Category: Church

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of doing a podcast interview with my good friend Larson Hicks on the topic of wisdom. You can find the interview here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zuyMb_87E0

 

 

 

Category: Pastoral Exhortations
God’s people have many ways of expressing godly grief over our own sin or over tragedies we endure in this fallen world. Here are a few examples.
 
From 2 Samuel 13:
 
[19] And Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore. And she laid her hand on her head and went away, crying aloud as she went.
 
From Esther 4:
 
[1] When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. [2] He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. [3] And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.
 
From Jonah 3:
 
[5] And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
Of course, we are never required to perform such outward rituals when we grieve over sin or the fallenness of the world. But to condemn all such rituals is Gnostic. They have their place, as physical manifestations of a repentant heart, just as feasting and gift giving are proper manifestations of a thankful and joyful heart.
 
In Matthew 6, Jesus condemned outward fasting and mourning rituals done to look pious or as a kind of religious showmanship. But we know he was only condemning the hypocritical abuse of these rituals, not the rituals themselves, because a few chapters later, he tells us what real repentance would look like if those cities that saw his mighty works had humbled themselves. In Matthew 11, we read:
 
[21] Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
 
So disfiguring your face to show others you are a superstar believer and a holier-than-thou Christian is forbidden. Do not be a Pharisee. But manifesting genuine brokenness and contrition over sin, even in sackcloth and ash, is commendable.
 
Welcome to Lent.

Category: Culture

This is an email I sent to my congregation this week, concerning Canadian bill C-4, which essentially makes the Christian faith illegal in Canada.

Read more …

Category: Bible

The phrase “descended into hell” from the Apostles Creed has been controversial at times in church history. Not even the Reformers agreed amongst themselves what it meant. Should we keep this phrase in the Creed -- especially since not every early version of the Creed included it? What did the framers of the Creed mean by it? What should we mean by it when we recite it? What Scriptures speak to the issue?
 

Read more …

Category: Men & Women

This is an email I wrote in October 2011. I came across it as I was going through some old files and realized it might be useful to make it public. I am turning it into a blog post here because the issues I was responding to are still very relevant. I have removed personal references, but otherwise, the email is essentially what I wrote at the time. This email was written in response to someone who was criticizing my preaching on male/female sexual issues. The critic of my sermons was moving in an egalitarian direction. I was preaching through 1 Corinthians at the time, so obviously a lot of my sermons in this time frame addressed marriage, sex, gender roles, tc. The sermons in question were preached in July and August of 2011 and can be found on the TPC website sermon page.

 

Read more …

  1. The Church in Three Dimensions
  2. Notes on Roman Catholicism
  3. The Pandering Church
  4. An Awakening for the Woke

Page 32 of 42