After a guest at our church has visited 2-3 times, I often hear the following: “You aren’t like most Baptist churches I have been too.” I always trust that’s a compliment, but nonetheless, I understand what they mean.
Most Baptist churches don’t stand every time the Bible is read, or prayers dedicated to adoration, confession, and supplication, or have a minister declare to you that your sins are forgiven through Christ. Most Baptist churches don’t …
The third of the 10 Commandments declares:
7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
To take the name of the Lord in vain means to use God’s holy name as if it were cheap or worthless. How is this done? Human beings take the name of the Lord in vain when they curse God, …
The second of the 10 Commandments declares:
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the …
The first of the 10 Commandments declares:
You shall have no other gods before me.
This commandment is the foundation for every other law God gives because this command declares God to be the ultimate foundation for everything else. There are no other gods, therefore we ought not to treat any other person or thing with the same adoration, trust, or respect that we give to God.
It’s good to compliment your spouse or children, …
As Bible-believing Christians, we know that we are not saved by our works. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. So, we want to make sure that no one misunderstands what is about to take place.
Each week we confess our sins as a congregation. God requires that we confess our sins—but these confessions do not save us. Our repentance is not a good work that earns us merit or …
EXHORTATION
1 John 2:1 says:
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
The Bible says that Jesus Christ didn’t just die for you. He stands beside you as your lawyer. When you sin, what does Jesus say to the Father? “Oh Father, they’ve sinned. They are guilty. But have mercy on them.” Is that what Jesus says as your advocate? No! You don’t hire a lawyer …
EXHORTATION
Today, many churches across the nation are observing “Sanctity of Life Sunday.” This observance began shortly after the establishment of the Roe decision in the Supreme Court, and now that Roe has been plowed under in God’s mercy, we still observe this day because abortion remains legal across our nation.
After Noah’s flood, in Genesis 9, God established a covenant with all creation. That covenant restated the command God gave to Adam and Eve …
EXHORTATION
If we ended our day by listing how we sinned, we’d find that most of our sins were sins against charity. We’ve sulked, snubbed, sneered, or stormed against someone else. And it wouldn’t take long before we found ourselves making the excuse that we sinned because we were suddenly provoked or caught off guard and in the moment we’d simply reacted. If we’d had time to collect ourselves, we’d have acted differently.
What we …
EXHORTATION
These weekly exhortations are intended to embolden and encourage you to resist sin. As it says in Hebrews 3: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” We see that sin hardens us. It curves us in on ourselves and makes us cold and calloused to God and our neighbor. Conversely, exhortations soften us. They expose the …
As we approach the midterm elections on Tuesday many are asking themselves, “How did our nation get here? How did we get to the point of denying what a human is or installing a Supreme Court Justice who says she can’t define the word “woman?” Abraham Kuyper tells us how we got here when he said:
In any successful attack on freedom, the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the …
