We’ve come through another holiday season and we’re off and running with the New Year. For our family, the last month was eventful. Our two daughters away at college came home for the winter break, and our whole family took a trip (7 of us, plus luggage, crammed into a minivan!) to Washington for a friend’s wedding, and then to Montana to…
We’re now in the holiday season, and I’m always surprised how quickly the year has gone by. Moses was right when he said of the passing years, “they are soon gone” (Psalm 90:10). But each moment that goes by brings us one moment closer to the goal of our salvation, eternal glory in the presence of Christ. How brief is our life…
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” These words from Psalm 100 are a fitting reminder that God not only calls us to worship him, but he calls us to worship him with thanksgiving and praise. On Thanksgiving Eve, some of us met at church for a worship service in which we had opportunity to publicly express our thankfulness…
Last month I had the privilege to attend the 2021 Banner of Truth Minister’s Conference in Ramona, California. I was very excited to go to this conference, as I’ve never taken a few days off to attend something like this. I’ve been to a few theology or preaching conference sessions here and there, but it was a new – and delightful! –…
Reading Ken Myers’ book All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes has convinced me more than ever that the church must deliberately create and sustain a Christian counter-culture in order to fulfill our Lord’s command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Popular culture, the culture in which we as modern Americans live and move and have our being, creates precisely…
On September 26th, Mt. Rose will resume the practice of having a worship service on Sunday evenings. Since some of you may be new to a church with a Sunday evening service, and since you may wonder if this is a good idea, and since in general the practice of worshiping twice on the Lord’s Day is getting rarer and rarer, I…
Sunday Sermon. We’re fast approaching the end of the 1 Timothy! My plan is to finish 1 Timothy this Lord’s Day and then pick up where we left off with Isaiah. As I thought about the fact I’ve almost preached through 1 Timothy, I was reminded of what a privilege it is to study systematically books of the Bible in my sermon…
Sunday sermon. Despite the suffocating smoke that filled the air on Sunday (even the sanctuary smelled like smoke), our congregation gathered as we do each Lord’s Day to bring our thanks and praise to God. For the sermon I preached again from 1 Timothy, this time 5:17 – 6:2. In this passage we see God’s concern for the integrity and honor of…
Sunday sermon. A truth underlying the passage I preached from this past Sunday, 1 Timothy 5:1-16, is that as Christians we have two families: our natural family and our spiritual family (that is, our brothers and sisters in Christ). And this passage speaks of responsibilities we owe to each family. We are to take care of those in our own (natural) family…
Recently I had the privilege to travel to Uganda as a representative of the OPC’s Committee on Foreign Missions. I went with our committee’s Associate General Secretary. Our purpose was to visit our missionaries there in order to encourage them in their labors and provide counsel. Since I had never been to Africa before, this was a special trip for me. In…