Worship is not to be thought of primarily as an experience, after which we can say that we felt worshipful. Rather, worship is an act, after which we can say, or not, that we were obedient. When experience is sought after in worship, we destroy the very thing we mistakenly exalt. When obedience is rendered …
Delivered In Our Generation
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Gracious Father of all salvation, we magnify Your great works of deliverance through the ages, as You have always shown kindness to Your people. You brought Abraham out of the idolatry of Ur of the Chaldees. You delivered Moses when he was …
Invited to Stay
Jesus Christ invited Judas to this meal, knowing what was in his heart. Jesus Christ warned Judas about his peril, in much the same way that God warned Cain about sin lying in wait for him. And the greatest possible grace and the greatest act of treachery met together. But the Table was not defiled. …
Absolutely Uninterested
Although we are a Christian people, we still have a tendency to hide from the sheer goodness of the gospel. One of the ways we have of doing this is to turn the word sinner into a technical theological one, meaning that no one is perfect, and despite this, any one can call on God …
Renewing Covenant
We are here in a service of covenant renewal. We know that this covenant contains blessings for obedience and chastisements for disobedience. We also know that all of us stumble and are disobedient at times, and so we wonder what is the good of renewing a covenant that we constantly break. The glorious news is …
A Wedding Banquet
The Lord’s Table is a wedding feast, and unless we understand our relationship to Jesus Christ as our Bridegroom, and ourselves collectively as His chosen Bride, we will not understand what is happening here. The book of 1 Corinthians has a great deal in it about the relationship of the two sexes, and we too …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXX
INTRODUCTION: Having looked at what headship is not, and what it really is according to Scripture, we now need to take a look at what submission is not. In this fallen world, glorious things are slandered and caricatured first, and sometimes the defenders of such things find themselves defending the caricature, and not the reality. …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXIX
INTRODUCTION: We have already considered what headship is not, and earlier in our series on marriage we considered some aspects of headship. But here we need to take careful pains to understand what headship actually is, so that we might live out this understanding obediently. THE TEXT: For the husband is the head of the …
Vanities and Mist
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Father of all glory, we come now to exalt and praise Your name. We ask that You would strengthen and feed us, and nourish us, but not because the focus of this service of worship is on us. We ask You to …
Lies and Liars
No one needs to teach us Pharisaism. Like all sins, it comes naturally enough if we do not guard against it. But you are Christians, you are a new creation in Christ, and one of the glorious characteristics of this new creation is the desire to guard against all such sins. One of the most …