December 24th, 2012
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“In Adam’s fall, we sinned all” (New England Primer, 14). This famous line of Benjamin’s Harris’ 1690 New England Primer expresses the basic Christian belief that Adam’s sin had dreadful consequences for the rest of us. We need to meditate upon this regularly.
December 17th, 2012
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever” (Ps. 136:1). God in his goodness and covenant mercy has created and continues to provide for all that his creatures need.
December 10th, 2012
The God of the Bible is the God who has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass from all eternity and who in human history brings all his plans to reality through creation and redemption.
October 1st, 2012
We live in a time in which our humanity is misunderstood, at best, and under attack, at worse. Our consumer society is rooted in the philosophy that greed is good, that “it’s not personal, it’s business,” and that he who dies with the most toys wins.
September 17th, 2012
We’ve all seen them, right? Angels, that is. You know, those chubby little children with wings; those cute Precious Moments statuettes
September 10th, 2012
The story goes that there was an astronomer, a biologist, a cosmologist, a geologist, and a physicist who climbed the highest mountain in the world in order to collaborate on determining the origin of life. The astronomer measured the distance to the stars, the biologist examined the smallest life forms deep in the snow, the cosmologist asked the big picture questions, the geologist studied the carbon dating of the rocks, and the physicist determined the makeup of everything they walked on.
September 3rd, 2012
The Reformed doctrine of predestination is “an opiate of the flesh and the devil, and is a stronghold of Satan where he lies in wait for all people, wounds most of them, and fatally pierces many of them with the arrows of both despair and self-assurance.”
August 22nd, 2012
What have you done for me lately? As a former basketball player I new this line well.
August 15th, 2012
Back in 2005 America’s new “pastor,” Rick Warren, said, “The first Reformation was about doctrine; the second one needs to be about behavior.
August 13th, 2012
When people speak of heaven, they often use images of their favorite places (i.e., the beach, or Yosemite), or they describe some sort of disembodied existence where their immortal soul will finally be set free from the limitations imposed upon it by the human body.
August 8th, 2012
A quick web search reveals surveys that show as many as 97% of Americans professing to believe in God. Impressive, isn’t it? But do 97% of Americans actually believe in the God who says, “You shall have no other gods before me?” (Ex. 20:3) What does it mean to say that 97% of Americans believe in “God?”
August 6th, 2012
The biblical account of the redemption of our fallen race takes many twists and turns throughout the course of redemptive history. But the story comes to a glorious resolution when we come to the final chapter of the story.
July 30th, 2012
The Reformed understanding of the Lord’s Supper is grounded in an important distinction between the sign and seal (bread and wine), the thing signified (forgiveness through his blood, the “blood of the covenant”), and a sacramental union between the two (our Lord’s words “this is my body”).
July 23rd, 2012
Before our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, he left his disciples with the following command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
July 19th, 2012
There once was a popular song in my college years with a blasphemous chorus that went like this: “Tell me all your thoughts on God. Cause I’d really like to meet her; and ask her why we’re who we are? Tell me all your thoughts on God.
July 16th, 2012
Although any discussion of the role of the sacraments in the Christian life seems too “catholic” for many evangelical Christians, the sacraments do play a very important role throughout the New Testament.
July 2nd, 2012
Do you know God? How easy it is for us to profess that we do merely with our lips. The visible church of Christ is full of people who profess to know God, but do we really? To know God is to have knowledge of him, to actually know something about him. But to know God is to have a deep, intimate, relationship with him through his Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. So let me ask you again, do you know God?
June 25th, 2012
If I asked you the name of Noah’s wife, would you answer Joan of Ark? Sadly, many would today. The level of biblical illiteracy today among the professing Christian church is sad. Recently arch-atheist Richard Dawkins commissioned his foundation to survey those who claimed to be Christian in the 2011 census in England.
June 13th, 2012
As a pastor, over the years I had my fair share of people approach me to find out if we were a “courtship” church or a “dating” church. The people invariably would tell me that their approach was “the biblical way.” I eventually become leery of such claims given that the Bible does not say much about how to find a wife, or does it?
May 23rd, 2012
Statistics can be misleading if they are abstracted from the moment they are calculated. But in that moment, they reveal a glimpse of reality. The well-known church growth leader, George Barna, provides us an opportunity to glimpse at the sad reality of the modern evangelical church as well as our culture. Back in 2000 one survey revealed that 75% of Americans agreed with the statement “God helps those who help themselves.” Then in 2005 another survey revealed that 11% of “born-again” Christians said they did not believe the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.
