INTRODUCTION:One of the customs we have in this congregation is that of having a “state of the church” message around the first of the year. Sometimes the message focuses on the local state of the church, and sometimes on the state of the national church. And sometimes, like today, it focuses on both. THE TEXT:“Wherefore …
Edge of What?
God has called us to be holy and blameless before Him, and so we need to understand that call. As Christians we know that holiness and blamelessness are good things, but we cannot just accept that the words refer to good things. We have to know how God defines these things—and this is what Scripture …
Nothing But Grace and Gratitude
Here is bread and wine. Here is the grace of God. Come as supplicants; come as those who know that they need nothing but the sheer, unadulterated grace of God. Grace, if it to remain grace, must be received as gift. We can be worthy of a gift after the fact, but if we try …
Sin is Not Exceptional
Father, we confess that holiness or separation from the mundane is an inescapable concept, and if we don’t accept the gift of Your holiness, we will attempt to manufacture our own. We confess that we have attempted to create our own forms of exceptionalism, and we confess how wrongheaded that is.
Jeremiah and Kelsey
The Scriptures speak a great deal about glory, but as earth-bound novices, we tend to shy away from the subject. We think that the whole thing is beyond our grasp. And yet, the Bible is very clear that glory is part of our experience here in this world, and so we need to learn how …
Second Temple Piracy
N.T. Wright takes the famous “den of robbers” statement made by Jesus in the cleansing of the Temple as referring to revolutionaries, which the word lestes can mean. But Peter Leithart, citing Nicholas Perrin, takes it in the more straightforward sense of “thieves.” Here are a couple reasons why Leithart’s reading is much to be …
Marriage Was Such a Good Idea
Wishing you all a very blessed new year. I was tired of 2010 anyway. And today is our 35th wedding anniversary, and the weather worked together with us in celebrating it. As I told Nancy this morning . . . half way to seventy!