The God of Abraham Praise

God’s promises to Abraham are not given in a vacuum. These promises represent the outline of fulfillment to a promise God made in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. The first humans sinned but God promised salvation. There would be enmity between the woman’s offspring and the serpent, and there would be toil when working the ground and pain in childbirth…but God promised to set the world to rights. The promises to Abram in Genesis 12 are the beginning of that process!  Continue reading The God of Abraham Praise

“A Sermon a Day Keeps the Heresy Away”

In the last year I have taken to the adage, “A sermon a day keeps the heresy away.” I have committed to reading and/or listening to a sermon every day and it has paid dividends in my own preaching life. For the preacher, or for preaching student-practitioners, there is something particularly formative about reading a sermon manuscript or listening to a sermon preached.* When I see how someone else interacts with a difficult text or moves seamlessly from exegesis to application, or who has mastery over language, cadence, and tone it sets my heart on fire. Continue reading “A Sermon a Day Keeps the Heresy Away”

God is Not Dead!

The God who is known, who knows, and who loves is also the God who hears. This is what we find out in Psalm 66:17. God hears our cries, he hears our prayers, he hears our hearts, and he acts on our behalf. In the Bible, to hear is not to receive sound into the ear but rather to hear and to do. God has heard our cries and in Christ he has acted decisively on our behalf. Continue reading God is Not Dead!

Substitutiary Locomotion?

On this Fifth Sunday in Lent, the final Sunday before the Sunday of the Passion and the commencing of Holy Week, the lectionary offers us up a heavy and necessary dose of hopeful fortification for the things to come. After the pomp and circumstance of next week’s procession of palms, we will be thrust into the depths of the crucifixion, into the agony of the cross and tragically tremendous terror that is the fallenness of humanity. It will be so easy for us to enter into the narrative and lose sight of the fact that Jesus is not helpless in his hour of need, but rather the Powerful One has allowed himself to be powerless that humanity’s perpetual propensity for sin might extinguish and exhaust itself upon his life and body. Continue reading Substitutiary Locomotion?