Trinity Evangel Church

Proverbs was written/edited by whom for whom for what? Solomon collected it for his sons so that he could teach them to know wisdom and instruction. The Lord blessed Solomon with wisdom on earth, not for some esoteric existence. As a father he gifted his sons by passing on this knowledge and discretion. A workable definition of wisdom is "skill for living." I recently saw another good angle on thi...

Darkness is discouraging. Our poets associate darkness with the cold, with the unknown, with fear, with evil, with death. To be in the dark is to be ignorant, often it describes what it feels to be sad, even to the point of despair. So many psalms begin with the author in the dark. So many societies before the incarnation existed in the dark. The world around us today is like Egypt in the ninth pl...

While explaining how it came to be that so many in Israel had rejected the good news about Jesus, Paul couldn’t help but uncover his beautiful feet. The prophet Isaiah said preachers of good news had beautiful feet, and Paul was showing his feet, so to speak, which is exactly what they needed. We don’t stop saying what needs to be said because the person doesn’t want to hear it. We don’t need to s...

I went out of my way last Lord’s Day to say that “Jesus is Lord” is an entire worldview. That confession is not less than soteriological; “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be *saved*.” All these confessors are saved from sin, saved from God’s wrath, saved from hell. Acknowledging “Jesus is Lord” is a dividing li...

Salvation is the most impossible thing and also completely available. We do not have any ability to make it happen, and yet it is fully accessible. It is not hard to see, and yet generations of men have missed it, including generations of those who had God’s Word pointing to it. It was right there in front of them, and it is the good news for us today. In Romans 10:5-13 Paul has written what is pe...

Hermeneutics is the technical name for the science of interpretation. It involves the principles for reading and the methods one practices for understanding what a text means. It comes from the Greek word *hermeneuo* (ἑρμηνεύω), “I explain” or “help someone understand” (a cognate form of which is found in Luke 24:27 when “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Jesus *interpreted* to them in al...

The Lord works in merciful ways. God’s ultimate purpose is to share the riches of His glory with vessels of mercy He has prepared for glory (Romans 9:23). I started by saying the Lord works in *merciful* ways, when most would expect the phrase to be “the Lord works in *mysterious* ways.” That’s a sticky idea, even if the sentence isn’t in Scripture. The phrase was sown in a [1773 hymn written by W...

One of my favorite books, probably the book that I’ve highlighted more per page than any other, is _The Supper of the Lamb_ by Robert Capon. It’s ostensibly a cookbook, but he gets a running start toward the recipe section by providing some reasons for rejoicing in all the things God has given us to cook, eat, taste, enjoy. Near the end of the first chapter Capon wrote this: > “In a real world, no...

The last time I talked about parenting my title was “Raising Parents.” We’re raising kids, yes, but we don’t want them to stay kids. We can, or should, see far enough ahead to realize that how we train them today will affect how they train their kids some future day. It’s still by God’s grace; thank God He fixes many of our failures. And yet we also know that God’s grace can work through our good...

It is really remarkable how much men are driven by dissatisfaction. It’s not a discussion too far removed from the law of diminishing returns, which means that the gains, or our appreciation of the gains, get smaller even as the requirement of our investment of money or energy gets higher. God created us with the privilege of His likeness (Genesis 1:26), but it didn’t take much for the serpent to...

One of my favorite classes that I ever took as a student was a 16th century Reformation class at Milligan College my sophomore year (30 years ago this fall). We met once a week for three hours, I think it was on Thursday evenings. I started that semester in a 1/4" thick plastic brace that went from my neck to my pelvis due to a fractured vertebrae that the brace was intended to stabilize. The inju...

In my Rhetoric class we recently hit a part of the curriculum talking about dilemmas. A dilemma (proper) is not just a problem, it’s when you’re given two really unsatisfactory options, when both choices are bad. These dilemmas are often of the moral kind, and there are some famous ones (e.g., the [trolley dilemma]( https://theconversation.com/the-trolley-dilemma-would-you-kill-one-person-to-save-...

God saved us so that we would “proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). “Once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). His election and His mercy are worthy of praise. The word translated “excellencies” (τὰς ἀρετὰς) is a frequently used word by Greek authors. Homer used it regularly where militar...

# Introduction The thing that distinguishes the true God from every other wannabe-god is that the true God declares what is going to happen (Isaiah 46:10); He tells the end from the beginning. He predestines. In His omniscience He does more than consider all the possibilities or make great calculations based on likelihoods, He “does all that He pleases” (Psalm 115:3) and accomplishes all His purpo...

# Introduction “All Israel will be saved.” There will be a time in the future—it has not happened yet—when an entire generation of Jews will repent from their sins and believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The Christ, the King of the Jews, will reign on His throne in Jerusalem over the nation of Israel, and He will be worshiped and obeyed as the King of kings, King over all the earth. That is God’s cov...

# Introduction Paul told Timothy what it would be like in the last days. > But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen wi...

# Introduction Every new calendar year I take some Sunday sermons to talk explicitly about **our worship**, our Lord’s Day liturgy as an assembly. I love it. I love the reminders and giving the reminders (a la 2 Peter 1:12), but that’s because I love our Lord even more and am thankful for His grace to us in the weekly process and practice and profit of our time together. Qualifications abound, of...

# Introduction This last week before Christmas has not gone according to plan. Since Wednesday I've been laying on my back in bed or on the floor for 22+ hours a day, unable to tie my own shoes. I hurt my back again somehow on Monday and it got worse and worse, and between pain meds and muscle relaxers I've made it this far. Last night's Christmas Eve service was the longest I've been on my feet,...

# Introduction Peter wrote that the Old Testament prophets carefully searched what they had written in order to figure out what was in what they had written (1 Peter 1:10-11). There were clues about the Christ, who He would be, when He would come, what sufferings and glories would be His. God's Spirit moved them to write just as wind fills a sail (2 Peter 1:21), but they didn't have the entire map...