God the Redeemer
God created the first Adam in His own image, and appointed him to rule over the works of His hands. He also gave him a commandment. Gen. 2:16, 17: “Of all the trees of the garden you may freely eat.…
Tag Biblical Exposition
Studying the Confession: The Doctrine of Assurance
The Westminster Confession of Faith … What is it? Is it a document that presents cold intellectual faith? Dead Orthodoxy as it seems to some… Is it a historical artifact that has no relevancy to the pastor or the people…
A Reason to be Thankful
I was in a store just a couple of days ago when a smiling clerk asked if she could help my wife and me with some pictures we were admiring. However, talk about beautiful pictures gave way to a less…
The Great Neglected Mandate
Last words are important and often intriguing and none more so than the last words of Jesus. They are best remembered as expressed by Matthew at the end of his Gospel where Jesus tells the Eleven, “All authority in heaven…
Assurance and Preaching the Word
On any given Sunday there are, sitting in the pews of church, myriad kinds of different people. There are, of course, the faithful who have battled well against unbelief throughout the previous week and are hungering and thirsting for the…
Doctrine Alone
The season of the Reformation ‘Solas’ has just ended and we have been reminded of the ‘aloneness’ of Scripture, grace, faith, Christ and the glory of God. But, hopefully, we will have also been reminded too that none of these…
Assurance and the Heidelberg Catechism
The Heidelberg Catechism, penned mostly by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, is among the most beloved and best written statements of Reformed Christianity. The forms of assurance discussed in this catechism fall into two broad categories: 1) those benefits which…
Westminster & Preaching: Preparation & Hearing
The Puritan movement was known firstly as a resurgence of biblical of preaching; its focus was upon the right preaching of God’s word which would transform and revive not only the Church but also the nation, and if the Lord…
William Perkins and Medieval Exegesis
In my previous post, we considered the response of William Tyndale to the excesses of medieval Roman Catholic exegesis, specifically the fourfold method. In line with his claim for the “single, full, and natural sense” of Scripture passages, William Perkins…
Biblical Counsel for Pastoral Burnout, Part 3
In the previous articles, I have suggested that C.S. Lewis’s article, “First and Second Things” provides an understanding as to why pastors experience burnout. Lewis said that when first things are eclipsed by second things both are lost. In the…