Preach the Word – March/April 2020
Volume 23, Number 4 What's the Point? I have a confession to make. I once attended Joel Osteen’s church. Okay, twice. I went twice. My wife and I lived in Houston, TX for a year, ...
D̶o̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶H̶a̶v̶e̶ Where Are Your Blind Spots?
Isn’t it quite stunning in Sunday’s gospel (John 9:1-7, 13-17, 34-39) that the only one besides Jesus who seems to see things clearly is a blind-from-birth beggar? The disciples see this blind beggar, but they ...
Blessed is the Man: A Man’s Journey Through the Psalms – Psalms of Lament
Blessed Is the Man is a devotion book written by a compilation of authors, all connected to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The eight contributors each have a paragraph-long biography on pages 4 and 5 of ...
Four Branches – February 2020
Jump to: Exegetical Systematic Historical Practical Exegetical Theology: Three Passion Predictions from Zechariah: Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will be Scattered Jesus told his disciples, “This very night you will all fall away on ...
Wittenberg vs. Geneva: A Biblical Bout in Seven Rounds on the Doctrines that Divide
Brian William Thomas is a pastor at Grace Lutheran Church (LC-MS) in San Diego, CA. He formerly served as a naval officer. He is a graduate of Christ College in Irvine, CA and Concordia Seminary. ...
“God, I Thank You That…”
My sinful nature needs little nourishment to feed smug self-satisfaction, but an unbelieving world provides a smorgasbord. If it’s not another mass murderer semi-automatically butchering people, then it’s the drug deal gone bad with bullets ...
Preach the Word – January/February 2020
Volume 23, Number 3 Preaching to the Choir Biblically Illiterate In March 2018, The Wall Street Journal had to issue a correction. The previous day, a journalist had quoted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ...
Four Branches January – 2020
Jump to: Exegetical Systematic Historical Practical Exegetical Theology: Three Passion Predictions from Zechariah: The One They Have Pierced In this series of articles, we are looking at the Old Testament context of Passion Predictions from ...
Jesus Is Still Partnering with Unworthy Instruments to Fulfill All Righteousness
In Sunday’s gospel (Matthew 3:13-17), it’s not hard to grasp why John would have sought to change Jesus’ mind about who would baptize whom. John had just finished confessing that he was not worthy to ...
The Honeycomb Scroll: Philipp Melanchthon at the Dawn of the Reformation
Gregory B. Graybill is senior pastor at First United Presbyterian Church of Moline, Illinois. He earned a DPhil at the University of Oxford and is author of Evangelical Free Will: Philipp Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Journey on ...