Tim Challies

The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Sabbath is a gift God has given us for our good. We are feeble creatures who need rest, yet foolish creatures who would otherwise work ourselves to the bone. The sabbath is a reminder of our weakness, of our finiteness, of our inability. It is a reminder of all of these in a physical sense and, more ultimately, in a spiritual sense, for so much of what is true of our bodies is true of our souls. We accept sabbath as a blessing from God and ignore or reject it to our own peril.

A short time ago I compared certain evangelical churches to a meatless, cheeseless, crustless pizza. Just like removing too many elements of a pizza will call into doubt whether something still qualifies as pizza at all, removing too many elements of worship should call into doubt whether something still qualifies as a worship service. A service devoid of prayer, congregational singing, sacraments, and the public reading of Scripture may be a service in name only. The main point of that article was to call churches to emphasize (or re-emphasize) Scripture reading, and I offered two reasons we ought to do this: Because God commands it and because the Bible has the power to save, teach, reprove, correct, train, and mature. Today I want to offer a few more reasons that churches should have tons of Bible in their worship services, and especially to have a skilled reader read a substantial portion as an element that stands on its own. These reasons are not as directly and obviously drawn from the Bible, but are drawn from my experience and the experience of other pastors.

Do you weep over your sin? There must be some things in life that bring you to tears, but is your sin one of them? We would all do well to consider these powerful words from Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture for he warns “how far are they from being godly who scarce ever shed a tear for sin” and goes on to explain the beauty and necessity of repentance.

Jerry Bridges gave many gifts to the church, not the least of which was his 2007 book Respectable Sins. In it he coined a term that describes a whole category of sins that might otherwise escape our attention. “Respectable sins” are behaviors Christians (sometimes individually and sometimes corporately) regard as acceptable even though the Bible describes them as sinful. They are subtle or refined in such a way that we may even dress them up to become a kind of virtue. Bridges offers many examples: anxiety and frustration; discontentment; unthankfulness; impatience and irritability; worldliness; and so on.

want to encourage you to read at least part of a denominational ad interim committee report on human sexuality. That may sound rather drab and difficult, but I am convinced you will find it both helpful and rewarding. It won’t even be particularly difficult. So let me set the context and then tell you why you should read it.

How do you know that you really get the gospel, that you really understand and believe it? Or perhaps better said, how do you know that the gospel has...