Doctrine for Life
What a happy surprise we just received—the first two volumes of Petrus van Mastricht’s Systematic Theology translated from our new English translation into Korean! Things like this, quite frankly, send chills of excitement up and down my spine and fill my heart with prayer. Please pray with me that God will bless this important work, which Jonathan Edwards thought was the best work ever published (except the Bible, of course), to thousands of Korean readers!
Available for purchase here:
In the woods behind our home we have numerous deer and a family of foxes, and all kinds of birds, but this is the first time in 25 years of living where we do that we have ever seen a Pileated Woodpecker in our back yard. Usually this memorable bird lives deep in the woods, far from the view of people. This amazing crow-sized woodpecker (easily the largest woodpecker in United States) with its zebra-striped head and neck, has a bill which is as long as its head and acts like a chisel to chip wood away. It can live up to 12 or 13 years.
This afternoon I immensely enjoyed being given a tour of our new Reformation Heritage Books (RHB) building on 29th Street in Grand Rapids which is undergoing considerable renovations. In the picture below, is our able RHB CEO, David Woollin (right), who is intimately involved in all the details of the renovations, and the very helpful renovator and on-site supervisor of the project, Bruce Kwekel (left), who is also a very good friend and member of our church who often serves as an elder. Together, they make a great team. We hope to open for business at our new 44,000 square feet facility next month, D.V.
Pray for God’s blessing on the new facility which we trust will make RHB much more effective at reaching the world with sound biblical, Reformed, confessional, experiential, and practical literature that ministers to the head, the heart, and the hands and feet of our tens of thousands of readers!
Yesterday was a special Lord’s Day for us. Pastor Paul Washer preached a powerful sermon for our Heritage Reformed Congregation in the morning on Romans 12:1 to about 900 people. Afterwards we enjoyed fellowship with him at the home of my in-laws over a noon meal (see picture with Paul and my wife and me).
In the evening, Paul preached for the Grace Community Church while I preached at the Walker URC in Walker, Michigan, on Acts 17:31 about the final, public judgment, after which Mary and I made it back in time for Paul Washer’s moving address to about 350 young people back in our church on the theme of how Christ must be everything in our lives. He stayed on to speak and pray with young people afterward for more than an hour (see picture above).
Pray that some of the young people may have been saved and that many others may have had their faith strengthened.
Last night’s PRTS graduation was blessed by God. As commencement speaker, Rev. Paul Washer delivered a convicting, moving, encouraging message from 1 Corinthians 3 to 400+ attendees, stressing the connection between ministry and stewardship. I provided ten commandments for effective ministry and spoke a personal word to each of the 23 graduates—including our first two PhD graduates.
If you missed it, you can connect here: https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=51421196155130
Will you please pray with us that God will abundantly use and bless these graduates from thirteen countries around the world as they take up a variety of ministry, teaching, or research posts for His own glory, the maturation of believers, and the salvation of the lost?
Please join us for Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary’s commencement exercises this evening at 7:30 p.m. for our 23 graduates from 13 countries—including our first two PhD graduates.
Rev. Paul Washer will give the commencement address: “A Good Minister of Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 4:6). I will give the personal charge: “Ten Commandments for Ministry.”
You can watch it livestreamed here: https://heritagereformedgr.org/sermon/english/livestream/ Please join five minutes before the start of the service or at any time during the ceremony.
Mary and I thoroughly enjoyed the pre-K graduation of our two oldest grandchildren this morning and we were humbled to have four generations present. Pray that these precious girls may grow up to hate sin, love Jesus, and walk in the King’s highway of holiness all their life (Ps. 128:6).
In this short video I discuss four distinct characteristics of Puritan evangelism.
First, their evangelism was biblical. They always used biblical texts. They were men of the book.
Second, they evangelized doctrinally. They knew how to take biblical truths and use Scripture to convict people of sin.
Third, they evangelized experientially. They taught their congregations how the believer experiences the doctrines of grace and what he should experience if he is a true believer. Fourth, they evangelized symmetrically. They were balanced. They taught the gravity and enormity of sin and the beauty of Christ.
Additionally, Puritan ministers not only taught the Gospel from the pulpit, but they modeled an evangelistic lifestyle in their own lives. A minister was the same in the church as he was at home. There was no disconnect. He prayed for his congregation. Puritan ministers commonly declared, “Wherever I go, wherever I do, and wherever I visit, I must leave the savor of Christ behind me.”
“But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine:” (Titus 2:1)
I took the Queen out to eat for Mother’s Day to a quaint and little—very little—red restaurant for a very good hamburger—in our opinion, about the best hamburger one can find in Grand Rapids! Isn’t it amazing how the simplest of pleasures in life become very pleasurable indeed when you’re with a spouse that you love more than anyone in the world? What a wife and mother Mary is—I thank God for her multiple times every single day!
