All Articles For A Word Fitly Spoken

Rev. Justin Smidstra, pastor of First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Unbelieving man suppresses this knowledge. But he can never shake off the fear of death. More than anything, man wants to live, and to keep living forever. Fallen man dreams of immortality. Not true immortality, but endless life after the imaginations of his own heart. In every age he chases after this dream. He looks to all sorts of things to lengthen his days and deliver him from death: idol gods, a mythical...

For us the word tower brings different things to mind than it did for God’s people in ages past. There are towers today. Radio towers dot the landscape spreading cellphone coverage over the country. The cityscape is dominated by skyscrapers housing offices and businesses. Go to one of today’s major cities, and you can likely visit a special tower erected as a monument to some important event or person. Few towers today serve the purpose they had in the past. The first mention of a tower in the Bible is not a favorable mention. This tower came to be called...

One of the fleeting pleasures of life is the feeling of soft new grass between your toes in the springtime. As much as we take for granted the green carpet God created on the third day (Gen. 1:11), its fresh dew-covered blades make it the picture of life and prosperity. Thus, the coming of the messianic kingdom to the psalmist is “like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth” (Ps. 72:6). And the life-giving doctrine of God’s prophet drops “as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass” (Deut. 32:2)....

Once in a while, you will find a word in the Bible that surprises you because it seems it should not be there. Hap is such a word. The King James Version renders this word as chance, event, or haply. “Hap” refers to something that, from our human point of view, happens by chance, an accident, or a seemingly random event. “Hap” is indeed a strange word to find in the Word of the sovereign God! Yet when we read our Bibles, we run into this word more often than we might expect. When Ruth went out to glean in...

If you were a Jew in the Old Testament, you would have been familiar with the lamb. You would have chosen one for your family every year at Passover (Ex. 12:3). It would have been a perfect lamb with no blemishes, a male of the first year, taken away from suckling at its mother’s breast (Ex. 12:5; I Pet. 1:19). You would have looked at its snowy white wool and into its large brown eyes before taking a knife and letting out its blood with a stroke to the neck. The flesh of the lamb would then be roasted and...

Often maligned and under suspicion, “but” can fall on hard times. Some of it justified. Heretics use “but” to obscure error. We use it to excuse sin. And both practices are due to sin against the first “but”—“But thou shalt not eat of the tree” (Gen. 2:17). The fact is, “but” is essential to the Word of God, which came not by the will of man, but by the Holy Ghost (II Pet. 1:21). And without “but,” there is no gospel antithesis between God and man, sin and grace, law and gospel, truth and lie, salvation and damnation, heaven and...

The lion is the strongest among beasts (Prov. 30:30). With his sharp claws he can rend a man in pieces (Ps. 7:2). With his powerful jaw he can crush bones and devour a man before he hits the floor (Dan. 6:24). His roar is like the battle cry of nations or the crashing of the seas (Is. 5:29). In the Scriptures, the strength of the lion is a powerful warning for the fierceness of our foes. The devil is not just any adversary, but a roaring lion who seeks victims to devour (I Pet. 5:8). The wicked man is a...

God once said, “The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; …I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen. 6:13). So shall it be at the end of this world when the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just (Matt. 13:49). He that shall endure unto the end shall be saved. When the gospel of the kingdom is preached in all the world for a witness, then shall the end come, and with great sound of a trumpet the angels shall gather together the elect...

It is universally recognized as the symbol of Christendom. If you walk through the arched doorway of a gothic cathedral, you will see a version of it in gold, encrusted with jewels, prominently displayed on the back wall. If you visit a military cemetery, you will see thousands of them in neat, white rows, casting shadows over manicured green grass. It dangles from silver chains or leather loops on the necks of men, women, and children all over the world. It marks arms, wrists, and ankles with the black ink of the tattoo. It is embossed in the leather binding...

A single hair is thin enough to be overlooked at a passing glance. Chances are you do not even see the few filaments littering the headrest of an armchair or floating aimlessly in the air. Hair in its basic unit is insubstantial and unnoteworthy. It was quite an impressive display of marksmanship, then, when the men of Benjamin with the left hand slung their stones “at an hair breadth,” and did not miss (Jud. 20:16). On the other hand, when a collective of single hairs populates the human head, the effect can be rather marvelous. One wonders what the head...