Covenant Presbyterian Church

When Peter and John stood before the Sanhedrin, something unexpected occurred.  The Jewish leaders assumed that they would be able to threaten Peter and John into submission.  Weeks before, they had done away with the chief object of their hatred.  Dispensing with his disciples should be quick work: warnings, beatings, perhaps some time in jail, a death or two.  With the striking of the shepherd, the sheep would be easily scattered.  In their blindness and hatred, the Jewish leaders were completely unprepared for the personal effect Jesus had upon Peter and John.  Being with Jesus fundament

There is a grand and glorious shaking occurring throughout the West.  It is most evident in the governments of the would-be gods, but this is to be expected.  For these governments are but the fading shadows, rotting corpses, and worn-out legacies of Enlightenment thinking.  The Enlightenment heralded the exaltation of science over divine revelation, man’s law over God’s, the secular state supreme over all.  It was, is, and has always been an attempted resurrection of the Tower of Babel.  And these governments are shaking, especially here.  Europe has already experienced devastating judgmen

There came a day, even a moment, when being a Christian took on new urgency joined with empowering freshness.  Perhaps it occurred progressively, which is likely, for the Spirit’s witness to Jesus, his communication of the Prince of life as our food and drink usually unfolds and possesses each soul little by little.  No new revelation came beaming from heaven; nothing beyond the same old Bible, the same Bible new.  Obligatory discipleship, necessary duty became a “you have come to Mount Zion,” the delight of the soul, a straight and level path, a light burden.  Sin was still present, to be

On July 3, 1863, close to thirteen thousand soldiers rose from their tree-shielded position and bravely marched three-quarters of a mile over open fields, under the constant barrage of thick cannonade and furious enemy fire.  Half never returned from the assault.  A very few made it to the objective, the center of the enemy position on the opposing ridge, the High-Water Mark of the Confederacy.  This engagement is known as Pickett’s Charge.  It ranks with the bravest maneuvers, however ill-conceived, in human history.  Walking these fields, as I have done, is an unnerving experiment.  Earth

Religion in America is being miserably reduced to just another product in a very glutted market of commodities and services.  However popular, consumer-driven theories of “church” wreak utter havoc upon the church’s divinely mandated ministry and focus, with the most egregious fruit being the neglect and adulteration of God’s word, preached and heard with faith.  A few examples should suffice.  Baptisms are now regularly accompanied by biographical videos playing overhead, with the finished recording given to the initiate as a record of his special moment.  So inept in handling and experien

There are defining seasons in our walk with God.  They usually involve divine introduction of testing into our lives.  Such testing often takes the form of family trials, for the domestic battle against sin is in many ways the front line of our Savior’s gospel march through history.  Testing is often aimed at our health or work.  It might also consist of a battle with long-standing sin, or some event that makes brings this contest to the forefront of our lives with such force that all else recedes into the distant background.  The death of someone dear to you is one of the Lord’s most serio

On the occasion of John Calvin’s five hundredth birthday, we do well to recall a statement made in 1611 by the Hungarian reformer Paul Thuri, who lauded Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion in this now-famous distich: “Praeter apostolicas post Christi tempora chartas, huic peperere libro saecula nullam parem.”  He did not exaggerate.  For intellectual breadth, spiritual passion, exegetical skill, and systematic genius, “No generation after the time of Christ, except for the writings of the apostles, has ever produced the equal of this book.”  The prerequisite legal training, master

The history of the death of the west may not be much more complicated than the story of its unending pursuit of sexual gratification.  While this is not a uniquely European epitaph, this pursuit has and is being used in our nations to further a variety of political agendas and enslave the masses with the illusion of freedom.  In the United States, we might start with Margaret Sanger, founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, whose passionate crusade for unrestricted access to contraceptives was matched only by her promiscuity, broken relationships, and life-long guilt for

Even the word fills us with trepidation.  The last thing we want is grief.  O, we will speak of the annoyances of daily life as “trouble” or “hard times,” but grief is not the dissatisfaction of a jaundiced culture frustrated that some object of its desire, pleasure, or convenience is withheld, lost, or made more difficult to obtain.  Grief is agony of soul and vexation of spirit.  It is misery and miserable.  It is the scream of the bereft heart before the yawning chasm of the grave.  It is the aching of a parent as he watches his profligate child destroy his life.  It is the inconsolable

The need to leave one congregation and choose another is a sign of our times – of our weakness and fragmentation, of our inability and unwillingness to resolve problems biblically, of our constant search for the perfect situation, and of our general rootlessness, whether geographically, doctrinally, or interpersonally.  Leaving a church is almost always painful – the loss of a comfortable situation and beloved friends, starting relationships over again, the questions.  Then, after the honeymoon, I find that my new perfect church, the best thing in town, has problems, maybe worse than my las