“Together with providing informative and insightful knowledge, God’s word equips by reproof and rebuke.  As the Spirit works through God’s word, both read and preached, that word calls you to account by revealing where you’re in error.  It then corrects through instruction by directing to the right way and just path.”   For the less... Continue Reading

If you are a Christian, it is NOT God’s punishment for your sin. This is very important. The great mistake of Job’s so-called “comforters” was to assume that Job’s sufferings must be a punishment for his sin. But if you are trusting in Jesus (as Job was, in anticipation), the punishment for all your sin... Continue Reading

How do we show “tolerance and love to those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ?” Keyes asked. He mentioned first, legal tolerance. Legal tolerance by Christians for those they disagreed with developed slowly. The difference between church and state authority was a development of Jesus teaching of our different duties to God and Caesar.  ... Continue Reading

But if sanctification is put in the trunk, the gospel can be darkened a bit. It can morph into that which saves from sin’s penalty but not its presence, which is not the biblical gospel. Instead, the gospel becomes something to display and imitate before it is something by which I am made acceptable to God. Often that something else is social cause. The death of Christ is to rescue us from our social needs instead of the wrath of God. The gospel which saves becomes the gospel which socializes.

Jesus contrasted his way with the way of the Pharisees, who “crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden” (Matthew 23:4). Jesus’ ethical creed, by contrast, is a statement that flows out of empathy and non-controlling service. All that law, that the Pharisees enforced with power and might, Jesus summed up like this: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind…Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

Singing it is well is a reminder that the old will pass away and the new WILL come. You might not have understanding about the deep hurts that you are experiencing, but I hope you can turn to the God who comforts and the God who does understand.

The Reformed were particularly zealous to apply this doctrine to the practice of Christian worship. The Westminster Divines had experience with attempts by the Anglican establishment to bind their consciences and those of their forebears. As early as the 1540s, it became clear that there were those within Anglicanism who did not accept the doctrine of sola Scriptura as authorities sought to impose certain priestly (not merely ministerial) vestments upon the ministers.

George Orwell once wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In the ninth commandment forbidding the bearing of false witness (Exodus 20:16). And, Jesus declared, “Let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil” (Matthew 5:37). In a world where deceit and lying is commonplace, God desires that His people be revolutionary truth tellers, men and women of their word.

My advice to those who find themselves on the pendulum swing from broad evangelicalism as well as to those moving toward Anglo-Catholicism: Find a church that is faithful to expositional, Christ-centered preaching of Scripture, regular Lord’s Day observation of the means of grace (i.e. word, sacraments, prayer), the practice of church discipline and the loving fellowship... Continue Reading

Someday we will get to see what Moses wanted to see: the glory of God. We will look Jesus right in the face and will not be destroyed but will be filled with glorious joy. In the heart of every man there is a yearning—yet unsatisfied—to see this promise fulfilled. We know that there is... Continue Reading