Author: Pastor Rich Lusk
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Christ the King Sunday 2022 — Sermon Follow Up
Sermon — How the Story Ends: Living Every Day in Light of the Last Day (1 Thess. 4:9-18) A few notes, following up on yesterday’s sermon: 1. Frank Senn on the eschatological/political background of Christ the King Sunday: “Christ the King is not a festival of great antiquity, supplying the church year with neat narrative…
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Wedding Homily #2
This wedding homily from 2014 is based on Romans 5:1-8. The world often seems to be a hopeless place. But as hard as hope is to come by, we cannot live without it. Hope is like oxygen for the soul. Without it, we suffocate. There is no greater pain than hopelessness; and yet with hope,…
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Wedding Homily #1
I will occasionally post old wedding homilies on the blog.This one is from my son’s wedding in September, 2022. John and Madison — it is a great honor to do your wedding service today. John, it has been a great pleasure for your mother and I to raise you and we could not be more proud of you. Madison, we have been…
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Who are the Modern Day Pharisees?
When Tim Keller preached his sermons on Luke 15 and wrote his book on the parable of the prodigal son, he treated the elder brother as a type of conservative/fundamentalist and the younger brother as a typical irreligious liberal. This model explains why he is hard on those to his political and cultural right and…
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Interacting with Christian Nationalism (Part 6): Isker Counter-Punches
My friend Andrew Isker has weighed in on the Christian nationalism debate with a response to Peter Leithart’s short statement on Christian nationalism. A few weeks ago, Larson Hicks and I interviewed Isker about his book (co-authored with Andrew Torba) on Christian nationalism. Like Isker, I also noticed the dichotomy in Leithart’s piece on a nation seeking its own good…
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2022 Ordination and Installation Sermons
Over the course of 2022, I have been honored and privileged to preach at a few ordination/installation services for some very good men in some very good churches. Here’s a recap. In April, I preached at the installation service for Matt Carpenter at Trinity Reformed in Huntsville. Trinity Reformed is a church we planted just…
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Interacting with Christian Nationalism (5): Mattson Weighs In
Mattson’s review of Wolfe’s book is well worth reading if you have been following the discussions on Christian nationalism. I might not agree with Mattson on every particular criticism and I certainly find a few more points of agreement with Wolfe’s social commentary in the second half of his book, but Mattson offers a pretty convincing…
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Interacting with Christian Nationalism (Part 4)
I appreciated a lot of Wolfe’s critique of VanDrunen’s radical two kingdom view, including the way he brought out its latent antinomianism. But there are still some problems with Wolfe’s two kingdom view, especially the heaven/earth, sacred/secular dualism built into it. I do not think Wolfe has done justice to the Calvinistic transformationalists (CT). Many…
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A Political Theology for the Present Moment
We do not live in the Christendom world inhabited by the Reformers. What it means to affirm a sacred/secular dichotomy in a Christendom situation is not the same as what it means to affirm that kind of dichotomy in a post-Christendom situation. We cannot just quote Althusius (or whoever) as if it were adequate to…
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A Quick Primer on What it Means to Be Ecclesiocentric
Ecclesiocentrism is incredibly simple to understand and absolutely ubiquitous in Scripture. The church is the central and most important thing in the world and in history. That’s it — that’s the fundamental claim. Ecclesiocentrism can be found on almost every page of the Bible. Some examples: These paragraphs from Doug Wilson’s post this week is…
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