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 Bear with me as I draw out one last bit from the first of the beatitudes… Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The poor have the reward of their poverty (such an odd thing to say, for it is gift not earnings) the kingdom of heaven now. There is, present tense, the kingdom. Another way to translate it would be, “of them is the kingdom of heaven.” That is, they are i...  Read More

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Matthew 5:3 — Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…Before moving on to a meditation on the second of the Beatitudes, I would like to lingerfor a moment longer on verse 3. This first pronouncement of blessing expects the presence of two realities in our world. Jesus speaks to us of poverty and kings. Clearly, he does so with assumption that we will have some sort of ex...  Read More

In August of 1742, a crowd of 50,000 gathered in Cambuslang, Scotland, for an outdoor communion service amidst the revivals of religion then erupting all throughout the Western world. The setting was the Great Awakening, which burst on the scene in 1735 with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the conversion of George Whitefield at Oxford.The broader context of the...  Read More

Tim Foster preached his first sermon at IPC as an intern in the summer of 2006. The Johnsonfamily was away on vacation, of course. When I returned to the church office, I was greeted inthe hall with questions by Art Broadwick, who, as many of you will know, is not given toexaggeration. Our interaction went like this:“Have you listened to Tim’s sermon?”“No.”“Extraordinary.”“Extraordinary?”“Extraord...  Read More