One way God guards us against arrogance is to remind us of our mistiness. Everything that feels so big, important, and impressive in our earthy lives right now will vanish and vanish quickly. We’re just a tiny burst of moisture, one that will evaporate almost immediately. God, on the other hand, knows everything there is to know, and he can do all things. He invented mists, and work, and us.

This time of year, as the leaves begin to change color and normal schedules emerge and blossom again, we often stop to make plans for the months ahead. The slower pace and irregular rhythms of summer are giving way to the steady beats of work, school, and church life. This changing of the seasons presents a crossroads where it’s natural to stop and revisit what, why, how, and how often we do all that we do.
And it’s good to plan. “The plans of the diligent,” God himself tells us, “lead surely to abundance” (Proverbs 21:5). He sends us to study the ant:
Without having any chief,     officer, or ruler,she prepares her bread in summer     and gathers her food in harvest. (Proverbs 6:6–8)
In other words, she plans and works ahead, like any wise person will.
And yet our planning, even our careful and intentional planning, can be quietly wicked. It might look like we have everything figured out and put together, but in reality our plans are foolish and offensive. Listen to the apostle James’s warning:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15)
Good and Wicked Planning
In this part of his letter, James confronts the seemingly successful men of his day. In the next few verses, he goes on to say, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. . . . You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence” (James 5:1, 5). But before he gets to their greed and self-gratification, he exposes their arrogance. Their success has made them think they know and control their futures.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” (James 4:13)
What are these men doing wrong? They’re presuming to know where they will do business, and how long their business will prosper there, and how much profit they’ll make in the process. They’ve done this all before, after all, probably dozens of times, and so they’ve grown comfortably accustomed to success — so comfortable that they’ve started to presume success.
Before we scoff at them, though, we might ask how often we’re lulled into similar temptations. We may not be traveling to trade in foreign markets, but we all can begin to assume that God will do this or that — in our work, in our marriage or parenting, in our ministry — and fall into some kind of spiritual autopilot. James presses on that tendency toward autopilot until we see the impulse for what it really is.
You ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:15–16)
James calls this kind of planning evil. Even if they were right about what would happen, their plans were wrong, terribly wrong.
Three Remedies for Arrogance
James doesn’t merely confront these arrogant men with their arrogance; he also applies what he knows about God to invite them into the paths and plans of humility. And what he shares, in just a handful of phrases, speaks as loudly to our temptations to presumption as it did to those in his day. He reminds these men what they do not know (and cannot know), what they cannot do or control in their own strength, and (more subtly) the one thing they can always do when setting out to plan another season of work, life, or ministry — in fact, the one thing they must do.
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Some may not be used to thinking of God as an unmoved mover.  Yet is not the first cause of all things God?  If God is anything He is that.  But many more attributes may be derived from the unmoved mover being pure act, which will show that we are dealing with God. This is not accidental.  Just as the attributes of a thing derive from its kind of existence, so if God’s existence or being may be established and that it is of itself, or from itself (aseity), its absoluteness, indpendence and primacy being herein established, many of its attributes may be drawn out from this. 

Can God be Proven?
Can God be proven to exist?¹  The Bible says God is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3) and “in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)  If this be true, as Christians believe, then it should be for all created things that their existence and continuance has no adequate or sufficient explanation or grounding in the things themselves, that is, in their own nature, but only because God wills them to exist.
¹ Francis Turretin (d. 1687), a pillar of Reformed Orthodoxy said, speaking for the Reformed: “Can the existence of God be irrefutably demonstrated against atheists?  We affirm.” Institutes, vol. 1, 3rd topic, question 1, p. 169.
If this be the case: (1) this should be able to be seen from examining the nature of things themselves and how they are caused, that is, by the light of nature (without Scripture), and, (2) from the characteristics of nature or its laws, God must be the only sufficient explanation, both in the orders of knowing and being,† for the existence and continuance at every moment for all created things.
† That is with respect to epistemology and ontology (or metaphysics).
This must be qualified just a little.  One would not expect from only certain properties of nature to be able to derive everything about God.  However, if such necessary derivations can be made, that which will be known of God will be distinctive to Him, showing that it is God one is considering.  This is what Rom. 1:20 says: “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.”  It is also what the Westminster Confession (1646) teaches.¹
¹ WCF ch. 21.1, “The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all; is good, and doeth good unto all;”ch. 1.1, “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable…”
About this Proof
No originality is claimed for the substance of this proof.  The general tenor of it derives from Aristotle, through Aquinas and most lately through Edward Feser.²  I have adapted it in my own style.  The Dutch reformed theolgian Peter van Mastricht (d. 1706) used a very similar proof.³
² Feser (b. 1968) is a professor of philosophy and an analytical Thomist.  Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God  Pre  (Ignatius Press, 2017), ch. 1, ‘The Aristotelian Proof’, pp. 17-68³ Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB, 2019), vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 2,sect. 2, pp. 45-46.
You can call it “The Aristotelian Proof from Change,” though, it does not hang on Aristotle, Aquinas, Mastricht, Feser or myself.  It derives from nature itself, necessarily, and is able to be understood by any rational creature in any place at any time.  It is a universal testimony to God’s existence. (Ps. 19:1-4)
The proof proceeds by the way of causality, one of the three ways the Christian tradition has taught God may be generally known by.º  It does not start with things more fundamental and absolute in their being than God, and then derive from these God, who must be consequently lesser.  Rather, it starts with things less absolute and fundamental than God and works backwards, so to speak, by their necessary connection to Him, to show that an absolute God must be.  That is, the way of knowing need not always follow the priority or ultimacy of being.
º See ‘On the Three General Ways God is Known: Way of Causality, Negation & Eminence’.
It ought not to be thought this proof is the only way God’s existence may be demonstrated, as other aspects of being and creation, by their distinctive traits, may be expected to show further things about the character of our God.
First, 1. Preliminaries to the proof will be given, then 2. the proof will be proven, then 3. it will be shown that many more attributes of God may be derived from what has been proved, showing that it is God we are dealing with.  4. Two objections will be resolved, and lastly, 5. we will close.
1. Preliminaries to the Proof
1.1 Change
Change occurs.  Besides that we acknowledge and assume this in our daily actions (such as in reading this proof), and couldn’t live without doing so, to rationally deny change occurs, one would have to think of a reason for this, possibly another, and conclude that change does not occur.  This involves change.  That change occurs is undeniable; therefore it is true.
Change necessarily involves the actualization of a potential, that something has a potential for something, and that potential thing comes into being or is made actual.  That is, change cannot be sufficiently explained or justified apart from potentiality and actuality.  Potentiality and actuality must lie beneath all change, though they are metaphysical concepts which cannot of themselves be seen.
Change occurs, therefore potentiality and actuality exist, functioning in relation to each other.
1.2 Train Cars
A flatbed train car has much potential.  Given its axes and wheels it can roll down the railway.  It can also hold many heavy things on it off the ground.  Yet there are many things a train car has no potential for.  If you see bunny rabbits hopping around the car and hear violin music, you would look around for their cause because you know train cars can’t, by their nature, turn into bunnies or produce bunnies or violin music.  A metal train car doesn’t have those potentials, due to its unique nature in being a train car.
One may think perhaps: the train car could be melted down and turned into a metalic violin with metalic strings and produce violin music.  Perhaps it may, but then it wouldn’t be a train car (and you wouldn’t be seeing a flatbed and hear violin music at the same time).  If something is a train car, it can’t produce things beyond what its nature has the potential for.
If the car sits on a flat railway, how long will it sit there till it moves down the railroad?  Of course not until something else comes and pulls it along.  The flatbed has no ability or potential to move itself or to activate its own potentials.  Something else has to do that.
1.3 The Law of Causality
Say two train cars sit on the railroad next to each other.  Both have the potential to move.  Yet the potential of the one never moves the other.  Why?  Because the one flatbed’s potential to move is not actual; it is not actually moving, and that is what it would take to move the second flatbed, to activate its potential to move.
That one thing must be moved by another is not only a common observation all around us, it must be true for everything that has potential, precisely because something not actual cannot do anything.  A possibility does not exist as anything but a possibility.  These thngs must be true by the distinct natures of what potentiality and actuality must be.  The principle is called the Law of Causality:
Something potential can only be made actual by something actual.
This is not only universally true by empirical experience, but it must be true by definition from the laws that constitute nature, given change.  If change occurs, it must be done by something actual.  Something must bump into or pull the train car before it will move, because it has no nature or potential to move itself.
1.4 Ordered Series of Dependent Causes
In a train of many cars going down the railroad there is an ordered series of dependent causes: each car’s potential is being activated to move by the actual car in front of it in a series where one car is dependent on all those in front of it.  The train engine at the front is pulling all the cars after it; it is doing all the work in one respect, through the nature of those cars and their causal relations.
Of course we are not actually interested in train cars.  Each car stands for something that changes, namely any and everything we see around us.  Ordered series of various causes surround us, and we are part of them.
The issue we are getting to is not dependent on time, nor concerns change through time.  Take the series of train cars in a moment of time.  Each one still depends by way of causation and dependence on those in front.
Take a case where there is no movement or change through time: You may be sitting on a chair, which is keeping you off the floor.  The chair is being held up by the floor, the floor by the building supports, which are resting on the foundation, which is being held up by the ground.  The ground has more ground underneath it, and further factors are causing that ground to be the way it is, such as gravity and various forces science is concerned with.  Go as far along in that series as you can.  Here is a hierarchical series of ordered causes, always existing in our universe.
2. The Proof
2.1 The Problem
You see a clearing in the trees with flatbed train cars rushing through.  Seeing as a flatbed has no ability by its nature to move itself, what is moving each one?  You might say, “Well, the train car in front of it is pulling it.”  Well that is true, but that flatbed also has no power to move itself; what is pulling that one?
You look a little more around the edge of the trees and see several more train cars ahead in the line.  What is pulling those?  Each further car activating the potential of the one behind it still needs its own potential activated by another.¹
¹ If you don’t agree, try denying the Law of Causality above and see how that works out in daily life.  See Feser defend the principle in Five Proofs, ch. 1, ‘Common Misunderstandings’, pp. 38-68.
Clearly no finite number of flatbeds in the series is going to resolve the issue.  If there are 100 flatbeds, you will then need 101, then 102, 103, 104, etc.  You may think, “If no finite number of flatbeds will help, there must be an infinite number in this series, each further flatbed pulling the other.”  Yet if no flatbed by its nature has inbuilt power to move itself, neither does an infinite number or series of flatbeds.
Some may claim this commits the fallacy of composition, that the qualities of parts are not necessarily those of the combined whole: if each lego piece weighs one ounce, a wall of them does not weigh the same.  Yet not every composition of qualities functions the same.  If each lego is red, the whole wall of them is red.  What’s the only color of an infinite wall of red legos?
What kind quality and composition then are we concerned with?  If each flatbed has potential and therefore can’t move itself, and an infinite line of them is moving and changing, and thus has potential, it can’t move itself either.
Well, perhaps the infinite series of train cars is going in a circle.  That’s not going to work, for the same reasons.  The conglomerate of an infinite number of things that cannot move themselves still does not have a nature to be able to move itself, even in a circle.  So the flatbeds’ moving is left unexplained, as their natures, even strung together infinitely in whatever shape you desire, cannot account for it.º
º Turretin in addressing that a thing cannot be the cause for its own existence, which we will get to: “such a circle is impossible; for suppose it were true, it would follow that the same thing was made by itself and was the cause (mediately at least) of itself.” Institutes 1:170
But perhaps it’s a whirlpool, like the whirpool of secondary causes all around us.  What moves the infinite, whirpool of dependent causes (grant its existence for the sake of argument), if the whirlpool has nothing in it able to move itself and, as the whirlpool’s potential (which it must have, as it changes) must be activated by something outside itself?  Adding another whirpool, universe, dimension, finding of science, etc. is not going to help.
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From 10/21-7/22, our now 43-year-old son Jordan went through great adversities. He responded to ongoing wicked trauma on many fronts by trying to take his life three times. We felt the power of that vortex too. Once, in Mexico, he jumped from a tower, broke his back and smashed his feet. His back required 8-hour surgery. It is remarkable he can walk on his shattered feet. After we exhausted mental health resources in Montana, friends recommended Menninger Clinic in Houston. Menninger charged $50,000 to walk in the door. God provided.

Stephen King’s character, Ted Brautigan, tells youthful Bobby Garfield, “When you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up, and our hearts break in two.” (“Hearts in Atlantis”)
That breaking comes in many ways. Because of sin’s onset, God “subjected” (creation) “to futility”…and placed it in “slavery to corruption.” (Romans 8:20, 21) Friend, who knows when futility and corruption will manifest themselves?
For example, consider “Sam”, a sprightly older man in his late 70’s. We met after a lecture regarding the care of words. Our conversation ran deep.
As an infant, Sam simultaneously contracted two serious diseases. The doctor, called to Sam’s parent’s farmhouse, held out no hope. Already having lost other children to disease, Sam’s Mother with deep groaning poured out her soul in prayer like Hannah (1 Samuel 1: 10-17).
Mercy, mercy! God spared Sam’s life. Like Hannah in the Bible, Sam’s Mother encouraged Sam to go into the ministry. And he did.
Sam and his wife, “Sarah”, raised six children. And there were challenges with churches – he even had the sad duty of closing one.
Sam’s greatest challenge came after the children had left. Something broke in Sarah. She became dangerous. On numerous occasions, she tried to take Sam’s life. Finally, a daughter helped him commit Sarah to a mental hospital.
Once, after Sam visited Sarah, a doctor pulled him aside saying: “Sam, following your visits, it takes days for your wife to settle down. For her well-being and ours, we ask you not to visit your wife.”
What a story!
I asked Sam: “What good has God been in all of this?”
Sam, who had thought much about life, with unwavering voice replied: “God’s love is incorruptible.”
Friend, “incorruptible” leads us to the majestic New Testament book, Ephesians. Paul and the Holy Spirit conspire to make “incorruptible” the last word – the word that continues to ring in our ears and dominate our thoughts.
“Incorruptible” had that effect on me.
Traveling from Helena to preach Sunday, August 27, 2023, for a 4:00 service in Laurel, MT (3+ hours away), I felt an urge – by the Holy Spirit? –  to stop and worship at dynamic Trailhead Christian Fellowship – north of Townsend.
Although I walked in late, that unexpected stop paid rich dividends.
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Doesn’t a woman have the right to choose what happens to her body? Yes, to an extent. But none of us can legally do whatever we want with our bodies. U.S. laws prevent organ sales, public nudity, and prostitution. We also aren’t only talking about the mother’s body. We’re talking about the baby’s body inside the mother. This amendment threatens the lives of both babies and mothers while hiding this truth behind a misleading presentation.

Abortion has likely been the most contentious and consistent conversation in American politics over my 45 years. As a pastor, I’ve never endorsed a candidate, and I’d imagine things would need to be either incredibly good or incredibly bad for me to consider doing so. Still, we have a responsibility to bless the cities we live in, and at times that requires us to speak out on moral issues like abortion, political as they may be.
I’ve walked with women (and men) as they wrestled through all the emotions that come both before and after an abortion. My church in Orlando shares Maitland Avenue with an abortion clinic. Abortion isn’t merely an academic or political discussion for me but one that hits close to home. With that said, Florida’s proposed Amendment 4 to potentially legalize full-term abortion without parental consent is as deceptive in its presentation as it is wrong in its ethic.
The Presentation
The title of the proposed amendment claims to “limit government interference with abortion,” but it essentially divests the government of its role to protect both the lives of the unborn and the health of the pregnant mothers. Florida amendments, with their short, attractive titles and brief descriptions, are notoriously easy to pass but hard to repeal. So let’s look at the brief description as it appears on the ballot.
“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion . . .”
Not only will this allow full-term abortions, but it presumably lifts basic safety regulations that currently protect the women getting abortions.
“. . . before viability . . .”
Conveniently, “viability” isn’t defined. Again, this opens the door to abortions up until birth.
“. . . or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, . . .”
What constitutes the patient’s health? Does mental stress, financial stress, or anxiety create a health issue that warrants late-term abortion?
“. . . as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” 
This isn’t necessarily a doctor but simply a healthcare provider. Again, this puts women at increased risk of dangerous procedures.
“This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
That sounds good on the surface. Parents will still be notified, but they aren’t required to consent in any way. Imagine being told your underage daughter is having an abortion, but unlike with every other medical procedure, you wouldn’t need to give your consent.
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Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said it well, “You should never want the state to be deciding what is the correct understanding of religion. The last thing any devout follower of Jesus should want is government control of religion. The government will always get it wrong and pious followers of Christ will have their consciences violated.” It is the job of the Church and parents to teach Christian doctrine, not the job of the state or its agencies.

The usual suspects are up in arms over a proposed public school curriculum in Texas. “Bible-infused curriculum sparks Texas-sized controversy over Christianity in the classroom” reads the breathless headline from one education publication. From the ominous reports, one would think that classrooms in the Lone Star State were being converted into Sunday schools. One Democratic state representative called it “egregious.” But the reality is different.
The Texas Education Agency posted the educational curriculum in May. It’s still subject to approval by the Texas Board of Education. The materials are not mandatory, but there are incentives for school districts that opt in.
A cursory reading of the materials shows that while the curriculum features many stories rooted in the Bible, they are also joined by lessons from other religions. What’s more, there are connections between history and Christianity, such as Esther’s heroic advocacy for the Jewish people in Persia and contemporary anti-Semitism, analysis of the religious content in Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” and an explanation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting.
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told The Washington Post, “There is content, where relevant, that provides information on various religious traditions.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Even within the Christian community, there are wide differences of opinion regarding which behaviors are pleasing to God and which aren’t. One man approves dancing; another disapproves of it. How do we know who is correct? We see in the New Testament that the conscience is not the final ethical authority for human conduct because the conscience is capable of change. Whereas God’s principles don’t change, our consciences vacillate and develop.

It is vitally important for Christians to consider the issue of conscience. In the classical view, the conscience thought to be something that God implanted within our minds. Some people even went so far as to describe the conscience as the voice of God within us. The idea was that God created us in such a way that there was a link between the sensitivities of the mind and the conscience with its built-in responsibility to God’s eternal laws. For example, consider the law of nature that the Apostle Paul says is written on our hearts. There was a sensitivity of conscience long before Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of stone.
The famous philosopher Immanuel Kant was agnostic with respect to man’s ability to reason from this world to the transcendence of God. Even so, he offered what he called a moral argument for the existence of God that was based on what he called a universal sense of oughtness implanted in the heart of every human being. Kant believed that everyone carried with them a genuine sense of what one ought to do in a given situation. He called this the categorical imperative. He believed there are two things that fill the soul with an ever-new and growing wonder and reverence: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. This is important to note because even in the realm of secular philosophy, there has historically been an awareness of conscience.
Historically and classically, the conscience was seen to be our link to the transcendent ethic that resides in God. But with the moral revolution of our culture, a different approach to conscience has emerged, and this is what is called the relativistic view. This is indeed the age of relativism, where values and principles are considered to be mere expressions of the desires and interests of a given group of people at a given time in history. We repeatedly hear that there are no absolutes in our world today.
Yet if there are no absolute, transcendent principles, how do we explain this mechanism that we call the conscience? Within a relativistic framework, we see the conscience being defined in evolutionary terms: people’s subjective inner personalities are reacting to evolutionary advantageous taboos imposed upon them by their society or by their environment. Having reached a period in our development when these taboos no longer serve to advance our evolution, they can be discarded with nary a thought of the consequences.
As a professor some years ago, I counseled a college girl who was overtaken with a sense of profound guilt because she had indulged in sexual activities with her fiancé. She explained to me that she had spoken of her guilt to a local pastor. He counseled her that the way to get over her guilt was to recognize the source of it. He reasoned that she had done nothing wrong; rather, her feelings of guilt were a result of her having been a victim of living in a society ruled by a puritan ethic. He explained that she had been conditioned by certain sexual taboos that made her feel guilty when she shouldn’t and that what she had done was a mature, responsible expression of her own emerging adulthood.
Yet she came to me weeping and exclaimed that she still felt guilty.
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The Father had said that his holy one would not see corruption and the Son had said they would all see “the sign of Jonah.” There was no version of reality in which Jesus’ body would remain in the tomb to decompose and no possibility he would remain there any longer than Jonah had been in the belly of the great fish. God had spoken and it would come to pass, despite the most valiant efforts of the chief priests and Pharisees.

You’ve got to hand it to the chief priests and Pharisees: They did their best. They did their level best to keep Jesus in his tomb. After successfully overseeing his execution, they remembered that he had not only predicted his death but also spoken of some kind of resurrection. Wanting to make sure his disciples didn’t manufacture a way of sneaking his body out of the tomb, they asked Pilate to guarantee the situation. “Order the tomb to be made secure until the third day,” they demanded, “lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64).
Pilate reminded them they already had access to troops they could assign to the task. The soldiers who guarded the temple could also guard the tomb. “Go, make it as secure as you can,” he told them (27:65). “As secure as you can” could almost have been words of prophecy. “So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard” (27:66).
And I can’t help but wonder: Did the angels laugh? Did the angels laugh aloud when they saw these religious leaders satisfied that a stone and a seal and a couple of soldiers could in any way thwart the purposes of God? Did they laugh in disbelief that these little beings thought they could stymie the Creator’s plan to save a people to himself? Did they laugh at the arrogance of it even as they wept at the sorrow of it?
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We must be actively depending on God, the Holy Spirit, to grant illumination and understanding to us and our hearers so that in our preparation we are governed by his life-giving word and praying for its impact on all who hear. Equally, we must be dependent on the Spirit who inspired the text to give us clear thinking, a warm heart, and effective delivery in the process of preaching so that the wind of God may be in the sails of the sermon. Convictions such as these need to be rooted in us through the power of the Scriptures themselves.

God Speaks through Preaching
To many people, preaching seems strangely out of place in the modern world. Why would anyone choose to go to a church building, week by week, to hear a preacher (often the same person) deliver a monologue for twenty or thirty minutes (sometimes even longer) about an ancient book with characters who lived, at best, two thousand years ago? This doesn’t happen in any other context. Educational methods are increasingly interactive. Learning by discovery is the watchword. Preaching seems to be just another example of the church being out of touch, out of date, and out of steam.
Of course, it’s not difficult to find examples of preaching that are sadly boring or irrelevant. Nor is it hard to hear arguments put forward to claim that preaching has had its day: we live in a visual learning culture, listeners have sound-bite levels of concentration, study groups or one-to-one mentoring is more effective, moderns are opposed to domination of a congregation from an elevated pulpit, and so on. But the remedy for the disappointing level of much contemporary preaching is not less preaching, nor its removal from the church’s agenda, but better preaching. And that is because something happens through preaching that cannot occur in any other communication context.
God is committed to preaching, by which he speaks through the proclamation and explanation of his word. So the preacher’s task and privilege is, in J. I. Packer’s memorable phrase, “to mediate a meeting with God.”1 Preaching matters not because human beings decide that it does but because through preaching God speaks today. His voice is heard. So let’s look at three basic convictions or principles (and key Scripture passages for each) that help us to understand not just why preaching matters but why it is of supreme importance.
Preaching Matters Because the God of the Bible Is a Speaking God
The act of preaching today cannot be separated from the word of God that he has infallibly spoken in the Scriptures—the sixty-six books of divine revelation that make up our Bible. That is the bedrock foundation on which all preaching is to be built.
A basic biblical definition of the preacher is that he is a herald or proclaimer. It’s a significant description because it implies that there is a message, or declaration, that the messenger is to pass on faithfully and accurately without distortion. Because God has spoken in his word, the preacher can and must preach. Without that divinely given biblical content, all that a preacher can achieve is the expression of his own, often highly questionable, opinions. On offer, then, are the mere words of human beings. They may appear attractive and promise all sorts of comfort and joy, but ultimately, they are just human words—transient and powerless. Instead, in biblical expository preaching, the authentic voice of God is heard. What is expected is that God will speak to our souls through the human agency of the preacher.
To mediate a meeting with God will require the preacher’s disciplined preparation and dependence on the Holy Spirit. The conviction that such a meeting is God’s purpose and, therefore, possible will have constant implications for the preacher. If we are to be expositors, we must take sufficient time for preparation so that we have more than just a surface acquaintance with the text. We must read and reread, to listen carefully and hard, if we are to represent God’s truth faithfully.
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Parents, it is no overstatement to say that worship is why God gave you kids. They were made to worship their Creator, and they don’t know how. You have been given the awesome responsibility to show them how to do the thing they were made to do.

Thomas Doolittle was raised in Kidderminster, England under the preaching of the Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter. Baxter would go on to encourage Doolittle to enter the pastorate, which he did. Doolittle preached all over London, including at a chapel he erected at Bunhill Fields. He even preached at the Cripplegate!
Amidst political and ecclesiastical turmoil, Doolittle preached a 34,000-word sermon (… wow) entitled “How May the Duty of Daily Family Prayer Be Best Managed for the Spiritual Benefit of Every One in the Family?” In the sermon, he exhorted the families of his congregation to the faithful practice of family worship with this warning:
“If in your houses, God hath not a church, the devil will have a chapel. If your houses be not nurseries for heaven, they will be breeding places for hell.”
In a previous post, I argued for the biblical mandate to conduct family worship. In this post, I want to listen to the resounding chorus of voices throughout church history that echo the biblical refrain for family worship. While some warn against the dire consequences of ignoring family worship, others celebrate the joys of a home gathered for the praise of God.
My hope is that, in reading through the examples and quotes below, you’ll be encouraged and motivated to start or restart family worship in your own home as so many of our spiritual fathers did before us.
Family Worship in Church History
The church history Lyman Coleman writes about the habit of Christians in the second century, saying,
“At an early hour in the morning the family was assembled and a portion of Scripture was read from the Old Testament, which was followed by a hymn and a prayer, in which thanks were offered up to the Almighty for preserving them during the silent watches of the night, and for His goodness in permitting them to meet in health of body and soundness of mind; and, at the same time, His grace was implored to defend them amid the dangers and temptations of the day – to make them faithful to every duty, and enable them, in all respects, to walk worthy of their Christian vocation… In the evening, before retiring to rest, the family again assembled, the same form of worship was observed as in the morning, with this difference, that the service was considerably protracted beyond the period which could be conveniently allotted to it in the commencement of the day.”
From the inception of the church, Christian families were given to family worship. The second-century church father Tertullian concurs, writing about Christian homes,
“They pray together, they worship together, they fast together; instructing one another, encouraging one another, strengthening one another… Psalms and hymns they sing to one another, striving to see which one of them will chant more beautifully the praises of their Lord.”
These habits continued throughout the early church, it seems. However, family worship began to die out in the medieval period because of a lack of access to resources, a lack of instruction, and a lack of emphasis on the family unit.
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Biblical servitude seeks what’s best for the other person over what the other person wants in the moment. To do this effectively, you need to be confident in your knowledge of God’s Word. You need to be seeking to daily grow in wisdom. It doesn’t need to be a “my will versus your will” situation. You can serve others well to the degree that you are personally submissive to God.

“How do you serve without becoming a doormat?” This question, posed to me during a marriage counseling session, gets to the heart of a common misunderstanding of the biblical call to serve others. The short answer is that Jesus’s call never entails allowing another person to assert their will over you as you passively obey. However, we often struggle to understand key distinctions due to our failure to properly define our words.
Part of the problem is that many of us have never seen biblical servitude modeled faithfully. We hear “serve others” and imagine “be a slave to others.” That misunderstanding is how we end up with Christian parents organizing their lives in obedience to the fickle will of their toddler. We’ve all witnessed the flustered mom desperately trying to placate the selfish desires of her ungrateful teenager as veteran parents from a previous generation look on shaking their heads.
To add to the confusion, trendy parenting philosophies like Gentle Parenting encourage parents to cater their nurturing style to the emotional lives of their children. The experts tell us to stop correcting bad behavior and instead to listen for clues indicating what’s going on in their inner lives. Christians hear “gentle” and immediately think of our gentle and lowly Savior. We fail to recognize that Gentle Parenting and Christianity may be operating under two different definitions of the word. Our Savior was gentle, but he also knew when to be confrontational. Clearly, it’s possible to be both.
Jesus is always the model.
In his excellent book, Authority: How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing, Jonathan Leeman writes, “Never does [Jesus] take orders, as would an actual servant—not even from his mother. Instead, he defied both the religious and civil authorities. He demonstrated authority over people, demons, sickness, the elements, and death.
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