Things were desperate. The Israelites had just lost 4,000 men in a battle with the Philistines, a battle that took place a mere twenty miles or so from the tabernacle in Shiloh. If the Philistines should continue to decimate the Israelite army, what would stop them from destroying Shiloh itself? The elders held a council…

My usual practice at Grace OPC is to preach through individual books of the Bible, one passage at a time. I recently finished preaching through Matthew’s Gospel in the Sunday morning services, and Romans in the evenings. Now, I’m working my way through 1 Samuel in the morning service and Isaiah at night. This return…

This is the time of year that many Alaskans start to notice that the days are getting longer (it’s also true, of course, that many other Alaskans don’t “notice” this, but have been obsessively keeping track of every added minute of daylight since December 21st). Where we live in Alaska (Wasilla), even on the shortest…

Why do we baptize infants? This is the question we discussed last night at the Theology and Leadership class. As is true for many areas of Christian faith and practice, there is no one Bible verse that provides irrefutable grounds for baptizing the infants of believers (“paedobaptism”). It’s not a question to be settled by…

At church on Sunday, we had the privilege of hearing one of our young people make her profession of faith in Christ. Earlier, she had been interviewed by the session (the elders of the church), at which time she shared with us in her own words about her faith. On Sunday, her profession of faith…

As I prepared this morning for a message to give at a memorial service tomorrow, I was struck by these words of Jesus to Martha, about her dead brother Lazarus: “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23). What caught my attention was that Jesus called Lazarus, “your brother.” Not “he,” or even “Lazarus,” but “your…