The most recent version of this post is available here.
“God is interested in our willing participation in his plan for our lives, not in micro-managing helpless automatons.” — Tom
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Friday, July 01, 2016
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Quote of the Day (24)
“Weak
men drive women insane, and insane women make men weak.”
— John C. Wright
Not wrong, but we’re no closer to a
solution.
Feminism has already made tremendous
inroads into today’s church. The war of the sexes is not yet waged in every Christian home and place
of worship, but if you haven’t experienced it, trust me, it’s coming.
Labels:
John C. Wright
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Quote of the Day
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Relationships
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Inbox: The Finishing Stroke
Having
opened that can of worms before, I know the feeling of looking at your watch
and realizing that you’ve inadvertently set yourself up
for a reply on the scale of a Homeric recitation of ancient Greek epic poetry in dactylic hexameter.
Then
again, sometimes it turns out the question wasn’t so simple after all. Or,
in this case, that it provided the occasion to do an in-depth study that I
trust may have had a few unexpected benefits.
In
Exodus 32 God told Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will
blot out of my book”. The simple question originally asked was, “What about those
who repented (if any did)?”
Labels:
Book of Life
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Eternal Security
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Exodus
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Inbox
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Inbox: The Book of Life in the Book of Revelation
The
book of Revelation contains the majority of the Bible’s references to the
moderately mysterious and much-discussed “book of life”. No study of the subject
(such as the one beginning here and concluding here) that failed to address
these verses would be particularly useful.
This
one may not be either, but let’s at least take a crack at it.
Labels:
Book of Life
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Inbox
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Revelation
Monday, June 27, 2016
Inbox: Booking It
In connection with the episode in Exodus 32 where God says, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my
book,” WD wonders,
“What about those who repented (if any did)?”
Good
question. I think this might be the first mention of such a heavenly “book” in
scripture (assuming we take the reference literally), but similar language
comes up in other places more than once. The Hebrew in Exodus is çêpher, an umbrella term for all kinds
of written decrees, long and short, variously translated “book”, “letter”,
“scroll” or “evidence”. The sense of the word is not merely a communication but
a communication that has legal force.
That part we can all agree on. Don’t worry, it won’t last ...
Labels:
Book of Life
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Daniel
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Exodus
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Hebrews
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Inbox
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Luke
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Philippians
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Psalms
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Retro Christianity
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
1 Peter
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Christian Testimony
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John the Apostle
The Distance Between
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Immanence
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Transcendence
Friday, June 24, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: Coalition of the Unwilling
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Calvinism
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Censorship
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D.A. Carson
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Disagreement
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John MacArthur
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John Piper
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The Gospel Coalition
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Look It Up Your Own Self!
My biggest source of confidence in
understanding and interpreting the scriptures has being looking in-depth for myself at the passages in which I’m interested before reading any commentaries or
looking into any other educated opinions.
Sure, I’ll look at what others have written about the Bible — but only after I’ve spent a good long time establishing my own opinion about what the Holy Spirit was saying, trying to grasp the issues involved, and praying them through.
Sure, I’ll look at what others have written about the Bible — but only after I’ve spent a good long time establishing my own opinion about what the Holy Spirit was saying, trying to grasp the issues involved, and praying them through.
Other opinions are great, but they’re worth
precisely what the commentator has invested in them. Which is often not quite as
much as we think.
That’s not a complaint. It’s just math.
Labels:
Bible Study
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William MacDonald
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Recommend-a-blog (19)
Douglas Wilson meets Rachel Held Evans |
Douglas Wilson. Ah,
Douglas Wilson.
Yes, THAT Douglas Wilson: the one quoted in the notorious Gospel Coalition blog post about men, women, sex and authority, the same post that got Rachel Held Evans mightily agitated and for which its writer, Jared Wilson (no relation,
so far as I know), was compelled to eventually apologize (though Jared’s dutiful groveling is now well and truly buried, probably by TGC, and I haven’t got the patience to seek out and link to the inevitable archived
version; feel free to concoct your own conspiracy theories).
Doug Wilson remained gleefully unrepentant.
Labels:
Douglas Wilson
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Rachel Held Evans
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Recommend-a-blog
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Quote of the Day (23)
Most of us make our choices (be they heaven or hell, life or death, blessing or ruination) primarily on the basis of the testimony
of others, not because of any independent intellectual exercise. Those who succeed in freeing themselves of the “outdated worldview” characterized by belief in the existence and authority of God have merely accepted the default assumptions
of other, much more dubious would-be authorities.
Or put another way, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools”.
Labels:
Freedom
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John C. Wright
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Quote of the Day
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Romans
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Slavery
Monday, June 20, 2016
Valley and Peak
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
A.W. Tozer
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Immanence
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Worship
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Why Do Christians Worship?
[NFL fans will not miss the obvious; this post was written well prior to the acquisition of Manning’s second (and final) Superbowl ring — Ed.]
Prior to the Superbowl, there was much discussion about Denver quarterback Peyton Manning.
Prior to the Superbowl, there was much discussion about Denver quarterback Peyton Manning.
Everybody seemed to want to know where Manning rates on the
list of all-time football greats. It was not a subject debated only by the
talking heads on TV. Jim Rome rambled on about it on my car radio. It came up
at work. It came up at my local diner. Even people who would otherwise be uninterested in football seemed to have an opinion about Manning’s legacy in
the two weeks between conference finals and the big game — and even more so
during the game itself.
It is in the nature of mankind to have something to say about
greatness.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: Tom Becomes a Redhead
In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
At one end of the spectrum you get
Christians for whom everything is worship; hence terms like “worship team” and
“worship leader” and so on. Such a concept of worship is so broad as to be
almost meaningless. At the other end you have the ritualists, whether they are
Catholicized and liturgical or simply traditionalist evangelicals with very
rigid ideas about what a church’s corporate worship ought to entail. Such a view
of worship fails to deal adequately with Romans 12:1.
Both extremes claim scriptural evidence for
their positions, though I would argue that both views of worship are too limited. Everything in the Christian life may be done worship-fully, but choosing to worship remains a specific and deliberate act.
Labels:
Recycling
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Too Hot to Handle
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Worship
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Higher Learning
The martyrdom of John Lambert came up in discussion with my
fellow blogger IC last week. Lambert was burned at the stake in 1538 for refusing
to retract his objection to the doctrine of transubstantiation. As he died,
Lambert is reported to have cried out over and over again, “None but Christ!
None but Christ!”
Subsequent to our conversation, IC sent me a link to a video
clip of an episode from the otherwise-execrable TV series The Tudors, in which John Lambert meets
his end. Interestingly, the show’s producers opted to change Lambert’s dying
statement to “All for Christ! All for Christ!”
So what? Such minor tweaking of dialogue takes place all the
time in the process of bringing real stories to big and small screens alike. It’s
still a powerful scene, and the viewer’s sympathies are fully with Lambert,
which is presumably the writers’ intent.
Still, there is a difference in meaning, and I think it’s
one worth noting.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Traitors at the Table
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Communion
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Lord's Supper
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Remembrance
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Worship
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
In Need of Analysis: Worship as a Lifestyle [Part 2]
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
We have been discussing worship as a lifestyle, a concept
set out by John Piper among others, and how the recent discovery of a “worship lifestyle” compares with the way the word “worship” is actually employed throughout scripture.
First we drew a sharp distinction between two ways scripture uses the word: (1) to describe “acts of worship” (the public appearance) and (2) to refer to “worship” itself (the heart reality). Then we went on to establish that genuine worship is deliberate, sacrificial,
obedient and informed by the character of God himself. It is not a mechanical,
rote act, nor is it to be engaged in casually. It takes place at specific times, not at every moment of life.
Labels:
In Need of Analysis
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John Piper
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Recycling
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Romans
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Worship
Monday, June 13, 2016
In Need of Analysis: Worship as a Lifestyle [Part 1]
The subject of worship is currently getting a little more attention than usual in Christian circles, and that’s not a bad thing. We have John Piper to thank for this, among others who have written about worship as a lifestyle.
Piper starts by encouraging us to enlarge our thoughts of worship:
“… don’t think worship services when you think worship. That is a huge limitation which is not in the Bible. All of life is
supposed to be worship.”
and goes on to describe eating at Pizza Hut to the glory of
God, having sex to the glory of God and dying to the glory of God. So eating
moderately, healthily and gratefully is worship; loving sex within the bounds
of marriage is worship; chastity, too, is worship. “You are always in a
temple,” Piper says. “Always worship.”
Labels:
In Need of Analysis
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John Piper
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Recycling
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Worship
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Worship Teams
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Tom Takes a Breather (2)
Long-time readers will probably remember that we did this in June last year, and it was so much fun (for me at least) that this year we’re doing it again. You’re currently reading our 921st consecutive daily blog post since December 2013. (To be fair, a little over 6% of those posts were recycled, but if you don’t tell, I won’t.)
I’m going to take this coming week to recharge my batteries and work on a few pieces without an immediate deadline looming, but really that’s just a convenient excuse to do this:
Labels:
Coming Untrue
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