I remember seeing my first one. It was beautiful, and I could barely take my eyes off of it. There before me on a simple piece of paper lay the answers to so many of my questions. This was the secret, the . . . Continue reading →
Have you ever been called home? It may be after a long vacation or a business trip. Or maybe you are going home to spend the holidays with family after moving to the other side of the country. There is just something about home. Continue reading →
As we saw in Part 1, the Songs of Ascent (Psalms 120–134) were songs the Israelite pilgrims sang on their way to Jerusalem for the annual feasts of Passover, Weeks, and Booths. These fifteen songs are in cycles of three, and Psalm 120 began the first cycle with the psalmist far from God, dwelling in the tents of warlike, deceitful pagans. Continue reading →
“Are we there yet?” Who among us has not either heard or voiced these words on a long family road trip? The trees fly past in the slightly foggy windows, the road signs mark the distance to our destination, and a small voice pipes up from the backseat. Children are generally (and notoriously) impatient. Continue reading →
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Thus begins Psalm 23 in the old King James Version. In an age of ever-decreasing biblical literacy, Psalm 23 remains one of the most well-known passages in Scripture. One gets the sense that, besides being . . . Continue reading →
The city of God awaits the people of God. This was a comfort to the faithful inhabitants of Judah in Isaiah’s day, even as they heard about God’s impending judgment on the earthly Jerusalem. It is also a comfort to Christians today . . . Continue reading →
I remember the thought popping into my head as if it were yesterday: “Why are we doing this?” I was eight or nine, sitting in the back of the family minivan on the way to church. I think this was the first . . . Continue reading →
In Part 1 we saw that Yahweh is the only true God, the one worthy of worship. He is the true storm god, and Baal is nowhere to be found. The LORD is the great King over all things, and his voice . . . Continue reading →
There are few books in the Bible more well-known in the church and the world today than the Book of Psalms. Even unbelievers have Psalm 23 memorized. Psalms 95 and Psalms 100 are mainstays as calls to worship in Reformed and Presbyterian . . . Continue reading →
At this point in Psalm 77, Asaph begins to see things in a different light—Yahweh acted to save His people in history, which brought the psalmist comfort in the midst of his present chaos and pain. Specifically, the LORD rescued His people . . . Continue reading →
Asaph was desperate, looking to Yahweh for help in his day of trouble. That is how Psalm 77 begins, but in this second installment, we see things begin to change. The psalmist was looking in the right direction: his desperate cries for . . . Continue reading →
“Now what?” It is the question we would rather not ask. We still find ourselves asking it in different contexts, of course. Sometimes we have acquired knowledge but do not know how to put it into practice, or we have finally obtained . . . Continue reading →
We live in an age that has lost the plot. In this case it is not the world at large, but rather the broadly Protestant/evangelical world in the West—many things taken almost for granted by previous generations of Christians are met with . . . Continue reading →
No one can deny that we are living in strange times for Reformed theology. For example, we are hard-pressed to find enough professing Christians theologically astute enough to be actual Arminians. What is a Reformed person to do when there are not . . . Continue reading →
If what we saw in part 1 is what the ecumenical creeds and Reformed confessions teach, and if this is where the biblical data point, then what do we do with all of this? Continue reading
I will never forget that Sunday. I was about thirteen years old—or maybe a little younger. Continue reading
On June 9, 1886, a funeral was held in a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The deceased, John Williamson Nevin (1803–86), was a pastor, professor, and theologian in the German Reformed Church. Friends and family were in attendance as well as several theologians and professors of differing fame and reputation. None of this was unusual for a theologian’s funeral in nineteenth-century America. There was, however, at least one irregularity: A. A. Hodge (1823–16) gave one of the eulogies.1 Hodge’s late father, Charles Hodge (1797–1878), and Nevin were involved in one of the most prominent sacramental controversies in nineteenth-century America, yet the younger Hodge eulogized the very man who contested with his father decades before. Even now, the controversy and the theologies that gave rise to it live on long after the death of the major figures. Continue reading →