If Jesus is Lord…

The Apostle Paul makes the lordship of Jesus Christ a central theme in his letter to the Romans. Forty three times Paul uses the word “Lord” in that letter, often with the pronoun, “our,” to indicate our fellowship with Him — Christ is not just any Lord, but He is the Lord who belongs to […]

Sermon: We Give Thanks to God

We Give Thanks to God Colossians 1:3-8 August 11, 2019 A tremendous amount of effort has gone into acknowledging GBC’s 40th anniversary. Hours and hours in planning, interviewing, designing logos, phone calling, ordering (food and shirts and…), setting up tables and chairs, mowing, marking parking, and more. Is it worth the effort? Is there value […]

Sermon: Semper Reformanda

“Semper Reformanda: Always Needing Reformation” Romans 12:2 December 10, 2017 On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted 95 theses for theological debate in an effort to transform the Roman Catholic Church. He hardly anticipated when he posted and printed those 95 topics that he was lighting the fuse that would create the dynamic explosion that […]

Sermon: Sola Gratia

“Sola Gratia: a Pillar of the Reformation” Ephesians 2:8-10 November 19, 2017 In late November of 1988, a 19-year-old woman fell asleep while driving shortly after midnight on a Los Angeles freeway. The car went through a guard rail on an overpass. But the left rear wheel got trapped by that guard rail and left […]

Sermon: Solus Christus

“Solus Christus: the Center of the Reformation” Colossians 1:15-20 November 12, 2017 Rowland Taylor was a Reformer living in England who died on February 9, 1555. He was identified as a Protestant, questioned, imprisoned, and then taken from London to his hometown of Hadleigh “where to his great delight [he was] to be burned before […]

Sermon: Sola Scriptura

“Sola Scriptura: the Foundation of the Reformation” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 November 5, 2017 The passage before us this morning is well known to us: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good […]

The spiritual value of reading history

When I was in school, one of my least favorite subjects each year was history. Each history lesson just seemed to be a tangle of confusing names and random dates. If there were any compelling stories to be found in history, it didn’t seem that any of my history teachers knew them. And then in […]

Sermon: Luther, the Reformation, and You

“Luther, the Reformation, and You” Selected Scriptures October 29, 2017 You might say that the Reformation began because a church building program went awry. Pope Leo X wanted to paint the church ceiling, but he wanted a man named Michelangelo to paint it, and because of Leo’s other art expenditures, he couldn’t afford the project. […]

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

From Justin Taylor, yesterday: Lady Jane Grey (1536/7-1554) is a daughter of the Reformation whose story of faithfulness and grace deserves to be better known. To explain why this 18-year-old girl was beheaded after a 9-day reign as Queen of England, we first have to offer an all-too-brief primer on the political background of Tudor […]

A favorite Santa Claus story

What’s your favorite Santa Clause story? Nathan Busenitz tells his favorite story of the real Santa Claus, the fourth-century pastor Nicholas of Myra: Tradition says that Nicholas was one of the bishops attending the great council [of Nicaea]. As he sat listening to Arius proclaim views that seemed to him blasphemous, his anger mounted. He […]

3 lessons from Brainerd’s death

From Jesse Johnson: David Brainerd died 265 years ago. Yesterday [Tuesday] was the anniversary of his home going. Brainerd’s life ended when he was only 29 years old. He was not exactly famous when he died; he was expelled from Yale for declaring that an empty chair had more evidence of grace than the seminary […]

Why reading Christian biography is good for the soul

I had a really effective (and fun) history teacher in seventh grade. Her students did so well that observers from the school district and other educators came into her class to find out what made her so effective. By the time I reached seminary, all those fun days in history forgotten and replaced by prototypical […]

Grab bag

Some helpful articles from the last week: Clint Archer writes about “Celebrating Singleness” over at Cripplegate. His posts coincide nicely with what I wrote a couple of weeks ago on the same topic (“Four reasons for the unmarried to consider singleness”). Does church history confuse and bore you? Nathan Busenitz provides some insight and a […]

456 years ago today

The British reformer, Thomas Cranmer, died 456 years ago today. But he didn’t just die — he was burned as a martyr. Unfortunately, there are complexities to his death. The quick version is that he was imprisoned by Catholic Queen Mary (aka, “Bloody Mary”) along with his friends Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. They were […]

Grab bag

Some helpful articles seen recently: John Newton, writing his troubled friend William Cowper, notes the hardness of the Christian life — and the grace of Christ: “For every day shows us some new thing in the heart, or some new turn in the management of the war against us which we were not aware of; […]