Pastor's Blog

What do you think of the idea of separation of church and state? It all depends on what you mean by it. If you mean, “Do I believe in institutional separation, i.e., that the government of the church should be kept separate from the government of the state ”, then yes I’m all for it. The church should not be a department of the state nor the state a ministry of the church. Each has its own officers and its own sphere of responsibility. But if you mean, “Do I believe in the separation of God from government,” which is what so many people mean who cry “Separation of church and state!” then no, I don’t believe it for moment. The state, no less than the church, has a responsibility to acknowledge God and to be subject to him. Now therefore, O kings, be wise;             be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the L ord with fear,             and rejoice with tre...

This is a very timely question seeing as how we are witnessing a proliferation of all kinds of body modification, including piercings and cuttings and tattoos. The Bible actually mentions these things very directly in Leviticus 19:28. The Lord says, “You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves.” A couple of interpretive questions arise. The first concerns the words “for the dead”.  “ You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead …” It was a practice among the pagans to cut themselves for a variety of reasons, one of which was as an expression of mourning for the dead. In the Ugaritic story of Baal and Anat, the god Baal is killed and the other gods, his friends, cut their cheeks and chins and lacerate their forearms, chests and backs. [1] We find, too, that the priests of Baal, in their contest with Elijah, “cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them” (1 Ki. 18:28). The ques...

I believe in Jesus, that he came to earth, lived a perfect life, and died for my sins; but, if faith in Jesus is absolutely the only way, then what about the people who died who never heard of Him? He doesn’t punish children for not believing he died for their sins because they don’t know Him yet and can’t comprehend that kind of sacrifice, so how could He punish those who never had the opportunity to know about Him when it’s not their fault? Or what about the people who died before Jesus rose again or before his life even began? What about all of the important people from the Old Testament like Adam and Eve, Noah, Joseph, David, etc? Do they just not get to go to Heaven because they lived before Jesus’ sacrifice?  First, let me say that you have asked a really good question. The question of what happens to those who have never heard the gospel is one that is frequently asked, often with a two-fold concern, first, for the justice of God (how can he punish people for never ha...

Is it best to understand creation as six literal days? Yes it is, and I think it’s apparent to anyone reading the text without any preconceived notions to defend, that the author intends his account to be taken as a literal historical narrative, and not merely in a figurative sense. Many try to combine the biblical account of creation with the theory of evolution and of course to do that you need to greatly extend the length of time that appears in the Bible. Taking the chronology of the Bible at face value only gives us about 6,000 years, not nearly enough time for evolution to take place. So where do we find the necessary time? We insert it into the account of creation, by taking the days of the creation week not as literal 24 hour days, but as symbolic of very long periods of time. But Dr. Ken Gentry, who has written extensively on this subject, gives several reasons to take each of the days of the creation week as a literal 24-hour period. First, he mentions what he calls ...

I would say that it is a bit misleading to refer to the ten tribes as “lost.” For those who may be not aware of what is meant by “the Ten Lost Tribes,” let me briefly explain. After the death of Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was divided. The two southern-most tribes of Judah and Benjamin were loyal to Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. The ten tribes to the north chose a man from the tribe of Ephraim, named Jeroboam, to be their king. The northern kingdom was known as Israel and the southern kingdom was called Judah. The two kingdoms sometimes lived in peace with one another and sometimes were at war. But after about 200 years, the Assyrians came in 722 b.c . and defeated the northern kingdom and took many of its citizens into exile. Something very similar took place about 150 years later to the southern kingdom of Judah. It was overrun by the Babylonians, Jerusalem was destroyed and thousands of Jews were led away into captivity in foreign lands. After many years, the Bab...

What does Paul mean when he says in Romans 10:4 that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes”? Let me first tell you what it does not mean. It does not mean that we do not have to keep the commandments. There is this silly notion about that the grace of God frees us from the obligation to obey him. Not so. If anything, grace increases our obligation to obey. Paul says in his letter to Titus that the grace of God teaches us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age” (Tit. 2:11-12). In First Corinthians he says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor. 7:19). In Hebrews we read that Christ has become the “source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb. 5:9). So when Paul says that Christ is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” he is not saying that the law its...

Is there any such thing as luck or chance? For example, a basketball player takes a half-court shot at the buzzer and makes it. Do you think that it’s due to chance, to the player’s skill, or to God’s will? We can rule out chance right off the bat. As Christians we shouldn’t be in the habit of talking about chance or luck because there’s no such thing. The world is governed by God, and everything that happens can be traced in one way or another back to God’s will. This doesn’t mean that God directly causes everything to happen, as if he’s the only agent at work, the only one who is truly acting; but it does mean that everything is under God’s control. The Westminster Confession of Faith has an excellent statement on the providence of God. God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and ...

Please explain what it means when it says that the Lord “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. There are several passages that speak of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. The first time this is mentioned is in Exodus 4:21, where God announces his intention to do this, saying to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go” (see also: Ex. 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17). I suppose there are a couple of things our questioner has in mind about this:  (1) what exactly did this hardening consist of, and (2) was God unjust to harden his heart? We must be cautious in answering the question about what the hardening consisted of because the Bible doesn’t explain it. But I think we would not be too far off the mark to suppose that, at a minimum, God withdrew whatever positive influences operated upon Pharaoh’s mind. The Bible teaches that we are by nature s...

In the New Testament we find several accounts of people being possessed by evil spirits. Do you think that still goes on today? I think it’s clearly possible that it still happens today, but I don’t think we should expect it to happen with the same degree of regularity with which it occurred in the period of the New Testament. And I might add that the same is true for the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. We should not expect miracles to happen with the same degree of regularity. Some people believe that since miracles were frequently performed by Jesus and the apostles, then they should still be frequently taking place today. The reason they don’t take place, we’re told, is because of our sinfulness or our lack of Christian maturity or our lack of faith. But there is a serious flaw in reasoning here. We should not assume that whatever took place in the New Testament ought to be regarded as normative for the church for all time. Here’s why: God was clearly doing something uniqu...

Is it wrong to be glad that Osama bin Laden has been killed? What should a Christian’s response be to the news of his death? Our response ought to be one of humble thanksgiving that God has taken out one of our enemies. “But,” I hear you saying, “is it really appropriate to give thanks for someone’s death?” Yes it is, when it is such a man as Osama bin Laden, a man who was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of many thousands of people both here in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The fact of the matter is that we frequently find the saints of God in Scripture giving thanks to the Lord and praising his name for taking out their enemies. For instance, at the time of the exodus, Israel stood beside the Red Sea and saw Pharaoh and the Egyptian army lying dead on the shore and they “sang a song to the LORD, saying, I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously;      the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea… This is my G...

I have heard you say before that God requires us to keep the commandments of the Old Testament. But does he expect us to keep all of them? If not, what commandments are we supposed to keep, and what commandments are no longer necessary, and how do we know the difference? This is a very good question. Let’s begin making our way toward an answer by suggesting a basic rule of thumb for properly applying the Old Testament today, which is this: We should assume that whatever God once required of his people is still required unless he has altered the requirement in some way. In other words, our operating assumption ought to be one of continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Everything God required of his people in the Old Testament should be assumed to have an ongoing obligation for us today unless the New Testament teaches us otherwise. This is implied in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount when he says: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to ab...