Deus Misereatur

If you are a Christian who has been faithfully engaging in the corporate worship of God, then hopefully, over the years, you have noticed that much of our religion, much of Christianity is external. The Spirit uses outside-of-us things to bring us into fellowship with Christ. Just think about the Gospel. It is a verbum ex auditu (an external word), that comes to us by another who is outside us, and it confronts and comforts us from the outside. As Paul says: “Faith comes by hearing; & hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10.17). Similarly, think of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. They also are outside things that God pours out onto us as well. None of this is a mistake, meaningless, or useless ritualistic rigmarole. God intentionally, purposefully establishes creaturely things to aid and guide His human creatures. To disdain the physical, creaturely rites for some form of “superior spirituality” is to slide, whether subtly or seriously, into the anti-cosmic, anti-creation, anti-hi...

[Note: Here at the end of 2010, I felt it was appropriate to present to you some of the things I said at the Reformation Theological Conference on Nov. 6.] In what we are about to read, you must recognize what the people were doing. They are often pictured as following the dictates of their own heart (9.14), taking their direction from their own internal desires, to the point that they had made their own words divine oracles (23.36). The result was public pandemonium & ethical upheaval. Into this environment God speaks: Jer. 6.14-16. “They have also healed the hurt of My people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time I punish them, they shall be cast down,” says the LORD. Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; t...