A few years ago, at the start of a new school year, I announced to the kids that we would be memorizing the book of James.
“The whole book?” one son asked, eyes wide with surprise.
“That’s the goal,” I responded.
“Impossible!” he declared.
Up to that point, my children had memorized single verses and short passages of Scripture. I thought it was time to take on something bigger.
Memorizing God’s Word
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” (Matt. 1:23, NASB, 1977)
These are the words of Matthew immediately after he wrote, “Now all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying” (Matt. 1:22). The “prophet” here refers to Isaiah. In Matthew 1:23, Matthew references aspects of Isaiah 7:14, 8:10, and 9:6. Those texts read as follows:
“Dimittimini exiteI” (“You are dismissed, get out!”) With these imperious words, Johannes Bogerman (1576-1637), president of the Synod of Dordt, expressed what many of the delegates were had been painfully thinking. The Remonstrants had to leave.
Agnes Beaumont and Her Fateful Ride
Agnes Beaumont was gloating on her way to church. She had managed to find a ride against all odds, and what ride! She was sitting right behind John Bunyan, pastor of the church in Bedford. “My heart was puffed up with pride,” she wrote, “and I was pleased that anybody did look after me as I rode along.”[1]
Last week, I entitled my column, “How to Wreck a Church.” In my mind, the false teachers in Jude had (and have) the potential to do just that. They come in secretly; they flatter; they are immoral and follow their own desires; ultimately, they will be destroyed by God. But when we step back and look at Jude’s letter as a whole, we see that everything in the letter – including the description of the church-wreckers – is written in the service of one major theme. It all fa
As I look back on my days at seminary, I can see some courses which were more helpful than others. This is probably due to a combination of factors: my own interests and aptitude; the strength of the teacher; the subject matter itself. Most classes were valuable, but a few classes were forgettable.
Humans have been fascinated by themselves since the earliest times in the history of our race. From the crude stick figures painted on the walls of caves in prehistoric times through to the sophisticated image of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, or the mathematical musings around the Fibonacci sequence in the beauty and balance of the human form, there has been a never-ending search for the perfect paradigm for humanity.
I heard a comment recently from one of the young men in our church that gave me pause for thought. He said, ‘I don’t think I have ever heard a sermon about assurance.’ My initial reaction was to frantically cast my mind back over the last 40 years trying to remember if I myself had ever addressed the subject (thankfully I have), but then I began to wonder why this vital topic has apparently been neglected both in the pulpit and in Christian literature in more recent times.
…he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it.
John 12:6bNKJV
Anyone who might still hold to the classical liberal perspective that the God of the Old Testament was this angry, vengeful, “bad-hair-day” deity that frankly hated everyone and everything ,while the New Testament Jesus was a veritable hippie, spouting free love and holding forth no judgment of any kind, has obviously not read (or has read and does not believe!) texts like Matthew 5. Most of us can get through the day without actually ending someone else’s life or fornicating with someone-not-our-spouse. But who can stop anger or lust dead in their tracts?
What do we mean when we say that God is without passion…that He’s indifferent to His creation? Is God moved by anyone or anything? How should we handle the difficult Bible passages that seem to contradict the doctrine of impassibility?
Jonathan and James share an informal conversation about the knowledge of God.
What are we really saying when we claim that God knows all things? What’s the scope of God’s knowledge? Is God continuously learning everything at the moment it happens?
James affirms that God is “uneducated”—what does he mean by that? Join us for another mind-expanding episode of Theology on the Go!
Satan tells us that repentance is easy and forgiveness is available, so yielding to temptation is not serious. We are tempted to think that we'll only commit a sin a few times and then claim God's forgiveness. “Correcting the situation after you sin is easy,” the Tempter tells us.
But this is dangerous thinking for several reasons. First, consider how nauseating even we humans find insincere repentance. Here's an example of what I mean: Imagine that you heard me saying to my young daughter,
One of the reasons the Puritans wrote a number of polemical works pertaining to sanctification, particularly with respect to law, good works and salvation, was to defend faithful ministers and churches. That reason remains true today and I want to take the opportunity to say a few words in defense of PCA pastor Kevin DeYoung. Pastor DeYoung was recently criticized for teaching that good works are necessary for salvation as a means.
