The burden is two-sided. First: a significant portion of the confusion about the Lord’s Supper comes from names that are not biblical — Eucharist, sacrament, emblems — names that carry theological freight the New Testament does not authorize. The names must be corrected before the practice…
Somebody must fill all second places. The refusal to do so — the insistence on first place when God, time, or circumstance has assigned the second — is one of the most consistent causes of failure in life. The man or woman who can take second…
The soul is worth more than the whole world — the Lord said so, and his statement has never been answered. The person who would not trade their house for a dollar still trades their soul daily for far less than the whole world. The four…
No matter what view of inspiration a person takes, no errors were made in the original manuscripts. The degrees of inspiration among biblical writers — varying from Christ’s highest (the Spirit without measure) to Luke’s sufficient level for his careful historical investigation — are not evidence…
The curse fell on Meroz not for what it did but for what it failed to do. Jehovah was victorious without them; the battle was won; the enemy was destroyed. Meroz was not needed for the outcome. But Meroz needed the blessing that would have come…
The Christ of the Gospels is not the passive, mournful figure that a certain tradition of piety has constructed. He resisted evil actively, condemned sin publicly, denounced hypocrisy with more severity than any other sin, and felt genuine indignation at the hardness of heart that preferred…
The crucifixion of Jesus was not accomplished by unusually evil people — it was accomplished by ordinary sins operating in ordinary people. The sins that crucified him are not confined to first-century Jerusalem; they are present in every generation, in every community, and in every congregation….
Effectiveness depends upon proper arrangement. The best material in the world, poorly arranged, will not accomplish what properly arranged material of lesser strength will. Structure is not decoration — it is the difference between a sermon that arrives and a sermon that dissipates. The principle of…
Service is the fundamental structure of Christian existence, modeled by Christ himself — “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The motive of service determines its character: fear-motivated service…
Anxiety is not merely an emotional condition — it is the practical expression of misplaced trust. The person who worries about what they will eat or wear has, at the level of daily functioning, placed more confidence in their own management of material circumstances than in…