Luke 5:1-11
Sunday, July 5, 2026
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
CrossTalk: Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the LORD
America’s Declaration of Independence depends on the truth that “all
men are created equal.” Saturday, July 4th, celebrates its 250th anniversary.
To say that all people are created is to say that there is a creator. This
observation is so obvious as to be “self-evident.” Every person who ever lived knows
that he or she did not appear spontaneously but came from another.
That creator is usually referred to as God. The Declaration refers to him
as “Nature’s God” who wrote the “Laws of Nature.”
What the Declaration does not do is to define or describe who the God
of Nature is. Christians regularly assume that Nature’s God is Jesus Christ.
And they are not wrong.
But, for Thomas Jefferson—and the signers of the Declaration—it was
enough to acknowledge that every person, tribe and nation is answerable to a
common creator. Because of this, no person has an inherent right to rule
another. Hence, all are equal.
Nations that fail to acknowledge this fact quickly devolve into
tyranny, murder and chaos. That’s what happened in Revolutionary France and in
the now defunct Soviet Union.
In fact, the 1954 Congress amended the Pledge of Allegiance in response
to Soviet atheism. On Flag Day, President Eisenhower signed the bill behind the
phrase, “one nation, under God.”
It is a good thing that we acknowledge a common creator. But it is an even better thing to know that Creator to be the Triune God.
Because to know the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as One God is to know the Creator as the
God who suffered, died and rose again for the sins of His creatures.
King David said, “Blessed is the nation whose God is
the LORD” (Psalm 33:12). This is not meaningless repetition. To say that God is
the LORD is to confess that the Triune God of Holy Scripture—not Zeus, not
Isis, not Molech, not Thor—is the God who created heaven and earth.
And the Bible goes on to teach us “that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”
(Philippians 2:11). Jesus is the eternal Son of the eternal Father who with the
Holy Spirit created all things. This same God redeemed you by His suffering and
death on the cross and is the author and source of the one true faith.
And any nation whose God is this God will be a
blessed nation.
David, of course, knows that nations as nations cannot
have personal faith. Only people can do that. But David also knew that every
decision that rules a nation is made by people who either believe that “God is
the LORD” or not.
What David might not have foreseen is a nation that
was not ruled by a hereditary king but by the people themselves. And that
brings us back to America’s 250th anniversary.
Governments instituted among men are more or less
godly as the people are more or less godly. Elected officialdom is more or less
godly as the individuals elected to office govern their own lives under the one
true God.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of America,
let us first submit our own lives to the Word of the one true God. Then, let us
be bold to bring that faith to bear on all that we say and do to discharge our
duties as godly citizens of the United States of America.
This nation, too, can be blessed whose God is the LORD.
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Monday, June 22, 2026
Saturday, May 23, 2026
CrossTalk: Pentecost Fulfills God's Descent on Mt. Sinai
This coming Sunday Christians around the world will gather for the third
great feast of Jesus.
The first one was in December. It is the annual celebration of the
birth of Jesus. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son”
(John 3:16). We exchange gifts in remembrance of Jesus as the Father’s Gift to
the world.
The second one was in early April this year. It moves with the Old
Testament festival of Passover because it was on Passover “that Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that
he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).
The third great feast of Christianity also moves
with the Old Testament festival calendar. As the Old Testament Feast of Weeks was
held seven weeks after Passover, so the New Testament festival of Pentecost is
celebrated seven weeks after Easter Sunday.
The book of Acts makes this clear. “And when the
day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place”
(Acts 2:1 [KJV]). Pentecost is a Greek word that simply means “fifty”—seven
weeks plus Sunday.
Fifty days after the angel of death passed over the
homes of those who had the blood of the lamb on their door-posts, and after the
Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea on dry land, they celebrated the
giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai.
This is called the “Feast of Weeks” in Exodus 34:22
and in Deuteronomy 16. By the time Jesus was born, it was called “Pentecost.” And
after Jesus rose from the grave and ascended into heaven, He did one more
magnificent thing while the Jews were gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost.
“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of
a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and
it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and
began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:2-4).
Just as it is instructive to read the suffering, death and resurrection
of Jesus against the backdrop of the Jewish Passover, so it is helpful to read
the events of Acts 2 against the backdrop of the Jewish feast of weeks—the
momentous events that happened at Mt. Sinai.
“[T]here were thunders and lightnings, and a thick
cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all
the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the
people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of
the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD
descended upon it in fire” (Exodus 19:16-18).
At the first Pentecost, the twelve tribes of Israel
had been freed from slavery in Egypt and assembled together to meet with God. At
the second Pentecost, the twelve Apostles were freed from slavery to the devil
and assembled together in the Upper Room.
At the first Pentecost, God was present in the form
of fire on the top of Mt. Sinai. At the second Pentecost, God was present in
the form of fiery tongues on the Apostles.
At the first Pentecost, God spoke in a disembodied
thunderous Hebrew voice so that “[W]hen all the people saw the thunder and the
flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the
people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, ‘You
speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die’”
(Exodus 20:18-19 [ESV]).
At the second Pentecost, God spoke in every
language of the world, through the voices of fishermen, tax-collectors, and ordinary
men. And, rather than scattering in fear, “the multitude came together” to hear
the Word of God speaking in their own language in which they were born (Acts
2:6, 8).
This is the glory of Pentecost! Rejoice and be glad that you can gather
in churches still today! And that you, by Jesus’ power, can hear the voice of
God preached in your own native tongue.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
CrossTalk: Live in the Light of Easter
We live in a world that has been forever
changed. It was changed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
For all of our lives, and for two millennia
before that, we have lived in a world where the promised Messiah has come. He
has finished His battle with Satan and has crushed the Serpent’s head. Jesus
has ended the Old Testament and ushered in the New Testament in His blood.
Jesus’ resurrection is the indispensable foundation
of the Christian faith, its hope, of Christian love. St. Paul put it this way,
“if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then
they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1
Corinthians 15:17-20).
Nevertheless, we struggle daily with doubt.
Despair harasses us. And love does not come easy. Our struggle is to live in
the light of Easter—to internalize the reality of the resurrection.
The first step is to put yourself in the
shoes of its first witnesses. You are no different than those who lived through
the first Easter. They also struggled because, as St. John tells us, “As yet
they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead” (John
20:9).
They didn’t know that He was risen. The
clues were all there. The body was gone. The linen cloth was lying there. The
napkin was folded, in a place by itself. But still, they went home dejected.
They interpreted the clues to mean something
false. Mary could only conclude that “They have taken away the Lord from the
tomb” (John 20:13). Not realizing the true significance of what they
witnessed, they interpreted them as more evidence that Jesus’ enemies were
still prevailing. “They did it. They are in control. We don’t know what they
did to His body,” thought His disciples.
But they were wrong. And we know otherwise. For
us, these clues are signs of the resurrection. We cherish these artifacts, and
revel in the empty tomb. What a difference perspective makes! We know the
Scriptures. They did not.
And today, in our lives and in our circumstances,
we too are given clues that Jesus has deliberately left for us. We see His acts
in the world, every single day. World events are never random. The good and the
bad and the ugly—all events are of His making.
Jesus chose Judas, His betrayer, to be a
disciple. The Father gave Pontius Pilate the authority to crucify Him. God Himself
made Caiaphas High Priest, that year.
And the same remains true today. God is
directing current events. And God has brought you into the world precisely for this
moment. Whether God or you approve of what is happening, God remains in
control.
You don’t yet know HOW God “will work [them]
together for the good of those who love God” (Romans 8:28). But, because of
the resurrection of Jesus, you know THAT He will.
Future generations will look at us and say,
“How could they NOT rejoice?” Because they will see with hindsight.
We, on the other hand, live by faith. The
Scriptures interpret the clues and make us glad—even before God’s plan is clear.
If we are still in sorrow, bitterness and
anger, it is only because we—like the first visitors to the empty tomb—do not
yet know the Scriptures. Observing the world apart from the Scriptures will
make us misinterpret the clues and make us despondent.
So, let us consciously live in the light of
Easter. That means to believe God’s promises for you as surely as if they have
already happened. Because, in Christ, they have.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
CrossTalk: Read the Bible as your Lenten Challenge
For the second year in a row, our congregation is working on a
challenge to read the Bible from cover to cover during one calendar year. That comes
out to 82 verses, or three and a quarter chapters per day.
It’s quite doable and it has many benefits. I encourage you to join us
in this challenge.
The first benefit is that it will dispel the myth that the Bible is
just too big and too complicated for the average person to tackle. Anyone—and I
mean anyone—who starts reading the Bible at page one soon learns that it is
very straightforward.
Most of the Bible simply describes events that happened during the
history of the world. It is not written in cryptic code but in historical
narrative.
The Bible is only confusing when false teachers cherry-pick a passage
from here and a passage from there and artificially connect them together into
something that the Bible never says.
When you read the Bible cover to cover, don’t try to read between the
lines. Just see for yourself how its stories connect naturally. Adam’s story
flows into Abraham’s story. And Abraham’s flows into Moses’ story and Moses’
story flows into Jesus’ story.
Read it on its own terms and you will soon become familiar with the
story of the human family, created and sustained by God. As you are reading
these historical events, you will see how God is deeply involved in very ordinary
lives.
Sometimes His involvement is a miraculous deliverance from an
impossible situation. Sometimes it is a frightening judgment on those who thumb
their noses at Him.
The blessings—like bumper crops, victory in battle, and restoration of
broken relationships—may seem like pure luck in the non-biblical world. But the
Bible makes clear that all of them are God’s direct fulfillment of His
promises.
Likewise, judgments—like famine, military disaster, and the fall of
entire nations—are not random, but are directly connected to the people’s sins
and rebellion.
Taken together, both sorts of stories are written so that you would
take God ever more seriously. “Now these things happened
to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction” (1
Corinthians 10:11).
When you read of God’s terrible punishments, you are stirred to repent.
And when you read of God’s miraculous deliverances, you are emboldened to trust
His promises without fearing that He will let you down.
That’s the second main benefit of Bible reading. If you approach it
like an empty fairy tale, you will be bored. But when you remember that these
things really happened, you will be moved to repentance and faith.
Repentance is when you take your sins seriously and are no longer
content to cave in to every temptation that you feel. Faith is when you are no
longer afraid of what others can do to you but you trust that God’s promises to
care and provide for you are true.
And that brings us to Lent.
Lent is a time of renewal because Lent is a season that invites us to
take God more seriously today than we did yesterday. Lent is not about giving
up chocolate or some such thing. Lent is really about a renewal of life that is
born of repentance.
Fasting can be helpful. But if you really want renewal, go to God’s
Word. It will do more for you than anything that you can do for yourself.
Reading the Bible for yourself will reduce your intimidation over Bible
reading and fortify you against some of the false teaching that Satan will
throw your way. Reading the Bible will give you reasons to fear, love and trust
in God more than anything. Also, reading the Bible will teach you to gather
with fellow believers in weekly worship.
When you take God’s involvement in your life seriously, the blessing
you find by gathering with other believers will crown your Lenten repentance
with renewal and Easter joy. God promises it.
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