Charles Spurgeon, called the “Prince of Preachers,” longtime Baptist pastor in London, noted that those who truly love the King will love His palace, that a healthy Christian doesn't need to be driven to church by a sense of duty alone, but is drawn by a holy appetite. He famously remarked that if a person finds no joy in the earthly assembly of the saints, he is poorly prepared for the eternal assembly in heaven, and that a coal glowing in the fire stays hot, but one pulled away soon turns...

Proverbs 16:1–9 provide a spiritual blueprint for setting right goals, objectives that align with eternal reality rather than a mere personal want. The process begins internally with the “preparations of the heart,” which in the Hebrew are the military-like arranging of our desires and intellectual reasoning toward which desires (v. 1). While humans are responsible for this mental aspect of goal making and keeping, the text warns against the inherent blind spot of self-deception, viewing our...

Called “the Benedictus ,” Luke 1:67–79 is not merely a father’s (Zacharias) celebration of a newborn son (John the Baptist). After nine months of divinely imposed silence, his first words give a hymn of redemptive history. In the first half of the song, he looks past his own son to the very covenant faithfulness of God: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (1:68–69)....