In our prayers for reformation and revival over the years, we have asked God to move in remarkable ways, and He has been pleased to grant many aspects of our requests. But as God has done wonderful things in our midst, He has been pleased to do it over time, over the course of years. …
Highhandedness
Father, we live in a time when the worldliness of the unbelieving world is truly stark. We confess that in many places of our national life. — in our letters, on our politics, in our entertainment — our rebellion against You is highhanded in the extreme. Father, we confess that our nation is guilty of …
Haman Brought the Treachery With Him
This meal is a royal feast; the Lord Jesus is the king, and He has invited us all to sit down and partake with Him. But the fact that we are seated at this Table should not make us careless of our manners. Haman was invited to a meal by a queen, and he sat …
No Endless Chain of Buttercups and Daisies
God is the God of great mercy and He brings great salvation. But it should not be concluded from this that the God of the Bible is a soft God. He is the Lord of Heaven and earth, and though He is altogether good, He is not what we would call well-behaved. The universe is …
Sin Is Generational
Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all. Father, we know from Your Word that sin is generational, just …
Don’t Come Unless You Want Some
There are many complementary contrasts between the old and new covenants, and one of them has to do with the relative potency of sin. In the old covenant, sin is contagious. In the new covenant, holiness is. In the old covenant, God’s people were consistently warned against coming into contact with the unclean—with dead bodies, …
Red for Our Red
We want our sins to be reckoned as tiny for numerous reasons. One is the obvious self-justifying one, but we also want our sins to be small because we want God’s forgiveness to be a reasonable forgiveness. We want God to be a gentleman, the kind of being who would obviously be well-bred enough to …
Close and Far the Wrong Way
Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all. Our Father and great God, we do come before You with …
Staying Away from Ziba
We are gathered here at the royal table of the greater David, the one who has graciously invited us to take this meal together with him. As the Lord Jesus is the one greater than David, so we are like Mephibosheth, descended from an enemy of the king, and with no great power of our …
The Wrong Opposite
The Bible teaches that God hates. We prefer a sentimental faith to a biblical one, and so we tell ourselves that God is love, which is biblical, and that the opposite of love is hate, which is unbiblical. God hates insolence. God hates lies. God hates hands that shed innocent blood. He hates wicked imagination. …