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Most Saturday Nights
On most Saturday nights our household makes dinner into an event. The food may be a bit more fancy as well as the decorations on the table. We get the kids involved with some quick-fire catechism type questions, we all sing the doxology, we pray, and then we feast as an appetizer for Sunday morning’s feast of worship.
One thing I usually do is poor the drinks. Everyone around the table gets a glass of wine, be it a large glass or a kid cup, and to whatever degree it is cut with seltzer water.
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Overlooking Glory
There is a stage of development as Christians are learning to love righteousness that can cause its own kind of damage. There is no way to not love righteousness and have that be good. There is also a way to love righteousness that is not as good as it could be. It can happen between peers, it can happen from parents and pastors, and really anytime someone watches someone else sin.
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The Fruit of the Womb
November is National Adoption Month and in this first week of the month elections took place across our country. It may be too much to tie together an exhortation to confess from these two threads, and yet they may be in a knot already.
When we worship God we not only see what He is like but also what He likes. More than that, we begin to like the same things.
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Everything in Subjection
Though David wrote Psalm 8 about man as in mankind, the author of Hebrews also recognized a unique application for the God-Man, Jesus Christ.
For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
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There Is No Spoon
More from Saving Leonardo about the inevitable results of a man’s defective theology proper:
When artists were persuaded that nature operates by blind, undirected processes—-with no overarching purpose, order, or design—-then consciously or unconsciously they began to express that worldview by refusing to impose any order or design on their starting materials….If the universe does not have an author, if it was not created by a supreme artist, then what basis is there for humans to create works of art?
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Protecting Our Talk
The doctrine of creation does more than provide science with the origins of the universe. Because we know the first cause, in particular, because we know the first Who, we know that we are not alone. We are not alone and we exist for someone else’s purpose. That means that we all exist for Him, each and every one of us, and that means that we should be careful how we talk about His stuff.
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The Day of Refreshing
The following encouragement came in a letter from Robert Cushman to the William Bradford recorded in Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620-1647 (page 108):
I pray you not be discouraged, but gather up yourself, to go through these difficulties cheerfully and with courage in that place wherein God hath set you, until the day of refreshing come.
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The Son and the Psalter
Psalm 2 sits in a special place in the Psalter. In fact, based on early manuscripts of Acts 13:33 that quoted Psalm 2:7 as being in the “first psalm,” Psalms 1 and 2 were seen as one song, starting in 1:1 with “blessed” and ending in 2:12 with “blessed.” Though they are divided in our copies, Psalm 2 clearly provides another entrance into the entire Book. If Psalm 1 stresses the goodness of singing the Scriptures, Psalm 2 stresses the goodness of singing the Son.
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Three Nots
The blessed man in Psalm 1 is known by three “nots”.
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
(Psalm 1:1)
First, he walks not in the counsel of the wicked. He does not follow advice from the ungodly. He doesn’t listen to their opinions.
Can you imagine what the writer of Psalm 1 would think about talk radio, cable news, podcasts and vodcasts, or the magazine wall at the airport?
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The Door
I gave the following address at our end-of-year assembly on June 5th.
This year Mr. Sarr, Mr. Bowers, and myself (on Thursdays) read for you 100 Cupboards and Dandelion Fire during lunch. The Chestnut King is next and I’m sure it’s first in the queue for lunch breaks next year. N.D. Wilson’s trilogy works wonders for the imagination and I wonder if any of you have tried out the cupboards at your house to see if they lead anywhere amazing.
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A Good Egg
I gave the following address at our school’s fundraising dinner last Saturday night.
It’s been said that a man shouldn’t put all his eggs in one basket. That assumes, really, that all your eggs are of equal value. Putting a bunch of unremarkable eggs into a bunch of baskets diversifies a portfolio of unremarkable investments.
But what if you found the egg? What if you found the treasure of all eggs?
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Tohu Turns Ten
On Tuesday I had a private little party (in my head) to celebrate a decade of posting things that are without form and void here on tohu va bohu. If you’re still reading after all this time, thanks.
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A Zero Ego Party
We will never be really happy without being really humble. Only humble eyes seen how many things there are that are amazing. A proud person’s expectations are rarely satisfied. A humble person enjoys everything as unexpected or undeserved. He gives thanks always and everywhere because he knows he’s getting great stuff.
It is the humble man who does the big things. It is the humble man who does the bold things.
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I Am Not My Own
One of the greatest comforts in life is knowing that we are owned. As disciples of Christ, we were the Father’s and the Father gave us to the Son. He did it in such a way that both Father and Son possess us. Jesus described this reality in John 17 as He narrowed His prayer list. He prayed for His own.
The Heidelberg Catechism, written in 1563, begins with this encouragement, affectionately referred to as “Heidelberg One.
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Making Himself Known
When Jesus instituted the Supper of remembrance He told His disciples, “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). What was the new covenant and how is the Lord’s Table connected with it?
The New Covenant was God’s promise to “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31; Ezekiel 36:22, 32) to do for them what they failed to do in the previous covenant.
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Racing Back for More
We’ll be studying John 17 as a church for a while on Sundays and taking our exhortation to confession cues from Jesus’ prayer. What He wants for us should be valued and pursued by us. If we’re not desiring in the same direction that He is supplicating, we have something to examine, and possibly to confess. Last week we focused on His prayer for our sanctification. This week let us consider that He prays for His own glory.
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Many Offspring from One Offering
Christ is our high priest. He ministers with our names on His heart as the priests in the Old Testament carried the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. They prayed, they offered sacrifices for the people. But they were limited.
The author of Hebrews wrote “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said ‘Sacrifice and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me’” (Hebrews 10:4-5).
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Prayer for Sanctification
Last Sunday we entered a study of John 17. The entire chapter is one prayer by Jesus for His disciples the night before His crucifixion. We learn, or at least we have confirmed for us, what sorts of things the Son desires for us as we hear Him ask the Father. He makes a variety of supplications and we will take a few weeks in our confession time to examine if we are wanting what the Son wants.
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Loathsome Liturgy
Those of us who know so much, we who have been given so many biblical vistas of God’s glory, will naturally struggle to match our hearts with His majesty. Our feet are too small for the worship shoes we have to fill. There is a very real danger to give up, not entirely, but in certain religious ways. Rather than fight against sin and fight for fuller affections, we settle for worship motions.
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Table Rules
When the Corinthian believers came together it was not for the better but for the worse. It is sadly, and maybe too often, the case that Christians offer worship to God that He despises. Scripture reveals a variety of despicable practices and Paul mentions two of them related to the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 11. The church broke two table rules.
First, when the Corinthians came together as a church there were divisions.