Category: Theology
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Forgives Your Iniquities, Heals Your Diseases (Psalm 103)
The 103rd Psalm comes pretty close to perfect praise. It seems to be built around the quotation of God’s own self-description from Exodus 34, The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but…
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Now You See It, Now You Don’t
The church is a visible reality. Sort of. Evangelicals frequently forget, neglect or disdain the notion of the church’s visibility. This is more often than not a function of an ecclesiological minimalism. We get antsy around institutions and formalities, and we rejoice in the simplicity of the gospel. Do you trust in and love Jesus?…
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Even More Means, Even More Grace
When teaching about the means of grace, John Wesley habitually listed three things: prayer, Bible study, and the Lord’s supper. Those are the three in his best exposition of the doctrine of the means, and in many other places: GOD hath in Scripture ordained prayer, reading or hearing, and the receiving the Lord’s supper, as…
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Charles Wesley on Means of Grace
John Wesley preached the classic sermon on the Means of Grace, but his brother Charles decided that this was a doctrine that could be sung. So he wrote a very didactic hymn on the subject. Every line of thought in John’s sermon finds poetic expression somewhere in this 23-stanza hymn. Hymn No. 83, “The Means…
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In All Things, Be Fearful
I just returned recently to southern California after a nice, long vacation with my family. As well, I was able to spend two good weeks at the National Institute for Newman Studies in Pittsburgh, PA. The Institute, run by the Pittsburgh Oratorians, is a research facility containing all the works of John Henry Newman as…
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By the Book
“The B-I-B-L-E” doesn’t really pack the same punch for adults as it does for the pre-K Sunday school crowd. But gussied up in the dignity of an Elizabethan homily, the admonition to read my Bible once again demands my attention. “A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture” is the first sermon of over…
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Voting as a Spiritual Discipline: Ten Tips
How do you keep a healthy spiritual life during an intensely political time? The political season, after all, is about to begin in earnest: in only one week the Democrats will open their national convention in Denver, and shortly after that the Republicans will convene in Minneapolis – St. Paul. In short order, running mates…
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The Gist of the Lesson
R. A. Torrey wrote dozens of books, oversaw academics at the two greatest Bible Institutes in America, and carried out a round-the-world preaching tour that made headlines in big cities on five continents. He was a busy man and he worked on a grand scale. But while serving as the international celebrity for evangelical Christianity,…
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R. A. Torrey’s Greatest Sermons
R. A. Torrey (1856-1928) was the most important evangelist between Dwight L. Moody and Billy Graham. In the eighty years since his death, his fame has declined, so that he is no longer a household name. But his name is still powerful: you can hardly find a Christian bookstore so vacuous that it doesn’t sell…
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“Permit Me, Then, to Address You as Dying Persons…”
It’s a phrase Charles Simeon used fairly often in his preaching career, usually toward the end of a sermon in order to double-underline his point. “Permit me, then, to address you as dying persons, and to ask what you will think of these things when standing on the bring and precipice of eternity?” He uses…
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All Three Reasons to Be Humble
“There are three great motives that urge us to humility,” says Andrew Murray in the Preface to his book Humility. The first is that we are creatures, the second is that we are fallen, and the third is that we are redeemed. First: Creatures have reason to be humble because they can compare themselves to…