Our Lord Jesus Christ gave His people the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. This is a significant task, yet it is one that the Holy Spirit enables us to accomplish as we rest in the authority of Christ over all things. In this series, Dr. Burk Parsons walks us through every phrase of the Great Commission, carefully examining how Christ calls us to fulfill the Great Commission in our homes, our churches, our communities, and to the ends of the earth.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gave His people the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. This is a significant task, yet it is one that the Holy Spirit enables us to accomplish as we rest in the authority of Christ over all things. In this series, Dr. Burk Parsons walks us through every phrase of the Great Commission, carefully examining how Christ calls us to fulfill the Great Commission in our homes, our churches, our communities, and to the ends of the earth.

In celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of John Calvin‘s birth (2009), Burk Parsons, editor of Tabletalk magazine and senior pastor at Saint Andrew‘s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., has brought together a group of pastors and scholars to reconsider Calvin‘s life and legacy. In twenty succinct chapters, these men examine Calvin the man; his work (as a Reformer, a churchman, a preacher, a counselor, and a writer); and his teachings (on subjects as diverse as the Holy Spirit and prayer). What emerges is a multifaceted portrait of a man whose contributions to Christian thought and Christian living were significant indeed, a man whose life, work, and teachings are worthy to be remembered and studied even in the twenty-first century. Endorsements “There is a fresh breeze blowing in these pages. A new generation has discovered the riches of biblical truth to be found in John Calvin’s work. Written in an inviting and accessible style, this book extends an invitation to all to come and learn as well. However, what they will learn will have far less to do with Calvin and far more to do with the centrality and greatness of the triune God whom he served. Calvin would have wanted it that way, and so do we.” —Dr. David F. Wells “I personally have benefited in the reading of this work, and most heartily commend it. The value of this book is that it brings out something of John Calvin’s own life and struggles, and then summarizes his doctrinal position, not just as an academic exercise, but in the true spirit of genuine Calvinism, which points men to Christ and justification by faith, producing godliness of life and true communion with God.” —Dr. Morton H. Smith

Nothing stimulates Christian service more than the humble assurance of God’s saving grace. Many of us are immobilized by lingering doubts about our salvation or, worse, by a false security. Is assurance of salvation reserved for the super-spiritual? Is it a sure sign of presumption? What are the benefits of assurance and the dangers of an unsure faith? Separating truth from error, and viewing assurance in relation to its larger family of biblical doctrines, the contributors to this volume demonstrate its significance for grateful, productive Christian living. Each author writes with a pastoral desire to help Christians understand God’s promises and live in the fullness of his grace.

Our Lord Jesus Christ gave His people the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. This is a significant task, yet it is one that the Holy Spirit enables us to accomplish as we rest in the authority of Christ over all things. In this series, Dr. Burk Parsons walks us through every phrase of the Great Commission, carefully examining how Christ calls us to fulfill the Great Commission in our homes, our churches, our communities, and to the ends of the earth.

As we consider the history of God’s people in the Old Testament, we do not observe a people who served the Lord faithfully. The people of Israel did not demonstrate their love for God with all their hearts. Even some of the great heroes of Israel manifested the depths of depravity in their lives.

Nevertheless, it is through our careful study of Israel’s past that we find great comfort. With spiritually discerning minds, we have been given the ability to understand the way in which God’s redemption of His people has been displayed throughout history. As such, we possess insight into the unfolding drama of redemption, from the beginning of life itself to the very end when death itself is conquered.

It is for no small reason that God’s record of His people is replete with stories of failure and renewal. For it is in the history of redemption that the patient God of Israel restores His people time after time, demonstrating His enduring love and faithfulness. Despite their lawlessness and rebellion, the people of God in the Old Testament were repeatedly brought to repentance by the kindness of God and were always renewed in their sweet communion with Him. This common theme of restoration is perhaps best illustrated in the life of David who was the son of Jesse, the shepherd of Bethlehem, the defender of the kingdom of God, the king of Israel, the adulterer, the deceiver, and the murderer. In the biblical portrait of David, we observe a man whose heart was broken by his sin and healed by his Lord.

Upon the occasion of David’s anointing, we recall the words of God to Samuel concerning David’s older brother Eliab: Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. (1 Sam. 16:7)

The boldness and sheer magnificence of these words demand that we hearken to the words of Samuel when he proclaimed to Saul that “the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart…to be prince over his people” (1 Sam. 13:14). David was a man after God’s own heart, not because the heart of David was pure. Rather, he was a man after God’s own heart precisely because he understood that his heart was not pure, and for that reason he hid the Word of God in his heart so that he might not sin against the Lord and so that he might love the Lord with all his heart, coram Deo.

There is a widespread fascination with the end of the world. Throughout history, we have witnessed the bold assertions of soothsayers, naysayers, and doomsdayers. Every day, self-proclaimed prophets of the end times make whimsical predictions about the future. Claiming to have biblical authority, they tout their cleverly devised schemes about the end of the world as we know it, and by reading between the lines of the Old Testament prophetical books, they carefully contort the words of sacred Scripture to fit their fictional fantasies about the second advent of Christ.

Christians throughout the world have become so enamored with some obscure aspect about the second advent of Christ that they construct their entire systems of doctrine upon what might happen—not upon what has happened. We are, indeed, called to live with eager expectation of the second advent of Christ, but we should only do so in light of the first advent of Christ. In remembrance of Christ’s first advent, it is not enough simply to wish Jesus a happy birthday. In fact, to do so borders on blasphemy. Instead, we are called to remember and to celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Logos.

At the first advent of Jesus Christ, the fullness of time had come and God sent forth His Son into this fallen world. As the prophets foretold, He was born of a virgin who was richly blessed of God. He was born under the law of God, not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. As was necessary to redeem those under the Law, He fulfilled the righteous demands of the Law and took upon Himself the sins of His people, His sheep for whom He laid down His life.

As His people, we confess that Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. We believe He will return to this world not as a babe in a manger but as the King of all the earth, in power and glory to manifest His reign over the new heavens and the new earth.

We confess His return because of what He taught us at His first advent and on account of the hope that is within us. For this reason, during the wonderful Advent season that comes each year, we should eagerly await the second advent of Christ as we celebrate the first advent of Christ. Nevertheless, let us always be mindful that although Christmas day comes only once a year, we are called to remember and celebrate the eternal work of Christ—past, present, and future—each day of our lives coram Deo, before the face of God.

In our day, many Christians have a view of church history that is a popular, but unfortunate, caricature. They believe the church started in the first century, but then soon fell into apostasy. The true faith was lost until Martin Luther recovered it in the sixteenth century. Then, nothing at all significant happened until the twentieth century, when Billy Graham started hosting his evangelistic crusades. Regrettably, we form caricatures of history on account of our ignorance of history. Too often, our historical awareness is sorely lacking. What’s more, we don't fully know where we are, because we don’t know where we've been. We might be aware of certain historical figures and events, but we are often unacquainted with what our sovereign Lord has been doing in all of history, particularly in those periods that are less familiar to us.

This is the seventeenth year that we at Tabletalk are focusing on a specific century of church history, and we do so in order that the church of the twenty-first century would better understand how the Lord has worked throughout history to keep His promises. For Christ has promised to build His church and that the gates of hell will never prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). Every century has a story to tell about Christ’s faithfulness to His promise, even those centuries that are perhaps less well known to us than others.

We rightly celebrate the lives and ministries of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Reformers whom the Lord used to help bring the church back to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Yet the Reformation did not end with the passing of the sixteenth century. The gospel seed planted by the fifteenth-century forerunners of the Reformation was watered and tended by the Reformers in the sixteenth century. However, it is in the seventeenth century that we begin to see the full flowering of Reformed doctrine, piety, and practice. During the seventeenth century, so much of what it means to be Protestant and Reformed was codified in the creeds and confessions that we affirm and confess today.

Rome was not built in a day, and neither was the confessional, Reformed, Protestant church. The faithful men and women of the seventeenth century continued the work of the sixteenth-century Reformers by bringing every doctrine, every practice, and every thought captive to the Word of God. May they serve as a model to us as we stand on their shoulders, holding firmly to the divinely revealed truths they faithfully proclaimed for the sake of Christ's church, kingdom, and glory.

John Wycliffe was the morning star of the Reformation. He was a protestant and a reformer more than a century before Martin Luther ignited the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Through Wycliffe, God planted the seeds of the Reformation, He watered the seeds through John Hus, and He brought the flower of the Reformation to bloom through Martin Luther. The seed of the flower of the German Augustinian monk Luther’s 95 theses was planted by the English scholar and churchman John Wycliffe.

Wycliffe died on New Year’s Eve, 1384. Three decades later, he was condemned as a heretic. In 1415, the Council of Constance condemned the Bohemian reformer John Hus (c. 1370-1415) and burned him at the stake, and it condemned Wycliffe on 260 counts of heresy. The council ordered that Wycliffe’s bones be exhumed, removed from the honored burial grounds of the church, and burned, and his ashes scattered. More than a decade later, the Roman Catholic Church sought to counteract the spreading heresies of Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, by establishing Lincoln College, Oxford, under the leadership of Bishop Richard Fleming. Although the pope could condemn Wycliffe’s teachings and scatter his bones, he was unable to stamp out his influence. Wycliffe’s ashes were scattered into the River Swift in England’s Midlands, and as one journalist later observed: They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; and they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over.

Wycliffe was committed to the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture, declaring, Holy Scripture is the highest authority for every believer, the standard of faith and the foundation for reform in religious, political and social life . . . in itself it is perfectly sufficient for salvation, without the addition of customs or traditions.

As such, Wycliffe oversaw the translation of the Bible from Latin into the English vernacular. This was a radical undertaking, and it was against the express mandate of the papacy. His understanding of Scripture naturally led to his understanding of justification by faith alone, as he declared, “Trust wholly in Christ. Rely altogether on his sufferings. Beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation.”

In the fourteenth century, at the dawn of the Reformation, Wycliffe shone as a burning and shining light of gospel truth, and his doctrine mirrored his life as one who lived by God’s grace and before God’s face, coram Deo, and for God’s glory. Soli Deo gloria.

never changes. And though I hear it all the time, there’s no such thing as "falling out of love." Christian couples don’t ever fall out of love, they fall out of being repentant. The gospel hope for our broken homes is our broken and contrite hearts that turn daily to Jesus Christ and His brokenness for us on the cross as our Savior and Lord.

One of the greatest joys of pastoral ministry is preaching the Word of God to the people of God every Lord’s Day, morning and evening. However, it is also one of the greatest challenges of pastoral ministry. The challenge is not only in the enjoyable and arduous task of sermon preparation, nor is it merely in the spiritual, emotional, and physiological strain of preaching. The challenge also comes in expositing and carefully applying the Word of God to the entire congregation—to mature believers and to new believers, to believers who are weak in the faith and to believers who are strong in the faith; to people of various races, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and to adults and to children. I am certain that I will find it a challenge to preach to the entirety of our congregation as long as the Lord sustains me in pastoral ministry. Thankfully, I have had the wonderful opportunity to be mentored by one of the most articulate communicators of our day, Dr. R.C. Sproul. His example of preaching to the entirety of the congregation is one that many faithful pastors have sought to follow.

Striving to communicate to everyone in the congregation is no easy task, and from beginning to end, we who preach are resting in the Holy Spirit to take the Word of God and instill it within and apply it to the hearts of His people. And it is our unwavering belief that the Holy Spirit can regenerate the hearts not only of adults, but of children as well. Thus, we strive to communicate to both young and old. In our congregation, that means that the older must always strive to be patient with the younger, and the younger must always strive to honor the older. For this is one of the ways that our children grow in maturity. We certainly want kids to be kids, but we don’t want them to remain kids. We want them to grow up to be young men and women who are mature in Christ and mature in all spheres of life.

Paul said to young Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). Even the youngest believers can attain and model emotional and spiritual maturity, for maturity is not a matter of age. Some of the youngest among us are the most mature and some of the oldest are the least mature. Young and old alike, God calls all His people to grow into “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), and this not so people will exalt us but so they will exalt our risen and returning Savior, as we strive to live as mature believers, looking to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith.

As a pastor, I often find myself counseling people with addictions. Having served in local church settings for more than twenty years, I find ministering to addicts and their families to be one of the more difficult, complicated, and sad things I do. Every week, I preach the Word of God to people who have never been addicts and may never become addicts, to former addicts, to addicts themselves, and to future addicts. There are some addicts who know they are addicts, some who are seeking help for their addiction, and some who either do not know they are addicts or do not want to admit it. Some people think they will never become addicts because they do not have an “addictive personality.” Others think they will never become addicts because their parents were not addicts. And some fear becoming addicts because they think they have an addictive personality or because so many in their family history were addicts. Whatever the case, all of us have been somehow affected by addicts and addictions.

Statistics reveal that the prevalence of addictions is growing rapidly around the world, even among children who are becoming unknowingly addicted to behavioral and psychotropic medications. We are most familiar with addictions to illegal substances, medicines, gambling, and pornography. Yet we are less familiar with addictions involving sex, screens (video games, TV, smartphones, and so on), and self-injury. In addition, there are numerous people who struggle with addictions that many of us mistakenly deem as “harmless,” such as overeating, shopping, exercise, work, social media, and Internet addictions. Whether public or private, big or little, outward or inward, addictions are real and are ultimately matters of the heart in the lives of image bearers of God.

All addictions have consequences and must be taken seriously. We should not underestimate the significance of addictions in our lives or in the lives of others. What’s more, we should not make addictions insignificant things and simply ridicule and threaten addicts, leaving them to themselves and abandoning them in their addictions. If we ignore an addiction, the consequences can be devastating. We must be compassionate and courageous as we come alongside one another. We must pray, confess, confront, admit, intervene, befriend, and love. As the family of God, we must not give up on those who struggle with addictions as we depend on the transforming and renewing work of the Holy Spirit through the gospel of Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world.

to enter our lives; in His unchanging fatherly love for us, He may decide to discipline us even more in order that we might more detest our sin and delight in Him. We should approach Him in humble reliance on His grace as we seek not merely the blessings but the One who blesses.

Resolving for Christ’s Sake

“So far as they are agreeable to His will for Christ’s sake.” We cannot resolve to do anything with a presumptuous attitude before God. The whole matter of making resolutions is not just goal setting so that we might have happier lives. We are called by God to live according to His will, not our own—for Christ’s sake, not our own—for it is not to us but to Him that all glory belongs (Ps. 115:1).

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published December 31, 2018.

In the church, many people assume that men enter pastoral ministry simply out of a desire to be pastors. But such an assumption is far from the truth. God makes men pastors. He calls us, gifts us, equips us, and sustains us. We enter pastoral ministry not necessarily because we want to but because we must. It is not as if we are incapable of doing other things for a living, but rather that we are incapable of doing anything else that will allow us to obey God and find the God-ordained fulfillment that comes from serving Him with the particular calling and gifts He has bestowed on us. Left to ourselves and our own selfish desires, we would run from God’s call upon our lives. However, we answer God’s call because we cannot help it. For just as God by His sovereign grace makes us all the sheep of Jesus Christ, He makes some of us undershepherds of Jesus Christ, our Chief Shepherd, the one and only head of the church.

Although not every Christian is called to be a pastor, every Christian is called to serve the Lord and His church with the gifts He has given them. The church is not a business organization where the pastor is the paid visionary, entertainer, program director, and CEO. On the contrary, the church is a living organism wherein each and every communing member of the church serves the church with his or her gifts. One of the jobs that pastors perform is helping to shepherd and disciple God’s people so that we might all serve one another, our families, our communities, and our neighbors as we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. At Saint Andrew’s Chapel, one of the questions we ask professing Christians when they take their vows to become members of our church is, “Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?” In taking that vow, members are agreeing not only to support our congregation and missional outreach financially but to support the congregation with their gifts and service, being faithful stewards of their God-given time, talents, and treasures. Furthermore, in vowing to support the church, members are not only vowing to support our congregation alone, but to support the one, holy, catholic (universal), and Apostolic church of Jesus Christ.

As pastors, one of the driving passions of our hearts is to see the church, the family of God, love one another. That each and every member of the church, both young and old, from every culture, race, and socioeconomic background, would serve one another with their spiritual gifts. That God’s people would treat the church like their home, not like a hotel. That we would all see the church as our family, with whom, by the grace of God, we will love, worship, and enjoy our triune God now and forever.

My dad was fifty-two years old when I was born. When I was thirteen, he asked me if I was embarrassed that he was so much older than my friends’ dads. I told him I wasn’t embarrassed but that I respected him and learned more from him because he was older. He was born a few years after the end of World War I and fought in World War II. He had a newspaper route during the Great Depression, and he told me stories about real cowboys, bank robbers, and his father, who grew up at the turn of the twentieth century in the old West in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. My dad wasn’t just older than my friends’ dads, he was from a different era, an era when young men respected old men and when old men raised young men to be men and not just guys. It was a time when older men and older women took seriously the biblical charge to teach and train younger men and women in old values such as integrity, service, loyalty, sacrifice, honor, wisdom, hard work, and humility.

My father’s values were old, traditional values. But just because they were old and traditional didn’t necessarily make them good. They were good values because they were biblical values, and biblical values are relevant in every generation. But although they are relevant in every generation, they are disappearing from the rising generation. The problem today is not so much that young people have consciously rejected ancient biblical values but that they have not been taught what they are, much less been trained in them. Many teenagers simply do not know the old values that many of us take for granted. For decades now, many parents have turned over to Hollywood the responsibility of teaching values to their children. As a result, many young people have been left to fend for themselves and figure out their own personal sets of values, whether or not those values are biblical or conflict with other people’s sets of values. The result is that many young people, in the world and in the church, not only don’t know right from almost-right and truth from half-truth, they don’t even know right from wrong and truth from falsehood. They have not been taught the old values and they have not been guided down the old paths. Thus, they have had to make new paths, not knowing the old paths of their fathers or the ancient path of the Lord.

These new paths have, in turn, become the path of our culture. Much of society is being overtaken by a youth-driven culture because we have neglected God’s call to train up the next generation of young people in the way they should go. If we are to redirect the current paths of young people, we must begin in the church by taking up the charge to come alongside younger men and women, and teach them the old, ancient values of God’s Word.

The love language of all marriages is self-denial. When both husband and wife are consumed not with their own immediate happiness but with the happiness of one another, they will enjoy a happy marriage. The same is true for enduring friendships and for authentic community.

With the disintegration of marriage has come the dissolution of community. As such, community has fallen on hard times. What every generation in every society in all of history has enjoyed, the rising generation will have to fight for. With the rise of online communities, online church, and online everything, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, shoulder-to-shoulder community has become increasingly difficult to find. Moreover, many don’t know what real community is and thus don’t know what to look for. Real community doesn't happen on its own—it takes time, patience, repentance, forgiveness, and love that covers a multitude of sins. The church community is not just a crowd of people on a Sunday morning; it is the gathered, worshiping people of God in a congregation where masks aren’t needed and where real friends help bear the real burdens of one another. Community is not just getting together; it is living together, suffering together, rejoicing together, and dying together.

Although many Christians claim to want genuine community, many want it only on their own terms, when it’s convenient, and when it demands nothing from them. What they want isn't the church community, but a country club where they pay their dues for services rendered. They want to be served without having to serve anyone else. Real community forces us to die to ourselves and get over ourselves so that we might love one another as ourselves. Francis Schaeffer observed that “the early church practiced two things simultaneously: orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of visible community.” Such orthodoxy of visible community is grounded in the “one another” passages of Scripture, which provide us with the essential elements of authentic community. They strike at the root of our self-centeredness, and they lead us to take our eyes off ourselves and to deny ourselves so that we might love one another, encourage one another, confess our sins to one another, forgive one another, and not slander one another, gossip about one another, devour one another, or envy one another. In so doing, our Father in heaven is glorified as we manifest the beauty of the gospel of Christ through the power of the Spirit, who has united a bunch of repentant sinners like us.

“In God we trust” officially became the national motto of the United States in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law. Originally implemented in part to distinguish the United States from the Soviet Union and its explicit state atheism, the motto has remained to our day. Like many mottoes, however, the phrase has unfortunately become more of a throwaway statement for many Americans than a declaration of true faith in the one and only God of Scripture.

It is indeed our hope that our nation—and every nation—would genuinely trust God. Although many people claim to trust God, they act as if He has no authority whatsoever over their lives. They are an authority unto themselves, and the foundation for their self-appointed authority is as unstable as the emotions of their ever-changing hearts. Whether or not they know it, they have succumbed to secularism, which begins in the heart and ends in death. Secularism is the belief that man does not need God or God's laws in man’s social, governmental, educational, or economic affairs. Ironically, secularism rejects religion, yet is itself a religion. In these United States of America, many of our politicians, courts, schools, and businesses embrace and promote the religion of secularism under the rubric of freedom from religion and by the advancement of human autonomy, which inevitably leads to anarchy.

It’s bad enough that secularism is a growing problem in our culture, yet it’s even worse that it’s making inroads in the church. Worship is often shaped by the felt needs and wants of secularized people. Many pastors will not preach on hell for fear of scaring people away. Some of our most popular religious leaders do little more than take self-help messages and dress them up with a veneer of Christianity. Even some preachers have embraced secularism's teaching that we define our own reality. Thus, they are happy to redefine gender, marriage, and a host of other divinely revealed institutions and norms.

Secularism is not only a problem out there in the culture, it is something we must fight in our hearts, our homes, and our churches. We are too easily tempted to forget God and to avoid conflict with the world. It sometimes seems easier to live as if God really isn’t there, to go about our days without reflecting on His authority and that we’re called to live all of life coram Deo, before His face. But if we forget Him, we’ll forget who we are. We are His people, and we are called to stand firm against the creeping darkness of secularism, declaring to our hearts, our homes, our churches, and our nation that the Lord God Almighty has authority over all and that, unwaveringly, in God we trust.

John Calvin was a churchman for all ages. He was a reformer par excellence. He was a godly pastor who equipped his people for ministry. He was a humble revolutionary. He was a loyal husband, father, and friend. But above all Calvin was a man whose mind was humbled and whose heart was mastered by the Lord God Almighty. His life’s prayer—”I offer my heart to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely”—was an unwavering declaration of surrender to the Lord, whom he sought to love with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

While many Christians throughout the world may be familiar with some of Calvin’s doctrines, most are unfamiliar with the man who was so devoted to prayer and the ministry of God’s Word (Acts 6:4). Given all that the Lord accomplished in him and through him, his legacy to us is one of biblical, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical integrity. As such, we would do well to heed the words of Calvin’s friend Theodore Beza, who wrote, Since it has pleased God that Calvin should continue to speak to us through his writings, which are so scholarly and full of godliness, it is up to future generations to go on listening to him until the end of the world, so that they might see our God as he truly is and live and reign with him for all eternity.

Calvin’s greatness was not in his service to himself but in his surrender to God, as B.B. Warfield recognized: Here we have the secret of Calvin’s greatness and the source of his strength unveiled to us. No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction.

This is Calvin’s greatness—his constant surrender to God.

For those of us who desire not simply to wear the five-pointed badge of Calvinism, but who desire to clothe ourselves with the fullness of the old Calvinism, let us follow Calvin’s example as we fall to our knees in constant surrender to God, living each day before the face of God, enjoying and glorifying God forever. This was Calvin’s chief desire for himself, for his congregation, and for us. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion he wrote, “As the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads.”

God is love, and love never fails because God never fails. Love cannot be separated from God and cannot exist without Him. God’s love is the foundation and definition of love, just as He is the source, fountain, sustainer, and enabler of love. God gives meaning to love, and without Him, love isn’t only worthless but meaningless. Without God as its source and center, that which humans conceive of as love is impatient and unkind, envious and boastful, arrogant and rude, always insisting on its own way, irritable, resentful, rejoicing in wrongdoing and falsehood. Without God, love is nothing more than a hateful lie of Satan.

Every day we hear people talk about love as if it were some sort of impersonal force and independent energy that alone has the power to change hearts, restore homes, cure diseases, rebuild communities, and unite nations. The world is infatuated with the idea of love. Even the word itself, love, has degenerated into an all-encompassing, catch-all term that seems to be at the heart of a rising one-religion-politically-correct world language—a language of love that has become a religion unto itself. And although the world, the flesh, and the Devil would love to strip love of all its beauty and character in order to make it adaptable to every conceivable context and theology, such would be a futile attempt. For just as God defines God, God defines love.

In the end, the one, true definition of love will, indeed, win because truth will win, and truth will win because Christ has won, and Christ has won because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. To be sure, we deserve to perish—not just today but for eternity—and we don’t deserve life—neither the life we have today nor life for eternity. The wages of my rebellious sin is death. Consequently, I deserve eternal condemnation just as much as Mahatma Ghandi, Adolf Hitler, and my own children. Every man, woman, and child—no matter how good or bad we think we are—will perish without repenting from self-trust and trusting in Jesus Christ, who is the only truth, the only life, and the only way to the Father. True love means proclaiming the truth. True love means proclaiming the gospel. True love means proclaiming the love of God and the wrath of God, and the most unloving thing we could possibly do is withhold the truth from those who are perishing without Christ—the truth about God’s love, holiness, justice, and grace; the truth about man’s sin, death, and hell; the truth about faith, forgiveness, and an eternal life coram Deo, before the face of God in heaven, where God’s love will reign over us forever.

Awakening is at the very heart of the Christian faith, and it is the reason we are Christians. Awakening is the powerful work of our sovereign and gracious God. When He awakens us, He doesn’t simply awaken us from sleep, but from death. Awakening is the glorious work of regeneration, revival, and reformation. When God awakens us, He regenerates our hearts, gives us the gift of new birth, and makes us alive. He says to us, “Live!” (Ezek. 16:6). The Holy Spirit invades, conquers, and persuades us. He rips out our stubborn, self-trusting hearts of stone and replaces our dead hearts with new, living hearts—hearts that are made willing and able to believe; hearts that are soft and pliable in the hands of our Father, united and lovingly enslaved to Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

When God awakens, He always brings revival, whether it is the revival of a single soul, the revival of a family, the revival of a community, or the revival of a nation. When God brings revival, He always brings deep and convicting repentance that leads to a life of faith, repentance, and obedience. When God awakens, He always brings true and lasting reformation—reformation of hearts, lives, homes, and churches. However, we cannot schedule awakening, and we should not attempt to devise a superficial, formulaic scheme to bring about awakening. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “A revival never needs to be advertised; it always advertises itself.” Awakening happens only when God ordains it. He brings about awakening according to His sovereign plan. He brings about awakening where He wants, when He wants, and to whom He wants, all according to His good pleasure.

Nevertheless, just as God ordains awakening, He ordains the means of awakening. God not only sovereignly ordains the ends of all things, He ordains the means of all ends as well. And the means that God has ordained to bring about awakening are the ordinary means He has already ordained for our regular weekly worship and daily growth in grace. The Word, prayer, and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the ordinary means of grace God has given us. These are the means through which the Holy Spirit works to bring true conversion, true revival, and true reformation. God’s awakening power is not activated by our schemes and tactics, but by His Spirit and His ordinary means of awakening. And we must trust Him to do precisely what He pleases to do according to His sovereign wisdom, resting in the promise that the light of His countenance shines upon us as we live before His face, coram Deo.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He did so for the sake of the peace, purity, and unity of the church. His first thesis called the church to genuine and continual repentance, and among his last theses he called the church to true peace through Christ. Luther wasn’t a rebellious schismatic who sought to lead a revolt against Rome; he was an ardent herald and defender of the gospel who, due to his obstinate and unwavering faithfulness, drew Rome’s ire in the midst of its revolt against the truth, the gospel, and the true church. Luther wasn’t a divider, he was a peacemaker. For there to be true peace and true unity, there must first be truth, and truth divides before it can unite. Truth must conquer before it can liberate. Luther did not divide the church—Rome divided the church by infusing the church with the false doctrines of men. The Reformers didn’t leave Rome—Rome left them by leaving the truth, the gospel, and the church. The Reformers sought reform in Rome, and in return, Rome sought their heads. Rome divided the true church from the false church and kicked out the true church.

The forerunners of the Reformation (such as Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus) and the Magisterial Reformers of the sixteenth century (such as Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin) are rightly called Reformers, but they were Reformers in the most basic sense of the word. They sought reform in order to bring the church back to her original form. For something to be reformed, there must first be the form itself—and the form the Reformers sought was the original form of the church found in the only infallible guide for faith and life, namely, Scripture, and Scripture alone. Ultimately, the Reformers were not seeking to change the nature of the church, but to call the church back to her biblical identity and to who she must be in order to be the true church.

The Reformers wanted peace, but not at the expense of truth, as Luther cried, “Peace if possible, but truth at all costs.” True peace only comes through true repentance. In calling Rome to repentance, Luther didn’t set out to divide the church but to unite the church and bring about real peace by proclaiming the truth. True peace is found only in the truth of Jesus Christ, and thus real peace and unity can only exist where truth reigns. The true church knows the truth, and the truth sets us free (John 8:32). And when we are free in Christ, we will also seek the truth and, in turn, the peace, purity, and unity of the church for the glory of God alone, soli Deo gloria.

In 1977, Dr. R.C. Sproul launched Tabletalk as a monthly newsletter featuring news about the Ligonier Valley Study Center in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, which was established in 1971. The newsletter also included articles covering a wide range of subjects for Ligonier students and supporters. Dr. Sproul and his fellowship of teachers from the study center and abroad contributed articles on biblical, theological, cultural, and philosophical matters with a focus on helping Christians grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. In 1989, the format of Tabletalk changed, and a monthly theme, columns, and daily Bible studies were introduced. Since 1977, Tabletalk has witnessed tremendous growth in readership, with now more than one hundred thousand copies of Tabletalk going out the door every month and an estimated audience of 250,000 readers in more than fifty countries. We are grateful for our Lord’s continued blessing these past forty years, and, if the Lord tarries, we hope He will continue to bless the ministry and readers of Tabletalk for the next forty years as we strive to make disciples of all nations for God’s glory, not ours.

Tabletalk is Reformed, and we mean it. We are not ashamed of being distinctively Reformed in all that we do. We are Reformed because we believe that to be Reformed is to be biblical. To be Reformed is not only to stand firmly on the same doctrine as our faithful Reformation forefathers, it is to stand firmly on the Word of God. To be Reformed is not only to believe that God is sovereign over salvation, but to believe that He is sovereign over everything. To be Reformed isn’t simply to accept the doctrines of grace, but to take great comfort in them, to teach them graciously, and to defend them courageously. To be Reformed is to believe that God has one glorious covenantal plan of redemption, and that He is carrying out that plan. To be Reformed is not to give mere lip service to the historic Reformed confessional standards, but to affirm them heartily and study them diligently. To be Reformed means not only that we are professing members of a local Reformed church but that we are regular, active worshipers and participants in the life, community, and mission of our local churches as we take the gospel to the ends of the earth. To be Reformed is not to be a complacent, smug, arrogant, or apathetic people, but to be a gracious, dependent, humble, prayerful, evangelistic, joyful, loving people who believe that God not only ordains the end of all things but that He ordains the means of all ends in us and through us by the powerful ministry of the Holy Spirit for His glory alone.

God’s Word but to obey it, love it, apply it, and proclaim it as we live coram Deo, before the face of God for His glory.