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It is a regular occurrence. The committed churchman apostatizes. The pure, young single lady in the youth group becomes pregnant out-of-wedlock. The loving wife leaves her family for the promise of sexual freedom. In churches across the country, things like these...

The Bible is a unified story that finds its climax and fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. This article will analyze the nature of biblical theology and its relation to exegesis and systematic theology. It will be argued that biblical theology has a distinct nature...

"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV). It may be difficult to comprehend all the research, writing, editing, proofreading, and email-arm wrestling with your friendly...

Is the Future Bleak or Glorious? Thinking about the future can be daunting for many people. This is true when thinking of oneself. Will I marry? Will I have children? Will I have good health? Will I find satisfying work? Is the best ahead of me or have I passed it...

A World Full of Authors Eighty-one percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them, and should write it. Of those who start to write, 97 percent never finish. Only one in five of the books submitted to publishers get published. Of the half million or so books...

Jesus ends The Lord's Prayer with a plea for protection. The Bible is clear that God does not tempt anyone. James tells us, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each...

Jesus wisely establishes God’s goodness, holiness, and our need to reach out to him for provision before he gets to this difficult point in the prayer. Reliance on the Father to give us the courage and humility to forgive others is essential since only the Holy Spirit...

Give us this day our daily bread... Christ has begun his model prayer by establishing God's goodness, greatness, and supremacy and our need to seek his perfect will for us. Now he models supplication. We are told in scripture to ask God for our needs and desires. In...

Jesus Christ’s desire for his Father’s will was paramount in his earthly life. Eternal yet begotten, Christ was the linchpin in the plan of salvation. He knew that the good of Creation depended on God’s will, established from heaven, being accomplished on earth. So,...

After establishing our relationship to God (Our Father), his whereabouts (in Heaven), and reminding us of our obligation to revere him (Hallowed by your name), Christ presents his first supplication: to bring God’s kingdom to earth. Steve Urban, the author of the Mere...

On Fridays, I load up my 10-month-old son, Tucker, in a stroller, and together we go on a prayer walk up and down our street. During this walk, I usually ask for God’s favor and blessing over our neighborhood, for the Lord to send laborers into the harvest (Matthew...

God’s residence and reign in Heaven also means that he is absolutely holy. This is either terrifying or quieting, depending on our spiritual citizenship. Make no mistake: Whether we believe in God or not, whether we follow Christ or not, God is our Creator and our...

One way we can truly help others is to show comfort during times of stress, fear, or anxiety. We can do this joyfully to bear one another’s burdens and encourage one another (Galatians 6:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:11). Many of us struggle, however, on a personal level with...

After Christ addresses God as our Father, thus establishing the intimate and unhindered relationship we enjoy with him as his beloved children, he continues The Lord's Prayer by establishing God’s address in Revelation 22:1-5: “Then the angel showed me the river of...

Andrew Wilson is a young pastor in England who, together with his wife, have two children on the Autism spectrum. In his book, The Life We Never Expected, Andrew and his wife chronicle their experiences with their two beautiful children and what they have been...

Turning Meditation into Prayer How Our Theology Shapes Our Prayers from Crossway on Vimeo. How does our theological awareness show up in our prayers? That is a very good question. I think it shows itself in how we address God and it shows itself in what we pray about...

You Are a Theologian The case can be made that every Christian is a theologian because every Christian has a theology, whether well thought out or not.1 After all, the word “theology” clearly has to do with God (theos, Greek for “God”), and since the third century at...

Why should we pray? God already knows our hearts. He already knows our desires. So why pray? We could easily say it is because the Bible commands it. Paul goes as far as to say, "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17)—that is reason enough. But let's explore a few...

We know we need to pray. We also know the Scripture commands us to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17). After all, the forces of evil will do everything in their power to stop God’s people from praying. Even though we know all that (or should know that), we often...

Churches need pastors committed to expository preaching. An expository sermon submits its shape, emphasis, and argument to the Biblical text being preached. The point of the passage is the point of the sermon. A commitment to expository preaching exposes our...

Psalms 13:2 (NIV), “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” How much longer? How much longer? Four hundred fifty-eight days later, not only has my hatred of death not diminished even...

Psalm 26:8-12 NKJV, “Lord, I have loved the habitation of Your house, And the place where Your glory dwells. 9 Do not gather my soul with sinners, Nor my life with bloodthirsty men, In whose hands is a sinister scheme, And whose right hand is full of bribes. 11 But as...

Loss is a part of all of our lives. Sometimes it comes in the form of losing a parent, a spouse, a relative, a friend, a colleague, or even a pet. It can come from financial loss, loss of property, loss in the way of sickness, or an injury. At times, we experience...

When I was engaged, I hunted for all the advice I could get about being a good husband. Most of those conversations focused on leading family devotions, getting a good job so I can provide financially, and taking care of issues around the house - even though my skill...

Happy Childhood Memories When we look back on our childhoods, among many other happy memories, we may recall our parents reading with us. “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Three Little Pigs,” and multiple other children’s classics cast a warm hue...

2 Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” Is it the responsibility of every Christian to handle the Bible rightly? Or should we solely rely on the interpretation...

In centuries past, all the way through the middle of the twentieth century, a great number of ministers (from a broad spectrum of Protestant Christian communities) conducted divine services, including a pastoral petition that (understandably) came to be called “the...

As a pastor, I desperately want the people in my church to read the Bible. Not just when they come to big church or Bible study, but during the week on their own. I want the Lord’s people in my local church to read the Bible regularly and consistently. I also desire...

Start Now to Form Good Habits There were years when I didn’t read my Bible at all. Sometimes, I would do it on and off, a few days then stop, a few weeks then stop. Other times I would do it legalistically, thinking that I had to read a certain number of verses every...

Enjoying God’s Word with Others We all know the value of sharing a meal with others. Reading the Bible is similar to eating food—we can do it alone, but we’re missing something if we never share it with others. But what can communal Bible-reading look like? Here are...

There are always at least two different paths to choose from in life. Typically, one is much easier than the other, and that certainly is the case in the Christian life. Why do you think John Bunyan pictured Christian as one who was always put in a position to take...

Why isn't my sick family member getting better? Why am I still single? Why is this relationship so difficult? Why doesn't God do something? However we frame it, we want to know why—why me, why you, and why does a loving God allow His people to suffer at all? When I...

Christianity faces a tough question regarding the conflict between the Bible’s claim toward God’s sovereignty and our suffering. This question can be asked in a variety of ways—from skeptics’ challenges (“How can you say there is a God?”) to saints’ laments (“Why God,...

Every wife longs to be loved by her husband. This longing is a Biblical one. The marriage covenant is a picture of the covenant between Christ and His church. In this covenant, Christ sacrificially loves the church, leads her, provides for her, protects her; and the...

2 Corinthians 12:9, “But He said to me,‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’” These words, penned by St. Paul, were given to encourage the church in Corinth, and they can encourage us today. Paul claims that a “thorn” was given to...

The Lord's Prayer Teaches Us How to Pray Every Other Prayer from Crossway on Vimeo. A Prayer Model The Lord's Prayer is a model for us. It's not the only prayer that we ever pray, and Jesus is not telling his disciples (or telling us), You just have to say this one...

Several years ago, I went through an intense time of doubt after my faith was rocked in a class led by a pastor who admitted he was an agnostic and who would later identify himself as a “progressive Christian.” At the time, I had never heard of progressive...

The Eternity of God Revelation 1:8 supports God’s sovereignty with three statements, the first of which expresses the eternity of God: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God.” God reigns over all since He is before and after all things. “The Alpha and the...

Luke 3:38 In one of the two New Testament genealogies of Jesus, Luke identifies Jesus as “the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli” (Luke 3:23). Luke proceeds to trace Jesus’s descent back to “Adam, the son of God”: Jesus, when he began his ministry, was...

God intends for us to grow. Peter reminds us that, “like newborn infants,” we should “desire the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow up into your salvation” (1 Peter 2:2). Growing from infancy to maturity is how the Bible portrays God’s work in your life (Eph...

Who the Puritans Really Were Horse racing is said to be the sport of kings. The sport of slinging mud has, however, a wider following. Pillorying the Puritans, in particular, has long been a popular pastime both sides of the Atlantic, and most people’s image of...

1. Revelation is not hard to understand. Revelation is a book that many people avoid, convinced that it is too hard to interpret and understand. Certainly there are some challenges to rightly interpreting some of its vivid imagery and plentiful symbolism. It is a...

People of the Book Why do Christians take the Bible so seriously? Despite some variety in how they might frame their doctrine of Scripture, debates about its nature and function, and differences in their understanding of particular passages and what emphasis should be...

Dear College Student, College is often depicted as a time of great freedom and discovery, and rightly so. In both Western culture and the modern educational system, it seems like all roads lead to the college experience. Elementary school prepares you for middle...

1. We’re afraid we won’t be able to understand it. Revelation is filled with strange creatures, other-worldly imagery, and scenes that we find difficult to imagine and decipher. It demands that we use our imaginations, and we’re not really used to doing that when...

Dear Pro-Life Christian Brothers and Sisters, I feel your palpable energy and pent-up hope and prayers that are on the cusp of being answered in the probable overturn of Roe v. Wade. In your rejoicing and praising Jesus, don’t forget to be Jesus to those who see this...

October 13, 2021, will be a day I will remember until I go to be with the Lord. It was a day that my dear mentor, my adopted big brother (and me, his little brother), and one of my former pastors Mike Beaudin, went to be with the Lord. To say that the almost seven...

Fearing the Almighty The fear of the Lord is an important concept throughout the storyline of Scripture. Solomon saw the wisdom in fearing God when he said, "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death" (Proverbs 14:27)....

The Plausibility of Self-Creation The idea that we can be who or whatever we want to be is commonplace today. Consumerism, or late capitalism, fuels this notion with its message of the customer as king and of the goods we consume as being basic to who we are....

Have you ever been listening to your favorite Christian podcast, only to be stopped in your tracks by a confusing statement the speaker makes about the Bible? Have you uncomfortably shifted in your pew as your pastor preaches a sermon that seems to cast a negative...

I’m currently in the “last days” of teaching a bible study on the book of Revelation. I started the study somewhat hesitantly, knowing there are many wild interpretations of difficult passages. However, throughout the study, I’ve been constantly encouraged and blessed...

I am an unashamed golfer. I grew up around the game and began playing competitively by age 6. For the longest time, it’s all I ever knew. Golf has always been my favorite sport, from the feeling you get when you hit a perfect shot to draining a long putt. For the...

1. The Edenic origin of the priesthood. In Eden, God created mankind in his image to reflect his glory. In this setting, God crowned man with glory and honor (Ps. 8:5), authorized him to subdue and rule (Gen. 1:28), and gave him priestly instructions for serving in...

We recently took the training wheels off my son's bike. After a few falls, he wanted to quit and put the training wheels back on. I imagine Bible reading can feel similar. In January, we resolved to read the Bible. A couple of months later, we might look at how many...

Defining the Church Every generation struggles with devising a thoroughly biblical definition of the church. Previous generations defined the church through ecclesiastical hierarchies, while others shaped their characterization of the church around her distinct...

What Percent of God is Good? Recently I heard a wonderful and inspiring story of a young man who, during a routine physical, was sent immediately to the hospital to investigate a knot on his collar bone. After extensive testing, it was determined that there was a 99%...

The Ministry of the Spirit Any discussion on the church would be severely lacking without a close look at the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit. Without him, the church would never have been founded. Godly leaders would never have been called, believers added,...

Because He has inclined His ear to me, Therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live (Psalm 116:2 NASB). What is a collect? [Ka’-lect: a gathering prayer with a set sequence of movements based on Scripture. The collect movements include: Humbly calling on the...

Over the past six months, I’ve been going through deep grief, been in biblical counseling for the last three months, and have been sitting on this article since writing it about two weeks after a dear friend and mentor died. See, six months ago today, a very dear...

Our Context Shapes Us ​​On a recent hike in Colorado’s famous Garden of the Gods, my brisk pace was halted by a tree. I saw it when I emerged from the woods: a solitary evergreen, jutting out of the expanse of red sandstone. On one side of the tree were all its limbs,...

No matter what kind of ministry the Spirit of God calls any of us to, we may be profoundly thankful for the sufficiency of the Word to accomplish His soul-edifying work. This is true because of the unique qualities of Scripture. Hebrews 4:12-13 uncovers the power of...

We have all been troubled by stories from those who have been abused or betrayed by the church. Sometimes these anecdotes stymie us as we try to share the gospel. When I hear these stories, a scene from the Bible reels through my mind: When Jesus was in the Garden of...

Now that we’ve answered the questions, “What is theology?” and “How do I engage in theology?” in my first article, we turn to the question, “Why is theology for all of life?” It’s a question of equal importance, but not less than the other questions. Theology is not...

Theology is the study of God. Christian theology is concerned with understanding God, who has revealed himself in the sixty-six books that constitute God's reliable, trustworthy, clear, and authoritative Word for every phase and sphere of life. No theology can exhaust...

Three critical pillars support confidence in Scripture’s reliability, the first of which is inerrancy. Inerrancy A fundamental feature of inerrancy that needs to be embraced is infallibility. This means that the Scriptures are exempt from error; they are unfailing....

Every Christian knows the importance of Bible reading and desires to read the Bible better. However, most Christians read the Bible less today than in previous generations. A friend told me once that he wrestles with why he should read the Bible. It was hard to...

Enjoy Walking the old Roads I was part of my church for years without a drop of angst. However, after a couple of months into my pastoral ministry training, I started questioning everything we were doing. I could only see the flaws in our ministries, and I believed,...

I remember what it felt like as a child needing comfort and receiving it. To hear my mother say, “Come here” when I was hurting and relaxing in the rest of her arms. Even if my need arose from something I had done wrong, I found welcome and respite from my distress in...

I recently received a series of tragic updates that tipped my normally trust-filled, hope-saturated prayers into anguished, aporetic cries of lament. A very close friend’s preteen daughter had suddenly and inexplicably fallen into the darkness of mental illness,...

Justified Human Anger There are a few examples in the Scriptures of human anger that would appear to be justified, but only a few. What follows is not a selection of examples; it is, so far as we can see, the entire list! When Moses comes down the mountain with the...

Introduction: March 28th is the first anniversary of my late wife going to glory. Her name was Heidi. And that is how best to put it that she is in glory. She is not dead but with the Lord. Though we wait for the resurrection of the body (1 Cor 15:42), we know in the...

Several years ago, I had cancer. It was rare and fast-growing and came out of nowhere. Despite my trust in Christ and knowing that I would be with him if this cancer took my life, the fear I felt was persistent and, on a few terrible days, crippling. Fear is a deeply...

I recently preached on Jesus’ clear and authoritative answer to the irenic scribe who asked Him which one commandment was foremost. Jesus boiled all God’s requirements down to supreme, sacrificial love for God, as well as neighbor (Mk 12:28-34). Thus, all our sins can...

Seeking to Serve Radically ordinary hospitality—those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth. They know...

The Gospel of Matthew was written to a primarily Jewish audience with a great deal of knowledge relating to the Pentateuch and Torah. Indeed, as J.K. Brown has noted, “Most scholars consider that Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience that had been persuaded that...

There’s a tiny Italian bar and restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, called Valentino’s. Their generation-spanning secret spaghetti sauce recipe is comparable to Feast-of-the-Lamb fare (I exaggerate only slightly). This plate of wonders is complemented by a basket...

Indispensable Truths for When Tragedy Strikes The Apostle Peter, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, commands believers to be in a constant state of readiness: “…always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that...

A Foundation of Truth Warfield was a Christian and a theologian, but for him these two categories are virtually one and the same. And we must recognize this if we are to understand him and profit from his instruction on the Christian life. For Warfield theology is not...

I hate disappointment. When plans get canceled, expectations are not met, or I simply can’t have my own way, I tend toward brooding. Last year I experienced a couple of sharp disappointments, denials of things I prayed fervently for. Good things. Things I thought were...

Jesus’s Teaching of Finances in Luke’s Gospel Most know it to be true that too much of a good thing can quickly turn into a bad thing. The child who longs for candy soon finds that too much candy leads to a stomachache. Likewise, those who long for great financial...

A Pattern of Priesthood from the Beginning In the beginning God created a priest. And not just any priest, but a royal priest—a man made in God’s likeness, a son fashioned to reflect God’s beauty, an image bearer commissioned to rule God’s world with holy affections....

How the Gospel of Mark’s Image of Jesus as Spiritual Conqueror Teaches Christians to Battle Spiritual Conflict In the first verse, Mark begins his Gospel record by referring to Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) and as the Son of God. For the Jewish audience, he was...

Lead These three verbs describe freely given love: lead, sacrifice, and care. Let me speak directly to men with each of these words. Husbands, lead your wives. I remember hearing John Piper say on more than one occasion that the husband should be the one who most...

Guilt drives most superheroes. In “Captain America: Civil War,” Tony Stark (Iron Man) generously funds the Sr. projects for every MIT student. One character is blown away and responds, “Tony, so generous!” But another character cuts to Tony’s heart when she reminds...

I’m sure you have heard people purport that doctrine is divisive, irrelevant, boring, or not practical. Yet, we must not, as Dr. Charles Ryrie so aptly retorts, “forget that all practice (and every experience) must be based on sound Bible doctrine, and all Bible...

Decision-Making Fatigue Sometimes things become so much a part of the fabric of our lives that we don’t even recognize them. Decisions are chief among them. They are so ubiquitous that we tend to drown out their prevalence and significance. In a self-initiated...

Enjoy Thinking about the Trinity Among my Christian friends, the Trinity was like a dirty Christian secret. We believed it was true, sang about it (God in three persons/ blessed trinity), but we dare not bring it up in polite company. Conversations about the Trinity...

When Our Kids Talk Back We’ve all been there. You tell your child to do something, or you try to help them see something about themselves or the larger world, and they respond immediately with some kind of verbal push back. Sometimes they quickly refute you, “That’s...

Introduction Love is many things to many people. Love is defined in the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as, "Strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers affection based...

John MacArthur-A Brief Biographical Sketch of a Faithful Expositor We find the admonition from the beloved apostle Paul to “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). The importance of example and mentoring is underscored in this text and others...

The Strongest Human Emotion Boo! It’s one of the first words we enjoy. As children, we loved to leap out on our friends and shout it. But at the same time, we were scared of the dark and the monsters under the bed. We were both fascinated and repelled by our fears....

Settling for Plan B? Once a year, my family and I put on our baseball hats, hop on the trolley, and head to downtown San Diego to attend a Padres game. At some point during the event, the three-cup game appears on the screen, bidding the fans to figure out which of...

Truths about the Holy Spirit It is sufficient that God’s word speaks much of the Spirit, for the only warrant we need to study a truth is that God teaches it in his word. However, to strengthen our motivation to study this topic deeply, let us consider reasons why it...

My husband has been watching old western films lately. In my opinion, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, but don’t tell him that. They all have the same plotline; the bad guy comes to town, tries to get the good guy’s girl or livestock, and resolves it with a...

In your church, "Ben," a young man is found to have a deep involvement with pornography, using his phone and laptop to access it regularly. Through patient, gentle, and loving confrontation, Ben has repented of his sin and is serious about change. His biblical...

Hebrews chapter eleven is one of my favorite places in Scripture. Often referred to as the “Hall of Faith,” the author recounts stories of Old Testament figures who, by faith, accomplished wondrous feats to the glory of God. For me, Hebrews eleven is less like reading...

Does Doctrine Matter for the Everyday Christian? from Crossway on Vimeo. Relevant for Christian Living Sometimes the temptation is to think Doctrine, in general, is just stuff for the head, for the academics, for those in institutions. In the church, though, we’re...

Confessing Our Sin For five years, one particular sin trapped me. I knew it was wrong, and I also knew Christ was more rewarding than this sin. Still, for years this sin threw relentless body punches and kept knocking me down to the mat. Then, suddenly, it lost its...

Suppose a young man came to you for biblical counseling concerning the ongoing tension and conflict with his ‘partner.’ Oh, by the way, he and his girlfriend are living together, though there has never been a wedding. He says to you, “Well, we’ve already committed to...

John Calvin said, “If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field…it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.” Abortion is the premeditated killing of an unborn child. In other...

In Matthew 24:2, Jesus says something that shocks all those around Him. Jesus is with His disciples near the temple, and as they admire its beauty, He says, “You see all these things, do you not? Truly, I say to you; there will not be left here one stone upon another...

A Book of Good News Many of us approach the Bible not as oxygenating, but as suffocating. We see the Bible lying there on the end table. We know we should open it. Sometimes we do. But it is usually with a sense of begrudged duty. Life is demanding enough, we think....

The spiritual discipline of daily Bible reading is something in the lives of several Christians, to be inconsistent and even hap-hazard, as they stumble towards doing what they know is important. Like other well-intentioned believers, I recall occasional attempts at...

We are engulfed in a body-focused world. In our media and entertainment-driven age, we are being told stories from all angles about our body's purpose, how our bodies must look, and what we can do to make our bodies look a certain way. Turn on the TV, unlock our...

If you are a parent or know anything about children, you’ll be familiar with the famous road trip question, “Are we there yet?” Children ask it repeatedly during road trips. Although it gets annoying, it’s a fair question. After all, traveling is not the point of a...

The Proverbs 31 Woman The Proverbs 31 woman has what seems like an endless list of expectations—the A to Z of spiritual etiquette. This list of virtues appears unrealistic for any mortal to accomplish, causing some women to feel inadequate. Yet this must never be the...

In the Garden of Eden, there lived a man whose name was Adam (Gen 2:20). The Creator had formed Adam from the dust of the ground (2:7), and the man was made in the image of God as a reflection of God’s glory (1:26-27). He was loved by God and given the task of...

I started as a lead pastor in September, and I began by preaching through Jonah. Of all the Bible stories from Sunday school, Jonah was my favorite. As someone who always seemed to fall off the boat when it came to being a good Christian, Jonah’s story, especially God...

A brand-new gift comes with a sense of goodness and potential, and we do a lot to preserve that goodness and to keep that potential alive. New car owners want to keep the inside smell as fresh as possible, new phone owners protect their screens with cases and covers,...

It’s time to flip the page and turn the calendar to a New Year. With that comes a new set of resolutions, and for Christians, a new resolution for reading the Bible. Maybe you are a brand-new Christian, and you simply resolve to read the Gospel of Mark this year....

Our youngest offspring was in the final year of high school when this variation of a childhood question came to mind. It did not elicit the same excited response that it had when I was a child! After 27 years teaching my children at the kitchen table, I would no...