Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly. –Matthew 1:18-19 The key thing to note about Joseph’s character is in verse 19. The text says that Joseph was “a righteous man.” A righteous person in Matthew’s gospel is one who has an obedient trust in the promises of God revealed in the Old Testament. A righteous person cares about what God says. He trusts what…
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Bibliotheca Update: Production begins this Spring
I wrote about the Bibliotheca Kickstarter campaign last summer (read here), and the campaign has been a runaway success. For all of you who ordered Bibles, you might be interested to know that a video update was released yesterday (watch above). It looks like they will begin production in the Spring.
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Five books I enjoyed in 2014
It is the time of year for lists. Here are five non-theological works of non-fiction that I enjoyed in 2014. 1. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, by William Manchester I love this book. How can you beat Manchester’s prose? To understand Churchill, you have to see that he was fundamentally a relic of a bygone era called to lead the greatest conflict of the modern era. But it was Churchill’s vision of England’s greatness that made him great and equal to the task. All of his upbringing and early political life is covered in this book. The book begins, however, with a fast forward to…
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The Sussex Carol
My wife was singing this line from “The Sussex Carol” tonight in our kitchen, and it was like a ray of light to my soul: “Then why should men on earth be sad, Since our Redeemer made us glad?” I hope it will be a ray of light to yours as well.
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A friendly response to Wesley Hill’s “thought-experiment”
I am really grateful that evangelicals seem to be moving toward a serious conversation about homosexuality. Two articles in particular seem to be driving some recent online discussions. One is a piece in World magazine profiling a lesbian chaplain at Wheaton College. Another is a piece by Michelle Boorstein in The Washington Post about the “celibate gay Christian” movement. Both of these articles have provoked disagreement and spirited discussion about what it means to be a same-sex attracted Christian. I am not going to try and rehash all that has been said up to this point. I invite you do to take a look at the links in this post…
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Libera Boys Choir sings “The Wexford Carol”
Justin Taylor, I see your Alison Krauss/Yo-Yo Ma and raise you one Libera Boys Choir. Enjoy.
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The “celibate gay Christian” movement: How should we think about it?
Michelle Boorstein has a must-read piece in The Washington Post about the celibate gay Christian movement. It features Albert Mohler, Wesley Hill, and some others from the evangelical movement. The article begins with a discussion about Eve Tushnet, a celibate Roman Catholic lesbian. Today, Tushnet is a leader in a small but growing movement of celibate gay Christians who find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they’re celibate. She is busy speaking at conservative Christian conferences with other celibate Catholics and Protestants and is the most well-known of 20 bloggers who post on spiritualfriendship.org, a site for celibate gay and lesbian…
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Christmas Chaos
This really explains a lot. I think this guy may be stealing sox from my dryer as well. (HT: Igniter Media)
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Is persecution the seed of the church?
Christianity Today has a short article challenging Tertullian’s famous statement about Christian martyrs: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Does persecution really cause Christianity to grow? According to one study, the answer is no. Here’s an excerpt: According to the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of the world’s population live in a country where social hostilities involving religion are high, and 64 percent live where government restrictions on religion are high. Does this explain why Christianity is likewise growing worldwide? Not necessarily, says missiologist Justin Long, who recently compared Pew’s latest tally of religious freedom restrictions to Operation World’s latest tally of Christian growth (see…
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Does the Bible teach that women can be deacons?
I have been preaching through the Pastoral Epistles at my church, and a few Sundays ago I delivered a message on deacons from 1 Timothy 3:8-16. You can listen to the sermon below or download it here. The second point of the sermon focuses on verse 11 and deals with whether Paul intends for women to serve as deacons. This is a controversial question, and I obviously don’t treat it exhaustively in this sermon. Nevertheless, here’s where I came down.