Hello again

I'm back. Retired from the pastorate at the end of 2016. Had heart surgery early 2018. Filling pulpits and teaching Sunday School and enjoying my grandchildren. God is good, all the time!

For The Lord's Day

“The biblical motive for being a forgiving person may be deeper than being forgiven. It is true to say: The motive for being a forgiving person is that we have been forgiven by God when we did not deserve it (Ephesians 4:32). The bottom of this motive is not God’s forgiveness, but what God’s forgiveness gives. It gives us God. … God is the goal of forgiveness. He is also the ground and means of forgiveness. It comes from him; it was accomplished through his Son; and it leads people back to him with their sins cast into the deepest sea. Therefore the motive for being a forgiving person is the joy of being freely and joyfully at home with God.”   – Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper

                 

For The Lord's Day

“True faith – created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel – is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything that God reveals in his word is true, but also a deep-rooted assurance that not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace earned for us by Christ.” Zacharius Ursinus, 1534 – 1583

Ursinus is the author of the Heidelberg Catechism and a part of the German Reformation. The Catechism along with the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dordt are known as the Three Forms of Unity – the confessional statements of many of the continental Reformed Churches, and some churches in our own country as well.

For the Lord's Day

“Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, not matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always in His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take place along with him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.” - - B. B. Warfield, Works, vol. 7, p. 113

For The Lord's Day

What can separate my soul

From the God who made me whole,

Wrote my name in heaven’s scroll?

Nothing, Hallelujah!

Trouble, hardship, danger, sword

Brought by those who hate my Lord?

Slander here? Or no reward?

Nothing, Hallelujah!

-- James Montgomery Boice

For The Lord's Day

"The rulers of the earth plan, and scheme, and make laws, and change laws, and war, and pull down one, and raise up another. But they little think that they rule only by the will of Jesus, and that nothing happens without the permission of the Lamb of God." - J.C. Ryle from TableTalk

For The Lord's Day

"God’s great end, in all his works, is the glory of his own name; and especially his work of saving sinners through Christ; and that which makes it a great work, is, because his great name is so much concerned therein, and magnified thereby, that it is not so greatly glorified any other way, as it is here." - Ralph Erskine

Ralph Erskine was one of the “Marrow Men” of the Church of Scotland. The “Marrow Controversy” (1717-1722) dealt with the heart of evangelical Reformed theology – God’s free, sovereign grace. Erskine believed that legalism – Christianity reduced to a set of rules, as well as antinomianism – we have liberty in Christ, are free from the law and can live as we like; both are errors that pull us away from a biblical understanding of the doctrines of grace. I stand with the “Marrow Men.”