Category: Uncategorized
-
Sermon Follow Up, 1 Samuel 13-16
1 Samuel 14:47ff might make it sound like Saul was a great warrior. And he did have a measure of success, obviously. But his ongoing wars have to be understood as a mixed blessing to Israel. V. 52 tells us he fought the Philistines “all his days.” The problem is that the never actually won. …
-
Worship Exhortation, July 14, 2024 (and other notes)
This is a slightly expanded version of the opening exhortation given at TPC on July 14, the day after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump: Presidential candidate Donald Trump dodged a bullet yesterday, and that means our whole nation dodged a bullet yesterday. I think it’s fair to say that our nation was just a…
-
Happy Presbyterian Rebellion Day (and other notes)
I wanted to provide some follow up to my sermon from last Sunday. In the sermon, I developed the pattern of the three falls/three heroes in Genesis, then showed how Saul recapitulated the three falls in 1 Samuel 13-15. This is a pattern I learned from that master Bible teacher, Jim Jordan. Jim develops the…
-
Progressives Will Not Make Very Much Progress, and Other Worldview Notes
I was teaching a Bible study on Judges 9 the other night and it occurred to me just how relevant this chapter is to many of our current issues. (We will eventually get audio up on our website.) First, anyone who wants a so-called “strong man” to rule should pay close attention to the beginning…
-
A Couple More Notes on Renn’s Negative World
It’s been pointed out that some Big Eva types have been dismissive of Renn’s “three worlds” model, including his claim that we turned to negative world around 2014. Why is this? One major reason is that these Big Eva leaders and their failed strategies are precisely why we landed in negative world. If we are…
-
Trump 2024?
The Presidential election still several months off, but already many Reformed/evangelical influencers (such as Wilson, Brito, Mattson, Leithart, and Devine — you can easily google their articles so I will not take time to link them) are giving their counsel about how Christians should approach voting this time around. Frankly, I do not think we…
-
Pick one: Romance or Equality?
You can have equality or romance but not both. The feminist version of equality killed sexual polarity which in turn killed romance, attraction, and ultimately marriage (as low marriage rates attest). In South Korea, an all out gender war has led to the lowest birth rate in the world, despite great prosperity. In the United…
-
Life in Negative World (notes)
We recently had a men’s discussion of Renn’s Life in Negative World book. I really liked the book, though it is far from perfect. Obviously Renn is a sociologist not a pastor or theologian, but I still thought some of his interaction with Scripture could have been deeper. He really missed a lot of opportunities to bring…
-
CREC Polity
I was recently asked if the CREC is Presbyterian. This is part of my response: It’s a very attenuated version of presbyterianism — small “p” presbyterianism, I suppose. We certainly are presbyterian in a fundamental sense because we have presbyteries and they perform many of the roles traditionally granted to presbyteries (eg, appeals court, examining…
-
Easter Miscellanies
Here are some things that have been on my mind during this Easter season: In the sermon on 4/7/24 on Matthew 27:57-28:20, I made the assumption that the guards at the tomb where Jesus was buried were Roman. The question was asked afterward if they could have been Jewish guards. The text is not clear…
TPC Pastor's Page 