Sunday Leftovers: Gracious and salty speech

Words matter. And the way words are spoken matters, too. This is true of all words, including words that are spoken to communicate the gospel. A believer cannot be content to merely speak the truth. He must speak the truth of the gospel with grace (Col. 4:6; cf. also Eph. 4:15 for the general principle). […]

I will sing to the Lord

Today is Sunday. So the first part of Psalm 13:6 resonates (at least a little) with us: “I will sing to the Lord.” It’s fitting. It’s right. It’s what we should do. It’s what we have to do. We will sing. But notice why David says he will sing: “because He has dealt bountifully with […]

Nowhere to lay His head

The humanity of Christ is a great comfort for believers. Certainly we are dependent on His deity, for that is where His authority and His redemptive powers reside, yet in His humanity, we have a Savior who is sympathetic to our needs. He understands us and our circumstances (e.g., Heb 4:14-16). Yet it can be […]

Jesus prayed

It’s a short sentence almost hidden (you will miss it if you read too quickly) between two accounts of healing by Jesus: “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Lk. 5:16). Now think about that for a minute. Jesus was a man, but He was also fully God. He had […]

The greatest verse?

John 3:16 — From R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe.

You have a ministry; don’t miss ministry

A friend has told me of an opportunity he had several years ago to invest some money in the stock market. His financial adviser was encouraging him to invest in a small but stable computer company. He wasn’t sure. While the company had a decent reputation, they were small and had never shown overwhelming growth […]

Ministry motives

I was in my first or second or second year of seminary when a retired pastor and an elder in our church stopped me in the hallway between Sunday School and the worship service. “I want to ask you a question. Why do you do what you do? Why are you wanting to be in […]

Three portraits of Christ

In John 2, Christ interacts with three different groups of people: His mother and the members of a wedding party, the Jewish leaders in the Temple, and a broader group of people in Jerusalem. [Aside: It’s interesting that the ones who are most prominent at a wedding — the bride and groom — are not […]

Sunday Leftovers: Baptism at the time of Christ

Reading the gospel accounts of John the Baptist’s ministry of baptism and then considering the significant number of accounts of baptism in Acts has made some wonder about the Old Testament practice of baptism. Was it present in the Old Testament? And what was already known and believed by the public about baptism during the […]

Complacent about God?

Can I ask you a question? Have you become complacent about God? If you’re not sure, then consider these marks of complacency: apathy about worship a sense of emptiness when you read God’s Word a sense of emptiness when you communicate with the God of the universe spiritual dryness an overwhelming feeling of worry and […]

Shepherds’ Conference 2012

The Shepherds’ Conference is starting in about seven weeks. Here is some information about it: More information and registration is here.

The temptation of Christ

Among evangelicals, there are two ways of thinking about Christ and His temptation. No orthodox believer thinks that Christ sinned, but there is debate about whether he could have sinned. The view that Christ could have sinned is termed peccability (“able not to sin”) while the view that Christ could not have sinned is designated […]

Satan and temptation

The temptation of Jesus (Mt. 4:1-11) is often used as an illustration of how Satan attacks believers, or how believers should respond to Satan’s deceptive offerings, or how the Word of God is sufficient for every need, or how Christ is sympathetic to our temptations because He has endured every kind of temptation. All those […]

What shall we do?

I moved to Southern California early in the summer of 1984 — the year the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. Virtually as soon as we arrived, we noted that there was a barrage of information about what to do to prepare for the traffic nightmare that was anticipated to ensue as soon as the […]

He has authority

Writing in World a few years ago, Gene Veith observed that, “People today want to feel moral. But they do not want objective, transcendent absolutes — such as the Ten Commandments — whose authority comes from God.…They prefer to construct an ethical system that does not make them feel guilty.” In general, people want authority, […]