How Jesus Wanted Us to Read His Gospel
The next time we open the Gospel of John, we could treat Jesus simply as a good teacher, scrounging for the final crumbs tossed to the floor. Or, we can know Christ as he has made himself known, the Son of God.
At one point in his ministry, Jesus drew a crowd of 5000 hungry people. Enamored by stories of Jesus healing the sick, they followed him. Desiring to feed the crowd, Jesus multiplied a little boy’s fish and bread, the disciples passed out lunch, and the crowd ate until satisfied. Enamored by yet another sign, they... Continue Reading
How to Orchestrate a Revolution
What we see from 1 Peter is the miracle of a changed life impacting others.
What does this mean for the Christian living in a given neighborhood? What does this mean for a Christian going to work? What does this mean for a Christian taking their child to soccer practice and how they mix with other parents? What does this mean for the children themselves and how they act towards... Continue Reading
God’s Promises in Christ While Encountering Affliction
Plead in your prayers the hope that God’s promises offer you in affliction, not asking when you will be delivered from your trial but what your trial is meant to deliver to you.
Hebrews 3:1 and 12:3 tell us that the most effective means for enduring affliction is to consider Christ, the fountainhead of all vital Christianity. But how, you ask, and in what ways must I consider Him? In this booklet, Joel R. Beeke shows how our consideration of the passion, power, presence, patience and perseverance, prayers, plenitude,... Continue Reading
When Genuine Obedience Becomes Impossible, Hell Becomes Impossible as Well
When we don’t have the category of obedience or holiness as a real possibility, it actually can be very detrimental to the preaching of the gospel.
So we must have a category of Jesus that doesn’t mean you’ll never be tempted or you’ll never have imperfect motives, but you can live a life of ordinary faithful obedience. One of the problems when we don’t have that category is when we think, You know what? I never really obey. Everything in my... Continue Reading
Commanded To Remember
“Remember” means to be in active reflection on the saving mercy contained in the eternal covenant and the consequent redemptive action of God in Jesus Christ.
Deuteronomy 8 verses 2, 11, 14, 18, 19 have an antiphonal chorus that works between the seriousness of the command to remember and the devastation wrought by the tragedy of forgetting. Should his temporal blessings make them flatter themselves with a sense of independence, they are warned not to “forget the Lord your God” (11)... Continue Reading
Are People Basically Good?
We are sinners not because we sin. Rather, we sin because we are sinners.
The fall is not simply a question of rational deduction. It is a point of divine revelation. It refers to what we call original sin. Original sin does not refer primarily to the first or original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Original sin refers to the result of the first sin—the corruption of the... Continue Reading
Where’s the Lion Now?
Making hard decisions with Aslan.
The most important thing to say is that anyone who regularly reads the Bible, by the Spirit, sees the lion every day. The word of God is the one inspired, infallible path he has given us for life. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the... Continue Reading
It Doesn’t Work: Presbyterian Church USA
Compromises on sexuality are connected to general erosion of biblical fidelity. It doesn’t work.
Since the change of the definition of marriage, the PCUSA seems to have lost all counterbalance to contemporary progressive ideologies. Having lost its conservative contingent, the PCUSA appears to be in theological and moral freefall with few voices seeking to preserve any historic biblical understandings. On the first day of the 2016 General Assembly, the opening... Continue Reading
The High Calling of the Pastor
The responsibility of the pastor is to bring the lost and straying sheep into the fold, strengthen the weak sheep, and help the strong sheep to mature. Preaching should reflect those responsibilities.
While the public ministry of preaching is vital, most salvation and spiritual growth happens in the context of private ministry. Baxter noted that it is this private ministry that lends credence and trustworthiness to preaching.[2] This private ministry is so important that Baxter spends more than a third of the book discussing it. It is... Continue Reading
Enthralled by the Beauty of God
Why Jonathan Edwards still preaches.
In Edwards’s greatest sermon, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” he depicts the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ as a light flowing from the center of reality. Since that light reveals the beauty of a loving person, it can be truly known only affectively. Someone might have just a rational knowledge about that love... Continue Reading
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- …
- 132
- Next Page »