This last weekend Nancy and I had the privilege of visiting the saints at Riverwood Presbyterian in Tuscaloosa. We were shown wonderful hospitality there, and were greatly encouraged by the trip. During one part of the visit we toured the area demolished by the tornado this last spring (and the picture below represents a miniscule …
No Stainless Steel Olive Branches
“Why does Paul argue that nothing can remove the elect from Christ, and then turn around and deliver a sober warning about the dangers of being removed from the olive tree? The answer is inescapable. There is a difference between being elect, and being a covenant member. The elect cannot be removed from God’s sovereign …
Study?
“Instead, tragic to relate, many [preachers] are essentially administrators, whose symbols of ministry are the office rather than the study, and the telephone rather than the Bible” (Stott, Between Two Worlds, p. 124).
The Baseball Cap of Punditry
Let us talk about the problem of Marcus Todd, and by this I am not referring to what ought to be the name of an upscale men’s clothier, but rather to the problem of Marcus Bachmann and Todd Palin. Anyone with an Internet connection and an interest in politics should know that in the last …
He Will Come
Because we present arguments in the presentation of the gospel, we sometimes come to think that the outcome of matter rests upon those arguments. But God uses arguments — He doesn’t depend upon them. He doesn’t lean on them. The reason people resist and reject the gospel is because of willfulness, not because we have …
When the Veneer Peels
A staple argument of homosex apologetics is that when the Bible condemns the vile behavior of the residents of Sodom, it was addressing the violent side of it — the attempted rape of Lot’s visitors. It does not address at all, so the argument goes, the kind of loving, caring, mutually affirming same sex relationships …
Despite the Jesus Jargon
One of our central difficulties with missions is that we have not yet identified the bane of benevolence. We have not yet figured out how to protect the mission field from destructive do-gooding. Not only do we not prevent it, we still positively recruit for it. We learn a great deal from the parable of …
A Trip to Tuscaloosa
If any of you are free in the Tuscaloosa area this weekend, Nancy and I will be there for a few days. More information is available here.
More on Motherhood
A number of weeks ago, my daughter Rachel wrote something on “motherhood as mission” for the Desiring God blog that generated a significant response. She has a follow-up post on a similar topic that just went up this morning. You can check it out here.
How Might Gentile Limbs Sin?
“As far as the Jews were concerned, the Bible teaches that because they were born into an Israelite family, circumcised in the covenant on the eighth day, they were attached to the tree. This attachment was an objective historical fact. But the sin and hypocrisy of many of them was also an objective fact, and …