Why did people reject Jesus and fail to give him honor? Because the old secular proverb is still true: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” People witnessed Jesus’ perfections with their own eyes. Nevertheless, they could not fathom how ordinary and imperfect Mary and Joseph–with all their other rascally kids–could come produce someone worthy of worship. They knew his parents. They knew his siblings. And they knew him. And there was nothing remarkable to them in anything that they had seen. And so they appeal to their familiarity with this family as a basis to dishonor Jesus. [Hear the rest of the sermon at the Spotify or Apple links below.]
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No Facts or Evidence Required
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on former President Trump, social media were treating us to an endless stream of uninformed “hot takes.” Although the better part of wisdom would refuse public speculation, precious few were so restrained. We were told that the shooter was a member of Antifa. We were told that he was Italian. There were even pictures circulating of some poor guy who was identified to be the shooter but who actually had nothing to do with any of it. Within minutes of the shooting, images and video from the site of the shooting began circulating. Some of these appeared on social media in misleading…
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How a Christian Patriot Loves His Wayward Nation
I love G. K. Chesterton’s reflections on what it means to be a Christian patriot. If you have never read it, I encourage you to read “The Flag of the World” in his classic work Orthodoxy. Chesterton contends that love of one’s homeland is not like house-hunting—an experience in which you weigh the pros and cons of a place and choose accordingly. He writes: A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential…
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Could This Be the Christ? – John 4:27-42
Jesus’ behavior toward women reflects the fact that God created both male and female in his image with equal value and dignity and differing complementary callings and roles. Their differences don’t negate their equality, nor does their equality negate their complementary differences. Thus, wherever Christianity has taken root in a culture, the lot of women has improved. “Men treat women with respect, and they take humble, courageous initiatives to protect women and create stable, loving families where the covenant faithfulness of husband and wife display the mystery of Christ and to his church to the world” (Piper). Jesus is showing us that even if other men wouldn’t give this woman…
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A Confrontation with Jesus – John 4:16-26
Sometimes we have an egocentric allergy to confrontation—to being criticized in any way. And yet how foolish and impoverished we are for it. It is this allergy to conflict that not only makes people behave in foolish ways, but also makes them resist following Jesus. Jesus offers a series of confrontations to the Samaritan woman at the well, and the only way she’s ever going to taste the living water is on the other side of these confrontations. How will she respond? How will you respond? I. Jesus Confronts Sin (4:16-18) II. Jesus Confronts False Religion (4:19-22) III. Jesus Confronts Unspiritual Worship (4:23-26) [Hear the rest of the sermon at…
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Walter Cronkite Reports on Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973
Linked below is Walter Cronkite reporting on the Roe v. Wade decision on January 22, 1973. This early report reveals that very few people realized how expansive the Roe decision would prove to be. On the same day that Roe was decided, the Supreme Court also handed down a decision on Doe v. Bolton, which in effect gave us abortion-on-demand. Roe and Doe together ensured that a woman would have a right to abortion for any reason throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Roe then presided over the legal killing of over 60 million unborn children. That’s more than ten times the people killed in the holocaust. Evangelicals were caught…
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He Would Have Given You Living Water – John 4:1-15
The Gospel of John introduces us to a Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well. Jesus will say to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who speaks to you… you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” And do you know what her response is? “Where’s your bucket?” She’s looking for something from Jesus that He isn’t offering; and what He is offering, she’s not looking for. And I want to submit to you this morning that this isn’t just her problem. On display in this woman’s response to Jesus is the human condition—which means it’s all of…
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Drafting Women into Combat?
Last week, the GOP majority in the House of Representatives passed the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). According to an executive summary released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the bill would “require the registration of women for Selective Service.” If this were to become law and if the draft were ever to be reinstituted, women could be drafted into a U. S. military that no longer has barriers to women serving in combat. When news of this broke last week, I saw no major news outlets reporting on it. I wrote a column about it for WORLD magazine, but I hardly saw any major news outlets discussing it.…
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What does the failure of the Law Amendment mean?
Last month, pastor Willie Rice said something about the Law Amendment that was prescient. He predicted that after the SBC annual meeting, we are going to find one of two headlines. Either “Southern Baptists oppose women pastors” or “Southern Baptists keep the door open on women pastors.” He said that messengers would decide through their vote which headline we would be written. After the Law Amendment failed to meet the necessary supermajority earlier today, Rice’s prediction proved pretty accurate. Here are some of the headlines that began to appear almost immediately after the vote: “Southern Baptists reject ban on women pastors in historic vote.” –USA Today “Southern Baptists Reject Tighter…
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Will the Law Amendment pass next week?
As the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention has drawn near, I’ve had a lot of people asking me what the chances are that the Law Amendment will pass. The short answer is that I don’t know, but I am hopeful. On the one hand, it passed overwhelmingly last year with at least about 80% voting in favor. On the other hand, opponents only have to shave off about 10-15 percentage points from last year’s total to kill it. And they have done a pretty good job over the last year scaring people away from it with bad arguments. They have argued: There are hardly any female pastors in…
