Carolyn Mahaney wrote “Homemaking Internship ” especially for moms with daughters. It’s about how to pass on to the next generation of young women some of the most important things in life. She says, 

But the truth is that homemaking involves so much more than just cleaning a house. The commands in Scripture to love, follow, and help a husband; to raise children for the glory of God; and to manage a home encompass a vast responsibility. Homemaking requires an extremely diverse array of skills—everything from management abilities, to knowledge of health and nutrition, to interior decorating capabilities, to childhood development expertise. If you are to become an effective homem…

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In September, 2009, we admitted the first class in the four-year program of Bethlehem Seminary. Here at the end of the year I want to give public thanks to God and take some of you with me into this vision. Not everybody. But some of you carry a special, God-given burden for the preparation of future generations of God-centered leaders.

Bethlehem has been training future pastors, teachers and missionaries through The Bethlehem Institute for over ten years. That two year program has now become the four-year Bethlehem Seminary. We plan to admit 15 men every year to the seminary. The number will be kept small so that the vision for mentored ministry and church involvement can be sustained.…

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The fact that hundreds of the pages of God’s inspired word are devoted to poetry moves me. One of the effects is to make me aware that God thinks the sound of language matters. 

God has blessed and humbled me with the inability to speed read. I read about the same speed that I talk. I hear what I read as I read it. For years I tried not to. Speed reading consultants (I took their courses—in vain.) say that pronouncing the words, even in your head, turns a rabbit reader into a turtle. No use. I’m a turtle. 

So I take heart that so much of the Bible is poetry. It is self-evident to me that poetry is not meant to be speed-read, but ordinarily read aloud. So I would encourage you to su…

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Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling some melancholy. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we’re left standing, watching the Christmas taillights and music fade into the night.

But it’s possible that this moment of melancholy may be the best teaching moment of the whole season. Because as long as the beautiful gifts remain unopened around the tree and the events are still ahead of us, they can appear to be the hope we are waiting for. But when the tree is empty and events are past, we realize we are longing for a lasting hope.

So last night, as Pam and I tucked our kids into bed, we talked about a few t…

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Noël and Talitha and I recorded a Christmas greeting for you and a “glimpse” into our home and traditions.

And since I didn’t write the advent poems this year, I wrote this Christmas poem to read at our Christmas Eve services last night, in the hopes of sharing my love for Jesus and my joy in him.

In this smelly place he lay,
Smelly like the swine,
Smelly like the rotting hay,
Like your sin, and mine.
Do you see how low he lay?
Do you see how low?
There is lower yet to go.
Lower yet to go.

He is lying where they eat,
Lying where the swine—
Lying like a piece of meat
Where the hungry dine.
Do you see the fl…

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We’ve looked at Jesus’ full divinity under the heading “Jesus Is Lord” and his full humanity under “Jesus Is Savior.” Now we turn to his single personhood and utter uniqueness that makes him our soul-satisfying Treasure.

The term hypostatic union is much easier than it sounds, but the concept is as profound as anything in the universe—the personal union of the eternal Son of God with our humanity.

The English adjective hypostatic comes from the Greek word hupostasis. The word only appears four times in the New Testament—maybe most memorably in Hebrews 1:3, where Jesus is said to be “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” Here the author of Hebrews use…

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Our good friend, Rick Gamache, preached a wonderful sermon on Isaiah 9:6 last Sunday. And he quoted C.H. Spurgeon reveling in the incarnation:

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." As Jesus Christ is a child in his human nature, he is born, begotten of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. He is as truly-born, as certainly a child, as any other man that ever lived upon the face of the earth. He is thus in his humanity a child born. But as Jesus Christ is God's Son, he is not born; but given, begotten of his Father from before all worlds, begotten—not made, being of the same substance with the Father. The doctrine of the eternal affiliation of Christ is to be re…

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Yesterday we summed up Jesus’ full divinity under the heading “Jesus Is Lord.” We said that the doctrine of the incarnation could be remembered with John 1:14, “The Word became flesh.” That “Word” is the divine second person of the Trinity, the eternal Word, who we know as Jesus.

Today we shift focus to Jesus’ full humanity. Not only did he remain fully divine when he took humanity to himself, but the humanity that he took was full humanity. And so Jesus has a fully human body, emotions, mind, and will—and this in no way compromises his deity.

Jesus’ Human Body

It is clear enough from the New Testament that Jesus had (and still has) a fully human body. Jesus was born (Luke 2:7). …

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December 21, 2009

In echoes of Capernaum the Lord
Inquired of me, his happy friend, and said,
“Will you, like these five thousand, take my bread
And leave?” But I replied, “Who can afford
To lift his little hand and wield the sword
Of pride, and sever now the hand that fed
Us with his love? No. No. I would be dead
If I should leave, and you be unadored.

I may as well in this exquisite night
Of pleasures—night to mark our wedding day—
Set out to find a harlot before light
To supplement my ecstasies for pay!
No. No. You only have the words of life
Nor will I dream of any other wife.”

When G. K. Chesterton was arguing against a rationalist who denied miracles on the ground that experience is against it, he cited this:

There was a great Irish Rationalist of this school who, when he was told that a witness had seen him commit a murder, said he could bring a hundred witnesses who had not seen him commit it. (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 176)