God’s Judgment: A Summons to Repent
One of the most important questions you can ever wrestle with is this: Which judge of your life matters most to you? Lots of people will have this or that to say about how you live your life. Some will judge how you live positively, while others will judge you negatively. What you have to […]
What Does the Bible Say About Hell?
We live in a time when few people have difficulty believing in a God of love. Some central texts in Scripture emphasize this point. Here are a couple key passages emphasizing God’s love, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament: “[God] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the […]
How Does Holiness Relate to Love?
How important is holiness? Isn’t it good enough just to be a loving person? And what does it even mean to be holy? The word itself means “set apart.” So, some have answered the question of how to be holy by removing themselves as far as possible from the world. For example, they become monks […]
Accountability and the Bible: Are Christians Supposed to Hold Each Other Accountable?
Not too long ago, I attended church where I had been the senior minister/pastor many years earlier. After church, I had a conversation with a man about a Bible professor we both knew from a Christian university who was teaching pro-LGBTQ theology. I voiced my concern about the increasing influence of more progressive professors on […]
Who Was Potiphar’s Wife in the Bible?
The actual identity of the woman known as “Potiphar’s wife” has never been verified, though in the book of Genesis chapter 39, she is the woman who caused Joseph to be thrown in jail unjustly. This gives some historians enough clues to speculate that she likely lived around 1600-1700 B.C., possibly when Sesostris I was […]
David and Bathsheba and Affairs in Your Church
I recently preached through the story of David and Bathsheba from 2 Samuel 11:1-27 on a Sunday morning. There are several important learnings from within this story, as well as from the related research on sexual immorality and affairs, that are worth applying in our churches today. Many of us can be intimidated when it […]
Holy Halloween? 3 Approaches to Halloween
I’ve noticed in recent years that Halloween has been added to the growing list of polarizing topics in Christian circles. Although I grew up in church, I don’t remember people taking too big of an issue with Halloween. Nowadays, it’s apparent each year on social media that Halloween creates problematic issues for many Christians. Some […]
What Is Holiness And Why Is It Such A Big Deal?
What is holiness, and why is it such a big deal? God’s holiness means that he is entirely unique, pure, and powerful, and to enter into his presence in a state less than holiness would result in death. God gave Israel the law so that we would know his holiness and our unholiness, but the […]
