Tag: Bible
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Worship Exhortation – 7/28/24 (Re: Olympics Opening Ceremony)
This is a rough summary that combines ad expands the exhortation I gave before worship and before the Lord’s Supper on July 28, 2024: I did not see the Olympic opening ceremonies the other day. I was traveling, but honestly, even if I was not traveling, I probably still would not have watched. However, I…
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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. …
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Baptismal Exhortation, June 2024
One thing conservative and Christian people do a lot these days is talk about how over several generations evil has progressed. It seems evil is growing stronger in our culture, year by year right now. Darkness is getting darker and covering more ground. Things that were once unthinkable and even illegal are now celebrated in…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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4/28/24 Sermon Follow-Up: Justification by (fill in the blank)
Justification by (fill in the blank). My sermon was based on the premise that justification is not just a Christian concern, but an innate human concern. All people operate out of a desire for justification — to be declared in the right, to be innocent, to be validated, to be vindicated. A great deal of human…
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Celebrating a Patriarchal Eucharist
This article was first published the Fight Laugh Feast magazine. It’s been said that in the Lord’s Supper, the church practices life the way it really ought to be lived. When we do the Lord’s Supper right, we do life right. When the church is what she is supposed to be, gathered around the Lord’s…
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