biblical fidelity

Before I had come to truly embrace the doctrines of grace, I remember being incredibly hung up on the idea of the perseverance of the saints. I simply could not understand how it was remotely possible that a Christian could be saved and then would never need to fear losing their salvation. After...

The three uses of the law—restraining sin, convicting sinners, and guiding believers in holy living—reflect its multifaceted role in God’s moral order. While the third use promotes societal order and the second provides a blueprint for Christian living, it is the first use that acts as a catalyst...

Perhaps more than anything, we need to be heard by God. That is, we need divine favor. We need God to look upon us sinners favorably. The problem is, we’re sinners, and the God whose eyes are too pure to look well upon evil must look away from our defiled selves (Hab. 1:13). One of the of the...

One of the first sermon series I ever preached was on the life of Samson. I was new, at the time, to expository preaching, and I wanted to start with something manageable and familiar. Little did I know, a careful study of Judges 13-16 would radically alter my understanding of not just Samson, but...

It’s a plot fit for a Hallmark Christmas movie. A young widow follows her mother-in-law to a small town where she is considered an outcast. She catches the eye of a kind and wealthy bachelor, who makes a grand gesture to redeem her as his wife and gives her an inheritance and a son. Yet the well-...

Josiah is introduced in 2 Kings 22 as the new king of Judah who is merely eight years old. As a young boy growing up in church, this story intrigued me. Later in elementary school in writing for an assignment asking what person in the Bible would I most like to spend one day with and what would we...

Do you remember show and tell when you were in school? I don’t recall what I took to show my classmates, but I remember that my classmates and I could bring in items that were meaningful to us in one way or another. We didn’t bring things that we didn’t like, or things that weren’t important to us...

Two summers ago, I preached through the book of Jonah. It remains one of the biblical narratives that I identify with most personally. Like Jonah, I once ran from God’s call on my life. The story of Jonah is straightforward, but its depths are profound, particularly in how it points us to Jesus...

When was the last time you considered your spiritual gifts? When you think about them, are you quick to recognize they were given to you by Christ for the edification, equipping and encouragement of the church, or were you tempted to think you somehow earned your spiritual gifts by way of education...

God had cursed David for his sin with Bathsheba. The curse is spelled out in 2 Samuel 12:10-15. In the next chapter we see the ugly blossom of the curse in David’s life. Not surprisingly, sin produces sin in its own likeness. Just as David had committed sexual sin and murder so too do we see that...