On January 31, 2017, P...

A Stew Pot One of the more frequently visited proverbs of my childhood came to me from my mother. “A stew pot never boils,” she would say. I felt what it meant long before I actually understood it. Explanation of the phrase came in its fuller version: “A stew pot never boils when watched .” It is...

E very society has a rulebook, but living in one’s birth culture creates a blind embrace of its practices, norms, and expectations. We believe certain things about speech, social cues, and even driving habits with little awareness of what we prize or why we prize it. Behavior witnessed out­side the...

Writing now from the Sea of Galilee only a short distance from where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, I am reminded how earthy the gospel is. Just as Jesus walked the real turf of Nazareth, he healed really sick people and raised really dead ones. He addressed people of real faith and people...

Blessed with the gift of saving faith, the believer is now able to hear what he could not hear before, to believe sincerely what he rejected outrightly. The sheep hear the voice of the One they now know as “my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1). Because of the radical change, such active listening streams...

When my children need braces, I do not dole out $5000 to a hetero dontist to wire their teeth randomly and recklessly. With a view to my children’s good, headgear and retainer wars are fought to ensure straight teeth, not crooked ones. If you break your arm and need your bone set, you do not Google...

Saving Faith, as we considered in part 1 , is a gift of God. It comes from him. Though we exercise that faith, the privilege and power of its exercise draw solely from the font of his grace. Having received the gift from God, we exercise that gift for him and unto him. Faith employs our minds...

This article is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here . Marriage, History and Theology With magisterial grace, the Bible weds Christian theology to the male/female distinctions in God’s creation of marriage. Space permits only a brief consideration of this mysterious and intricate knot...

God has a Grand Plan Larger than life itself, Paul’s God is a big God. The God of the prophets and apostles, in fact, created life. Creator and Redeemer, he becomes the awesome Benefactor of new life. Words fall short of the splendor. To say God is great is to call Niagara Falls a quaint and serene...

The following interview is from Tabletalk Magazine and was published online at Ligonier.org. It is reproduced here with permission. Tabletalk: How did God call you to become a seminary professor, and how does that calling serve the local church? David Garner : Some have enjoyed a deep sense of call...

Glorious Symphony The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) paints Scripture’s beauty with its own eloquent verbal strokes: “the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole” (WCF 1.5). In this 33-chapter...

This article is the fourth and final piece in a four-part series entitled "Truth and Idolatry." Read part 1, " I Am Not an Idol Worshiper ," part 2, " Call the Gospel What It Is ," and part 3, " Call Theological Error What It Is ." Integrity At the memorial service of a dear friend of mine nearly...

This is the second article in a series entitled, "Truth and Idolatry." Read part 1, " I Am Not an Idol Worshiper ." Idolatry by Degree? Idolatry lacks nuance. It knows no degrees, and before a jealous God, delivers no passable excuses, no matter how sophisticated they may sound. No one is sort-of...

The Mandate to Godliness Writing the Pastoral Epistles, the Apostle Paul makes “godliness” (Greek, eusebeia ) primary. Some have perceived here a theologically incompatible, and hardly “pastoral,” fixation. It might sound strange to hear the apostle of grace making such a big deal about our...

“Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn King; peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!’ Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies; With th’ angelic host proclaim, ‘Christ is born in Bethlehem!" 1 With Christmas season upon us again, familiar angelic...

We come now to our final section in this six-part series, [1] in which we have asked the question, How Can I Know For Sure? [2] We conclude with a reminder of our opening questions. Rejecting the closed circle of human reason, we have exposed an entirely different Source for understanding ultimate...

How Can I Know for Sure? [1] remains our ongoing focus in this series of articles. Both confidence and contentment have eluded many of us. Feet firmly planted in mid-air, we drift from one thought to another and one opinion to another, persuaded by the rhetoric of the speaker’s voice that has most...

In our prior article , we raised a number of pressing questions that could lead us to conclude that the only certainty is uncertainty! Yet in the midst of relentless questions, gnawing ambiguities, and the cacophony of voices offering inconclusive and unsatisfactory answers, we turn elsewhere. We...

“ For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. ” 2 Corinthians 1:20 Loving the Word of God As faithful Christians, we prize our Bibles. And so we should. The almighty God of heaven and earth has spoken, and he has...

This article is the fourth in a series on the Insider Movement. The first article is titled “ Stay in or Come Out? ” the second part is “ Old Trumps New or New Trumps Old ,” and the third is called " Who am I and Who Says? " Jesus or the Apostles? Understanding the relationship between the Kingdom...

In our prior article responding to the Insider Movement (IM), entitled, “ Stay in or Come Out ,” we examined a prevailing contrast between IM and Scripture: IM calls believers to stay in. God’s Word calls believers to come out. In this second of five articles, we raise another prevailing...

Come Back! The recipients of the letter to the Hebrews faced uncompromising pressure to compromise. Ridiculed for abandoning their own religious heritage and for extracting themselves from their very own people, these early followers of Christ anguished under tremendous pressures to return to their...

Introduction Missions is not what it used to be, because the study of missions and missions theories, called missiology, has taken a life of its own. In recent years, the attention of the international Church has been turned to controversial approaches in missions birthed in the missiological think...

This article is the fourth part of an on-going series. The first part is called " Salvation is by Works Alone ," the second is titled " God Works Grace ," the third is " God's Work in Jesus ," and the fifth is " Only Jesus' Grace Works ." In our last column, we surveyed the importance of Jesus’...