If you missed any episodes of the Modern Marrow Men podcast, you can now find them with a dedicated channel on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. A new episode will release each week until the season is complete. Modern Marrow Men is a podcast John Divito and I hosted for one year to try to explain …
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The Bible prohibits unclean language. This includes all language that society understands be obscene or dirty. Obscenities and vulgarities refer to things that are offensively revealing, disgusting, dirty, ugly or crude. Certain passages of Scripture forbid such speech. Jesus, in Matthew 15:10 says, “And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear …
There has been a good deal said and written about expository preaching, Christ-centered preaching, redemptive-historical preaching, etc., but very little has been said about pastoral preaching. Pastoral preaching is at the heart of true pastoral ministry. It’s expository, based on biblical hermeneutics and Christ-centered, but it goes further. Pastoral preaching is directed to a particular …
The Reformed confessions of faith all affirm that God made a “covenant of works” with Adam in the Garden of Eden. For example, The Second London Baptist Confession 20.1 explicitly refers to this covenant: “The covenant of works being broken by sin, and made unprofitable unto life….” But some aren't sure the doctrine is found …
In his magnificent work, A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel, John Colquhoun has a chapter titled, “Rules for Rightly Understanding the Ten Commandments” (pp 85-98), which is similar to Question 99 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, “What rules are to be observed for the right understanding of the Ten Commandments?” I highly recommend all …
Continue reading What does it look like to apply the Ten Commandments?
To frame the issue more precisely, the question is not whether a society or nation ought to worship the one true God rightly. Societies should certainly worship the one true God according to His commands. Furthermore, the question is not whether false worshippers deserve punishment. God will certainly punish them temporally in this life as …
Continue reading Should government punish false worship or coerce true worship?
Is part of the “good news” of Jesus Christ that He threatens His blood-bought people with an eternity of hell's torments if they don't believe and repent and keep on believing and repenting? To be clear, there is no question about whether the law as a covenant threatens anyone who does not believe. If you …
Continue reading Does the gospel threaten believers with condemnation?
Some of those who identify as theonomists today refer to themselves “general equity theonomists,” believing that this identification lands them within the boundaries of Reformed confessional orthodoxy. But if it does, then the term “general equity” needs to be defined the same way the tradition defined it. The technical term “general equity” is used in …
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Before critiquing theonomy, we need a good definition. Some people today who use the word “theonomy” don't mean anything more than “God's law” because the etymology of the word theonomy is "theos" which means God, and "nomos" which means law. They only want to affirm that God's law is supreme over man's law. And they're …
Sometimes Christian parents struggle with how to talk with their children about difficult subjects. They don't want to burden their children unnecessarily. Death is one of the subjects that is difficult for parents to discuss. But the principles here apply to all difficult subjects. The general rule is to speak the truth in love without …
Continue reading How should you speak to your children about death?
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