This past Sunday I began the sermon by talking about vindication. I said, "Everyone wants to be vindicated, proven to be in the right. Too often the desire for vindication comes in midst of conflict. One person sees things one way, the other person sees things another way and they both think they're right. They both want to be proven right and more than that, they often w...

One of the hidden snares that this world tempts us with is idealism. We are invited to believe that the ship is not sinking. Instead we are encouraged to sit, make ourselves comfortable, and listen to the beautiful chamber music being played as we sail on under the starlit sky. When all is said and done, we are in effect invited to, as some have said, "surrender realism fo...

J.I. Packer once provocatively wrote, "Law-keeping is that life for which we were fitted by nature, unfitted by sin, and refitted by grace" [J.I. Packer, Keeping the 10 Commandments, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), p.44]. Is that you? Have you been refitted by grace? Apart from God's work of grace, we are sure to fail in keeping God's law. And even having been refitte...

When we studied John 11:1-44, and we considered Jesus' outrage and grief over sin and its consequences, namely death. Jesus, though he knew no sin, knew the effects of sin. Though he was sinless, he saw how full of sin this world was. It is his holiness and righteousness that fuels his outrage against sin and it is seeing its consequence in death and sorrow that fuels his ...