The Plodding Preacher

There has always been a tension for Christians when it comes to the Law of God.  Right back to the earliest days of the church, the question of the Christian's relationship to the Law has been an issue of contention.  As early Acts 15 the apostles had to make a decision concerning how much of the Law Gentiles were obligated to obey.  When I am asked this question, I typically answer "None of it. . . and. . . All of it."  Now in this post I want to focus on the none of it side and in a later post I will address the all of it response. When the question of the Christian and the Law arises, I find I am often faced with two false assumption.  First, people tend to assume that the Law was created by God to allow mankind to gain eternal favour with God.  The thinking goes, "If I keep the Law God is happy with me and if I break the Law God is happy with me."  Therefore, I must obey the Law to make God accept me.  Unfortunately this assumption reduces G...

The very purpose of Christ's coming into the world was that He might offer up His life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas. Billy Graham

This afternoon I watched the Christmas concert put on by our Christian School children.  It included all the elements that I love in these concerts.  It had cute little ones dressed as shepherds and angels.  It included those who had trouble remembering their lines.  It even included that one child who unconsciously did something in front of the whole audience that would have absolutely mortified his mother. There is no doubt in my mind that Simon Cowell would have given the whole program a thumbs down if he had been judging the program.  Fortunately, an even more important judge was watching this program, and I am convinced that His evaluation was overwhelmingly positive.  You see, we have allowed ourselves to fall into the patterns of evaluation common in this world.  Music must be professional, slick - perfect, in order to be good.  The music I heard today was none of those things.  But it was joyful, heartfelt and glorifying to God....

At Christmas and Easter every year the History Channel, PBS, and other so-called educational channels take a break from their schedule of ancient aliens, pawn stars and bridezillas to take a shot at historical Christianity.  At Christmas they attack the virgin birth, the wisemen and the star.  At Easter their focus shifts to the resurrection.  Behind both attacks lies their absolute conviction that Jesus was a very nice man who never ever claimed that he was God.  Rather, they argue that a group of men who lived 300 years after the historical Jesus decided at the Council of Nicea to elevate Jesus to God status in order to further their own political ambitions.  Every year some new special loaded with experts with impressive sounding credentials is presented to debunk the biblical myths of Easter and Christmas.  With great sympathy, they pity the poor deluded Christians who still are taken in by this ancient conspiracy and actually believe that the...

What is the first name mentioned in Luke's rendition of the Christmas story?  Mary, Joseph, Jesus?  Actually the first name Luke mentions is Caesar Augustus.  For years historians denied that there ever was a census that made Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem.  However, in the last fifty years we have discovered how God's sovereign hand was even on a pagan emperor of Rome. Augustus was pagan but moral.  He hated the fact that the empire was declining due to loose morals.  Men were not marrying and raising a family.  One day he went into the coliseum in Rome and made all the men stand up to determine who was married and who was not.  As a result laws encouraging marriage and family were enacted.  Families with more than three children were given special benefits. How did he know if his policies were working? He held a regular census of the empire. Recently a document has been discovered containing a list of the 35 Acts of Augustus....