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Pastor Jay's Blog

This blog is Pastor Jay's weekly musings about God's Word, God's world, and God's call to our culture.  We hope they encourage, challenge, and inform you.  Sign up to recieve them in your email. 

Posts Tagged with "CULTURE"

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Allister Begg And A Second Level Admonishment

The Christian world has been stirred up by a particular question Pastor Allister Begg answered on a radio broadcast that was recorded on September 1, 2023. In that interview Begg recounted counsel he gave to a grandmother about a grandson's transgender wedding. Begg said because the grandson knew the grandmother's opposing position on this kind of wedding, she should still...

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Why I Am Not An Abortion Abolitionist - Part 2 - Bible

The last post took us to the theological reason that I don't believe Abolition will not work. That theological reason is Common Grace. God is only partially restraining sin in the unbelieving world; therefore we can only expect a partial stop of abortion. It will be more or less in different places and different times. We must always strive for the fullest and most complet...

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What's In A Name

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, Juliet tells us in the famous Shakespearian play. But roses aren't made in the image of God. Names don't really matter when it comes to plants, and that is why there are some really fun ones. Begonia Darthvadariana was the name given to a dark-leaved begonia. But names given to eternal beings who stand as the pinnacle of God's...

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Privately Wise But Publicly Foolish: The Ridiculous Case For Divided Morality

Last week the Respect for Marriage Act was passed by the Senate. While profoundly disappointing, it is not surprising. What is somewhat surprising is the case being made to support this. It is a case we have heard before. In the 1980's, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York made the case that a person could be personally and privately against abortion, but still be publicly an...

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A Line In The Sand For Parents and Public Schooling

Schools have always followed wherever the gospel goes. Schools meet needs that arise from gospel compulsions. The gospel compels us to know God more and thus learning to read allows us to read his holy Word. The gospel compels us to glorify God and we can do that better when we see his world accurately, which history and science allows. The gospel compels us to love our fa...

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Are We Facist? Yes, We Absolutely Love Faces!

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Thursday morning met us with a new addition to our church sign. Someone had given up some of their evening to spray paint "Facist" across the front. "Facist". Huh. Do we have a thing for faces? Yes, we absolutely love faces. We love all faces. We love the faces of those who are born and those who are still in the womb. We love faces of all sizes, even the smallest that ar...

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Ding Dong The Case Is Dead

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For whatever reason the song and feeling that has been going through me since last Friday comes straight out of the Wizard of Oz. Remember those munchkins dancing and singing "Ding dong the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the witch is dead." That captures it nicely. That wicked case, Roe v. Wade, has been oppressing and preventing us from protecting life for 50 years now...

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Quick Answers To Pro-Choice Challenges

With the reversal of Roe V. Wade becoming a real possibility, the question of abortion will come closer to home as it becomes a state issue to be voted on. People must be well versed in pro-life arguments and able to bring them persuasively. Below are key thoughts to help you toward this. The foundational point: Human life and personhood are inseparable and not diminished...

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Is There A Gay Christian?

There is a growing movement within Christendom to have an acceptance of homosexuality while still holding to historical Christian sexual ethics. The Revoice Conference in 2018 was a significant step in advancing what are being called Side B Christians. Side A Christians fully embrace all tenets of LGBTQ practices, while Side B Christians see marriage as only between a man ...

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The Divisive Christ and Being a Christian Bigot

Right now in our culture the worst words you can be called are a bigot and a racist. For those kinds of no-good people the key attitude is that of superiority, and the key action is discrimination. Most assuredly, there are countless ways to play the roles of bigot and racist which are straight out of hell. But what the forces of hell are really good at is twisting the t...

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Pray against the Equality Act

Back in 2015, we all braced for the fallout from the Supreme Court Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage. In terms of moral revolutions things have been happening at warp speed, and that decision made it seem like things were going to instantly implode. Instant implosion did not happen. Like most things on a national scale, the fallout was real but not imm...

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How Should We Think About 2020?

One of the most common things you heard in the last days of 2020 was the glee of being done with that horrid year. 2020 wasa trip. But was it really? When you are thinking about something you have to work hard to think about it rightly;thinking can go wrong on so many levels. You can think about things with the wrong information or with a lack of information. You can thi...

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When Should You Vote for Nobody?

Pastor John Piper recently wrote that he would not be voting again this year. This has caused a stir and raised the question of when not to vote. What circumstance would compel a Christian to abstain from voting? There are two issues that I think are at play in this question. First is the morality issue, and second is the party platform question. Is the morality of th...

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Murder for the Common Good

We have been hearing the phrase "right side of history" for years now. It has been the mantra of the progressive left so much so that it has become worn out and used less and less. However, it is still undergirding the thinking of the revolutionaries of our day. This showed up again in a recent article in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof entitled Will We Choose The...

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Keeping Unity Amid Pandemic Differences

C.S. Lewis once said that everybody loves the idea of forgiveness, until someone actually has something to forgive. Unity can be the same way. Unity is easy when everybody agrees, but when there are differences, unity is kicked to the curb. Many churches are reeling right now because there are differences when it comes to wearing masks and other responses to Covid. Argum...

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In This Cultural Moment, What Are You Praying For?

If you have made a habit of being at prayer meetings, you have probably been in the following situation before. As requests are being offered, someone asks prayer for Aunt Tilly's bunion. If the leader has his wits about him, this can be steered into a profitable time of prayer for Aunt Tilly. But sadly, many a saint has been led in prayer for untold numbers of hips, fee...

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This is Not Your Parents' Civil Rights Movement

The Black Lives Matter organization has been catapulted to the national spotlight and it is pulling in every form of endorsement. While an organization is more than its name, it certainly is not less. With a name like Black Lives Matter it is hard to speak against it. Yet, because there is more than a name, we need to know what this organization supports and promotes. In...

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Band-Aids on Cancer: Christian Distinctive During Cultural Calls For Racial Reform

Isn't it amazing how quickly crisis's seem to descend upon our nation now. We haven't even gotten through our stockpile of toilet paper and now there is a new issue of protests and riots concerning racial issues. And, by the way, whatever happened to the Murder Hornets? Though the scale of this new issue is hard to measure, it certainly is in the national spotlight. And...

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A Quarantine Emotion Check

A state-mandated stay-at-home order has afforded us an opportunity we never would have had otherwise. What is that? It is the opportunity to feel what our longing for heaven should be more like. Emotions are tricky things, but they are real and important. You are an emotional being, and emotions reveal the true you. You might be able to hide emotions, but you can't not e...

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Good Fear, Bad Fear

A global pandemic is a good time for a refresher on fear. During the Great Depression, the newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt said that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." That makes for good speech writing, but not good biblical thinking. As a Christian, your impulse might be to blurt out God's command to not fear. Yes, God commands this, but that is not a...

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Should a Christian Pursue His Life Dreams?

Just asking this question is almost blasphemous in our culture. Today's culture says that dreams are what empower you, animate you, and are the reason to get out of bed in the morning. Not having dreams for your life is considered the only real problem. Since the church is notorious at absorbing current culture, but with a 5-10 year delay, it therefore says the same thin...

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Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing of Relevance

Being irrelevant is a bad thing. Screen door companies should not market to submarine manufacturers, and you don't bring football pads to a nursing home. These things are irrelevant to the stated contexts. Irrelevance is foolishness and wastes time, money and effort. Does this mean that the search for relevance is the wisest and noblest goal for business and churches ali...

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A New Abortion Argument: The Priority of Bodily Autonomy

With the abortion discussions heating up more than ever, I want to make sure each person can give the best defense possible on behalf of their unborn neighbor who is under such great threat. One of the latest arguments that has gained a lot of traction in the pro-choice movement is the notion of Bodily Autonomy. Since the science of the fully-human fertilized egg is be...

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A Pro-life Clarification about Mothers Dying

The pro-life cause is making gains that are unprecedented. This is tremendous and we should pray for more of the same. We should not be surprised that there is also a growing outcry coming from the pro-choice side. Many of the pro-choice arguments are being repainted and sent out for duty again. There are also newer arguments gaining momentum. None of this is too surpr...

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The LGBT Old Testament Challenge

In my last post Did the Church Get it Wrong on Gay People?, where I addressed the recent article in USA Today that affirmed that very question, I made the recommendation that every Christian today needs to be able to answer a frequent challenge from the LGBT community. That challenge goes like this, "Since the Old Testament has laws you do not obey, such as certain die...

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Did the Church Get It Wrong On Gay People?

On Monday April 29th, USA Today published an opinion piece entitled American Churches Must Reject Literalism and Admit We Got It Wrong on Gay People. You can read it here. The main point of the author, Oliver Thomas, is captured well in the subtitle, "Churches will continue hemorrhaging members until we face the truth: Being a faithful Christian does not mean accepti...

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Unplanned : A Movie Review

Last week the movie Unplanned opened in theatres and I went to see it with a number of others. I am no movie critic, but I wanted to offer some thoughts about this film as you consider seeing it. First, I am glad this film was made. Abortion is a stain on the conscience of America like none other. It is the vilest atrocity our country as ever witnessed. We regularly...

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Strange But Not Weird?

Freak. Extremist. Religious Nut. If you have been a Christian long enough you have heard the names the unbelieving world gives to believers. The problem is, sometimes you kind of agree. There are people that get themselves situated on a street corner with signs and beards and materials that make us cringe. Is that weird or is that the kind of "strange" the Bible says...

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Can I Kill This? Using the S.L.E.D. Argument

Can I kill this? How do you answer such a question? Scott Klusendorf, a wonderfully skilled anti-abortion apologist, rightly points out that you have to ask another question. That question is: What is it you want to kill? A roach: Yes, kill it now. A wild Turkey: Yes, but only during turkey season. A Bald Eagle: No, it is legally protected. A human baby: ????????...

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Less is More: Challenges to LGBT+ Embrace

To the dismay of the LGBT community, keyboards only have 26 letters. But if divine authority won't hold you back, neither will a 26 letter keyboard. The solution is the + key. The + key is the ticket to so-called personal fulfillment and you being you. The problem with this is that chaos always comes back on itself. Contradictions cut the knees out from an argumen...

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A Memorable Way to Deal with the Fire of Pornography

Pornography is an epidemic and we had better get really good at addressing it and helping people kill this dragon. To that end I want to give you what I think is a tremendous way to think about a framework of help. This memorable method will help you tackle the problem immediately. This memory device revolves around fire. Let me explain. The Three Parts of Fire and ...

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Culture, Worship, and my Trip to Haiti

Many of you came to the presentation I gave Sunday night about my trip to Haiti. I hope you were encouraged by the ministry happening in Haiti and how Open Door Fellowship got to be a small part of that. But I am sure there were many questions raised about the nature of church life at Bethsaida Evangelical church in Haiti in comparison with our own church life. I am sur...

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The Nashville Statement and the Nature of love

Last week the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, in conjunction with many other leading biblical evangelicals, released a document called the Nashville statement. This statement upheld the historic Christian position on the biblical teaching of human sexuality and marriage. You can read it here. This statement, composed of a preamble, 14 affirm/deny articles, and...

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A LGBT slogan goes to the Science Scrapheap

The ubiquitous LGBT mantra "Born that way" is finally getting dumped in the landfill of scientific fiction. Bible teachers have been trying to do that for years, and the sexual revolution is now doing it for us. What has caused the reversal? Think of it like this. Bikes are wonderful vehicles. But do you know what bicycles are terrible at? They make for terrible tow-tru...

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Talking to our Kids about Winning, Losing, and the Goal of Sports

Someone has said that one of the most difficult things in sports is using a rounded bat to hit a round ball coming at you at a high rate of speed. This may be true, but a far harder thing is teaching your kids to think rightly about sports. Our family is just beginning to enter into the world of kids and sports, and already we are asking the question of how to talk about...

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Why Secularism Failed to Deliver More Tolerance

Many people are beginning to recognize division and intolerance are everywhere, and they are only getting stronger and more hostile. College campuses have to deal with violent rioting over speakers with certain viewpoints while at the same time creating "safe spaces" for students threatened by opposing ideas. Is this the legacy of progressivism: fight or flight? Apparent...

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Beauty… and the Beast of Normalized Sin

The moral revolution continues to speed along with these two commitments: "leave-no-stone-unturned" and "take-no-prisoners." The latest example is the highly anticipated live-action movie Beauty and the Beast. The entertainment industry surrendered to this moral revolution long ago. But the newest twist is Hollywood's offering of a beloved children's story on the altar o...

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Your belief that “Character Matters” will now be tested

As the election draws near to voting day we keep learning more and more about the candidates. The more we know, the more we wish we didn't know. Sadly, we are not surprised by any of it. Every new revelation fits into what we already knew, just like slime fits onto whatever it covers. The real question that confronts the evangelical voter is this, "Does character really...

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You Will Know Them By Their Votes

When Jesus spoke those penetrating words in Matt 7:20, "you will know them by their fruits" he clearly was speaking about the outworking's of a person's whole life. But a part of our lives as Americans is that we get to vote. This means our voting is necessarily one of the fruits of our lives, by which our profession of faith will either be supported or refuted. Christi...

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Abortion and Infant-personhood

I don't know where the term "cop-out" came from, but I know what it means. It means you will not face the truth. You cling to flimsy reasoning because the solid ground of logic is too unmoving and firm. You leave before the cross-examination can be pressed into you. It means you are a coward. That is what I thought when I read this article entitled Why Science Can't Say...

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Give Your Brain A Chance

There is a short story called Harrison Bergeron that I remember reading in high school. The plot is set in future America where there is total equality in every area of existence. Beautiful people must wear ugly masks, strong people must be weighed down by weights, and intelligent people must wear ear pieces that blast sounds in order to break their concentration. This ...

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When Anger is Right and Needful

This post is a portion from an "Ask Pastor John" podcast where John Piper speaks to the issue of righteous, godly anger. In a previous blog that you can read here, I tried to think through the dangers of anger and how to manage it. To bring in more balance, this list from Piper is exceptionally insightful about the place that godly anger should have in our lives. We are ...

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News Sources and the Informed Christian

I was pleased the other day when Albert Mohler finished his summer break and returned to his daily podcast called The Briefing. The Briefing is an analysis of news and culture from a biblical worldview. At the end of this blog I will list a few other great sources for news that you might consider. But first, let's think about news and how we are informed. You can't beli...

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Is Interstellar Life Bad News For God?

NASA held a press conference last week reporting the exciting discovery of the earthlike planet called Kepler-452b. But is this discovery exciting for the church? Are we one step closer to closing the church doors because life is found on another planet? Is this bad news for God? Jeff Schweitzer at Huffington Post says this is absolutely bad news for God and you can read...

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CAN CHRISTIANS LET THEIR BIBLICAL CONVICTIONS SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE NATION AS A WHOLE

This week's blog post is a transcript of Albert Mohler's weekend edition of The Briefing, a daily analysis of current news and events from a Christian worldview. This particular question and answer is very pressing and very insightful. The Briefing Ask Anything Weekend 4-4-2015 Albert Mohler Question: As Christians we affirm the Bible is our standard for morality an...

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Cute Bunnies, Jolly Santa, and Horrid Syncretism

It happens every time we come to Christmas and Easter. Someone somewhere waves a large red flag of warning over our celebrations. Their argument is that buried in the holiday is a connection to paganism. Is this true? Do we need to jettison these celebrations, or radically alter them? Are there dangers lurking in what we do? These are valid questions. We shouldn't shy a...

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Your Christmas Needs More Easter

If you have been to any birthday parties for 4 year olds lately, you know what I am about to tell you. When the piata comes out, there are two dominate mindsets. First is the parent's. This mindset is driven by visions of some boy swinging for the fences only to connect with the pigtails of some sweet, unsuspecting party-goer. The main thing the parents want is for that ...

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Reflections Following My Conversation With An Abortion Provider

Below is a blog by Pastor Scott Sauls. This is one of the best articles that I have read on the pro-life/pro-choice controversy. This article will leave you no place to hide. Whatever side you take, you will find that your own sin has warped what kingdom living calls for. May the gospel transform our approach so that we can have the "true religion" of James 1:27. Pastor...

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26 Ways to “Provoke the 1 Peter 3:15 Question” at Work

This blog post was too good to pass up. If you are not doing several of these at work, you need to do some heart probing to find out why. Posted by Pastor J.D. Greer on August 10, 2014 I mentioned in this weekend's sermon that the Apostle Paul lived in such a way that he provoked a question. Peter said it this way: "In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always ...

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REAL HOPE AND REAL DISASTER

People are really good at making the Bible say what they want it to say. There are lots of factors that contribute to this. Not the least of which is a widespread and growing ignorance of what is actually in the Bible. People simply haven't read enough of the Bible to know that what they think it says is absent from and/or refuted by scripture. One area that seems to fi...

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Self-esteem Will Dismantle Your Love

The right tool for the right job; that's the professional's mode of operation. Even in the area of demolition, If you are going to do it effectively, you need the right tools. So today I am asking, what would be a good tool for dismantling someone's effectiveness for Christ. There are plenty of options, but one less noticed is self-esteem. Your self-esteem is killing you...

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