Ben Sasse's Senatorial Campaign

Here's a great essay on how Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse went from a 3% statewide name recognition, to eventually winning in every county in Nebraska--without using any negative campaign ads.

The Anatomy of a Campaign

"The Savior of the World" -- John 4:27-42

The Fourteenth in a Series of Sermons on the Gospel of John

Israel’s prophets foretold that in the messianic age, God would include countless Gentiles among those who would be the beneficiaries of the long expected deliverance from sin and the curse which the Messiah would accomplish.  But by the time of Jesus, Jewish piety centered around things like ritual cleanliness and purity, observance of feast and Holy days, and a rigid external obedience to the law of Moses as interpreted by legal experts whom we know as scribes and teachers of the law.  This kind of piety excluded any Gentile (unless they ceased being Gentiles and became Jews) and caused Jews to view Gentiles as “dogs” (unclean).  But when Jesus leaves Jerusalem and passes through Samaria, we begin to see how poorly the Jews understood their own Scriptures.  Israel’s prophets spoke of a great harvest which would include both Jew and Gentile.  And in John 4, it becomes clear that Jesus has come to bring about that anticipated harvest.

In vv. 1-42 of John 4, we read of Jesus’ encounter with an unnamed woman at Jacob’s well in the heart of Samaria.  Although the passage should be covered in one sermon, because of our limited time, I broke the passage up into two parts.  Last time, we took up the first 26 verses of the chapter which recount Jesus’ dialogue with this Samaritan woman.  In this sermon, I will briefly recount that conversation before we look at the consequences of that dialogue in vv. 27-42.  Just as Israel’s prophets had foretold, many Gentiles came to believe that Jesus is the long-expected Messiah and Savior of the world even at this early phase of Jesus’ messianic mission.  As we will see, when the gospel went out to the Samaritans, many (unlike the Jews) embraced it with great joy.

In the opening verses of chapter 4, John tells us that Jesus and his disciples were headed north back to Capernaum after leaving Jerusalem where Jesus had gone to celebrate the Passover.  During his time in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple calling it his father’s house.  In righteous anger, Jesus cast out the merchants and money-changers who defiled the temple by selling their wares in the outer court of the Gentiles–that place where God intended the Gentile nations to come and worship the true and living God.  This point is important to recall, because God’s intention to save Gentiles during the messianic age (extending the promise of salvation far beyond the narrow confines of Israel) will figure prominently in our passage.

Jesus performed a number of unspecified miracles during his time in Jerusalem.  These miracles functioned to confirm that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and the son of God, leading a prominent member of the Sanhedrin (Nicodemus) who witnessed them, to acknowledge that Jesus’ miracles were an indication that God was with him.  Yet, we have no clear indication that Nicodemus ever came to faith.  Already worried about the multitudes following John the Baptist, it was during this time that Jesus came under the scrutiny of the Jewish religious leadership.  Although John the Baptist’s wilderness ministry began to decrease in influence (just as prophesied), Jesus’ ministry was only now getting under way.  Since it was not yet time for Jesus’ messianic mission to come to its fruition with his death and resurrection, Jesus sought to return to Capernaum in the region of Galilee (which served as the home base for Jesus during this early phase of his messianic ministry). 

To read the rest of this sermon, Click Here

The Bible and the Reformed Confessions -- 2015 Reading Plans

People often ask me about Bible reading plans--especially at the New Year when folks endeavor (dare I say it, make a resolution) to be more faithful about Bible reading.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

Ligonier has a great list of plans:  Ligonier Bible Reading Plans

ESV.org has a good list as well:  ESV Bible Reading Plans  

If you read Koine Greek and want to keep your skills sharp, I recommend Lee Irons' plan to read through the Greek text in one year:  Annual Greek NT Reading Plan

If you want to read the Reformed Confessions on a daily basis (and even have a reading from them delivered to you in a daily email) you can go here:  Daily Confession

If you want to do the same with the Westminster Confession, try this:  Daily Westminster

This Week at Christ Reformed Church (January 5-11)

Sunday Morning (January 11):  We are continuing our new sermon series on 2 Peter and Jude.  This coming Lord's Day we will focus upon Peter's reference to partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and his exhortation to make our own calling and election sure (v. 10).  Our Lord's Day worship service begins at 10:30 a.m.

Sunday Afternoon:  I am continuing my series on the Canons of Dort, and this Lord's Day we will continue to work our way through the Fifth Head of Doctrine.  We will discuss the relationship between the perseverance and the preservation of the saints (article 3).  Our  catechism service begins @ 1:15 p.m.

Wednesday Night Bible Study:  Bible Study will resume January 14, 2015

The Academy:  The Academy will resume on January 30, 2015

For more information and directions, check out the Christ Reformed website:  Christ Reformed Church

"The Righteousness of Our God and Savior" -- 2 Peter 1:1-2

Here's the audio from this morning's sermon, the first in a series on 2 Peter:  Click Here

This Week's White Horse Inn

An Introduction to the Book of Hebrews

This week on the White Horse Inn, Dennis E. Johnson and Zach Keele join us as we begin a trip through the Book of Hebrews. Dennis Johnson is Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Seminary California, as well as a minister at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, CA. He is the author of several books including Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All of Scripture, Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation, and The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption. Zach Keele is a frequent contributor to Modern Reformation and the pastor of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He is the co-author of Sacred Bond: Covenant Theology Explored. These pastors will help us as we survey the rich vistas of the Book of Hebrews. Who was it written to? Why is this New Testament epistle applicable to the modern church? What can we learn from these Christians who suffered in the ancient world?

Join us this week on the White Horse Inn as we look at the sufficiency of Christ from the Book of Hebrews.

Click Here

Allen Guelzo's Essay, "Democracy and Nobility"

There is an interesting essay from Allen Guelzo in the Weekly Standard, wrestling with the question as to whether or not the American Civil War should be seen as a "second" American Revolution (h.t. PB).

Guelzo writes,

The search for a revolution inside the Civil War is sometimes simply a search after something novel to say about an American event. Sometimes, however, the search for a “second American Revolution” is the offspring of a question that bedeviled Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and that bedevils historians of a Marxist persuasion today, the question posed by Werner Sombart a century ago: Why is there no socialism in America? Why, in other words, is there, in the land of the American Revolution, no interest in a social revolution of the classes? The answers on offer since then have been many and various. But one answer to Sombart’s question that has been overlooked may be Lincoln and the Civil War itself. 

Lincoln and the Civil War imparted to the idea of democracy a nobility and a moral grandeur that democracy has sometimes lacked. After all, democracy assumes that the humblest of citizens is competent to participate in governing; if the humblest citizen turns out to be a boor, a simpleton, or a redneck, democracy will quickly begin to lose its luster. But the victory of the North over slavery was a moment in which democracy shed any appearance of the commonplace and the ho-hum, and was borne up on the wings of courage, self-sacrifice, and the soaring eloquence of one humble but extraordinary president. Democracy can be dreadfully ordinary, because it is about the interests of ordinary people, rather than about knights in armor and royalty in gold carriages; Lincoln and the Civil War gave democracy the strength of giants and put into its hand the shining sword of freedom. Perhaps, in looking for a revolution, people have mistaken the means for the end, for in the Civil War, what we got was not revolution, but freedom. And freedom is worth having, by revolution or any other means.

To read the entire essay, click here: Democracy and Nobility

Gettin' the Ole Bell Rung . . .

There was a lot of great college football yesterday, but the most memorable play was the poor Baylor kicker getting blindsided by a Michigan St. player after his own kick was blocked.  Talk about adding injury to insult!  He later tweeted, "I'm alive."  Ouch.  I'll bet he feels it today.

A Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year to You All!

Jimi Hendrix rings in the New Year after Midnight, January 1, 1970.

"I Who Speak to You Am He" -- John 4:1-26

The Thirteenth in a Series of Sermons on the Gospel of John

Jesus’ encounter at Jacob’s well with a woman from Samaria is the first indication in John’s gospel that Jesus’ messianic mission will extend beyond the Jewish people to the ends of the earth.  Our Lord’s mission will include people from every race, tribe, and tongue under heaven.  Without any apparent regard for the long-standing cultural, political, and religious differences between Jews and Samaritans, Jesus speaks to this woman of the gift of eternal life, he informs her of a “living water” which takes away all human thirst, before explaining to her that the centuries old rift between Jews and Samaritans over the location of God’s temple is about to rendered moot, because in his very person a new age in redemptive history was dawning before her eyes.

When we left off last time (we wrapped-up our study of John chapter 3), Jesus and his disciples had left Jerusalem and were heading north back to Capernaum.  On the way, they entered the hill country where John the Baptist was now baptizing.  We saw that the Baptist once again affirmed to his followers that he is not the Messiah, but that he is the one whom God had sent to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.  When a debate arose between an unnamed Jew and the followers of John the Baptist over the nature of purification and the baptism of John, as reported in John 3:25, it is certainly not an accident that John (the disciple and author of the Gospel) continues his account of Jesus’ messianic mission with another incident involving water symbolism–this time with another unnamed person, a woman from Samaria.

The account of Jesus’ encounter with this woman (running from verses 1-42 of John 4) ideally should be covered in one sermon because the account (like many of the discourses in John) is seamless and does not really lend itself to division.  But the reality is that to do the passage justice we would need to spend an hour or more to do so, so out of necessity we will tackle this section of John in two sermons.  We will cover Jesus’ encounter and dialogue with this woman (the first 26 verses), and then next time we will take up the reaction of the disciples and the Samaritans to Jesus’ words (vv. 27-42).  

According the opening verses of chapter 4, “now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.”  The one thing that should jump out at us from this brief report is that at some point between the wedding in Cana (John 2) and Jesus leaving Jerusalem as recounted in the previous section of John 3, John the Baptist’s ministry has already begun to diminish while Jesus’ is increasing.  This is exactly what John the Baptist said would happen (John 3:30).

No doubt, the Jewish religious leaders were increasingly worried about the popularity of John the Baptist as multitudes were flocking to him, first out in the wilderness east of the Jordan River, and now in the hill country just to the north of Jerusalem.  But once Jesus made his first appearance in Jerusalem, cast the merchants and the money-changers from the Jerusalem Temple, all the while performing a number of unspecified miracles (signs which confirmed that the messianic age had dawned), Jesus was now on the Pharisees’ radar as yet another possible threat to their sect’s influence over the Jewish people.

To read the rest of this sermon, Click Here