Crumbs from the Master's Table

Edwards: Envy may be defined, a spirit of opposition to others' comparative happiness, or to the happiness of others considered as com...

C. S. Lewis: I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can. To avert or postpone one particular war b...

I heartily concur with  this post  on note-taking during the sermon.

"God is the Author of authors" (Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text ? 47).

"To read is to fraternize with the great minds of the past" (Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text ? 46).

In The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross , Leon Morris argues cogently concerning the redemption-language background for the usage in the Ne...

Speaking of the "sinless Redeemer" and his body, the church, Lewis says this: His presence, the interaction between Him and us, ...

Lewis: A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion. . . . But if either comes to rega...

"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship....

"To become a Christian means to have fellowship with Christ in all that He has accomplished for us." —Sinclair Ferguson, The Tri...

This is Wencel baby number four at eight weeks, measuring 1.6 centimeters and presenting with a heart rate of 163 beats per minute. ...

"Love of benevolence is that disposition which a man has who desires or delights in the good of another. And this is the main thing in ...

"To be kind is to have a disposition freely to do good. Whatever good is done, it is no proper kindness in the doer of it unless it be ...

Speaking of how to view the apostle Paul, New Testament scholar Michael Bird suggests five images: persecutor , missionary , theologian , pa...

In a section showing how "a Christian spirit disposes persons freely to do good to others," in the fourth sermon in his sermon ser...

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

Commenting on the situation in Corinth that Paul is confronting in 2 Cor. 10:1ff, Professor Carson draws out this important contemporary app...

Addressing some of the crucial lessons to be learned from Paul's passionate pen in 2 Corinthians 10–13, Professor Carson speaks to one o...

Why do I languish thus, drooping and dull,                     As if I were all earth? O give me quickness, that I may with mirth        ...

"It is always much more difficult for Christians to detect a fundamentally sinful attitude in other Christians than in pagans—especiall...

         Full of rebellion, I would die,          Or fight, or travel, or deny That thou hast ought to do with me.                       ...

Commenting on 2 Corinthians 10–13, and speaking of how Paul handled the crisis in Corinth generated by the accusations of intruders and inte...

The following is the corporate prayer we prayed this morning at  New Covenant Church . And two great texts from Matthew's gospel shaped...

"It is the nature of love, or at least love to a superior as such [e.g., God], even to incline and dispose to imitation. A child's ...

Powlison: Our struggles and temptations are more alike than different. An elderly man facing a health crisis is tempted to worry in ways s...

"'Do not be afraid' is the most frequent command in the Bible." —David Powlison, "Where Do You Start," CCEF No...

Amid much confusion in the modern world about what it means to be a Christian (yes even, lamentably, in "Christian" churches), I o...

It's just my opinion, but the only place skinny jeans look good is on a toddler. (And even with the sloppy-joe stain on the "s...

"Man under the law lives in a state of tension. He knows what is right; he approves what is right; but he lacks the power to do what is...

Edwards on Christian meekness, from a sermon on 1 Cor. 13:4 in his justly famous series Charity and Its Fruits : If men after they are off...

I'm tired of talk about whether Obama is a Christian or Muslim. I mean, seriously? A Christian? C'mon. Not if the New Testament is t...

I just finished Stephen Westerholm's  Justification Reconsidered . It's a cogent and concise overview of Paul's understanding of...

"Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." —J. Boswell, Life...

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you...

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and John Calvin (1509–1564), two of the world's most prominent pastor-theologians, speak eloquently to the ...

My gratitude to God, and esteem for  D. A. Carson , increases by the day. I'm  currently taking his course on Acts, Paul, and the Ge...

Speaking of the Corinthian correspondence: No part of the Pauline corpus more clearly illuminates the character of Paul the man, Paul the ...

Over at National Review, Mary Eberstadt has just penned an insightful piece on what is going on with feminism today. Please do have a  look ...

This  recent piece  by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic is easily the most helpful piece I've read on ISIS. While acknowledging fully that I ...

Rogier van der Weyden's Deposition , ca. 1436 For a concise exposition of this painting, see pages 65–69 in Art and Music : A Stude...

"A church full of people who are hungry to impress others and climb a little higher up the scales of social approval will not be a chur...

The following is what my wife Emily wrote yesterday as she reflected on the home-going of her grandpa Peter Wolfert: Today I’m thanking Go...

"Mission is the mother of all theology" (M. Kahler, as cited in Michael F. Bird, Introducing Paul,  20).

On his second missionary journey, Paul (with Silas) preached Jesus as the Christ with good effect in a synagogue of the Jews in Thessalonica...

What follows is a recent prayer offered up at New Covenant Church  in Naperville, IL . On the morning we prayed this corporate prayer, we w...

The meeting house where Edwards preached "Charity and Its Fruits" Jonathan Edwards' sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, preached ...

I'm slated to give my testimony ("pilgrim story," or "life story," as they call it) in my formation group at TEDS. A...

What follows is my all too brief attempt to trace out the kingdom of God theme as it unfolds in Scripture. Since this was produced for a gra...

"Teaching about the resurrection of Jesus is inadequate if it does not incorporate the notions of heavenly exaltation and eternal rule....

"In the ancient world, philosophy means something like what we mean by 'worldview.'" —D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, A...

Regarding Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions : Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles , Justin Taylor says this: "I wou...

The following is the corporate prayer we prayed at  New Covenant Church  this morning. It is shaped  by Jas. 1:13–25. The Prayers at NCC (...

How shall we interpret the book of James? Among other things that could be said (say, for example, about the genre of James), here is an imp...

 "A season calling for the exercise of our minds in thoughts of the omnipresence and omnisicence of God is made up of our solicitudes a...

Ray Ortlund thinks so. And explains how  here.   Here is a portion of that post: The liberal churches I’ve known are not openly hostile...

"One spiritual view of the divine goodness, beauty, and holiness, will have more efficacy to raise the heart unto a contempt of all ear...

J. C. Ryle: I am quite aware that Owen's writings are not fashionable in the present day. . . . Yet the great divine . . . [has] more ...

Stephen Dempster: Even though the prophets were preachers of repentance and social reform, it is wrong to think of them as the ancient equ...

"The gifts of the Spirit serve diverse means for a single end: to make visible the lordship of Jesus Christ as crucified and raised, an...

"Mark's opening verse makes the Gospel's purpose clear: 'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God' (...

Vos:  This reliance of faith is not confined to the critical moments of life, it is to be the abiding, characteristic inner disposition of...

"In the new life which follows repentance the absolute supremacy of God is the controlling principle. He who repents turns away from th...

"Where the love of God is absent, there an idolatrous love of the world and of self enters, and a positively offensive and hostile atti...

"The Academy is a very large, self-authenticating plausibility structure, with the words Echo Chamber stenciled on the door." —Do...

"The gospel of Jesus the Messiah was born, then, in a land and at a time of trouble, tension, violence and fear. Banish all thoughts of...

Bad to the bone Bible. Bad to the bone pastor. Bad to the bone band. Bad to the bone  Bad to the bone B-B-B-B-Bad B-B-B-B-Bad ...

"I cannot think about the One without being instantly surrounded by the splendour of the Three, nor can I discern the Three without bei...

The following is the corporate prayer prayed at New Covenant Church  this morning. It is shaped by Tit. 2:11–14. The Prayers at NCC (11/30...

Doug Wilson: Evangelicals are nice, there is no getting around it. It is our besetting sin. That means about the worst thing you can tell ...

"The kingdom is a conception which must of necessity remain unintelligible and unacceptable to every view of the world and of religion ...

Geerhardus Vos answers why Jesus uses the language "kingdom of God" (when it was not used in the OT) and why we might be prone to ...

Hafemann: S. Douglas Birdsall, the executive director of the Lausanne Movement, has said in public presentations and private conversation ...

How shall we render   ἐντὸς ὑμῶν   in Lk. 17:21? The Holman Christian Standard Bible translates the phrase: “The kingdom of God is among y...

"The end why God suffers any corruption to be such a snare and temptation, such a thorn and brier, is to awaken the souls of men out of...

"What is called 'American civil religion' is the product of a failure of ecclesiology." —Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom ...

Wilson: During our Sabbath dinner liturgy, the grandkids are asked a bunch of questions, and among the questions I ask are these—"Do ...

What is sentimentality ? My wife and I dislike it intensely, think it's all too common where it should be less common, and wish we could...

"There is absolutely nothing that God can give us that we are incapable of turning into an idol." —Douglas Wilson, Against the C...

In his stimulating book, The Bible and the Future , Anthony Hoekema, apparently following Karl Ludwig Schmidt ( TDNT 1:589), refers his re...