Archive for April 2018
Making the Most of Your Craft Time (Gail Schoonmaker)
As a Sunday School teacher, I have three goals: 1) to infect my students with an exuberant and contagious love for God, 2) to teach my students to know and love the Bible, and 3) to make church attendance irresistibly exciting. For my preschool-age students, creating weekly Bible-themed crafts helps with at least the second…
Read MoreAre You Really Taking the Lord’s Supper?
I joined a “social club” at the Baptist university where I went to college. “Social club” is just private Christian school lingo for fraternity and, like any fraternity, our group had its unique rites and rituals that came as a part of participation in the group. One tradition, taken by some to be the most…
Read MoreBook Review: How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament
While there are many introductory books on the Old Testament (OT), there are few which walk both beginning and advanced students together through each step of the exegetical process leading into theology and application. Jason DeRouchie does just that in How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology. The book…
Read MoreWhat Is Simplicity and Does it Matter?
What does it mean for God to be unity as opposed to a God who is compounded of parts? Are God’s attributes and essence identical? How are immutability and eternity compromised if we reject simplicity? In this episode, Dr. Matthew Barrett is joined by Dr. James Dolezal to discuss divine simplicity, the attributes of God, the importance of…
Read MoreI Resigned as Pastor: Personal Reflections and Congregational Encouragements
In October 2016, I was asked to resign the church I’d pastored for seven years. Though my resignation was the result of theological differences and not any type of moral failure, it was still the most difficult experience of my life. But, as God has promised to do, he’s used this experience for my good…
Read MoreLloyd-Jones on the Christian Life: An Interview with Jason Meyer
The Theologians on the Christian Life series is discounted at Westminster Bookstore through Thursday, April 26. One of the recently released volumes in the series is Lloyd Jones on the Christian Life by Dr. Jason Meyer, Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church and Associate Professor of Preaching at Bethlehem College & Seminary. In this interview, Dr.…
Read MoreTheologians on the Christian Life Series: Up to 60% Off
The Theologians on the Christian Life series is discounted this week at Westminster Bookstore. Each volume in the series is dedicated to a particular theologian from church history. So far, such theologians include Augustine, Herman Bavinck, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Martin Luther, John Newton, John Owen, J.I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, Charles…
Read MoreCaptured by God’s Beauty: The Ultimate Remedy to Pornography
As important as Jesus’ extreme instructions about lust may be, they cannot and should not be taken out of the context of the Bible’s big story line. You can gouge out your eyes and still be enslaved to lust. (Literally. That’s why there are pornographic magazines in Braille.) You can cut off your arm and…
Read MoreThe Violent Showdown: The Exodus in Isaiah (Andrew Wilson)
Isaiah is a prophet of the Exodus. His rich and beautiful prophecy contains a dramatic exodus triple-whammy, as he promises first rescue from Assyria, then redemption from Babylon, and finally redemption from sin itself, in a fashion that echoes the exodus but turns it completely on its head. Those who know the story of Moses…
Read MoreThe Big Thing Seminary Did Teach Me: I’ll Never Graduate from Learning
The man who would eventually become my doctoral supervisor, Tom Nettles, taught me three profoundly valuable words for ministry during my first week as a seminary student: “I don’t know.” Those words came in reply to one of my fellow MDiv student’s questions about Baptist history, a topic on which Dr. Nettles has written thousands…
Read MoreTheophanies
What is a theophany? The word theophany derives from two Greek words, which mean “God” and “appearing.” A theophany is a special case when God appears to human beings. God appeared in thunder and fire to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai (Ex. 19-20). God appeared to Isaiah in a spectacular vision where Isaiah…
Read MoreReformation Worship: An Interview on Liturgies from the Past for the Present (Part 2)
Reformation Worship contains 26 liturgies from sixteenth-century Reformers for the purpose of “enriching our worship in the present by learning from their worship in the past.” This new resource, edited by Jonathan Gibson and Mark Earngey, might be the most helpful resource of 2018 for those who oversee public worship. We would commend the book’s…
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