Lord’s Day Hymn – “What child is this?”

“What Child is This?”
By William Dix, 1865
What Child is this who, laid to rest
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste, to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.
Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and [...]

“A better gospel” by Charles H. Spurgeon

“Paul preached the gospel better than I do, but even he could not preach a better gospel.”
–Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ,” in Spurgeon’s Sermons, Vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 258.

“My Master’s riches are unsearchable” by Charles H. Spurgeon

“My Master has such riches that you cannot count them. You cannot guess them, much less can you convey their fullness in words. They are unsearchable! You may look, and search, and weigh, but Christ is a greater Christ than you think Him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest.
My Master is more [...]

“Two kinds of black” by Douglas Wilson

“As we celebrate the coming of the Christ, we must never forget the kind of world He was born into. The blackness that the star of Bethlehem shone brightly from was a creational blackness, the kind of blackness that was visible on the first day of our world–when it was evening and it was morning, [...]

“The gospel isn’t religion” by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

“Nothing hides our fellow man more than morality, and nothing hides the face of God more than religion. When we are most religious, we may be most at risk of losing touch with God.”
–Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 107.

“I had it all wrong” by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

“When television-saturated worshipers attend their local churches or wonder how to draw secular seekers there, it’s not the songs of Zion they want but the songs of Babylon and Hollywood– or something like them. People attend worship with expectations shaped by television, and evangelical preachers try to meet them.
In such cases worship may degenerate into [...]

“You will find me bigger” by C.S. Lewis

“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”
The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.
“Welcome, child,” he [...]

“Why children ought to love Jesus Christ” by Jonathan Edwards

“The following reasons may be given why children ought to love Jesus Christ above things in the world: He is more lovely in Himself. He is one that is greater and higher than all the kings of the earth, has more honor and majesty than they, and yet He is innately good and full of [...]

“These cannot satisfy” by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

“All forms of idolatry involve us deeply in folly. All idolatry is not only treacherous but also futile. Human desire, deep and restless and seemingly unfulfillable, keeps stuffing itself with finite goods, but these cannot satisfy.
If we try to fill our hearts with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are [...]

“What the Hebrew prophets call shalom” by Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

“The prophets dreamed of a new age in which human crookedness would be straightened out, rough places made plain. The foolish would be made wise, and the wise, humble.
They dreamed of a time when the deserts would flower, the mountains would run with wine, weeping would cease, and people could go to sleep without weapons [...]

“Look for Christ and you will find Him” by C.S. Lewis

“The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.
Does that sound strange? The same [...]

“In the Incarnation” by C.S. Lewis

“In the Incarnation God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus, and, through that, the whole environment of Nature, all the creaturely predicament, into His own being.
So that ‘He came down from Heaven’ can almost be transposed into ‘Heaven drew earth up into it,’ and locality, limitation, sleep, sweat, footsore weariness, frustration, [...]

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven” by C.S. Lewis

“I do not think that the life of Heaven bears any analogy to play or dance in respect of frivolity. I do think that while we are in this ‘valley of tears,’ cursed with labour, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed to perpetual plannings, puzzlings, and anxieties, certain qualities that must belong [...]

Lord’s Day Hymn – “Go to dark Gethsemane”

“Go To Dark Gethsemane”
By James Montgomery, 1820
Go to dark Gethsemane,
Ye that feel the tempter’s power
Your Redeemer’s conflict see,
Watch with Him one bitter hour
Turn not from His griefs away;
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray
See Him at the judgment hall,
Beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned
O the wormwood and the gall!
O the pangs His soul [...]

“The operating principle of the gospel” by Timothy Keller

“There is a great gulf between the understanding that God accepts us because of our efforts and the understanding that God accepts us because of what Jesus has done. Religion operates on the principle, ‘I obey– therefore I am accepted by God.’ But the operating principle of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God [...]