INTRODUCTION: As God gives us the grace, we will now begin to work our way through the prophecy of Amos. Apart from what is revealed in his writing here, we know nothing about the man. Among the minor prophets, he occupies the vanguard in this period of Israel’s history, even though he is placed third …
In Relationship
One of the most difficult things for us to do is the task of locating sin properly. One common mistake, one that we have addressed a number of times before, is the mistake of locating sin in stuff. This mistake thinks that sin must be resident in material things—in sex, in alcohol, in refined sugar, …
When God Paints
Sacraments are immediately instituted by God. This means that man does not have the power to multiply sacraments. Those who want to live sacramentally, seeing a sacramental significance in everything, must be careful here. The only way to see the world sacramentally is to jealously guard the two sacraments that God has given to us, …
Real Ambition
INTRODUCTION: So we have considered desire, envy, and competition, and we now come to ambition. To address the subject rightly, we have to recall what we learned thus far. There is a certain kind of desire that every human being has to deal with, and this is a desire that tends to veer toward envy. …
Tangible Signs, Tangible Seals
We have considered what our confession of faith states about the Lord’s Supper specifically, but we can also be blessed by thinking through the biblical basis for the claims it makes about sacraments generally. First, what are the sacraments? Of course there are two of them—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And because they share the …
A More Excellent Way
INTRODUCTION: We are continuing to consider the problems posed by desire, envy, competition, and ambition. We have now come to competition, something dear to the heart of most Americans. But because of this we must guard our step. You have heard many times that we must repent of our virtues, and this subject is a …
The Last Chapter
Never forget that you are a called out people. God is establishing a new nation among all nations, a new people among all people, and a new race of men in the midst of the old race of men. He is doing this with the intention of having this new race of men in the …
The Tie That Binds
The fifth and last blessing of the Lord’s Supper, as our confession of faith notes them, is this: The Supper is to be “a bond and pledge of [our] communion with Him, and with each other, as members of His mystical body.” This is why, in the observance of the Supper, we encourage You not …
Heavier Than Wet Sand
INTRODUCTION: In this series, we are considering the temptations presented to us by desire, envy, competition, and ambition. Last week we looked at desire—the quarry from which many sins are hewn—and is a word which, thankfully for the writers of rock ballads, rhymes with fire. We now turn to the thing that our spirits’ desires …
Every Christian is Christopher
We have been working through the statement of the Westminster Confession on the blessings that attend a right observance of the Lord’s Supper. We come now to the fourth, which is our “further engagement in and to all duties which [we] owe unto Him.” This is another way of saying that by partaking of this …