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March 8, 2015 Third Sunday of Lent   Reading 1 Ex 20:1-17 In those days, God delivered all these commandments:“I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.You shall not have other gods besides me.You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them.For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children...

I stink at acronyms, and unfortunately we are awash in them. I live one block from SPS (Standard Pressed Steel) and a few more from CVS and SVS. (The latter is a mom-and-pop produce store, and I have no idea what the letters stand for.) ACLU is very close to ACLJ, but I wouldn’t want to dial the wrong number. AA is for drinkers; add another “A” and it’s for drivers—who had better not be drinkers. And as a relative newcomer to the cell phone world, I thought LOL meant “lots of luck” till I was apprised of its less...

March 7, 2015Saturday of the Second Week of Lent    Reading 1 Mi 7:14-15, 18-20 Shepherd your people with your staff,the flock of your inheritance,That dwells apart in a woodland,in the midst of Carmel.Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,as in the days of old;As in the days when you came from the land of Egypt,show us wonderful signs. Who is there like you, the God who removes guiltand pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;Who does not persist in anger forever,but delights rather in clemency,And will again have compassion on us,treading underfoot our guilt?You will cast into...

We have been caring for my father at home since December. Last week we began hospice care and after a very bad turn on Tuesday, he's likely only days from death. I'd be grateful for prayers for his soul and for comfort for my mother, his wife of 56 years, who is in so much pain. Thank you.

I used to celebrate that the emergent church has gone the way of the buffalo. With Rob Bell jumping the shark and Brian McLaren’s “marriage” of his son to another man it had outed itself as at best a reincarnation of old-school 20th century liberalism and at worst another vehicle for moving large numbers of people out of the church. But the reality is, the ethos and theologically unorthodox impulses haven’t disappeared. Even more nefariously these impulses have been incorporated as a part of modern evangelicalism’s already sickly emaciated theological assumptions. Perhaps the greatest lasting rhetorical aspect of the emergent...

March 6, 2015Friday of the Second Week of Lent    Reading 1 Gn 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons,for he was the child of his old age;and he had made him a long tunic.When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons,they hated him so much that they would not even greet him. One day, when his brothers had goneto pasture their father’s flocks at Shechem,Israel said to Joseph, “Your brothers, you know, are tending our flocks at Shechem.Get ready; I will send you to them.” So Joseph went...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP) -- Scholars at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have discovered, within the institution's Spurgeon Library collection, a Psalter that 19th-century Baptist pastor Charles Spurgeon used in the compilation of his commentary on the book of Psalms, "The Treasury of David." "One of the purposes for the existence of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Seminary is to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the church and the academy by preserving the personal library of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and fostering a deeper appreciation of his life, legacy, theology and preaching," Jason K. Allen, president of Midwestern Seminary, said....

***O, Lord God Almighty, not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles; and better than all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may I express Thee unblamed? They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.*** What comes into...

It has been called the Achilles’ heel of the Christian faith. Of course, I’m referring to the classical problem of the existence of evil. Philosophers such as John Stuart Mill have argued that the existence of evil demonstrates that God is either not omnipotent or not good and loving — the reasoning being that if evil exists apart from the sovereign power of God, then by resistless logic, God cannot be deemed omnipotent. On the other hand, if God does have the power to prevent evil but fails to do it, then this would reflect upon His character, indicating that...

VATICAN CITY — It is nearly 8 p.m. on a Tuesday in early March, and the Vatican is locked up for the night. A few stray tourists pose for pictures in front of the glistening basilica of St. Peter, and cassock-wearing clergy skim the perimeter of the square on their way home to dinner. In the shadows of the famous colonnade and extending to the foot of the grand boulevard known as the Via Conciliazione, dozens of men and a few women settle in for the night in Vatican-issued sleeping bags. They are the welcomed guests of Pope Francis, though...

“That man might become God…” On its surface this statement simply sounds blasphemous. Interpreted in a wrong manner, it would be worse than blasphemous. When read correctly, however, it is the very essence of salvation itself. “To go to heaven…” from my childhood this phrase has been used as the goal of a Christian life. But, interpreted in its most common manner, it is only a Christianized version of paganism. The distinction between these two statements can be found in their treatment of the interior life. The first, “to become God,” suggests profound, even transcendent change within a person. The...

March 5, 2015Thursday of the Second Week of Lent    Reading 1 Jer 17:5-10 Thus says the LORD:Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,who seeks his strength in flesh,whose heart turns away from the LORD.He is like a barren bush in the desertthat enjoys no change of season,But stands in a lava waste,a salt and empty earth.Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,whose hope is the LORD.He is like a tree planted beside the watersthat stretches out its roots to the stream:It fears not the heat when it comes,its leaves stay green;In the year of...

Maybe it’s cancer. Maybe it’s divorce. Maybe you have a son or daughter who’s turned away from God. Maybe you have a friend who betrayed you. Maybe you’re close to bankruptcy. Whatever it is, Mark 14:32-42 shows Jesus in a more painful predicament. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ faces a soon and horrible death on the cross. Even his friends—Peter, James and John—refuse to stand by him. They can’t even stay awake as Christ pleads with his Father to “take this cup from me.” As Christians, our model is Jesus Christ. In fact, there is probably no better way...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are becoming cheaper and easier to use all the time. Combined with cheap high-quality cameras, and we’re living in a new age of video recording. A drone plus an HD camera can enable a regular person take absolutely breathtaking video from angles never before possible (or at least that were very, very difficult to do before). While YouTube is chalk-full of amazing videos shot with drones, here is just a sampling of videos shot with drones of beautiful Christian sites. For each video, I’ve included a picture, a few gifs, and then...

The God of Christianity is not a frivolous God. He is not given to caprice or arbitrary acts of violence. His actions are not irrational expressions or whims. We do not know why at a given place or a given time natural catastrophes take place. Easy equations of guilt and disaster are ruled out by statements in the book of Job and the ninth chapter of John’s gospel. When inexplicable disasters occur, we must say with Luther, “Let God be God.” When Job cried out, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the...

March 4, 2015Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent    Reading 1 Jer 18:18-20 The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said,“Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah.It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests,nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets.And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue;let us carefully note his every word.” Heed me, O LORD,and listen to what my adversaries say.Must good be repaid with evilthat they should dig a pit to take my life?Remember that I stood before youto speak in their...

We have free-floating guilt, can identify the Ave Maria within thre notes, and likely have rosary beads somewhere in the attic. We also own at least one study Bible, listen to sermons in the car, and know that a ‘quiet time’ is different from a nap. We are followers of Christ who grew up Roman Catholic and are now Evangelical Protestants.” That’s how Chris Castaldo begins his helpful, irenic, and humorous book, Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic. Chris was raised in an Italian, Roman Catholic family on Long Island, eventually graduated from Moody and Gordon-Conwell, and...

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture. What I...

IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE THINGS three degrees may be distinguished: the knowledge furnished by reason, by faith, and by spiritual experience respectively. These three degrees of knowledge correspond to the departments of the tabernacle in the ancient Levitical order: the outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies. Far in, beyond the "second veil," was the holiest of all, having as its lone piece of furniture the Ark of the Covenant with the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy seat. There between the outstretched wings dwelt in awesome splendor the fire of God's presence, the Shekmah. No...

As you may have heard, a few days ago Jason Stellman, a PCA pastor in Seattle area, announced on his blog that he was leaving the PCA because of questions surrounding sola Scriptura and sola fide.  By all appearances Stellman, a graduate of Westminster Seminary (Escondido) and the author of a 2009 book arguing for a Two Kingdoms theology, is leaving Protestantism for Rome. This move has generated even more interest because Stellman recently pressed charges against Peter Leithart in the Pacific Northwest Presbytery for deviating from the Westminster Standards with the latter’s Federal Vision theology. Not surprisingly, Leithart has weighed...