Crumbs from the Master's Table

"'The world hates me,' may such a soul as has the Spirit say; 'but my Father loves me. Men despise me as a hypocrite ; by m...

New Covenant Church pastor Doug O'Donnell's first sermon in a series on the Song of Songs, titled  Understand Thou What Thou Readest...

Does the Song of Songs include typology? Here is Graham Cole's definition of typology taken from his book He Who Gives Life (p. 289)...

In part 2 of  John Owen's On Communion with God , the point of departure and then the place of exposition for describing communion with ...

Isaiah 54:1, following the suffering and anguish of Isaiah 53, comes with an explosive change of tone and mood.  It shouts!  It sings!  It g...

Al Mohler on evolutionary theory in relation to Genesis and the Gospel:  "There is no way to affirm an historical Adam while holding to...

From the third division of Owen's On Communion with God , which addresses communion with the Holy Spirit, we're given this golden wi...

A good follow-up to yesterday's post on the sermon by Matt Newkirk is this stirring word from John Stott's commentary on Rom. 1:5: ...

Last week I posted part one of a two-part series on the book of Revelation preached by New Covenant Church pastor Matt Newkirk.  Here is the...

Thoughtful Christians (yeah, yeah, I know, these are in short supply nowadays) will want to take a look at breeders no more  and  then they ...

One of the great texts of Scripture: "Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself like he who takes it off" (1 Kgs. 20:11). ...

I'm going to begin a new category or two of posts that includes clear and concise definitions (sometimes with expansions) of important t...

Word studies are part and parcel of the exegetical process by which every preacher and teacher comes to terms with an author's intended ...

"When we find any of the good truths of the gospel come home to our souls with life, vigor, and power, giving us gladness of heart, tra...

Here is a good word from Dr. Peter Leithart about teaching children, from the preface of his book A House for My Name : I encourage parent...

Last Lord's Day, Pastor Matt Newkirk of New Covenant Church in Naperville preached the first part of a two-part series from Revelation. ...

"When men content themselves . . . with notions of the truth, without laboring after an experience of them in their hearts, and the bri...

"Indeed, what men are in these duties [prayer and meditation] (I mean as to faith and love in them), that they are, and no more."—...

Do we want prophets or professionals in our pulpits, men of steel or boys of the cloth?  O, Lord, give us vertebrates! A word from that pr...

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties . . . in action how like an angel, in apprehension how l...

I think I've put my finger upon something about middle class and upper middle class conservative Christian society, not least of the Whe...

Speaking of trinitarian love toward us—the fountain of divine love in the Father's sending of the Son, the purchase of the benefits of t...

"Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us"...

"This is an evident sign of a false spirit, whatever its pretense be, if it glorify not that Christ who was now speaking to his apostle...

In Ps. 40, we see the faith of David in action.  Amid his trials and tribulations, set before our eyes are two essential ingredients of genu...

From the introduction of The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry , 3rd edition, Armand Nicholi, MD, says this about the state of psychiatry: Progre...

Owen on the ministry of the Spirit (from On Communion with God ): The life and soul of all our comforts lie treasured up in the promises of...

Recently, in God's good providence, I've gotten to know fairly well a man who is a Jehovah's Witness.  And after speaking with h...

The Westminster Confession of Faith was produced in 1647.  Em and I have been reading it at dinner for a number of weeks now.  Chapter XX  O...

Last Sunday's  sermon at New Covenant Church was a call to a cruciform life.  Really, it was about basic discipleship, what it means to...

Now here is a description of Calvinism with which I heartily agree: It would not be correct simply to equate Calvinism with the 'five p...

In the controversy between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, there are theological assumptions driving everything that are not often stat...

"Believers Look to Christ as the Dispenser of the Spirit and of All Grace."  This is the heading of a marvelous section in Owen...

Em and I have really enjoyed this music video , especially the last portion where the old, married couples who've gone the distance are ...

The evangelical wing of the Church in which I came to Christ--for which I never cease blessing God--by and large embraces Calvinism's so...

After my conversion about a dozen years ago, I read the Bible voraciously.  After graduating from college, I think I typically read carefull...

I recently purchased John Mark McMillan's new album The Medicine .  I really like the song " Death in His Grave ."  Have a loo...

William Cowper produced in 1774 what is probably my favorite hymn: God Moves in a Mysterious Way . It expresses the mysteries and glories of...

Something a bit unusual occurred last Sunday.  At New Covenant Church in Naperville, since our senior pastor Doug O'Donnell fell ill, an...

At the last monthly New Covenant Church community chat, I spoke briefly about a men's ministry memorization effort that will shortly be ...

I first heard the quotation below on God's absolute sovereignty in a lecture that John Piper gave on C. H. Spurgeon in 1995 at Desiring ...

Section VIII of Pascal's Pensees , entitled "Diversion," includes these two profound sentences: "Being unable to cure ...

In chapter 2 of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship , these two propositions are set forth: 1) "only he who believes is obedient,...

When the call to discipleship goes forth from the sovereign Christ, why must the response be immediate?  In chapter 2 of Bonhoeffer's Th...

In 1 Sam. 16:13, the prophet Samuel anoints David:  "And the Spirit of YHWH rushed upon David from that day forward."  Under the O...

What follows is an excerpt from Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship .  I think it sums up what he's on about in the book.  He prov...

This youtube video Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration  is too good to pass up.  Enjoy.  Em and I were jammin' to this over the holiday...

Two texts have been on my mind as I think about church body life. They have wide scope, I believe, but I want to point them up in relation t...

Still moving through Owen's On Communion with God , I am in the midst of a rich section that speaks of communion with the Lord Jesus in ...

No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow.  It is only when they are behind and done, that we begin...

I've mentioned before, and I'll never tire of saying it, that I believe that the calling of being a mother is the greatest and highe...

"In the receiving of grace from God, we have not communion with Christ, who is yet the treasury and storehouse of it, unless we look up...

"Students, I tell you solemnly, nothing will excuse you from the most rigid economy of time; it is at your peril that you trifle with i...

"Woe unto the minister who dares waste an hour" (C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students ).

If you are looking for suitable inducement to aid in confessing Jesus as Lord of all, this New Covenant Church sermon  from last Sunday is s...

The following Lewis quotation is one of my favorites, since it holds together precious realities (much like "sorrowful, yet always rejo...

In my regular reading through the Scriptures with my wife, we've come to Deutoronomy.  This is one of my favorite OT books on account of...

Worship.  We all do it.  It's inescapable.  We're incurable.  So the question is not if  we will worship someone or something, but ...

Well, there he was, at it again.  New Covenant Church Pastor Doug O'Donnell sparred neither Pharisee nor Sadducee in last Sunday's s...

As a twenty-first century evangelical Protestant living in postmodern America who is a physical therapist by profession, I know that I'm...

What does it mean to be a Christian?  Well, among other things, it means basically and fundamentally to confess Jesus Christ as Lord of al...

The following poem is called A Litany in Time of Plague : Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss; This world uncertain is; Fond are life...

As I enjoy my way through a couple of glasses of Guinness and Mansfield's book on God and Guinness, I've gotten to a portion that re...

Some days ago I posted on an intriguing new book, a book that stirred up quite a bit of discussion over at Between Two Worlds  some weeks ba...

Have you ever asked why God doesn't make us completely holy immediately after saving us?  I mean, why leave us with indwelling sin, slog...

As something of a corollary to the post two posts ago on God's inability to sin, I have another question.  If God is unable to sin becau...

Because of our creaturely status, because we live in God's universe, because we utterly depend upon God for life, breath, and everything...

In his Summa Theologiae , scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) addresses a recurring question about God's omnipotence:  I...

Regularly reviewing and confessing creeds is good for the soul and body, both the individual and the corporate.  So here is an important one...

No mortal can possibly properly reckon with the worth of an excellent wife.  She is indeed far more precious than jewels (Prov. 31:10).  Thi...

"A man without holiness is good for nothing."--John Owen

John G. Paton was a missionary to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu).  One of his sons, it is told in his biography, said this about him as a father...

The story in Matt. 15:21-28 of the Caananite woman pleading importunately with Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter is one of my favor...

Many today have a hard time understanding the apostle who wrote Phil. 3.  But the good old men of an older era didn't seem to have such ...

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,           Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack           Fro...

What Scripture says, God says.  And so Scripture carries the authority, truth, weight, and honor of God himself.  Small wonder then that tre...

A favorite quotation by Martin Luther (1483-1546) regularly comes to my mind.  Actually it is on the door of my study.  He says, with his ty...

I confess that I find laughable the climate change gurus and inteligentsia who pontificate about rising temperatures on account of human bod...

Moving through John Owen's On Communion with God , one sentence recently grabbed me, shook me, turned me round, and set me going in a ne...

The Lord Jesus is the second Adam.  As the second Adam, he is the corporate head of a new humanity, the new Israel.  All the orthodox acknow...