Resources
Articles
Cultbusters?
Our community is both fascinated and repulsed by the cults, but what should our attitude be? Should Evangelicals be persecuting and seeking to eradicate the cults? Or is religious freedom a more important principle? The Briefing examines the issues.
Explicatory Preaching with Phillip Jensen
Under Phillip’s leadership and influence, Sydney Anglicanism has become a ministry well-known for its faithfulness and gospel-centeredness. Listen to this 9marks Interview on his experiences of doing faithful ministry and his take on various topics l...
What Is a Reformed Understanding of the Gospel?
What makes a Reformed understanding of the gospel is the desire and the passion that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son receive the fullest measure of the glory they should receive in saving me.
What Must Someone Believe in Order to Be Saved?
What are the most basic things a person needs to believe in order to be saved?
Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." He says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raise...
Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." He says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raise...
Pastoral Authority in an Anti-Authoritarian Age
What does the Bible have to say about the rights and responsibilities of leaders to exercise authority? The New Testament speaks clearly of the existence and exercise of authority in the world. The biblical case must be made that elders, as God’s she...
Thinking Biblically about Authority: An Interview with David Wells
Jonathan Leeman interviews Dr. David F. Wells on the subject of authority.
Confessions of a Bog-Standard Evangelical
Recently, a fellow historian at another Christian institution commented to me about the growing number of Presbyterian prophets who make their reputations on the back of bashing evangelicalism, while at the same time being dependent upon the publishi...
The Limits of Fellowship
Let me commence by saying that the title “the Limits of Fellowship” is misguided. I know I chose it myself, but it is the wrong question. It starts us off looking for the negative when the theme of the Bible is the positive.
In as much as we are abl...
In as much as we are abl...
5 Metaphors for Your Church Membership
The term “membership” is misleading because of how it’s commonly used. Often it connotes privilege in a club. Costco members get access to deals. Country club members get reduced green fees.
If you pay your dues, membership entitles you to get so...
If you pay your dues, membership entitles you to get so...
The Worth of Waiting: A Word to Aspiring Elders
Waiting is a challenging lesson. The better we perceive something to be, the stronger the desire. And the stronger the desire, the harder the wait tends to be.
I'm keenly aware of this because I'm prayerfully waiting for the Lord to open the door...
I'm keenly aware of this because I'm prayerfully waiting for the Lord to open the door...
The Healthy Church: Embodying Leadership
Churches are often distinguished from each other in terms of their theological position or worship tradition. A further, significant distinguishing characteristic of a church, however, is the nature of its leadership. At a surface level, we can readi...
The Invisible and Visible Church
Are you a member in good standing at your local church? More importantly, are you a member in good standing of the invisible church? In this message, Dr. Sproul teaches us the distinction between the “Visible and Invisible” church.
What Would An Ideal Polity Look Like From a Christian Perspective?
There is no ideal polity, at least not in the way most Westerners would think about the matter. Following in the Greek tradition of Plato and Aristotle, democratic Westerners think in terms of one constitutional structure versus another, as in “Give...
Proposal for a New Seminary
In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. A young man feeling a call of God to the ministry would associate himself with a church pastor, receive training from him, part...
Committed to Marriage, Committed to the Church
Wedding season is here. Are you committed to your church? That may seem like a rather abrupt shift in topics, but they are actually closely related, especially if we consider a certain popular wedding text?the passage where Ruth verbalizes her commit...
Judgment of God
JUDGMENT OF GOD. The belief that God passes judgment on the lives of his human creatures is important for Christianity, as it is for most of the world?s religious traditions (see, e.g., S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, London, 1967).
Christianity, Liberalism and the New Evangelicalism
For Christians, the past should always be instructive. When we look back to the Old Testament, we see how much of Old Testament faith and life was nurtured by remembrance of times past. The Passover, that most wonderful and central of Jewish celebrat...
Why (Some) Reformed People Are Such Jerks
The Oxford American Dictionary gives this informal usage of the noun jerk: a contemptibly obnoxious person.
The Crisis of Evangelical Christianity
The Reformation was, more than anything else, an assault on faith in humanity, and a defense of the idea that God alone reveals Himself and saves us.
To Be or Not To Be: The Uneasy Relationship between Reformed Christianity and American Evangelicalism
The ambivalence expressed by Warfield cannot help but be felt today by those who are convinced of the persistent truth and vitality of the catholic faith as it is expressed in the confessions and catechisms of the Reformation.
Abandoning Evangelicalism?
"Now, with new Reformation categories, I was able to see some of the problems inherent in American evangelicalism as I had experienced it over the past few years. I no longer considered myself an evangelical. It was like a second conversion."
Do You Worship Your Weekend?
We see nothing in Jesus? life that would pass the approval of a life coach?s prescribed ?ideal week.? Should church staff strive for a ?balanced? life, or a full life?
Do You Have an Accountability Partner?
R. C. Sproul Jr. talks about being asked by a deacon at church twenty years ago if he had an "accountability group." When it was explained that this would be "a group of men who are active in your life, that care for you enough to challenge you when...
Testing the Glue that Binds Churches Together
Are denominations dying? That seems to be the common wisdom. Certainly the mainline denominations are bleeding out; people are leaving those churches en masse. But what about denominations of evangelical churches that are holding fast or growing?
I'...
I'...
A Church and Churches: Independence
What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world?
In the companion piece to this article, I consider how different churches should integrate together. Here we want to ask what makes each independent.
In the companion piece to this article, I consider how different churches should integrate together. Here we want to ask what makes each independent.
A Church and Churches: Integration
What is the relationship between your local church and every other church in the world?
In the companion piece to this article, I consider what makes different local churches independent from one another. Here we consider how they should integrate.
In the companion piece to this article, I consider what makes different local churches independent from one another. Here we consider how they should integrate.
Churches Cooperating in Discipline
Yes, autonomous local churches really can cooperate in church discipline. No, they typically don?t. But, yes, they should!
The first step my own church takes to cooperate with other churches in discipline is to ask everyone joining the church, have...
The first step my own church takes to cooperate with other churches in discipline is to ask everyone joining the church, have...
Who Governs the Church?
A Presbyterian and a Baptist discuss how they derive their polity and who calls the shots.
Gospel-Centered Ministry
I am here to talk to you about what ministry shaped by the gospel, profoundly shaped by the gospel, really looks like?
In this letter, Peter was not writing to the same type of situation Paul addressed in his letter to the Corinthians. Paul was wr...
In this letter, Peter was not writing to the same type of situation Paul addressed in his letter to the Corinthians. Paul was wr...
Keep It Complicated
I am sometimes told, when discussing how to present the gospel to a non-believer or how to formulate a sermon or Bible study, to "keep it simple." Sometimes the admonition is "to keep the cookies on the lower shelf."
If the advocate of simplicity...
If the advocate of simplicity...
Submit to Jesus, Submit to His Bride
Church membership can feel boring, secondary, extrabiblical, and unimportant. Aren't there plenty of more pressing things to talk about? Not really, suggests Jonathan Leeman in "Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus" (Crossway,...
Gospel Centrality: A Warning and a Recommendation
How do you move beyond the gospel without moving on from the gospel? On the other hand, if the gospel is so all-important, do we need to "move beyond" the gospel in any sense at all?
Those are two of the questions which are raised by this increasi...
Those are two of the questions which are raised by this increasi...
The Gospel is Insufficient
At a seminar I gave last week, I used the tried and true method when facing a crowd outside of my usual comfort zone. Three points nobody could disagree with, a fourth point that might have raised some eyebrows and a fifth that sounded downright here...
A Fresh Look at the Regulative Principle
The "regulative principle" is the Reformed view of how God regulates our worship and provides that worship is by divine appointment. Everything we do in worship must be divinely warranted. And since Scripture is the sufficient Word of God, everything...
The Corporate Component of Conversion
If your doctrine of conversion is missing the corporate element, it's missing an essential piece of the whole. A covenant head comes with a covenant people.
Vertical First, Horizontal Inseparably Second:
That's not to say we should put the corporat...
Vertical First, Horizontal Inseparably Second:
That's not to say we should put the corporat...
Six Ways to Give Your People False Assurance
As a pastor, I interact with a lot of people who struggle to have confidence in the authenticity of their conversion. To their mind, their sin clings closely and their failings are always at hand. Most of the time, I find that these are faithful brot...
The Ethics of Share Investment: Should a Christian Invest in the Share Market?
The emergence of capitalism in the 1700s sparked off a fierce debate which continues to this day. This debate was highly visible, with a dramatic polarising on the world stage. On the right were the free, keenly competitive capitalist economies. On t...
Homosexuality in Scripture
The brief I have been given for this paper is to set homosexuality in the context of God's purposes for us as men and women. The source material I am to draw on is Scripture (the Old and New Testaments, and the approach is to be that of Biblical Theo...
Introductory Essay to John Owen's The Death Of Death in the Death of Christ
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is a polemical work, designed to show, among other things, that the doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the gospel. There are many, therefore, to whom it is not likely to be of...
Books
Stop Dating the Church!: Fall in Love with the Family of God
9781590523650
The Courage to be Protestant
9780802840073
Religious Affections
9780486491028
Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus
9781433532375
Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus
9781433532337