Weekly Updates (Page 14)

Dear Friends, If you’ve ever been to a wedding, you’ve heard the familiar words of Genesis 2:24:  “For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Dr. Dan Allender says that 90% of the issues couples face in marriage can be traced back to a failure to leave on the part of one or both partners. Failure to leave? For a married couple to be able to “cleave” (stick together) and “become…

Dear Friends, At some point in life, all of us wrestle with what I call the three ultimate questions of life.  Where did I come from?Why am I here?What happens when I die? The first and last of those three questions involve metaphysical speculation.  We can look to science and philosophy for guidance, but at the end of the day, the conclusions we reach will not be proven in this life.  Each of us will look at the data and arrive at a…

Dear Friends, The great cathedrals of Europe are awe-inspiring.  And so are some of the royal residences – the castles – that still are still standing centuries after they were built. Mary Ann and I spent the last two weeks on a tour that took us from Prague to Leipzig to Nuremburg and then down the Danube river to Passau, Vienna and Budapest.  Along the way we saw the church in Wittenberg where Martin Luther preached and nailed his 95 theses to…

Dear Friends, King David wanted to build a house for God in Israel.  He wanted to have a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant.  After years of worshipping in tents and tabernacles, David had it in his heart to build a temple in Jerusalem. God said no.  Not now. You may remember the story.  David had completed and was living in the King’s palace.  But his conscience was troubling him.  He called his friend and advisor Nathan and said “This isn’t…

Dear Friends, Which of the following has had a bigger impact on how you think about God, life, sin and holiness (Check one of the following)?                               ________________   The Bible                             ________________   The Culture  If you’re not sure how to answer that, here’s another question that may help you.  Which of the following have you spent…

Dear Friends, I’ve never forgotten a conversation I had several years ago with Dr. Robertson McQuilken.  For years, Dr. McQuilken served as President of what was then known as Columbia Bible College and Seminary in Columbia, SC.  He was a respected leader and theologian.  But our conversation was not about theology or leadership.  It was about a fight he’d had with his wife. Dr. McQuilken didn’t remember what he and his wife were arguing about.  But whatever the source of…

Dear Friends, I trust you all enjoyed our nation’s birthday.  May God bless and preserve our nation, and may our nation learn the meaning of Psalm 33:12:  “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” Next Wednesday morning, July 11 from 9:00 – 11:00 AM – it’s Kids Summer Fest.  Or is it Summer Kids Fest?  I can never remember.  If you’d like to help out or if you have any questions, contact Jen Gurney at jengiles1@yahoo.com.  And don’t forget the school supplies for David O…

Dear Friends, This is going to sound crazy.  But the Bible offers some very good reasons why we ought not spend time reading or studying or meditating on or memorizing the God’s word every day.  That may sound like heresy, but stay with me.  The Bible says there are wrong reasons, wrong motivations for spending time each day in God’s word.  Let me give you three of them. You should not study God’s word each day if your primary goal is to become…

Dear Friends, On Sunday, we talked about what Romans 14 teaches us about the need to both train and maintain a tender conscience.  I compared our conscience to the tingling “Spidey senses” that Spiderman has (in the comic books, at least.  I don’t think that particular super power was ever on display in the Spiderman movies).  I also compared the conscience to a spiritual Geiger counter that warns us about spiritual dangers we may be facing.  And I said that we…

Dear Friends, Do you ever find yourself discouraged?  Despondent?  Depressed? Good!  That means you’re human.   And you’re not alone. One Sunday morning in 1866, C. H. Spurgeon stunned his five thousand listeners when from the pulpit of London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle he announced, “I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever gets to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to.” For some of his audience it was incomprehensible that the world’s greatest preacher could know the valley…

Dear Friends, It makes sense that children should obey their parents. Right? But why? Those of you where were raised going to Sunday School have probably already said “because the Bible says so.”  And it’s fair to say that if there was no other reason for children to obey, the fact that the Bible commands it would be sufficient.  But even people who reject the Bible can think of plenty of good reasons for children to obey their parents.  For example: Parents are wiser than children.  They have…

Dear Friends, I spent two hours today with a remarkable young woman who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Here name is Jaquelle Crowe, and she’s written a book called This Changes Everything:  How The Gospel Transforms The Teen Years.   Jaquelle’s dad is a pastor of a small Baptist church in a part of the world that he described as hard ground for sowing gospel seeds.  But trust me, his daughter gets it. We started our conversation talking about how all of life flows…

Dear Friends, I was not one of the two billion. My mother-in-law was.  Big time.  Last Saturday, she awoke at 4:15 AM, picked up a friend of hers, and together they went to the Circle Cinema in Tulsa where they were served a fine English breakfast as they watched Prince Harry and his intended, Meghan Markle become husband and wife. Two billion?  That’s the number of people who tuned in to see a princess marry her prince in a castle amid much pomp and circumstance,…

Dear Friends, Sunday, we talked about the Apostle Paul’s statement that God have given to human government the right to bear the sword and to avenge wrong doing as His agent.  And we talked about whether it is ever valid for governmental authorities to assign capital punishment as the penalty for certain crimes. There is another application of this verse that has provoked discussion and debate over the years.  If human rulers are ruling in the fear of God, as King David…

Dear Friends, It’s become a familiar punch line over the last few years.  And it’s spawned a wide variety of memes along the way. I’m talking about the saying to someone, after an epic fail of some sort “You had one job…” Have you ever asked yourself about your “one job?”  As a follower of Jesus, an Ambassador for Christ, what would you say your top priority ought to be? The Westminster Catechism famously declares that our “chief end” is to glorify God…

Dear Friends, Do you love God? It’s not a trick question.  If you are a Christian, that should be a lay up.  It’s like the first trivia question you get when you’re playing HQ on your phone.  It’s always a simple, easy question, right? But let’s dig a little deeper.  Is there a way to diagnose whether or not your really love God?  More than a century ago, JC Ryle described how the characteristics of human love and affection offer us a way to…

Dear Friends, When we planted Redeemer, we decided for a number of reasons that we would take the Lord’s Supper each week.  Many of you have told us that you value this weekly time of reflection and celebration. Why weekly? First, we do it because there is strong biblical evidence that this was the pattern of the early church.  Acts 2:42 says that the breaking of bread was something the early church was devoted to.  And in Acts 20:7, we read this:  “On the first…

Dear Friends, I’m concerned that we are living in a culture of slander.  It is not simply tolerated, it’s celebrated.  Name calling and demonizing our opponents has become a new national pastime.  And we seem to be unaware of the corrosive impact of the slander epidemic on our collective soul as a country. The dictionary defines slander as “making a false and damaging statement about another person.”  God’s definition of slander is “bearing false witness.”  It’s one of the ten commandments.  Proverbs says that whoever…

Dear Friends, Mary Ann and I had not been dating very long when something very intimidating happened.  We were sitting together at a Bible study, and the guy leading the study made a passing reference to the fact that believers are sealed in their relationship with Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  The speaker didn’t cite a verse in support of his statement.  But Mary Ann started flipping in her Bible and landed at Ephesians 1, where the verse in question was underlined.  “In…

Dear Friends, I was 12 years old. Our family was getting ready for our spring break trip to Panama City Beach.   This was in the days when our nation’s interstate highway network was still being created.  So a trip from suburban St. Louis to the panhandle of Florida meant a lot of miles on two lane roads that snaked through Mississippi and Alabama.  Today, it’s a 12 hour drive.  In 1968, it was a longer journey, and one that my parents decided…