23 Now a detachment of Philistines had gone out to the pass at Micmash. 1 One day Jonathan son of Saul said to the young man bearing his armor, "Come, let's go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side." ...  4 On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez, and the other Seneh. 5 One cliff stood to the north toward Micmash, the other to the south toward Geba.  6 Jonathan said to his young armor-bearer, "Come, let's go over to the outpost...

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   Sunday morning I preached on church discipline from Titus 3, and I really wanted to share with the church the loving nature of church discipline from the most famous passage in the Bible on the subject, Matthew 18:15-17.  However, I just didn't have time, so I thought I'd post it here: The first way church discipline is initiated is when someone who is sinned against goes to the offending person.  This is the Matthew 18 way: 15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you [just one on one]. If...

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  I'm preaching on regeneration from Titus 3 this Sunday, and as I studied for it I was reminded of something I read several years ago by Brian Habig, who was the RUF minister at MSU back in the late nineties.  Enjoy. A couple of years ago, I led a group of students to Bucharest, Romania. It was my second trip there. Prior to the advent of communism, Bucharest was known as "the Paris of the East" and graced its portion of the globe with classical architecture and Old World charm. Now a visitor has to search for remnants of...

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   Few men stared as deeply into the glories of eternal life as Jonathan Edwards.  In a sermon on Romans 2:10 ("But glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile") he preached on why there will be different levels of reward in heaven, why those at the lower levels will never be envious of those above them, and how the saints in heaven can praise God continually throughout eternity without ever growing tired.    "As there are degrees among the angels, viz. thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers; so there are degrees among...

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This weekend I rented In the Heat of the Night, the 1967 classic starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Rod Steiger).  The plot: Poitier plays a Philadephia, Pennsylvania homicide detective named Virgil Tibbs who visits his mother in a small Mississippi town named Sparta.  He rises early one morning to catch an early train back to Pennsylvania, and waits at the depot.  That night a murder also takes place in Sparta, and the local police fan out to look for suspects.  They come upon Tibbs in the depot, search...

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