What Is God’s Plan for Your Life Here and Now?
We need to be faithfully and patiently present to all of those who are near us as we settle in for the long haul.
Though our true hope and eternal future do not rest on temporal things, such as plans for political power or an ultimate cultural transformation, we are not to neglect this creation that God has so graciously and providentially provided to us. As he is patient, so we ought also to be patient, living in the... Continue Reading
Failing Hurts Most When Success Defines Us
Where Do You Find Your Worth?
Failure is a reality of life just as success is a reality of life. Those failures don’t define us. We should allow the scriptures to shape our priorities and our view of ourselves. We should also forge real relationships with each other so that we provide support and guidance to those of us who need... Continue Reading
Entertainment and the Death of a Culture
The iron grip of endless entertainment impacts everything, even the churches.
I want to present one important secular voice who speaks to these matters. I refer to Neil Postman (1931-2003) and his very important 1985 volume, Amusing Ourselves to Death. I have quoted from this book often, but it pays to share even more of it here. By offering some choice quotes I might convince some of... Continue Reading
Review of John Gerstner by Jeffrey S. McDonald
Dr. McDonald shows that Gerstner was influential from the lectern, in the pulpit, and through writing for a variety of publications.
Jeffrey McDonald has provided a thought-provoking biography supported by over a thousand footnotes that document sources including Gerstner’s writings, reviews of his writings, recordings, judicatory records, letters, web material, and interviews of his students and colleagues. The nineteen-page bibliography shows a wide variety of sources accessed by McDonald. The book provides another angle on the... Continue Reading
We Must Identify and Resist Fools: Countering the Post-Modern Culture of Sentimentality
The wise and diligent know how to identify fools, help others identify them, and avoid them.
We must teach our students to work hard to empathize with and understand others. Students need many prior Christian virtues, such as humility, self-control, and gentleness, before learning and applying these skills. Yet, at the same time, we must not shy away from teaching our students to identify fools, offer reasons for their foolishness, and yes be willing to... Continue Reading
B. B. Warfield on the Formation of New Testament Canon
Through the revelation of the gospel preached by the apostles, Warfield notes that the Holy Spirit added to the existing Old Testament canon during the apostolic age.
According to Warfield, the church did not create a new canon alongside the old by determining what ought to be included in it (or not). Rather, the church recognized the books of our present New Testament as they were given, and therefore added them to the existing books of the Old Testament canon. These books... Continue Reading
The Gospel-Forward Church
Putting the mission in mission works.
When it comes to our local church becoming a gospel-forward church, it isn’t going to happen unless we pray, individually and collectively, that God will open our eyes, and free up our time. It means we will start planning gospel encounters with the unconverted. What does that look like? You tell me. I think it... Continue Reading
The Evolution of Protestant Politics
Christianity and Politics XI: From the Reformation to Early America
The New Testament only grants authority regarding the internal governance of the church to the officers of the church. I think most people who oppose establishment frame their opposition the other way round: they are mostly afraid of Christians imposing their will on the general populace via the state. I am more concerned—from a biblical... Continue Reading
America’s Campus Meltdown
This is what happens when the ideological left controls higher education.
What is not unclear is that the students now condemning Israel are the products of an elite American academic industry that offers leftist ideologies as its main product and, brace yourselves, the younger professors on many campuses are much further to left in both ideology and politics. The old liberals are scared to death of... Continue Reading
Heady Thoughts About Your Heart
Summarizing the teaching of Scripture, we can say the heart governs the totality of our inner self.
To be born again means that God has given each of us a new heart. Just as every function and aspect of our old heart was perilously infected by sin, so also nothing in our new heart remains untouched by God’s grace—including our mind. God has graciously enlightened our understanding. Now we see our sin and we... Continue Reading
Stopping the Transgender Conveyor Belt
Over the last decade, a complicated network of state and federal laws has increasingly channeled children down the path of gender transition.
This, in short, is how the conveyor belt works: The school encourages the child to embrace a new gender. Teachers must affirm it and hide it from parents. Counselors must support it. Parents must go along or risk losing custody. Employers and insurers must pay for it. Doctors must perform it. All of this is... Continue Reading
A New Testament Passage That’s Older than the New Testament
Historians are convinced that 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 is an early Christian creed Paul is reminding the Corinthians of.
This ancient creed, however, shows us what the very first Christians believed about Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. The Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7 obliterates the “Jesus as legend” challenge. From the inception of the church, the earliest believers confessed Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. There was no time for legendary development. The... Continue Reading
Teach What is Good
“Older women…teach what is good” (Tit. 2:3).
Being an “older woman” is not for the faint of heart. The older we get the more we realize the more flawed we are and the more we need every ounce of grace that God graciously gives –which is probably why God gives this command to us at this time in our lives. But our... Continue Reading
Stuart Robinson, 1814-1881
Stuart Robinson was known for his preaching gifts, the precision of his sermons, his pointed and no holds barred writing, and a short-fused temper.
Robinson’s book, The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel, 1858, has been reprinted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2009, with an introduction by A. Craig Troxel and a twenty-five page biography by T. E. Peck. Peck was a friend of Robinson and succeeded him at Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore. Robinson also published Discourses on Redemption:... Continue Reading
Idolatry and the Fear of the Lord
When the fear of the Lord lies firm in our hearts, it fortifies us against the ever-encroaching idolatries that war against our souls.
Take heart in your battle against the idols of this age. Your Savior has fought and won the most terrifying war against idolatrous unbelief through His perfect fearing of the Father unto death. Now, through His Spirit, you too can experience and exult in God as your eternal, all-glorious treasure, undaunted by the trivialities that... Continue Reading
Unchurched—and Anti-Semitic?
The case for “shallow Christianity” as a seedbed for rising hostility to Jews.
In May 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that, in 2020, only about a quarter of American Jews believed in the God described in the Bible, only a fifth deemed religion “very important” in their lives, and only an eighth attended religious services at least weekly. In “Embrace Pluralism over Racialism,” Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam rightly... Continue Reading
The Great Commission in the Old Testament
The commission was given to man as bearer of the image of God, created both to fellowship with God and to mediate the blessed reign of God over all the earth.
Once we understand the Great Commission as a function of kingship, we are in a better place to assess this agenda throughout the rest of the Old Testament. God’s reign is universal, and from the beginning, His plan of salvation aimed at all the families of the earth, never overlooking the fact that He “shall... Continue Reading
Gifting for Service: How the Spirit Gifts Today
The Spirit’s work in every believer’s life is to sanctify him through his Word and equip him for service.
Our response to this work of the Spirit should be clear: serve the church. Don’t worry about trying to figure out what your “spiritual gifts” are. Simply serve the church in any way you can. The Spirit has providentially gifted you to do so, so serve, and marvel at the ways the Spirit of God has... Continue Reading
Winsomeness in the Negative World
Christians should be kind, but also realize that kindness won’t stop accusations of hate.
If we assume that being winsome will win a favorable hearing, then heated opposition will tempt us to doubt Christian moral teaching. Most people are not ready to be perceived as unloving, hateful, and a menace to society. But that is what, in many circles, publicly affirming traditional moral teaching will get you. It looked... Continue Reading
Something Must Be Done Syndrome
Elders are not the trouble shooters who come in to resolve the sticky issues nobody wants to touch.
Churches cannot have it both ways. They cannot simultaneously wash their hands of all responsibility, piling it onto their pastor and/or elders, whilst at the same time having strong and vociferous views about whatever they do. One of the many terrific things I have discovered since being a pastor is that everything one does... Continue Reading
The Same Person in Every Room
I know who I am. I am the creation of God himself.
I have been rebellious and sinful, absolutely, but I have been forgiven and adopted into God’s own family through Jesus Christ. Whatever I’m wearing, wherever I am, this is my identity. Whatever I’m wearing, whoever I’m with, I want to live this identity out faithfully in every word and every action. I was sitting... Continue Reading
How Is the Trinity Involved in Our Prayers?
Each member of the Trinity gives himself to us in the work of prayer.
In prayer the Spirit perfects our requests, petitions, and praises and brings them to the Son, who in his authority as the righteous Son of God has access to the throne of the Father, where he makes our prayers his own. Prayer is an essential means by which we can commune (fellowship) with God—and... Continue Reading
Gen Z and the Draw to Serious Faith
When young people accept the invitation to visit a church, they’ve already committed to experiencing something unusual.
In a world marked by coddling and canceling, let’s call up the next generation. The gospel is true. God is real. The church that reaches the next generation will not be riddled with insecurity but will hold out, with confidence and humility, a serious faith. Not long ago, I sat across from a pastor of a... Continue Reading
Escaping Justice?
There may be those who escape an earthly court, but they will not escape the heavenly one.
Injustice can consume us; it can corrode us, our character, our trust, our very soul. It can dominate our thinking. It can sabotage our ability to trust God. And so in his kindness God offers more than binding up our hurt. He offers to take that awful pain, that deep injustice, and use it for... Continue Reading
Free Speech Ain’t What It Used to Be
NatCon Brussels and Authoritarian Liberalism
The abandonment of the freedom to engage in political speech against those currently in power leaves one of two options, neither of them conducive to national stability and flourishing. Those not currently in power will either become politically powerless forever or they will seek that political power non-peacefully. There is no alternative. As I... Continue Reading
God’s Purposes from Genesis to Revelation
God’s goal has always been to be in unbroken fellowship with us and with his creation.
The redemption of the world through Christ and His Church isn’t a new idea. It’s simply the fulfillment of God’s original plan. God’s redeeming work does not scrap creation but restores and renews it. Remember that it is not only God’s people who are longing for Christ’s return, but it’s creation itself as in Romans... Continue Reading
On Conscience, Christian Liberty, and Preferences
No amount of right living gives us a clear conscience. It can only be obtained by the precious blood of Christ.
Christians will disagree about preferences. Romans 14, 1 Corinthians 8, and 1 Corinthians 10 are passages that deal with this exact issue. Preferences of application cannot be sin. This would exclude it from the category of Christian liberty. If your application of the word leads to breaking of a direct command or prohibition, then it... Continue Reading
Looking Heavenward Transforms Our Sorrow
The heavenward journey begins with knowing the present and future eternal realities of your salvation. They will bring you such life, hope, and joy!
The Lord blesses us with particular blessings of the future heavenly life during our time on earth. We come into union with Christ, which will be the bedrock of our heavenly joy. He declares the current, heavenly blessing of union with Christ in Colossians by saying, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).... Continue Reading
Doing More vs. Doing Better
Let’s also look for ways to improve our shared life so that more outreach can happen – not by doing more – but by doing better.
If we are going to make the effort of organizing a day of food and games, why not be creative to think of ways of inviting the wider community to take part in the fun? We need to remember that much of our salt and light is the shared life that we enjoy together. The... Continue Reading
Saying It Out Loud
Elites finally admit abortion is murder—and they do not care.
When it comes down to it, it’s the “absolutist” position (i.e., the truly pro-life position) that gets Maher’s “respect.” Maher and the absolutist understand each other, he thinks, because both of them understand exactly what abortion is. “They think it’s murder. And … it kind of is.” The difference between them, as he succinctly follows... Continue Reading