Posts by Pastor Eric (Page 25)

• The incomparable John Owen said worship was “indispensably necessary” based on the simple reality of who God is (think Romans 1). And this “inner” awareness was expressed in how God commanded his people to worship (what Owen called God’s “ appointment” ). Owen argued that if you give up the latter — namely corporate worship with God’s people according to God’s ideas —…

• A few weeks ago at prayer meeting I mentioned how the first decade of our marriage was fraught with grave concerns for Lisa’s health: multiple surgeries, several very bad attacks of asthma, one brush with death. Lisa was always much better than I was at placing the love of God alongside pain — as Psalm 118: “ the Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me…

• Oddly enough, Jesus sometimes uses the word “sinner” to mean something other than a sinner. Often he is not referring to a person’s moral condition at all, but almost entirely to a person’s awareness of his moral condition, as in Luke 5:32 “ I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” Technically, of course, there are no non-sinners in Jesus’ audience. He’s using the…

• After the note below, I offer Teddy Roosevelt’s “ Ten Reasons for Going to Church” as an historical artifact, if nothing else.

• The article I mentioned on Sunday, Same-Sex Science, is up on the website. Go to www.cpcissaquah.org and click on the first slide (photo). Or, you can click on “sermons and resources” in the left column. Then, when the menu expands, click on “ resources” and you’ll see “ Sermon Links” on the right: “ Same-Sex Science.”

• I admit it’s a strange source from which to draw encouragement, but media responses to the NY Post photo of the man about to die on the subway tracks have been appropriately indignant. Photojournalists debate this kind of thing at length, but even if the incident were to lead directly to the installation of railings in the subway, everyone seems to know it’s wrong to…

• I’ve always thought the term “Christian worldview” was an odd one — as though even after being made a “new creation” you had to select a lens through which to see everything, and one of those lenses was called “Christian.”

• It is stunning and disheartening to watch a career such as Gen. Petraeus’s end in dishonor (his words), or a life such as Joe Paterno’s end in shame. The list could be much longer, of course. We might be tempted to think the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit would make us immune to some similar collapse, but we know better. We’ve seen prominent Christian leaders go…

• A last thought on the people of God and politics. In chapter 7 of Daniel’s prophecy, he is transported and haunted by a vision which reads in part: “As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire…

• You should remember to VOTE since our government, which “ God has appointed” (Rom 13.2), is one “ of the people, by the people and for the people.” That phrase, among several other elegant phrases crafted by Lincoln for Gettysburg, is honored by use in the current French constitution, drafted in 1958 (Title I, article 2).