Steam blasts from his flared nostrils in the early morning cool. Hooves scrape dirt as he paws the ground impatiently. Thunder rolls as heavily muscled bodies rush across the field, fletched arrows rattling at their sides, riders holding fast to spear and shield. Trumpets blast amid the clash of battle noises, yet the horse “mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword…. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting” (Job 39:19-25). The heaviness and sheer power of the horse...
Results 1 to 10 of 177
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon” (1 Cor. 15:41). The greater light God made to rule the day. The sun blazes with intense glory. Nothing is hidden from its heat (Ps. 19:6). God ordained a lesser light to rule the night. The moon presides with a gentler radiance, yet a splendor all its own (Gen. 1:14). The moon mellows the light it borrows from the sun and imbues a cool silver glow into the darkness. The moonlight, like the sunlight, shows forth the manifold glory of the living God, our Creator and our...
Hope is a treasure beyond price. Without hope we cannot live, but having true hope, we can persevere through all things. Hope stands out as one of the three cardinal Christian graces the Holy Spirit works in the child of God (1 Cor. 13:13). Apart from God’s grace in Christ, we were lost in deepest misery— hopelessness—a state of alienation from God, which the apostle describes as “having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). But now, being saved by grace, through faith (Eph. 2:8), we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). What...
pastor of First PRC in Grand Rapids, Michigan Better that a millstone is tied around your neck, and you are cast into the deep water, than that you should offend one of the little ones (Matt. 18:6). Jesus taught this to His arguing disciples after setting a child in the middle of them all. That child was the visual cue, for the disciples and for us, as to what Jesus meant by the “little ones.” Little ones are, of course, little. They are too little to keep up with adults on foot, so wagons are sent to carry them...
pastor of First PRC in Holland, Michigan “O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Ps. 95:6) We often hear these words calling us together on the Lord’s Day. A joyful summons to the highest activity of the Christian life, the most exalted expression of covenant relationship, the soul-satisfying fulfillment of the purpose for which we were created and redeemed: worship of the one true God. To worship is our privilege and duty; to be worshiped is God’s exclusive right and due. For He is the Lord our Maker, and “He...
pastor of First PRC in Holland, Michigan Although we human beings are creatures of dust, our creaturely frame is a marvel of divine handiwork, fearfully and wonderfully made. God endowed our earthly frame with amazing senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—by means of which we perceive, understand, and experience the physical world. Although the eternal God is exalted above all that is called creature, and thus inaccessible to our human senses, nevertheless, He is a God who condescends to His lowly creatures and reveals Himself in ways that we can understand. The whole creation is a most elegant book...
pastor of First PRC in Grand Rapids, Michigan Laughter is a sound we usually hope to hear as we make our way to gatherings of family or friends over the holidays. The table set with saucers and plates, the full glasses, the piles of food, and the light hearts are all designed with this very purpose in mind. “A feast,” the wise preacher tells us, “is made for laughter” (Eccl. 10:19). Living in a fallen world, seeing lined and weary faces on the people around us, we need little reminding that life will be marked by times of weeping...
pastor of First PRC in Holland, Michigan Is there anything more beautiful than mercy unmerited? For the Christian who knows the mercy of God, not merely with the mind but with the heart and lived experience, God’s mercy sets the heart on high to sing “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever” (Ps. 136:1). What is mercy? Put succinctly, mercy is tender- hearted compassion for the miserable, which moves you to endeavor to relieve the miserable of their misery. Described more fully, mercy is a deep feeling of compassion for another person...
Pastor of First PRC in Holland, Michigan Among the great, unsearchable, and marvelous works of Almighty God, which we can so easily overlook, is His work of giving rain upon the earth and sending waters upon the fields (Job 5:9-10). The King of heaven and earth rules over the mighty waters. He has both appointed the boundaries of the sea and “made a decree for the rain” (Job 28:26). He makes the dark rain clouds His chariot and walks upon the wings of the storm wind. “For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to...
Pastor of First PRC in Grand Rapids, Michigan Vengeance is a scary word. We are inclined to shy away from it, knowing as we do that “desire of revenge” is a sin serious enough that God “accounts” it “as murder” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 106). Our mothers were right when they taught us not to throw back the rocks at those who first cast them at us. Part of what makes vengeance so scary is just how intense it can be. Long before any novel or ballad put words to the inferno that ignites in the heart of a person who...
