Gandalf asked Bilbo why the morning was good. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” Bilbo’s answer was all of the above. It was... Continue Reading

While believers on earth are right to focus on serving in local churches to guard and proclaim the gospel and carry that good news to the ends of the earth, we are helped in that ongoing, though temporal, task by focusing on what will become of the church in heaven. Indeed, we are most effective... Continue Reading

Paul knew the happy God of the universe is not selfish with his joy. Never. His Trinitarian bliss expands outward as a gift to the creation, a gift to you and to me — the undeserving recipients of the happiness of God in his beloved Son. Our neighbors, right now out on their toys, who... Continue Reading

May we––as the Reformers before us––wholeheartedly embrace Augustine’s teaching about the way in which “sinful man depends, for his recovery to good and to God, entirely on the free grace of God.”   Lately, as I have been reading through Augustine’s Expositions of the Psalms, I have been struck afresh by how central God’s free,... Continue Reading

Carefully weigh your motivation for staying away from your local church service. Whenever the time finally comes that we find our primary motivation for remaining home is simply convenience, I encourage you to reconsider in light of these criteria. In meeting together, we embrace a long tradition of togetherness, we answer a call to connectedness,... Continue Reading

If the writers of the New Testament believed they were living in the last days and urged the early church to be prepared for the coming of Christ—imagine what they would say to us in our day. We must recognize that the culmination of our salvation is nearer today than it has been since we... Continue Reading

“The way we continually talk about our own inabilities is an insult to our Creator. To complain over our incompetence is to accuse God falsely of having overlooked us. Get into the habit of examining from God’s perspective those things that sound so humble to men. You will be amazed at how unbelievably inappropriate and... Continue Reading

Every time we fall short, the punishment that we deserve finds its satisfaction in Him, and we are declared righteous in Jesus. True knowledge of this never moves us to belittle his commands; it always moves us to love them and rejoice in them. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.   It... Continue Reading

Now I see that while God wants our obedience and does, indeed, bless it, He doesn’t want us to trust our obedience. He wants us to trust Him. Christ is the rock, not our obedience. True wisdom means trusting Him—even to provide our basic needs. As He said a bit earlier in the Sermon on... Continue Reading

When the Protestant Reformers talked about total depravity, they meant that sin—its power, its influence, its inclination—affects the whole person. Our bodies are fallen, our hearts are fallen, and our minds are fallen—there’s no part of us that escapes the ravages of our sinful human nature. Sin affects our behavior, our thought life, and even... Continue Reading