President-elect Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in the 2024 election suggests that a dwindling number of Americans will tolerate woke nonsense. Thus, the combination of a liberal jurist and a feminist musical should turn the stomachs of everyone besides coastal elites. According to Entertainment Weekly, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson...

President Joe Biden has not exactly distinguished himself as a president who puts Americans' interests first. Thus, it comes as no surprise that a story of unfathomable debauchery should unfold inside Biden's Department of Veterans Affairs . Last week, Breitbart News reported that a congressional investigation into workplace behavior and...

The Biden administration's State Department feted former Secretary of State John Kerry with a portrait unveiling Tuesday. And both current Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Kerry took the opportunity to celebrate the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. What was omitted from their remarks is Kerry's multiple...

As you read today’s devotional, was there a relationship that came to mind that needed repair? Ask the Lord to help you as you work towards reconciliation and restoration.

Tim Keller encouraged young ministers to to give their congregations the opportunity to ask questions publicly. I implemented that practice early on in my ministry, and it has yielded tremendous fruit. Inevitably, during congregational questions, I’m made aware of concerns that merit more significant treatment than a short answer can provide. Trouble is I’m also passionate about expository preaching, where the sermon’s purpose and structure come from the purpose and structure of a particular biblical teaching unit. I’m working through the book of Revelation this year because I believe sequential, expository preaching is the best means of spiritual growth for any congregation. So if I’m committed to expositional preaching, how do I address those important but occasional questions that arise? Are expository preachers allowed to preach topical sermons? If they decide to do so, what would that look like? When: Moments for Topical Exposition You may encounter a passage on angels in your regular exposition and need one to two weeks to clarify that part of the text by discussing angels and demons. A church crisis may arise that needs special attention from the pulpit. Your congregation may be engaging in church discipline, so you want to help them understand the process by teaching Matthew 18 and Galatians 6. Similarly, a cultural crisis may shake your congregation, necessitating an address from the pulpit. When the cultural upheaval over race and racism roared through 2020, I preached a topical message called “Our Racism-Destroying Gospel” to address the Christian response. This year, I heard from many women in our congregation about how they felt alone and discouraged in trying to be godly moms. I felt I should encourage them with my sermon on Mother’s Day. Sermons or short series focused on certain topics can help a church from time to time. But be careful. Preachers must examine their motives and their manner when preaching topical sermons. Why: What’s Your Motivation? Your motivation must be pastoral, not entrepreneurial. Topical preaching should serve the people in your church well, addressing their concerns, questions, or needs. Don’t preach this way because you think it might help you. Set up the following guardrails: Preachers must examine their motives and their manner when preaching topical sermons. 1. Don’t preach topically because you think a catchy title will bring in new people or connect you with a specific demographic. 2. Don’t preach topically because you want to seem clever or get attention. Don’t preach to create a scandal or shock your hearers. Don’t preach a series called “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby” just to create a “Did he say that from the pulpit?” response. 3. Don’t preach topically because you feel you’ve missed your calling to be a political spokesman. Parroting partisan talking points isn’t “engaging the public square” or “speaking truth to power.” It’s empty grandstanding that only shows you to be a hack. 4. Don’t preach topically to flex your intellectual muscles. If you prepare a series on history, linguistics, systematic theology, or another academic discipline to genuinely help your congregation, go for it. But if your motivation is to remind them you’re smart, don’t do it. Consider these questions: How will this sermon or series help your congregation within your regular pattern of sequential exposition? Will it distract from or complement the overall aim of your preaching? How: Choosing Your Text If you decide to preach an occasional topical message, consider carefully what texts to use. Ask these questions of each topically related passage: Does this text speak plainly about the subject? If I was preaching through this book in sequential exposition, would I discuss this topic? As you consider each potential reference, think about how it fits within its immediate context, canonical context (or place in redemptive history), and the context of the whole Bible before applying it to practical matters. While it can be helpful to use multiple texts that build a redemptive-historical case for your point, be wary of pulling texts out of their contexts. Covering too many texts simultaneously can easily degenerate into proof-texting (using the text to say whatever you want it to say about a topic). Instead, be sure your preaching outline flows from your text’s main idea. And remember your audience. Preaching any message is an act of shepherding. You’re answering your congregation’s questions, engaging their concerns, assuring their worries. Rubric: It’s OK to Not Talk About It One final caution: Create an evaluative process when deciding whether to preach a topical sermon. It may be wise to sit down with the elders or other church leadership and determine the criteria for choosing this format. Will the semon distract from or complement the overall aim of your preaching? There are always subjects that activists and enthusiasts want the pastor to preach on. But the decision should be up to the shepherd of the sheep. Pastors know their people and what they need at the moment. Not every cultural upheaval deserves a homiletic response. Topical sermons are a unique tool in the shepherd’s bag. If used appropriately and skillfully, they can serve a church well. You should try it.

I was raised in a family that loved Christmas. Every December after school ended, my mom took me and my little brother to a small town in west Tennessee to spend a couple of weeks with her family. We’d help close up my granddad’s furniture store around noon on Christmas Eve. Then we’d have a potluck lunch with his employees. My aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins would come to my maternal grandparents’ house after the candlelight service at church. This was Christmas in my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, the Christmas I experienced every year for 22 years. Thinking about it brings so much nostalgia and sentiment. But nostalgia and sentiment are, for me and almost everyone else, also colored by brokenness, hurt, and loss. Most notably, my brother died of a drug overdose in March 2021. But before that, several key members of the family passed away: my mom’s father (the patriarch of the family), my paternal grandmother, and my mom’s younger sister. The happy memories of my childhood Christmases are shaded, even marred, by loss. For those of us who have experienced such deep pain, how can we still find joy during the holidays? How can we still love Christmas, despite the acute emotional pain we may feel at this time of year? This is where Rhyne R. Putman’s book Conceived by the Holy Spirit: The Virgin Birth in Scripture and Theology comes in. The way out of our hurt isn’t to ignore it or wallow in it but to trust in the one who willingly stepped into it and saved us from it. Christmas’s True Meaning As Putman, associate vice president of academic affairs at Williams Baptist University, repeatedly shows, the triune God’s work in the incarnation of God the Son doesn’t ignore sin’s effects. Instead, it’s in that work that Jesus encounters and overcomes the source and consequences of sin and death on our behalf. The way out of our brokenness and hurt isn’t to ignore it or wallow in it but to trust in the One who willingly stepped into it and saved us from it. The true meaning of Christmas is that the one true God, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, becomes one of us to free us from what ails us and restore us to our purpose: dwelling with God and glorifying him forever. It’s this fundamental reality of God’s redemptive work on our behalf that can produce love in our hearts for the celebration of Christ’s birth. Sorrows remain. Yet there’s hope that God has done what’s necessary to redeem us from sin’s effects far as the curse is found. This brings joy to the world. As Putman puts it, In advent and Christmas seasons, we have an opportunity to reflect on what God has done for us in the virgin-born king and what he will do for us in the future. We rehearse the OT story, reliving the expectation of Israel as we await the final consummation of God’s kingdom in Christ. At the heart of the Christmas story is a profoundly theological message about the triune God and his great salvation. (344) Putman’s book is both biblically rooted and theologically careful. It’s both intellectually insightful and eminently readable. It won’t go over the average reader’s head. Instead, Putman defines terms and carefully works through biblical texts. He shows how doctrines interrelate and how a particular doctrine or exegetical insight helps us to live faithfully. Rich Doctrine and Exegesis The hope that comes from truly understanding Christmas is grounded in both Scripture and historic Christian doctrines. The New Testament’s description of Christ’s miraculous conception, virgin birth, and childhood are fulfillments of the Old Testament’s hope. This includes hope for the Messiah, for David’s son, for Abraham’s heir, for the seed of woman. It includes hope for the restored temple, for the restored land, and for the restored people of God. As Putman explains, “From Genesis to Revelation, we see that the birth of Jesus was not an arbitrary act of God—but an event that looked back to the garden of Eden and forward to the New Jerusalem” (249). Moreover, this properly biblical, exegetical, and theological understanding of Christ’s incarnation helps us to articulate a faithful Christology. Jesus is one person with two hypostatically united natures. He’s fully human and fully divine. His two natures aren’t separated, divided, mixed, or changed in the incarnation. This brings us hope because only the God-man—one who’s truly God and truly man—can save us. As Putman summarizes, “The immortal and incorruptible Word took on mortality and corruptibility so that he might defeat them once and for all on our behalf” (261). Putman’s combination of rich theological insight and a comprehensive explanation of the biblical story is a callback to the original virtuoso of Christmas theology, Athanasius in On the Incarnation [read TGC’s review]. In that regard, Putman demonstrates that what he’s saying is nothing new by masterfully weaving material from the early church through his argument. He’s simply articulating for a new generation the same hope Christmas has brought since Christ came into the world. Christmas Hope in the Gospel Conceived by the Holy Spirit is the best sort of theological book. It’s academically robust, helping pastors and scholars understand an important historical doctrine. But it’s also richly devotional, pointing readers to Christ. Most significantly, this book reminds us that because Jesus is God the Son incarnate, he could step into our brokenness and heal it through his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus lived the life we cannot, died the death we deserve, descended into the realm of the dead we all experience, and crushed death to death when he rose from the dead. So we have hope in the face of death and loss. Christmas is a time to sing about and celebrate the fact that, though he’s veiled in flesh, we see the godhead in Jesus Christ. For these reasons, we can still love Christmas, despite how the holiday nostalgia brings up memories of hard things. Christmas is a time to sing about and celebrate the fact that, though he’s veiled in flesh, we see the godhead in Jesus Christ. He’s the Incarnate Deity who brings peace on earth and reconciles God and sinners. He brings joy to the world through breaking sin’s curse far as it’s found. We can still love Christmas because, as Charles Wesley wrote in one of his classic hymns, it’s a time when we specifically recall that, in the incarnation, Christ by highest heav’n adored, Christ the everlasting Lord; Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb . . . Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth; Born to give them second birth.

In this lecture, Don Carson teaches mainly from Ezekiel 16, which describes Jerusalem’s spiritual adultery and compares the city to an ungrateful prostitute who turns to infidelity. Carson also points to Israel’s rebellion in forming a political alliance with Egypt. He explains that, despite the severe punishment described, God promised eventual restoration through an everlasting covenant when Jerusalem would repent and experience God’s faithfulness. He teaches the following: Why Israel is compared to a “useless vine” and how it connects to the Bible’s larger metanarrative Absolutizing any one form of God’s love results in absurd theology How political alliances contributed to Israel’s downfall God remembered Jerusalem and established an everlasting covenant with her The new covenant would bring atonement for Jerusalem’s sin How the metaphor of marriage and apostasy is used to illustrate the severity of Israel’s rebellion The importance of fidelity and the consequences of betrayal in both human and divine relationships The imagery of marriage and atonement conveys God’s enduring love for his people

Alex Jones Celebrates as Sale of Infowars to The Onion is Rejected by Federal Judge

Trump border czar Tom Homan recently spoke to a crowd in blue Chicago and was met with cheers and applause as he described how deportations were going to start right there in the Windy City. Homan was…