The Fifth Commandment “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.” 104. What does God require in the fifth Commandment? That I show all honor, love, and faithfulness to my father and mother, and to all in authority over me, submit myself with due obedience to all their good instruction and correction, and also bear patiently with their infirmities, since it is God’s will to govern us by their hand.
Read More“LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” – 1662 Book of Common Prayer
Read MoreThe Lord Jesus Makes No Mistakes
From Bishop Ryle: The Lord Jesus makes no mistakes in managing His friends’ affairs. He orders all their concerns with perfect wisdom. All things happen at the right time, and in the right way. He gives them as much of sickness and as much of health, as much of poverty and as much of riches, as much of sorrow and as much of joy, as He sees their souls require. He leads them by the right way to bring them to the city of habitation. He mixes their bitterest cups like a wise physician, and takes care that they have not a drop too little or too much. His people often misunderstand His dealings; they are silly enough to fancy…
Read MoreClick here for tomorrow’s bulletin. MORNING WORSHIP (9:30): Charlie Wingard, preaching: Ecclesiastes 1:1-3:15, “Living Wisely in a Broken World” CONGREGATIONAL MEETING REGARDING CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW SANCTUARY (11:00) EVENING WORSHIP (6:00): Nathan Eldridge, preaching: Proverbs 22:4 (and selected Proverbs, “The Character of Wisdom: Humility”
Read MoreGerman and American soldiers unite to fight one of the last battles of World War II in Europe. Exceedingly strange but true. “What do you do with the site of a mass shooting?” David Murray provides a helpful explanation of the regulative principle of worship. Paul Tripp on ministry readiness and spiritual maturity. On performing Shakespeare with the original pronunciation.
Read MoreFrom a speech at Hillsdale College by former Congressman Mike Pence. Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana last year: There is no finer, more moving, or more profound understanding of the nature of the presidency and the command of humility placed upon it than that expressed by President [Calvin] Coolidge. He, like Lincoln, lost a child while he was president, a son of sixteen. “The day I became president,” Coolidge wrote, “[Calvin, Jr.] had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, ‘If my father was president I would not work in a tobacco field,’ Calvin replied, ‘If my father were your father you would.”‘ His admiration for the boy…
Read More“Divorced from the holiness of God, sin is merely self-defeating behavior or a breach in etiquette. Divorced from the holiness of God, grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation. Divorced from the holiness of God, our gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines. Divorced from the holiness of God, our public morality is reduced to little more than an accumulation of trade-offs between competing private interests. Divorced from the holiness of God, our worship becomes mere entertainment. The holiness of God is the very cornerstone of Christian faith, for it is the foundation of reality. Sin is defiance of God’s holiness, the…
Read MoreNo fiction writer could have created the story of Englishman James Holman (1786-1857). At age thirteen, Holman joined the British Royal Navy and traveled to North America. For much of the remainder of his life he was on the move, never more happy and healthy than when traveling, even after he went blind In his mid-twenties. Disability did not dampen his enthusiasm for life. He studied medicine and literature at the University of Edinburgh, committing large bodies of materials to his capacious memory. Obtaining a machine used by British soldiers to write in complete darkness, he cultivated his considerable skills as a writer. Eventually, Holman set off to explore the world. By his death he was the most traveled man…
Read More“Bring everything you have and are to your ministry – your best craftsmanship, your most concentrated study, your truest technique, your uttermost of self-consecration, your toil and sweat of brain and heart – bring it all without reserve. But when you have brought it, something else remains: Stand back, and see the salvation of God.” – James S. Stewart, Heralds of God: A Practical Book on Preaching (Vancouver: Regent, 2001; originally published 1946), 189.
Read MoreBless and Do Not Curse (2)
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Romans 12:14). When we bless, we pray and behave in hope that God will bless our enemy with his favor. Seeking our enemy’s highest good puts the Christian to one of faith’s greatest tests. Victory is only won by trusting God in earnest prayer. Examples are few, so we should note them carefully. Two from the New Testament: At his crucifixion Jesus prays: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 24:34). Numbered among his killers stand men who on the day of Pentecost will hear the gospel, believe, and be saved. They will taste the very blessing of divine pardon our dying Savior sought for…
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