My last sermon of 2025 was titled Why Did God Write Poetry? I attempted answering that question because most of us today treat poetry as unnecessary and purely intellectual, ornamental rather than essential. Yet roughly one-third of Scripture is written in poetry. Thus, if we lack a proper appreciation for poetry, we will also struggle …
Continue reading Soul in Paraphrase: A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems | Leland Ryken
This question builds on the previous one, which answered: What is the Lord's Supper? Now, just like with baptism, we have a clarifying follow-up. Baptism is a beautiful picture of our saving faith in Jesus Christ, but it does not wash away sin itself. Baptism is necessary for the Christian life but not for salvation. …
Continue reading Question 47: Does the Lord’s Supper Add Anything to Christ’s Atoning Work?
Psalm 45 is a love song. But it may not be the kind of love song that we are expecting. One commentator writes: This psalm is a hymn celebrating a royal wedding. As its title says, it is a love song. The term translated "love" (Hb. yedidot) indicates deep personal attachment but is not in …
The New Year is here. Have you already started a new devotional? A devotional is book of sort, often daily, readings. Many have 365 readings for the whole year. They are usually written to be relatable and encouraging. The more theologically robust ones typically reflect on a particular verse or passage of Scripture, sometimes encouraging …
The four-volume Reformed Systematic Theology by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley is a massive work. Reading it cover to cover is quite a journey to embark upon but also a satisfying accomplishment to complete. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why our church has recently used this set as the primary reading of our …
Continue reading Reformed Systematic Theology | Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley
After addressing baptism over the past two questions, we now come to the second ordinance: the Lord's Supper. The catechism's answer begins by grounding the Supper in Christ's command, which again is what makes it an ordinance. Just as baptism is commanded by Christ in the Great Commission, so the Lord's Supper was instituted at …
When it comes to sermon preparation, pastors often think of sermons primarily as individual units of study or, perhaps more broadly, as parts of a sermon series, often on a particular topic or book of Scripture. Of course, that is a proper impulse. Each sermon must stand on its own. You never know who will …
Each December 31st I write this post, looking back on the previous year and forward to the new. As you may have noticed, 2025 was quite similar to 2024 here: my writing was fairly sparse. There were two main reasons. First, instead of using my free time to write, I have been devoting it to …
For most of history, poetry held a primary place in people's lives. In largely pre-literate cultures, bards functioned as the great entertainers and keepers of knowledge and story. Their performances at feasts were something like the first blockbusters, as they performed epic poems about heroic deeds that captured the history and identity of their people. …
I recently finished reading War and Peace (here is a great three-volume edition), which I picked up this year after coming across a full set of The Great Books of the Western World at a bookstore. It was the original 54-volumed edition and in great condition. So, we bought it. I began looking at reading …
B. C. Newton 