Not the Final Meeting

Thank God that the justice of God can never be isolated from the mercy of God. We can divide them when we study them. We can track both words through a concordance search and read passages that mention one and not the other. But in the world, in God’s nature, the two cannot be separated. When God judged Adam and Eve, promising them pain and death, then banishing them from the Garden, He honored His righteous, authoritative justice.

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Motivation for Obedience

We believe that God is God meaning that He does whatever He pleases (see Psalm 135:6). We believe that He controls everything, from ants in driveway cracks to the color of lights on the White House. We also believe that God writes all things into existence for His glory, and in light of His unmatched wisdom and power, we would be right to conclude that what we see around us is ultimately the best way for Him to be seen as great.

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Not That Far Apart

Over the last couple days I’ve argued that the start of our cultural problems is when man rejects God as God. The Supreme Court and the cover of “Vanity Fair” are fruit from an unsubmissive root. Then I gave three things that Christians could do. And we really must do something. If the church fails to apply the central truth of Christianity to social problems correctly, someone else will do so incorrectly.

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Mr. and Mrs. Grumpybottoms

Yesterday I wrote that the sins in our culture are not worse than the original sin in the Garden of Eden. That said, our sins are bad and getting worse, or they at least have better marketing. What can we do? Are we supposed to do anything? Who is the “we”? The church? Individual Christians? American citizens? Pastors? Parents? Within the first twenty-four hours after the Supreme ruining on marriage, the most common response I saw among evangelical Christians went something such as, “We don’t care about politics, we still have the gospel.

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Our Cultural Garden

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled last Friday that no State has the right to make it illegal for a man to “marry” a man and for a woman to “marry” a woman. This is on the heels of national news and controversy over a man changing himself into a woman (adding some female parts to his male parts). Some women are mad that this defines womanhood according to bodily features, and pink nail polish.

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When Obergefell Falls

Part stone slung at Goliath, part song sung at Grendel’s mom, read the whole charge from Toby Sumpter that starts with this: We are being taunted. The giant’s name is Obergefell; he is a six-fingered descendent of the Anakim. He has come out onto the battlefield arrayed in his impressive armor. He wears the media elites like a helmet of brass, and on his chest, he wears the deep pockets of multibillion dollar corporate CEOs.

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He Has Us Covered

Even if you’ve heard it before, sometimes it’s good to cover the same ground again. When Jesus died on the cross He covered our sins. Cover is an interesting concept. To cover the bill is not to put your salad plate on top of it, but to pay the full amount. To cover a mistake, at least in a good way and not a cover-up, is to do what it takes to fix the problem.

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Children of the Rainbow

Doug Wilson writing (again, for those who haven’t read him already) about why Christians kids need a Christian education before engaging the culture. You can’t choose sides before you can see the sides.

Running Out of Generations

Christians don't listen to Immanuel Kant much, or get our worldview of marching orders from him. But his take on Genesis 3 may represent a typical, if unspoken, view of the many about man. [Genesis 3 reveals the] transition from an uncultured, merely animal condition to the state of humanity, from bondage to instinct to rational control—-in a word, from the tutelage of nature to the state of freedom. (quoted in "

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His Shots Will Backfire

We understand now that the ultimate fulfillment of God’s curse on the serpent, namely, that the seed of the woman would crush his head (Genesis 3:15), is Jesus. It is similar to Paul’s explanation of how Jesus is the one seed fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham, “promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one. And to ‘your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16).

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Paternity Tests

Confession of sin is an issue of fatherhood. I don’t mean that father’s are the most important confessors, though dads can’t help but make a mess of things at home if they don’t. Instead, I mean that confession of sin is an issue that reveals spiritual fatherhood. How we react to sin makes it evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. The apostle John wrote,

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Premeditated Forgiveness

When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper (and we do celebrate it), we are not celebrating that God has overlooked our sin but that He most certainly has not. Grace isn’t God’s willful oblivion. Grace is His premeditated forgiveness with a full view. God knows all of our sin. And God receives Jesus’ sacrifice as a full ransom for our sin. Christ saw the list of charges against us. He knew we disobeyed, and how badly.

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Spilling the Beans onto Someone Else's Lap

It is possible to concede sin but not confess it. Or, to put it another way, a man may acknowledge what he did without acknowledging that it was his fault that he did it. In the second year of Saul’s reign as Israel’s king, he and his small army went to Gilgal to fight the Philistines. Saul was supposed to wait there for Samuel seven days, the appointed time for Samuel to come and offer sacrifices.

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The Fountainhead of Antithesis

Across the front of many communion tables is the phrase, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Jesus told His disciples on the night of His betrayal to keep eating the bread and drinking the cup as a memorial until He comes. The fall of man in Genesis 3 provides the first backdrop and the fountainhead of antithesis for remembering what Christ did in His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. To compare and contrast is a profitable mental appetizer to the meal.

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Passing Our Lusts Through Spell-Check

We are all amateur philologists. Philology is the study of language, and we use language to talk about everything. We type, text, speak, sing, and scratch out our words. Words are the materials that shape our relationships and responsibilities. There are many weird and wonderful aspects of our relationship with words. One of those is how we relate to the Dictionary. Some days we submit to it. We know a word but cannot recall exactly how to spell it.

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It's a Big Estate

Because Adam sinned we are all born guilty. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers for question 17, Adam’s “fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.” Every man didn’t eat the forbidden fruit but, because our representative did it, all mankind is guilty in him. “One trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Romans 5:18). “[B]y the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). The sin of one became the sin of all.

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Ad Nauseum Wholus Foodus

What we eat matters. God made us to eat. All sorts of bodily systems, some obvious and some more obvious when things aren’t working properly, are given by God for us to bite, taste, swallow, digest, use, and compost food. Eating is routine and what we eat identifies us. We know it ad nauseum wholus foodus in our current context. Organic used to mean that you ate something derived from living matter, not that that’s what made your life matter.

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More Fruitful Than Treebeard

I gave the following address at our year-end assembly last Friday. If you’ve read The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, you no doubt remember Treebeard. He’s a great character, helpful, slow to decide and to speak and to move, but full of conviction. He also offered tasty things to drink to guests. I’m sure his beard was quite a beauty (it was part of his name after all) and have tried to model my beard accordingly.

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Forty-one in Forty-one

Here are lessons I’ve learned or reasons that I’ve got for giving thanks. Also, although I did recently turn 41, I don’t have a 41 point list. Instead, in the spirit of having recently read 1984 which was written in 1948, here are 14 things, numbered but not ordered by importance. Learned: Line diagramming is great for meditating on God’s Word. It’s my favorite observation tool to beat the meaning out of a passage.

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Before or After?

Most of us are familiar with Paul’s warning about eating the bread and drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. Unworthy eaters “will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27). So a person should “examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (verse 28). Some Christians with sinful attitudes towards another person, let’s say toward their spouse, do not eat or drink at the communion table.

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