As an English teacher I always used to say:  "Second period always gets a good education."  Like a pre-season practice game,  first period often served as the place to test content, employ new strategies, and refine delivery.  First period journeys with the teacher as they "perfect" an unfinished presentation .  Second period enjoys the fruit of this labor.  After 14 years, I have learned the same can be said about preaching--second service always gets a good education. Its follows that, more often than not, I post the 2nd service sermon.  If I was more of a technology guru, I would like to take the first half of my sermon from first service and combine it with the second of second service.  I feel this way because, between services, the Lord revealed a better way for me to connect these 12 verses.  This didn't require changing the sermon significantly, but minor [...]

Brethren, I have to EXHORT YOU TO PRAY FOR OTHERS. Before I do it, I will ask you a personal question. Do you always pray for others? Guilty or not guilty, here? Do you think you have taken the case of your children, your church, your neighbourhood, and the ungodly world before God as you ought to have done? If you have, I have not. For I stand here a chief culprit before the Master to make confession of the sin; and while I shall exhort you to practice what is undoubtedly a noble privilege, I shall be most of all exhorting myself.                                    - Charles Spurgeon The best way to teach your family to pray, is to model it.  Jesus taught his disciples to pray for themselves.  His lesson is recorded in Matthew 6.9-13.  I challenge you to commit to praying for 21 days the following, after Jesus instruction: [...]

After preaching on Biblical Womanhood last week, I received some excellent questions from some godly single women in our church.  None of them expressed issue with the sermon, but they all desired a better understanding as to how some of principles of marriage may apply to singleness. A Good Word Used Badly One question that came up centered on the idea of "submission".  And although this concept was not highlighted in my sermon, it is an all too familiar term employed when teaching about Biblical Marriage.  It is not a bad word in itself, but it is often badly taught by bad teachers and badly exercised by bad men. As Paul wrote in Philemon 8…though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, 9 yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—.  In other words ladies, I’m not scared to tell it like it is.  But [...]

Yesterday,  I preached a sermon on Biblical Womanhood from Genesis chapter 2.  Preaching these kinds of sermons always feel like trying to navigate a minefield.  One wrong step and "boom", you are hated or misunderstood by the women in your church. Even though the Scriptures are quite clear about biblical manhood and womanhood, anyone who teaches on these topics must speak with tremendous amounts of grace (especially if they hope to be heard the same way). Unfortunately, many pastors and churches make the mistake of compromising truth in the name of "grace". That is a destructive mistake that does a disservice to anyone who might hear. The other mistake that preachers like myself can make is failing to communicate the whole truth to the whole congregation.  It is probably unreasonable to expect a single sermon on a single text to speak to every flavor of men, women, young, old, religious, irreligious person equally (or at all).  But in [...]

We began our series on the first 11 chapters of Genesis this week.  I am becoming more and more convinced that the Book of Genesis is probably the most important book ever written.  There are 66 books in the Bible and few, if any of them, make sense without a basic understanding of Genesis.  Yet, I find a growing number of Christians unfamiliar with the story of God.  They wrongly believe that they can jump in the middle of God's novel and expect to understand what HAS happened, what WILL happen, and WHY.  Genesis is the beginning of the beginning.    In many ways, it is the beginning of everything we know—the BEDROCK of our faith. Our culture desperately needs Genesis right now.  Our world is struggling with truths that everyone, believer or non, once held as absolute.   Our questions have changed.  We are asking different ones that many people, believer or not, [...]

This past week we preached through the not-so-triumphal entry in Matthew 21.1-11.  This is the well-known passage where Jesus rides a donkey into Jerusalem. I find the first verses of this passage, preparing to enter, the most moving.  The disciples were curious as to why Jesus would ask them to go impress a donkey from a stranger.   What is even more curious is that they obeyed!  The disciples did not know why Jesus asked them to get a donkey.  John's record of this event says it plainly: His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had to be done to Him. John 12.10.  For all of the things the disciples say and do wrong, they did get a few things right--even if unintentionally.  There is much to learn from their commitment [...]