This blog is Pastor Jay's weekly musings about God's Word, God's world, and God's call to our culture. We hope they encourage, challenge, and inform you. Sign up to recieve them in your email.
This question, "Where is God's justice?" is a frequent go-to question for the village atheist or the run-of-the-mill, God-ignoring neighbor. It is one version of asking about the problem of evil. It is also asked like this, "If God is so good and so powerful, why isn't he dealing with all the evil in the world?" There are plenty of ways to answer to this question, but...
Keep Reading1 Timothy 4:10 says something we don't expect. "God is the savior of all men." All of them. That is a big statement, and one not readily accepted. In a world so full of suffering, most people shake their fist at God because they know he could do something yet he seems unconcerned. But in actuality he has done something. He has kept them out of hell. The one thing they de...
Keep ReadingBook Review: The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness I recently read the short and easy-to-read book The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness by Timothy Keller. Not only is it short, it is also only $2 on Amazon Kindle at the time of this writing. I loved this little work and plan on having copies on hand to give away. It is a glorious remedy to a perpetual problem in the heart of m...
Keep ReadingThis weekend we are doing something as a church that we have not done before. We will be doing some evangelistic Christmas caroling. Why are we doing this? There are a number of reasons why we are doing this, but the first reason, the reason that got it all in motion, was one of our members brought the idea to our attention and explained the benefits. Do you know what...
Keep ReadingA couple of weeks ago, I addressed an understandable challenge to preaching the Lordship of Christ in a person's life. This challenge said that if a person cannot know everything that Christ will call him to in the future, such as sin to forsake or life decisions to make, then demanding Christ's Lordship is too demanding. You can read why that challenge won't work here...
Keep ReadingBy Russell Moore Wednesday, November 21st, 2012 We tend to idealize holidays, but human depravity doesn't go into hibernation between Thanksgiving and New Year's. One thing that will hit most Christians, sooner or later, are tensions within extended families at holiday time. Some of you will be visiting family members who are contemptuous of the Christian faith and d...
Keep ReadingI want to highlight a book that distills some recent research done on the spiritual upbringing of kids in our world. I suppose I feel a word of balance is needed right at the start. First of all, there is nothing you can do that will create spiritual life in your children. Nothing. We have to tell ourselves this often. New birth is a gift of grace, not an outcome of fa...
Keep ReadingLast Sunday we were looking at Matthew 21:35-46 and our attention was brought to the matter of Jesus' Lordship. In the parable, hired vine-growers were attempting to overthrow the ownership, rights and lordship of the owner [God] and take the vineyard for themselves. Just what is the extent of Christ's lordship over someone's life? If we say it is total, we bump into ...
Keep ReadingI have been in Romans chapter 6 for a while and a certain verse caught my attention. Romans 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. "Free in regard to righteousness". Really? Is this an exaggeration? One of the impossible issues for most unbelievers to accept is the assertion of the complete corruption of their hearts. They wi...
Keep ReadingOne should not want to give even a whisper of support to an abomination such as prosperity theology. The tradecraft of all such false teaching is the ability to twist and distort the Scripture so that it ends up pointing in the exact opposite direction the author intended (2 Peter 3:16). Let's not forget, however, that the Scripture is being used (though in a wrong way...
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