Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Distracted driving kills about 9 people every day in the US. We’ve tried doing something about this phenomenon. Unfortunately, providing more information does not seem to be working. Despite all of the public service announcements, the statistics continue to follow a discouraging trend. Distracted worship is also on the rise in 2020. For anyone sensitive to the spiritual needs that a worship servi...

Note: The audio cut out half way through. In Love and Friendship, a movie based upon Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, the plot is typical of Austen. A recently widowed woman seeks a suitable husband for herself and a wealthy husband for her daughter. In one brilliant scene, Susan’s daughter Frederica is interacting with the wealthy Sir James Martin, who is trying to impress everyone with his knowledge. ...

This is an important message to hear anytime something doesn’t go as we expect. How should we respond when we are unable to get what we want? How do we cope with suffering and loss? The world offers many coping mechanisms that are dangerously misguided. Buddhism and new age meditation teach us that life is suffering caused by craving. Therefore, the goal of Eastern meditation is to learn to elimin...

Conspiracy theories are found around every corner, but they have been around for about two-hundred years in their current form. Back in 1831, New England religious leaders warned about the Illuminati’s destructive plans. Ever since then, Americans have sought and found conspiracies typically associated with politics or religions.  DeYoung Bad news travels much faster than good news. We must be car...

The Ninth Commandment: Tell the Truth We often times think of telling the truth as a basic regurgitation of the facts. Truth tellers are honest and forthright. They don’t sugarcoat the unsavory details. They don’t downplay anything problematic about an event or belief. But, do we really appreciate such unfiltered truth? I love courtroom dramas. To Kill A Mockingbird, A Time to Kill. But, one of my...

The post “The Sower and the Knower” (Matthew 13:1-23) appeared first on Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA).

The Eighth Commandment: You Shall Not Steal Someone broke into our garage this week and stole our limbo stick. I mean, seriously, how low can you go? Maybe you think this sermon is going to be fairly easy to take after hearing enough conviction the past several weeks considering the previous commandments. Maybe you assume stealing has never really been an issue for you. A survey from Barna discove...

The Eighth Commandment: Fostering Prosperity The U.S. is, by any measure, the wealthiest, most powerful, and most influential country in the history of the world. It is not difficult to understand why so many immigrants want to come here to pursue their dreams. The United States is far and away the most likely destination for immigrants (5x more than the second country). That is true of those want...

What a cultural reformation would take place if we began to take the seventh commandment seriously. It is not difficult to find illustrations of our radical need for this renewal. We could name prominent figures in every sphere of society that have committed adultery. We could see the breakdown of the covenant marriage, both its biblical definition as well as its value in a secular nation. One of...

The Truth of the Gospel (2:1-14) Paul wrote the letter of Galatians to several churches he had planted a few years prior. A problem arose when false teachers taught a different gospel. In the first chapter, Paul explained that his authority and message came directly from Christ. In today’s passage Paul shows that he was fully accepted among the other apostles. They recognized that he was both call...

The Call of God (1:11-24) Galatians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to several churches that he had planted a few years prior in the region of Galatia. Since his last visit, some false teachers came through the region teaching a different gospel. Not only did they preach something that was untrue, but they challenged Paul’s apostolic authority in order to undermine what was true. Paul cut...

No Other Gospel (1:1-10) Over six years ago we held our first public worship services with a series on Galatians. The context of the letter seemed like an appropriate starting point. Paul was a church planter. After his conversion he set out on three different missionary journeys in which he planted churches in the provinces of Galatia, Asia, Macedonia, and Achaia.  After planting these churches P...

The Sixth Commandment: You Shall Not Hate As we get practical in our application of the commandments, we must always keep in mind the preface, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). These commands were given to a people who had been set free from their bondage in Egypt. Since entering the wilderness God had already shown himse...

The Sixth Commandment: You Shall Not Murder In such polarizing times it is difficult to maintain a godly posture towards those we disagree with. We are quick to allow our political allegiances to determine how we think about and treat others. If we follow the attitudes of many of our favorite radio and cable tv pundits, we may find ourselves not only in fundamental disagreement with our opponents,...

The Fifth Commandment: Honor the Authorities Several values have shaped American culture since our founding. Those who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower were mostly Puritans with an appreciation for Reformed theology. They sought freedom of religion and took extreme measures in order to find that freedom. Half of the pilgrims died during their first winter in Plymouth. November 11, this year m...

The first four commandments focused on our relationship with God. Beginning with the fifth commandment we transition to our relationship with one another. We summarize the whole law with one word, “love”. We are called to love God in commandments one through four. Then we are called to love one another in commandments five through ten. This is the commandment all the parents have been waiting for!...

The Fourth Commandment: The Christian Sabbath There have been significant figures in church history who argued that Christ abolished the Sabbath in the same way that he fulfills the shadows of the ceremonial law. Augustine and Calvin are two of the more significant figures that give me pause for holding to a view that differs. For them, gathering on Sunday is not a command from God, but a traditio...

In high school and college I learned to do the bare minimum to get the grade I was seeking. If I knew I could get an “A” by skipping the reading and focusing on the writing, I didn’t bother reading. I like to think I was being efficient, but laziness is a better word for it. The Sabbath was not instituted so that men would have an excuse to be lazy. As much as that sounds like a great way The post...

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The post “Sovereignty and Random Arrows” (1 Kings 22:1-38) appeared first on Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA).

The Fourth Commandment: The Purpose of the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11) The first four commandments reflect our instruction to love God. Commandments five through ten reflect our instruction to love our neighbor. There is only One true God and He is worthy to be worshiped in the way that He has revealed. We are to honor Him in thought, word, and deed. This final commandment in the first section that d...

The Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11) There are plenty of ceremonial laws that were not inherently right or wrong in and of themselves. They were temporary laws meant for a specific people in a specific time and place. An example would be how certain food was forbidden under the Mosaic dietary laws, but are now permitted (1 Cor. 10:31; 1 Tim. 4:3-5). Ceremonial laws have be...

You might think a reflection upon God’s name is irrelevant to the current state of our nation. We are living in strange times. Fears of the coronavirus are still among us, but they have been largely displaced by the riots in response to the murder of George Floyd. In fact, more than a thousand medical professionals, infectious disease specialists, and community stakeholders wrote an open letter th...

I was soundly converted in Jr. High. I went to Hume Lake Christian Camp and distinctly remember recognizing the heinousness of my sin against God. I had heard the gospel several times, but something clicked on that occasion and I knew that I needed to repent and confess my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior.  One of the first obvious changes that occurred in my life was a strong desire to clean up...

At the end of 2011, my wife and I went to church planting assessment. Then, for the next two years, I attended several cohort meetings and training where I learned the model that other churches successfully followed. Some of the information was truly invaluable, but some of it was disconcerting. Certain topics provided direction, while others were misleading. Unfortunately, many church planting st...