God brings into our lives “heavy providences” as a means of nurturing in us “God remembrance.” I call these circumstances “providences” because it’s God who brings them. I call them “heavy” because, well, that’s what they are—circumstances that are not easy and call for a deep dependence on God for His strength to endure. It... Continue Reading

Unsurprisingly, this indifference to cause and contrast is common among Mainline Protestant elites. They routinely ignore or minimize their half century of perpetual decline. At their recent denominational conventions, both the Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church USA largely pretended all was well. Meanwhile, they doubled down on radical political, theological and sexual stances.   Do... Continue Reading

God will set his unstoppable love on sin-blind sinners, and this was his plan from eternity past. Depraved souls stuck in the unceasing cycle of sin and death will be the objects of his boundless love (Ephesians 1:3–23), a reality that speaks not to the merit of the sinner but to the magnificence of God’s... Continue Reading

T. David Gordon’s  Why Johnny Can’t Preach has put forward that current day preaching is not particularly good, and that most churchgoers do not expect it to be. In his argument, the typical 21st-century sermon is a rambling, inarticulate, and unsuccessful attempt to say something that is somehow connected to the Bible. This is the... Continue Reading

Sin always promises to taste good, and there’s some truth in its promise. Eve saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “was good for food . . . a delight to the eyes, and . . . to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). Yet, what looked good and... Continue Reading

Boston’s perseverance through suffering is worthy not only of our admiration, but also of our imitation.  One way to learn from his example is to read his classic sermon on the sovereignty of God, which is one of the last things he prepared for publication before he died. Boston called his sermon The Crook in... Continue Reading

It is from Luke’s record of the ever-extending reign of the risen and exalted Christ, that we are given a clear picture of how the Apostle Paul sought both to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and defend the Christian truth claim (2).  Paul does so not only in the synagogues of the major cities... Continue Reading

What people want this verse to say is that any time two or more Christians are gathered, there’s a church, because Jesus is in their midst. On a closer examination of the whole passage, we find this text to specifically deal with the practice of church discipline.   I can’t recall the number of times I’ve... Continue Reading

We need to remind ourselves of the significance of what we are watching: this case will be a textbook case for decades on the failure of a church — its Elders, its Boards —  to listen to women, to evaluate accusations, and to have policies in place for handling a one-of-a-kind world-influencing leaders. How the Elders handled this case... Continue Reading

If you’re one of those rah-rah guys firing on all emotional cylinders for everything from bake sales and the book table to baptisms and baby dedications, you create an equality between minutiae and missional milestones that can be disorienting, and ultimately dulling.    Generally speaking, a church will over time become affected by, influenced toward,... Continue Reading