Have you ever been in a gathering where you should have been welcomed as a friend but were instead spurned as an intruder or even as an enemy? Sometimes that kind of rejection can be justified. If a murderer shows up at the funeral of his victim, he shouldn’t be surprised if the family and other mourners treat him like a pariah and ask him to leave. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m asking if you’ve ever found yourself at a place where you should have been welcomed but weren’t? The rejection was not due to anything wrong you had done. The people there just didn’t like you.…

There is nothing new under the sun. The path to apostasy is sadly well-travelled and ancient. Do you know what it looks like? Do you have the will to avoid it when the temptation comes? [Listen to the whole sermon at the Spotify or Apple Podcasts links below.]

It doesn’t matter who you are—Jew or Gentile—apart from grace, you won’t recognize Jesus as the only way of salvation. You will view His plan of salvation as a cynical effort to enslave you and ensnare you and to do you harm. And you will run and kick and scream and spit at anyone who tries to constrain you with this offer. Who can receive what Jesus offers when their hearts have been so darkened by sin? Who will come? How will they come? How will you come? [Listen to the rest on Apple Podcasts or Spotify below.]

I recently listened to an old country song that I haven’t heard in a long time. It came out the year I graduated high school—Bonnie Rait’s ballad “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” It’s a beautiful melody with absolutely depressing lyrics. It’s a about a woman who keeps going back into the arms of a man that she knows doesn’t love her. And she says, “I can’t make you love me if you don’t You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t Here in the dark, in these final hours I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power But you won’t, no you won’t ‘Cause I…

What kind of Christianity is it that desires the fruit but not the root? Is it really Christian for someone to say, “I’ll take Jesus’ gifts—life, social order, morality, beauty, law, the western tradition and western culture—I’ll take all of these gifts from Jesus, but I don’t want Jesus.” What kind of Christianity is that? It’s the kind of “Christianity” that allows you to hate Jesus while insisting that you benefit from his gifts. Some people may call that Christianity by slapping the label “cultural” on the front of it, but might I suggest that such a thing is no Christianity at all. At best, it is a form of…

I don’t know about you, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I have appreciated the gravity of Christmas. As a child, Christmas is all about the presents. It’s all focused on Santa Claus and Christmas morning. As you move into adolescence and young adulthood, you begin to have an appreciation for the entire season, the music, and the traditions. For many, nostalgia about childhood becomes a major part of the celebration. But the older you get the more you pile on experiences that make some of that wear thin. You have friends and family that go in and out of your life–sometimes through broken relationships and sometimes through death.…

One of the most dangerous traps we sinners can fall into is to think about God, to relate to God, or to speak to God as if he were the creature and we were the Almighty. It is exactly this sort of attitude that Jesus confronts in John 5:31-47. In this passage, Jesus explains two actions that are rightly performed by the Deity toward his creatures but must never performed by creatures toward the Deity. John 5:34, “I do not receive testimony from man.” John 5:41, “I do not receive glory from men.” [Hear the rest of the message at the Spotify or Apple links below.]

A sermon on John 5:24-30. [Hear the message at the Spotify or Apple links below.]

Last Saturday, I watched an old video of the moments right after my son’s birth. Right after the delivery, the nurses took him to a table near the bed, cleaned him off, and put medical tags around his wrist and around his ankle. Do you know why they did that? So that no one at any time would get confused about who this baby is. I recently read about two men who were born on the same day in the same hospital in Canada 67 years ago (source, source). A few years ago, the men discovered that the hospital sent them home with the wrong families. At this point, all…

We are a people prone to allow lesser things to loom larger in our thoughts than God does. For those without Christ, ignoring God or denying His beneficence is a way of life. The apostle Paul says it this way: Romans 1:21, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” But even for those of us who have experienced the grace of God, is it not the case that we too are often tempted to let other things loom large in our imaginations while God appears to be…