Christians Should Desire the Salvation of All People Because God Does
God neither delights in the death of the wicked nor desires that anyone should perish but that all would repent and come to know him.
Some will enter into eternal perdition. We should lament this as Jesus lamented over Jerusalem. We should preach repentance as God preached it to Israel. We should pray for all people and offer Christ the saviour for all men to all and sundry. And we should desire above all that everyone be saved and come... Continue Reading
Let My People Go
The command was simple, unchangeable, and there was only one proper response.
God gave the command and he didn’t negotiate it. Obey it, or die. He repeated that command over a dozen times. he gave Pharaoh chance after chance. But he didn’t change his mind. Obey it, or die. Those are the options. And Pharaoh chose to die with his whole army rather than bend the knee.... Continue Reading
An Open Letter to the Suffering Christian
Suffering must be walked through one step at a time.
Jesus is a most sympathetic friend, fellow sufferer, and Savior. He has walked a hard road. He has felt his own anguish and crushing pain (Isaiah 53). He understands. He is compassionate toward you. By the comfort of his presence and sympathy, he intends to draw you out and draw you to Himself. Dear... Continue Reading
If I Could Preach Only One Sermon: Luke 18
A summons to come and claim your mercies from Christ.
The self-righteous spirit seeks to establish commerce with God, where a good done or a bad avoided moves God to accept us favorably. It is an old evil. It is asking God to boast in the works of sinful man. We never draw God’s favor by pointing to something within ourselves. If I could... Continue Reading
Genuine Christian Transformation
The battle to mortify our sins is part of our sanctification.
What is a truly transformed life in Christ? It is not one that is produced via a man devised program. It is one that is the fruit of becoming a living sacrifice in which God develops the mind of Christ via his plan of mind renewal. And do not be conformed to this world,... Continue Reading
Gazing On The Gospel
The lens of the gospel directs our gaze out, not in.
Gazing itself isn’t necessarily wrong, as long as we evaluate the object of our gaze. When we see something we like—when we see something we love; something that resonates deep within us—we don’t just look, we fix it with our stare, observe and contemplate it. This is the thing that, if jeopardized, we will defend... Continue Reading
Praying for the Dead
It should strike us as strange for professing Evangelicals to say "Praying that God will have mercy on him or her" or "May God grant that he or she may rest in peace" about an individual who has recently died.
It could be that such sentiments are merely tongue in cheek. However, we ought not consider this to be an insignificant matter. The Scriptures lack the slightest hint of support for any notion of intercession on the part of one believer for another postmortem. This is also a matter upon which the church has spoken... Continue Reading
Aunty Ethel’s Elbow
Prayer was supposed to be powerful and effective, wasn’t it?
I was missing, of course, the connection between the Bible study and the prayer. I was missing an understanding of how people in the Bible prayed, what they talked to God about and what they asked him for. As Alistair Begg points out in his recent book Pray Big, none of the prayers in the Bible... Continue Reading
The Shocking Case of the Hungarian Galley Slaves
A 17th-century Tale of Religious Persecution
Pastors were charged with rebellion, treason, and defamation of the Roman Catholic Church. They were sentenced to death, and told they could forego punishment by converting to Roman Catholicism. About two-thirds of them took this way of escape, even if only on paper, and fled to other countries. One of the worst examples of... Continue Reading
History’s Most Misunderstood Tree
Why Nothing on Earth Will Satisfy
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil inspires awe. What makes it special is the divine prohibition against its fruit: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Genesis 2:16–17). Alone among the trees of the first orchard, it presents humans with an option: either they can... Continue Reading
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