For the Lord’s Day, December 3, 2022 Dear Saints, This Wednesday night we finished Ligonier Ministries’ Reformation 500 video series with a final Q&A panel discussion. Something in the end of the video, as you know, surprisingly rang out to me. And it was this: “What about today? What is the biggest threat to Christianity in this century as you see it right now?” Dr. Sinclair Ferguson answered with a startling statement of obvious deep conviction: “Probably Christianity in this century. That’s a greater threat than Islam. Christendom is a far greater threat to Christianity than Islam is. Islam can…
Read More »For Lord’s Day, November 26, 2022 Dear Saints, As I have just entered the 13th year of ministry with you this month and very recently began reading through a book historically important to my second ministry employer, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, entitled, Here We Stand! A Call from Confessing Evangelicals for a Modern Reformation, I found reviewing its “Cambridge Declaration” (produced in 1996 during a gathering on the campus of Harvard University) within the preface of the book profoundly current. Considering the flow of “evangelicalism” (hear, “Reformed”) we have observed in broad and immediate ways over more than a…
Read More »For Lords’ Day, October 8, 2022 Dear Saints, First, let me rejoice with you that Abraham Van Leuven met with Session this week to review his fully completed Membership Class test and discuss his hearty desire to graduate to communicant membership during morning worship tomorrow. God is faithful! Praise the Lord. Pray that Abe’s first partaking of the Lord’s Supper would be the means of grace it is intended to be for him. Thank you! Recently in a sermon entitled, “You Can and Must Defeat Despair!” (based on 2 Corinthians 4:8b), I emphasized how Satan’s tactics with all other sins…
Read More »Since this post, the show ran and here is a link for its podcast where you can now hear it: ____________________________________________________________ Dear Saints, I wanted to share the following, which also can be viewed publicly here (if it’s easier to share if you might like to on your social media): https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6980663319565127680/ Another family interview to air this Thursday on our church’s (Puritan Reformed Presbyterian Church) Monday through Saturday K-PRAISE radio program, “Man’s Chief End.” This time, the younger three Van Leuven children with Mommy (Fernanda) join Dad (Pastor) for a fun Bible study introducing our next series of messages to run about…
Read More »For Lord’s Day, August 7, 2022 Dear Saints, During our Westminster Confession of Faith Membership/Enquirer’s Class this week we studied chapter 29, “Of the Lord’s Supper,” together. In that class we discussed the Biblical warrant and practical benefit of weekly communion, but also the importance of preparing properly each week to come to the Lord’s Table appropriately. Here is what I referenced to help us prepare to do so: Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) 171. Q. “How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?” A. “They that receive the sacrament…
Read More »Dear Saints, Our morning sermon this Lord’s Day will be on being “kind” and showing “kindness” with studies of these words in the Hebrew and Greek, and our featured text being the command in Ephesians 4:32: “ … be ye kind …”. At times, I like to search quotes and illustrations on a topic from a few resource books I have kept alongside me over the years. In this case, I put together many (not all) of what was provided under the term, “kindness,” from The New Dictionary of Thoughts (A Cyclopedia of Quotations), by Tyron Edwards (Revised and Enlarged,…
Read More »For Lord’s Day, April 17, 2022 Dear Saints, In One Thousand Evangelical Illustrations (Webb), Albert Barnes wrote: “Neglect is enough to ruin a man … A man who is lying on a bed of sickness need not cut his throat to destroy himself ; he has only to neglect the means of restoration, and he will be ruined.” The sermons tomorrow are “special requests” for me and Fernanda about how we have been neglecting the health of our bodies and want to turn to Scriptures to motivate us about not eating excessively or unhealthy in the morning message, “Don’t Let…
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