Jesus, please give me the fresh start you gave to Peter on the beach. O Lord, help me to love you and to learn from his journey of change into a man you used so powerfully. O God, I pray his words back to you now, and cry out for courage to take the next... Continue Reading

Jesus had to reveal the true meaning of the Old Testament to His disciples after the resurrection despite the fact that they had been acquainted with it their entire lives.  We too have no hope of understanding Scripture unless the Spirit reveals it to us as Jesus promised He would.  So we must pray for... Continue Reading

I implore my fellow elders to quit trying to solve denominational controversies in 280 words or less. Let us return to true dialogue and persuasion, taking the time to develop our thoughts and measure our responses. This could be in blogs (remember those), articles, and yes overtures which are meant to be debated in person... Continue Reading

Liberal theology is not another type of Christianity but something altogether different. Machen had to fight this on many fronts during his career, including having to leave the increasingly liberal Princeton Seminary after 23 years to form Westminster Theological Seminary. And of course things are no different today and perhaps even worse. Modern forms of... Continue Reading

When Elisabeth Elliott returned to the jungle in 1958, after subsequent missionaries had made successful contact with the Huaorani, the tribe told her they’d speared the five men because they thought they were cannibals. Reading back through the men’s journals after this revelation is like going back to the beginning of the movie and noticing... Continue Reading

Paul claims that all are under sin (Romans 3:9) and uses a number of biblical quotations to show the unrighteousness and irreverence of man (Romans 3:10a, 18), giving further explanation of his sinfulness and examples of his sin (Romans 3:10b–17). Addressing the Jews in particular (cf. Romans 2:17, “if you call yourself a Jew”), Paul clarifies that they... Continue Reading

Jesus’ identity is bound up in the Word of God. He is the Word made flesh. The trustworthiness of the Bible is inextricably tied to the trustworthiness of Jesus. If the Word of God is not trustworthy, neither is Jesus, and if Jesus is not trustworthy, neither are the Scriptures. To follow Jesus, we must... Continue Reading

In this prayer, as we will see, the two themes surface which we have identified earlier as running throughout the entirety of Daniel’s prophecy. First, we see God’s absolute sovereignty over all of human history, including YHWH’s rule over the great empires depicted by the statue in the dream. Second, God’s fatherly care of Daniel... Continue Reading

Jesus’ message about being the bread of life is one of the most convicting and revealing in the Gospel accounts. People who are confronted by this message cannot stand in the middle and they cannot pretend which side they are on – at least for long. We all must either recognize that we have nowhere... Continue Reading

When Paul says to “restore” in Galatians 6:1 he uses a word that means to put something back into its proper condition. What can more perfectly convey the goal of church discipline than that picture? Believers are never going to be perfect, and when we get off track we need help being put back into... Continue Reading