Title: When Satan Cancels Your Plans
Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:17—3:13
Originally delivered on 25 October 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Within the twenty-five-verse narrative of Exodus 19, Moses makes three of his seven trips up and down Mount Sinai, which might not sound all that enthralling, but the events that lead up to the actual giving of the law in the next chapter make this one of the most important sequences in the entire Bible. Some commentators have even suggested that, in fact, it is the most important chapter. Whatever the case, this chapter refuses to be ignored, even as the exultant Decalogue awaits being declared. With all the attention that’s given to the laws that boom forth from the summit of Sinai, it is critical to consider what precedes that moment, as the Lord offers his people an indispensable word about what it looks like to be in a relationship with him.

1. God Acts First

What does it mean to be the people of God? And what makes that an ongoing reality? What is it that maintains their status as God’s people? These are incredibly resonant questions, especially since Israel has already showcased just how flimsy their devotion is on several occasions. Even beyond that, though, these questions reverberate through the heart of the majority of the ecclesiastical schisms in church history. The question of how unholy sinners can belong to and relate to a supremely holy God has long been debated by the likes of Paul, Luther, the prophets, and even Christ himself.

Despite how often the church has misunderstood its identity, longevity, and mission during various epochs, most of those inquiries are resolved, surprisingly so, in a text that serves as a prologue to the law. But this isn’t like those prologues and prefaces you’re inclined to skim or skip on your way to more important pages. Before any command has been etched in stone, before any “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not,” before any requirement has been put upon them, telling them what they must do or how they must act, God tells Moses to tell the rest of Israel all that he has done for them (Exod. 19:2–4).

It’s notable that the Lord’s first words in the covenant confirmation ceremony that is about to ensue are words that recap what he has accomplished on his people’s behalf. In other words, the only reason Israel belonged to the Lord is that the Lord made them his own. They didn’t earn this relationship, nor did they deserve it. No amount of merit or worth in them prompted God to make them his people. The reason they belonged to God is pure mercy.

That’s it; that’s the reason. They were made his people because of his merciful choice, because of his word of promise (Deut. 7:7–8). God didn’t wait for Israel to find their way to him — he went out of his way to draw them to himself. They didn’t scratch or claw their way out of Egypt — God brought them out. They didn’t steer themselves through the treacherous terrain of the wilderness — God shepherded them all the way. They belonged to him because he brought them to himself, even if they kicked and screamed along the way.

2. Mercy, Then Law

From first to last, Israel’s story is one where God takes the initiative to make them his people and to keep that relationship alive. And, of course, that’s our story as well. If God waited for us to find him, we’d be irreparably lost. But just as the Lord called and brought Israel to himself, so, too, does God leave the ninety-nine to find the one. This is the good news that announces Jesus has come to us, to rid us of the enemies of sin and death, and to bear us on his shoulders and bring us to himself. All because ours is a God who is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4).

It wasn’t our merit that incited God’s condescension in Christ, especially since we have none to speak of. It was all mercy. “When our Savior appeared,” Paul writes, “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:4–5). The point is that God’s mercy always comes before God’s law, even here in the foothills of Sinai. This doesn’t mean the law has gone quiet. It still gets the first word in the sinner’s ear, indicting, exposing, and shutting mouths. The law accuses — lex semper accusat — no one cries mercy who hasn’t first been cornered. So while the law gets the first word, mercy does the first work. This is no accidental or circumstantial emphasis; this is the order that allows us to relate to a holy God and stay in relationship with him, apart from which we have nothing.

I am reminded of the scene when the woman who was caught committing an adulterous act is dragged into the plaza, where Jesus was preaching (John 8:1–11). The discoverers of this woman’s infidelity are, of course, eager to entrap the Galilean Rabbi, but Jesus is not so easily enmeshed in the affairs of the pious. Despite the woman’s faults, which were glaring, to be sure, she is relieved and restored by the words of the Savior, who tells her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). The order is vital. She isn’t told not to sin, and then condemnation won’t come for her. Rather, it’s mercy, then law.

Once we start tinkering with the sequence of those words, we end up misconstruing how God relates to us, and we to him. Again, the law accuses, and Israel was about to feel that accusatory word deep in their bones. No one mistook the thunder and the lightning for an invitation to start climbing. As J. Alec Motyer aptly reminds us, the law is not a “‘ladder of merit’ by which we try to climb, by grim obedience, into his ‘good books’ — it is a way of life revealed to those who are already by redemption in his good books.”1 The Ten Commandments weren’t given so God’s people could earn God’s favor, precisely because they already had it.

3. The “If” That Trips Us Up

The law that was revealed on Sinai is the expression of the holiness that characterizes God himself and serves as the thoroughfare by which a nation of former slaves can live as “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:6). What so often trips us up, though, is that little word if: “Therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession” (Exod. 19:5). If we aren’t careful, or if we aren’t paying attention, that “if” can change the entire tone of this scene.

The temptation is to read what God is saying as a condition, as if he will only make them into a holy nation and a kingdom of priests depending on their fidelity to the law. From a certain point of view, we can read this “if” as if Israel’s “status” as the Lord’s “treasured possession” is dependent upon them and how well they’re able to obey his voice and keep his covenant. In that catastrophic scenario, the “if” twists God’s words over his people into a carrot of covenant relationship that is dangled at the end of the stick of their performance. “You’ll be mine if you do this.”

The problem with that is that the Lord has already said they were his, which means their status as the Lord’s highly valued property wasn’t in jeopardy. And how do I know that? Well, because even after they’ve failed for centuries, God still calls them his treasured possession (Mal. 3:17; cf. Deut. 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps. 135:4; Titus 2:14). Their status as God’s people comes from a decision God made about them, as well as a deliverance God won for them, both of which spring from God’s merciful heart.

Accordingly, the “if” in Exodus 19:5 isn’t about status. What’s at stake is their enjoyment of all the blessings and privileges associated with their identity as God’s people, along with their influence among their neighbors (Exod. 19:5). This, as you might imagine, is supremely important for understanding the purpose of God’s law, which is meant to minister to us by showing us how holy God is, and how unholy we are.

4. Living Like What You Already Are

Although the law discloses to us what holiness looks like, it can never make us holy. This is where the gospel comes in and makes us holy through the gift of grace and the Holy Spirit. However, the ongoing ministry of the law continues to reveal our sin and shows us how to live as God’s people. The motivation to live as his people isn’t to get into a more favorable relationship with God. Rather, it’s to show the world that we belong to him.

The obedience to which God’s people are called isn’t an obedience that can make them any less or any more his people. It’s obedience that evidences to friends and neighbors what was already true of them because of what God did for them. It’s obedience that exhibits their belonging. And as they obeyed and observed God’s words, they not only reflected God’s holiness among the nations, but they also deepened their enjoyment of God himself. Motyer’s commentary again proves insightful:

It was not, therefore, that they were ordered to obey in order that they might enter the covenant, but that, already being within the covenant, they were called to obey so that they might enjoy the benefits and privileges of God’s people . . . The significant if with which verse 5 opens relates not to covenant status but to covenant enjoyment. Status comes by the acts of God; enjoyment by the responsive commitment of obedience. Obedience is not our part in a two-sided bargain, but our grateful response to what the Lord has unilaterally decided and done.2

Put differently, none of the law’s threats comes at the risk of forfeiting their status as the beloved of God.

5. A Holy God Among Unholy People

As Moses brings God’s words to the elders and the rest of the people, they respond by affirming a wholehearted embrace of whatever is required of them. Although this is the right response, I’m not sure they understood what they were signing up for, especially since the tone of the scene shifts as the Lord informs Moses that he’s coming to meet them (Exod. 19:10–13). This, of course, wasn’t meant to induce a sense of dread, like Imperial officers overhearing the imminent arrival of Emperor Palpatine. Rather, God meant for his people to understand that he is holy and they aren’t.

The ensuing consecration regimen and the border that’s erected around Mount Sinai aren’t because God wants to keep them at arm’s length. It’s all because he wants to be with them and among them. In other words, this is the posture of a holy God who is eager to be in a relationship with very unholy people, and to do that, God demonstrates the gap between them and him — a gap that can’t be crossed by them (Exod. 19:12). And as the day of God’s arrival dawned, God’s people were greeted by one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Scripture:

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. (Exod. 19:16–19)

Amid all the smoke and fire and lightning and thunder, the peal of a trumpet pierces the sky, crescendoing as Yahweh himself approaches. This is what it looks like when an infinitely holy God enters an unholy realm. Our fickle, finite minds can barely fathom it, let alone nature contain it. Here comes the Lord, ready to tabernacle with his people.

6. Where You Cannot Go

Moses’s prep work serves as a preview of the forthcoming Tabernacle, the place where God calls his people to worship him, replete with boundary markers identifying where the people are permitted to go and where their priest goes, and a Holy of Holies, where the very presence of God dwells. The foothills of Sinai, therefore, became a site where the function and structure of the Tabernacle was acted out, with the key figure being Moses. Despite all the regulations and prohibitions, only Moses was allowed to venture up. He was the one who went where others could not.

And yet, even after all their preparing, washing, and abstaining, the people of God still weren’t fit for the holiness of God’s presence (Exod. 19:20–25). No one, no matter how hard they try, can make themselves pure. “The holiness of God,” Motyer notes, “is such that no human self-preparation can ever satisfy its demands.”3 Even our best efforts at cleaning ourselves up fall woefully short of how holy God is. Indeed, the holiness of God is always greater than our thoughts could ever comprehend it to be. Only one man is summoned to stand before the Lord and represent the multitude.

This, of course, makes Moses Israel’s go-between or mediator. And the message is clear: if God’s people want to relate to this God, it will only ever be through a mediator. If we have any hope of relating or belonging to this thrice-holy God, it will only ever be through someone acting as our representative. The good news of Scripture tells us that this is exactly the role Jesus fulfills for us. “There is one God,” Paul says, “and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

7. The One Who Brings You Up

Left to ourselves, left to our own devices or abilities, we’re just like Israel at the base of a terrifying mountain, frantically looking up and knowing we can never go up (Heb. 12:18–21). We can never make it. There’s a line we can’t cross, a gap we can’t close, and a holiness we can’t withstand. And yet, piercing the din of our failure is the good news that we haven’t been summoned to Sinai but to Zion (Heb. 12:22–23). And the difference isn’t that God is any less holy or that his righteousness is relaxed. The difference is that we have a better Mediator standing in our place.

Even though Moses was able to stand between God and the people, he was never actually able to bring them up. Moses could represent them, but he couldn’t transform them. He could speak for them, but he couldn’t secure their standing for them. The gospel is the announcement that Moses is no longer our mediator. Jesus Christ is (Heb. 12:24). He is the one who comes all the way down into our mess of sin and death, goes up to the cross, and closes the gap that Sinai exposed.

Because of him, and his blood, which speaks a better word over us, we don’t stand afar off. We draw near. We are invited to come close, not because we’re so good or because we have behaved well enough or because of how clean we are or because we have obeyed. We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.

Sinai can show us what it means to be holy, but it can’t make us holy. It can’t secure your standing before the Lord. In other words, your relationship with God doesn’t hang on your ability to climb; it rests on who comes down to bring you to himself. The good news for the church is that the God who thundered on the mountain is the same God who takes on flesh to bring you near to him.

What makes us into God’s people? Mercy alone. And how do we relate to him? What keeps us in a relationship with him? Mercy, in the form of a Mediator who stands for us.

Title: Where Your Faith Rests
Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:1–16
Originally delivered on 18 October 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

In the 1700s, the Church of Scotland told its clergy not to recommend a certain book that was making the rounds — the reason being it was offering Christ to sinners indiscriminately, with no fine print. Listen along as Jeffrey Perry from the Marrowcast joins the show to talk about the ongoing legacy of The Marrow of Modern Divinity, the law-gospel distinction, and the Pharisee that lurks in us all.

Jeffrey lives in North Carolina with his wife Lindsay and their four children, where he serves as pastor of Gospelway Baptist Church in China Grove. He co-hosts the Marrowcast with John Meeks, where you can also find his sermons and writing. You can follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Resources:
The Marrow of Modern Divinity, Edward Fisher
The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance―Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters, Sinclair Ferguson
How Shall I Go to God?: And Other Readings, Horatius Bonar
The Imperfect Pastor: Discovering Joy in Our Limitations through a Daily Apprenticeship with Jesus, Zack Eswine
The Judgment Seat of Christ: A Primer on the Final Judgment, Rewards, and the Believer’s Final Hope, Jeffrey Perry
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

Sponsor:
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Credits:
Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
Composer: DJ Quads, soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
License: Creative Commons (BY-NC 3.0), creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Music powered by BreakingCopyright: breakingcopyright.com

Title: The Church That’s Stamped with the Savior
Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10
Originally delivered on 11 October 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Title: The Word No Man Can Silence
Text: 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10; Acts 17:1–10
Originally delivered on 4 October 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Title: The End of Scorekeeping
Text: Matthew 18:21–35
Originally delivered on 27 September 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

At the heart of a particularly poignant section of Gerhard O. Forde’s Theology Is for Proclamation, a distinction is made between the “Jesus who preached” and the “Jesus who is preached.” While that might sound like nothing more than esoteric fare for homiletical nerds, it’s precisely this distinction that radically alters how preachers preach. This, of course, is a field in which I have a vested interest. What preachers preach about and how they go about fulfilling the preaching task isn’t a minimal pastime. The words that echo from pulpits around the world have the ability to shape the lives of individuals and communities. But what shape are they being formed into?

This question can help us trace the ways in which the “Jesus who preached” track and the “Jesus who is preached” track diverge. While one might suppose that these tracks are parallel, they aren’t. Their trajectories are off by a few subtle degrees, such that, when taken to their eventual end, they are worlds apart. The “Jesus who preached” assumes the taxonomy of a Jesus “who is amenable to us,” Forde says, one whom “we would never have crucified had we been there, a Christ who would be approved by reasonable and free beings, a Jesus who is the perfect earthly exemplification of our ‘Christ principle.’”1

In other words, the Jesus who preached all too often adopts our views and preferences on just about everything. He agrees with us and votes like us and does what we do and values what we value. But “just as we try to make God ‘nice’ by our theologizing,” Forde continues, “so also are we inclined to make Jesus into a ‘gospel’ suitable to our taste.”2 And what good is a Jesus who is suitable to us? It might, at first, sound like good news, but there’s not much benefit to be had in the wake of the “Jesus who preached,” precisely because it keeps what he came to accomplish in the realm of an ideal we’re all meant to pursue. The so-called “prize of the upward call” is the assurance that’s encased in the archetype of Christlikeness, which, it’s said, Jesus came to realize.

A generation or two before Forde, this same distinction was noted by renowned Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen, who, while caring for the moral ideals of his day, wasn’t duped into assuming that preaching morality could actually solve the crisis of immorality. “It is one thing,” he once wrote in a treatise called What Is Faith?, “to hold that the ethical principles which Jesus enunciated will solve the problems of society, and quite another thing to come into that intimate, present relation to Him which we call faith; it is one thing to follow the example of Jesus and quite another different thing to trust Him.”3

In the same book, Machen goes even further, piercingly naming the exact threat Forde would oppose decades later: “The truth is that in great sections of the modern Church Jesus is no longer the object of faith, but has become merely an example for faith; religion is based no longer upon faith in Jesus but upon a faith in God that is, or is conceived to be, like the faith that Jesus had in God.”4 Although their grammar might have been different, both Forde and Machen express the same conviction: far better than ivory-towered principles and forever out-of-reach ideals is the Jesus who is preached.

The Jesus who is preached is the word of the gospel that brings sinners into contact with their Savior, with one whose words actually do what they promise to do, not a syllable of which ever returns void (Isa. 55:11). “Proclamation,” Forde wrote, “is not ‘about’ something other than itself. It does not point away from itself. It does not signify some other thing. It is the saying and doing of the deed itself.”5 Rather than offering an ideal after which sinners and saints are made to strive, the Jesus who is preached gives what he says. Peace, pardon, and assurance aren’t held out as carrots dangling at the end of Christlike piety. They are gifts given through “the present-tense unconditional proclamation” of the Crucified and Risen one.6 The good news, Machen concurs, is that Jesus came “not merely to lead men through His example out into a ‘larger life,’ but to give life, through His death and resurrection, to those who were dead in trespasses and sins.”7

This imbues the sermon with a new vocabulary, one where preachers are found “pouring Christ into [the] ears” of their hearers.8 Instead of alluding to an event that happened two millennia ago, hoping that its veracity compels saints to “press on toward the goal,” the Jesus who is preached is right here, right now, releasing sinners from bondage and raising them to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). “Proclamation,” Forde concludes, “is present tense: I hear and now give the gift to you, Christ himself, the body and blood of the Savior. I do it in both Word and sacrament. This is God’s present move, the current ‘mighty act’ of the living God.”9 When preachers preach the Jesus who is preached, the old house of rebellion and ruin is occupied, the strong man bound, and his hostages freed.

Both Theology Is for Proclamation and What Is Faith? together are a powder keg of homiletical revelation ready to combust. And this is why both belong within arm’s reach of every preacher. Whereas Forde won’t let the homiletician settle for an inspirational message about Jesus, Machen refuses to treat imitation as a substitute for faith. And when read in tandem, the preacher’s task snaps into focus. Instead of an example to chase, preachers preach a Jesus who seeks, finds, and remakes, even as he gives himself away on the lips of imperfect preachers, Sunday after Sunday.

I was trying to think of a way to theologize what I wanted to share with you, and the Lord brought to mind Ecclesiastes 3, where the Preacher — maybe, probably Solomon — ponders the passing seasons of life. “For everything there is a season,” he muses, “and a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). He then proceeds to ruminate on the kaleidoscope of appointed times that make up life, from birth to death to weeping to laughing to loving to hating (Eccl. 3:2–8). I’ve always found this particular section of the Preacher’s meditations especially affecting, not merely for its literary quality but also for its existential resonance. If there’s one thing this passage conveys, it might be summed up in the oft-quoted aphorism, “This too shall pass.”

Notwithstanding what your current season looks like, whether it be a time of planting or plucking up, or mourning or dancing, wisdom tells us that what is won’t be forever. Times will change and roll into new ones, a fact that’s simultaneously encouraging and sobering. The former serves as a buoyant reminder that seasons of pain and heartache, when it seems as though the fabric of your life is tearing at the seams, aren’t perpetual. The intensity of the storm subsides as the thunderhead moves into another valley or dissipates as the mountainsides break it apart. The latter reality, though, instills in us the prudence to know that times of prosperity are fleeting, too.

An on-the-nose example of this might be the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 18 and 19, who quite literally goes from a mountaintop experience to a valley of despair and back again. From besting several hundred prophets of Baal in a battle of wits to running for his life from the clutches of Queen Jezebel to wishing he’d just die because life has gotten too heavy for him, Elijah experiences the full gamut of emotions in a short amount of time. The point isn’t to hasten about seeking out newer and fresher mountaintop experiences at all costs, but we can cherish them by understanding who’s with us in life’s high and low seasons.

To put this in modern parlance, I have to cite the age-old counsel of Dunder Mifflin’s Andy Bernard: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days, before you’ve actually left them.” If there are words to encapsulate the gist of the Preacher’s words and Elijah’s exploits, I think it’s those. More pointedly, though, if there are words that epitomize the ache of my generation, you can do none better than Ed Helms’s proverb.

My algorithms have recently become inundated with those A.I. reels that seemingly depict “How Christmas Looked in the 90s” or “POV: It’s a 90s Christmas,” complete with yellow-tinted incandescent lighting and garish holiday accoutrements that feel intensely familiar, despite being spat out by a data center somewhere. I won’t lie, I’ve been stopped in my tracks a time or two, or seven, when these little clips pop up, especially the ones that portray youngsters gleefully booting up a video game console to play a few rounds of Halo or Star Wars: Battlefront, with little worries about anything else. They remind me of a season that isn’t anymore, of a time that felt simpler, more innocent, even if it wasn’t.

I think what makes these silly reels so evocative is the fact that they manifest a time more than a few Internet users distinctly remember. For whatever you might say about Millennials, it’s remarkable to think about what those in that generation, of which I am a member, encountered. I can pinpoint memories before the omnipresent inundation of the World Wide Web. Heck, I have a vivid memory of when my family got its first computer back in the day. One PC for an entire household seems both foreign and ancient. It was one of those white behemoths, situated in my dad’s downstairs study, and the only things I knew how to do on it were create crude drawings in Microsoft Paint and play Solitaire.

And now that I think about it, I can even recall the thrill I received when my dad got a new laptop for work that came with Microsoft 3D Pinball: Space Cadet, still one of the best games known to man. The point is that this same generation that remembered a time before notifications and perpetual connectivity and location-based suggestions and algorithmic newsfeeds also had to learn how to adjust to all of the above. This isn’t a “woe is me, feel bad for Millennials” lament. This is just a confession that deep within the Millennial consciousness are real memories of a time those in younger generations can only dream about.

I don’t want to retread old ground, since I wrote about this last March — “Relief for an Algorithmic Age” — as did Gen Z essayist Freya India, but there’s a growing phenomenon where folks in younger generations yearn for a time they never knew, which Freya calls “anemoia.” The phonelessness of it all was both alien and appealing, triggering a particularly sensitive nostalgic corner of the human psyche that, I think, recognizes that pixelated connection isn’t what we were made for. But I don’t have to imagine what that must’ve been like. I was there. I remember those times. And as I’ve gotten older, it makes more and more sense to me why nostalgia is so intoxicating, even if I know — and I’ve preached about this — that nostalgia isn’t really true to life or all that life-giving.

Perhaps I’m layering on the melancholy a little too thick in this rather innocuous update. Or, perhaps I’m just in my feelings, and this is what’s emerging. I don’t really know which is which, if I’m honest with you. The objective of this stream of consciousness is really only to tell you two things. (1) This season of life has been kicking my butt. And (2) that means I’m going to be adjusting my publishing schedule for the foreseeable future.

From family schedules and personal priorities to pastoral responsibilities and writing obligations, this has been one of the most hectic seasons I can ever remember. I don’t say that to garner sympathy. I say that just so it makes sense when I tell you that I’m going to be reducing my Substack output considerably for a season. The Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine of post-sermon-post (or podcast) is going to switch to a Tuesday-Thursday post-sermon or podcast-sermon schedule for an indefinite amount of time. This, Lord willing, will alleviate some of my self-imposed pressure to publish “content,” allowing me to focus on local and family needs and writing deadlines.

If you didn’t already know, I have two books coming out in 2028, if the schedules stay as they are right now. One through 1517 Publishing and another through B&H Academic, both of which I am enormously excited about. Rest assured, I’ll be sharing more details about each project over the next several months. Until then, I’m learning, like we all are, for the most part, to live in the present and enjoy whatever season God has for me. I don’t say that as someone who’s figured it all out. I say that as a guy who’s definitely still learning — who’s desperate for the daily bread of Jesus and his grace, which abides and sustains every season.

See you Tuesday. Grace and peace.

Title: Beyond the Ruins
Text: Isaiah 54:1–17
Originally delivered on 20 September 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

The narrative that spans Acts 10 and 11, which runs for nearly seventy verses, relays the striking conversion of a high-ranking military captain and the intricate sequence of events that led to him entrusting his life not to Caesar but to Christ. And yet, as stunning as that may sound, that’s still not the most shocking development contained in this story. As is often the case, these chapters are regarded as Cornelius’s conversion story, but it could just as easily be called Peter’s conversion.1 By that, I don’t mean to suggest that Peter gets “saved” here, but his understanding of God’s salvation in Christ is broadened beyond what he or anyone else could’ve ever imagined.

1. The Scattered Church

Up until about Chapter 8, the gospel of Christ was still relatively confined to Jerusalem. This, of course, wasn’t without warrant since the apostles were specifically told to stay put in that place (Acts 1:4–5; cf. Luke 24:47, 49). But, of course, the good news concerning Christ’s death and resurrection wasn’t supposed to remain in Jerusalem forever. This news was meant for the whole world’s ears (Acts 1:8). And when the zealous Pharisaical extremist known as Saul began “ravaging the church” in the aftermath of Stephen’s murder, the church scattered, and notice to where:

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. (Acts 8:1–3)

Even amid that harrowing season of uncertainty and upheaval, Christ’s words were coming to fruition, as his witnesses spread the word about him beyond the borders of Jerusalem, “in all Judea and Samaria.” The reach of the gospel was widening (Acts 8:4–5), perhaps not in the ways many anticipated, but Luke’s summation of the ministry of the church to that point sounds an awful lot like a bookend to the Great Commission. “The church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria,” Luke records, “had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31).

In other words, Acts 10 and 11 witness the moment the proclamation of the gospel crossed a line pretty much everyone assumed was uncrossable, including Peter. And the church has never been the same since.

2. A Soldier, a Saint, and the Need for a Preacher

Luke begins by introducing us to a man named Cornelius, who was a Roman centurion stationed in Caesarea (Acts 10:1), which was among the most important cities in the first century. Home to a major seaport connecting Judea to the rest of the world, and home to the evolving cultures of Greece and Rome, Augustus Caesar’s namesake city soon became the administrative capital of Rome in Judea. All of which to say, Cornelius’s status was among the highest and most influential in a city teeming with powerful people.

And yet, there was another side to him that surely surprised everyone who knew him. This battle-hardened career military man was known far and wide for his generosity and devotion to Israel’s God (Acts 10:2). Some of his men even go on to describe him as “an upright and God-fearing man, well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation” (Acts 10:22). To say that Cornelius is a complex character is an understatement. It’s difficult to be dogmatic about the extent of his knowledge and the depth of his faith. Whatever he knew or was aware of, it moved him to do something about it, which is saying something.

However genuine Cornelius was, it’s apparent, at least to me, that something was still missing from his faith. He desperately needed a preacher, which is precisely what the Lord ends up giving him (Acts 10:3–6). Bursting into his room and interrupting his afternoon tea was an “angel of God,” who greeted him by name and told him that although all his almsgiving and praying hadn’t gone unnoticed, he needed to send for Peter, who happened to be lodging thirty miles south in the town of Joppa. Cornelius wasted no time dispatching one of his men and two servants to go there (Acts 10:7–8).

3. The Vision That Broke Peter’s Brain

Meanwhile, as Cornelius’s men were making their way towards Joppa, Peter went up to the rooftop to pray. Unsurprisingly, he got distracted by the noises his stomach was making. Hunger became more vital than prayer, but while he waited for his host, Simon the tanner, to make lunch, “he fell into a trance” (Acts 10:9–13). Even though, physically speaking, he was still on Simon’s roof, spiritually speaking, he was somewhere else — he was “displaced,” transported, like a daydream.

Before him unfurled “a great sheet” or a linen sail, and as it came into view, he noticed all kinds of creatures on it. A miscellaneous hodgepodge of hoofed, scaly, and feathered friends was all seated on the sheet, mingled together. And as he took all this in, he heard a voice telling him to make lunch for himself and enjoy the heavenly buffet. But, being the devout Jew that he was, Peter outright refuses (Acts 10:14), resisting the urge to make a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel for himself. He knew the law; he knew what was required of him. There was a whole chapter in the Torah that detailed what should or shouldn’t be eaten (Lev. 11:1–47), and the mixture of common or unclean creatures in front of him made partaking off-limits.

Peter’s resistance stems from his devotion, perhaps seeing this moment as a test of his faith that he needed to pass. He wouldn’t be made to give in that easily. “Not today, Satan!” But the voice persisted, inviting Peter to freely eat whatever he saw (Acts 10:15–16).2 Seeing and hearing all of this left him utterly befuddled. But as he attempted to figure out what it all meant, at that exact moment, (1) Cornelius’s three men arrived at Simon’s house and (2) the Holy Spirit spoke to Peter (Acts 10:17–20).

In what can only be chalked up to God’s impeccable timing, both Cornelius’s quest for assurance and Peter’s breakthrough were happening at the same time. And the convergence of both occurs when the three men knock on the door and call for Peter by name. Suddenly, it clicked! Three men, three sheets, and the Spirit’s approval to go downstairs and “accompany them without hesitation” (Acts 10:20; cf. 11:10–11). Peter does just, greeting the men and even inviting them “to be his guests” (Acts 10:21–23).

This, in and of itself, is a remarkable development. A company of men in the employ of Rome being unhesitatingly welcomed and housed by a devout Jew is a radical display of hospitality and grace, and that’s only half of it. Peter ends up accompanying the men back to Caesarea, where Cornelius had amassed a sizable audience to hear what the apostle had to say (Acts 10:24–26). And soon after sharing what brought him to Caesarea, Peter eagerly waited for Cornelius to explain why he had summoned him in the first place:

He went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.” And Cornelius said, “Four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner, by the sea.’ So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” (Acts 10:27–33)

4. God Doesn’t Play Favorites

After the surreal events that brought a Roman centurion and a law-abiding Jew under the same roof, what happens next is even more astounding, if you can believe that. Peter opens his mouth and starts preaching a sermon that was filled with an array of radical assertions, not the least of which is when he attests that “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). Despite what had long been promoted by the Pharisees, and what the majority of the Jews relished in, the God of the Word wasn’t a God of favoritism. No smidgen of prejudice resides in his heart. As Peter puts it, “He is Lord of all” (Acts 10:36).

A widespread belief in those days was that the Jews were not only God’s “chosen” people, but also the preferred and superior race. They had “the corner” on God’s favor, or so they thought. And it was this thinking that led to the demeaning and disparaging treatment of the Samaritans and the Gentiles, which was rampant. It was an understood norm of society that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,” as John tells us (John 4:9). In fact, when one Samaritan village rejected Jesus, James and John’s first reaction was to wonder why their Lord didn’t call down fire from heaven to “consume them” (Luke 9:52–54).

This level of animosity stemmed from the fact that the Samaritans were “half-breed heathens” who had intermarried with the Israelites during the days of the exile. But despite being “lesser-thans,” they still had every right to relate to or belong to the Living God, who knows nothing of bias based on bloodlines. What Peter was learning in real time was that no race has the upper hand when it comes to God’s favor. The same words of hope and peace that were entrusted to Israel are available to all, to “everyone who believes” (Acts 10:43).

The promises originally given to Father Abraham weren’t confined to one people or place. Rather, they incorporated everyone — “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” in Abraham’s offspring (Gen. 22:18; 26:4). And as Paul tells us, that “offspring” is none other than Jesus himself (Gal. 3:16), which is why he goes on to say that all of God’s promises to the O.G. patriarch correspond to God preaching the gospel to him (Gal. 3:8). Peter’s sermon in Cornelius’s home follows the same track, upholding Christ himself as the culmination of God’s words to God’s people.

Christ was “the word sent to Israel,” and the world, “appointed by God” to bring peace to the nations by making peace through his self-giving on the cross. He spans the gap between ragged sinners and an infinitely holy God, extinguishing all wrath and paying for all sin, a feat that was accomplished not merely for a select class or category of people but for the whole world (Acts 10:43; 1 Tim. 2:5–6). Notwithstanding one’s background, age, race, gender, intellect, or socio-economic status, there is peace, pardon, and new life free for the taking in the person of Jesus. And the only “condition,” if you can call it that, is that you believe, and by believing receive what he is so eager to give — namely, himself.

This is God’s word to us, his “testimony,” the gospel that he has commanded us to preach (Acts 10:42). Neither Peter nor Paul nor James nor John nor Luther nor we are authorized to tinker with this message, adjusting it to fit our liking. “Only one message has the Lord’s authorization,” R. C. H. Lenski comments. “Any alteration of that message, any substitution for it, is not only empty but, when it pretends to be the Lord’s true message, makes the herald who proclaims it a liar, a false prophet.”3 Indeed, as soon as the church or its leaders begin messing with the message God has entrusted to them, the essence of the message is lost.

As Peter makes clear, preaching ends when the preacher starts telling you either what they themselves want to say or what you want to hear. Either way, God’s words are thrown by the wayside in favor of “something else,” some other message, that’s entirely incapable of cleansing sin or raising the dead. But when the church stays true to the testimony about Jesus Christ, which has been entrusted to them, God has a knack for showing up.

5. The Danger of Tweaking God’s Testimony

When the news about what happened in Caesarea echoed in the ears of “the circumcision party,” they were beside themselves, criticizing Peter sharply and publicly (Acts 11:1–3). According to their by-laws, the foremost apostle had perpetrated a series of violations against Jewish tradition and custom, fraternizing and fellowshipping with those who were deemed “off limits.” Not only did he show an unmitigated level of hospitality toward Gentiles, but he also received their hospitality in return. “The circumcision party,” who also had a number of run-ins with Paul (Acts 15; Gal. 2:12; Titus 1:10), couldn’t fathom the audacity of Peter’s actions, entertaining and evangelizing an assembly of undesirables.

These self-righteous influencers are the epitome of what happens when God’s testimony gets twisted, when human beings go beyond God’s words to add qualifications and stipulations that never existed. Suddenly, you’re no longer rejoicing when the gospel is received and believed. Instead, your only concern, the only thing you can focus on, is all the broken protocols and severed traditions. And it’s precisely this brazen sense of self-righteous superiority that the gospel puts to bed.

6. The Ragged Church

What Peter stunningly came to realize, and what he is now boldly proclaiming, is that the gospel knows nothing of hierarchies. There is no ranking system of worthy versus unworthy, clean versus unclean people. The only category of human being with which the gospel deals is sinners, and that’s all of us; sinners are all that there are (Rom. 3:9–12, 23). Accordingly, Peter’s vision wasn’t really about how pork rinds and scallops aren’t off the menu anymore. Rather, it was to show him and us what the church is supposed to look like.

Like the sheet that filled Peter’s view, the church is home to people “from every corner of the earth” (Acts 11:5). The Body of Christ is filled with people from every race, region, and rank (Rev. 5:9–10), including those once thought to be outsiders and beyond the reach of grace. They, too, can rejoice in the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. No matter how ruined or ragged, corrupt or compromised, a sinner may seem to our eyes, the moment any sinner believes in the gospel, they belong at Christ’s table.

Far from being a club for the morally polished, politically correct, socially acceptable, or religiously impressive, the church is and always has been an assembly of sinners who’ve been absolved by what they hear and receive. This means that there’s no such thing as being too far gone or too dirty or too broken or too addicted or too ashamed to belong. “No poor sinner in all the world,” H. A. Ironside once wrote, “need feel he has gone so far there is no salvation for him.”4 The good news tells us that God’s Son willingly bore the unclean label so that we could be declared clean. He was cast out so that we could be welcomed in. He was forsaken so we could be received. The unfit and the unworthy are free to have a seat at his table, not because they’ve straightened themselves out, but because his blood has reserved them a seat.

What if the most prevalent two words in Scripture — “fear not” — aren’t a command to try harder, but a promise to hold onto? This is the question Luke Kjolhaug and I aim to answer in this edition of the Ministry Minded Podcast, where we talk about Luke’s new book, Fear Not, and how the gospel of Christ for you speaks grace and life and hope in the middle of our most fearful moments.

Luke is the pastor of Elim Lutheran Church in Osakis, Minnesota, where he lives with his wife, Bethannie, and their two daughters. He holds degrees from Wheaton College and Lutheran Brethren Seminary. You can connect with him on Facebook and Instagram.

Resources:
Fear Not: How the Gospel Transcends Our Deepest Anxieties, Luke Kjolhaug
Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer for the Christian Life, Luke Kjolhaug
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

Sponsor:
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Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
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Title: The Word Prevails
Text: Acts 19:1–41
Originally delivered on 13 September 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

Having recently preached on Jesus’s miracle of turning the water into wine, I have John 2 on the brain, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m not complaining, especially since there are several hermeneutical and/or homiletical threads that I want to highlight here that I wasn’t able to cram into my sermon. One of the unsung skills a preacher has to have is knowing what insights should be left on the cutting room floor and which ones actually serve the sermon he’s writing. This, of course, doesn’t just mean that good preachers are good editors, but kind of.

I don’t mean to imply that sermons are indistinguishable from essays. They’re not. Having been on both sides of preparing a sermon and an academic essay, while there are certainly overlapping elements, there are worlds of differences, chiefly in the Spirit’s filling, or what some old theologians might refer to as “unction.” To offer my own definition of what unction is, it’s the investiture of Christ’s Spirit to convey the Word of Christ with deep emotion.1 If you’ve listened and/or watched one of my sermons, you might notice times when that unction is more or less apparent.

And while it might feel like I’m rambling or digressing, I promise I’m not. What I’m getting at is just that there are some things that live on in print better than they do in homiletical practice. I’ve had to wrestle with this reality several times over the years, editing out sentences or phrases that get a little too cute for their own good. Wordplay is often hard to convey without over-explaining, and by that time, you might as well have skipped it. Sort of like a joke you have to end up deconstructing for someone to finally get it.

With that said, preaching about the miracle at the wedding of Cana brought with it many wonderful exegetical details that I didn’t want to go to waste. The paradigm that made it into my sermon was understanding the jars Jesus used as the critical piece of evidence for understanding what he was doing the whole time. The six stone jars that the Lord gestures toward and directs the caterers to fill with water weren’t random pots collecting cobwebs in the corner. These were jars that were set aside “for the Jewish rites of purification,” which was a topic of debate that seemed to follow Jesus and his disciples wherever they went (John 2:6; 3:25; Mark 7:1–5).

The scandal wasn’t that Jesus and his men were raggedy or failed to practice good hygiene. The point was that Jesus wasn’t interested in playing the Pharisaical game of tethering one’s religious standing in the eyes of God to one’s ability to wash their hands correctly. Hand washing, among other things in the first century, had become more than just something you did to get ready for a meal. It had become a referendum on your piety, one that went well beyond any Mosaic standard (Matt. 15:1–2; Luke 11:37–39). Jesus’s insistence on using these jars and filling them with wine is, as I understand it, a subtle but nonetheless pointed invective on the emptiness or, we could say, “dryness” of the incumbent religious system.

Bruce Milne puts it plainly: “The ‘new wine’ of the kingdom brought by Jesus contrasts with the old wine of Judaism.”2 Or, as Stanley D. Toussaint says, “The old wine had run out, and Christ the Messiah was here to bring the new.” Turning water into wine was no mere wedding party trick. Rather, as Toussaint says, “the miracle shows the old order had run its course; now was the time for a new one.”3 Without his filling, without the new wine of the blood of the Lamb, our religious impulse will be empty, at best. What’s needed is precisely what Jesus provides: himself.

Perhaps the most regrettable thread that didn’t make it into my sermon was connecting the wine at this wedding to the wine of the new covenant, which Jesus identifies as his own blood (John 6:53–56; Matt. 26:27–29). The groom whose wine supply is scarce is eclipsed by the true and better Groom whose wine, which is his blood, never runs out (John 3:29–30). This is the argument Jan M. Kozłowski makes, writing, “The wine Jesus gives to the wedding guests is a type of His blood which will be spilled to save the world.”4

Kozłowski’s essay draws a straight line from the wine to the blood to highlight the soteriological undercurrent of Jesus’s first miracle. It was a calculated and programmatic event that accomplished multiple things at once, chief of which was saving the groom from disgrace and hinting at the salvation the better Groom came to accomplish. This understanding keeps this miraculous event from veering into some other field, keeping this account within biblical theological grounds to perceive its resonance through the lens of the revelation of the Christ of God. E. Ray Clendenen makes this striking assertion plain to see when he writes:

Jesus’s words and actions there intentionally foreshadowed his shedding of blood on the cross for our atonement, which would provide not just external cleansing but internal life and transformation. He was preparing us for his teaching that the Christian life entails our eating and drinking Jesus until at the great marriage banquet we see him face to face . . . Jesus’s words to Mary, and especially his reference to the ‘hour’ of his death are ‘almost unintelligible’ unless he was associating the need for wine with the need for his own sacrificial blood to be shed at the cross in order for us to receive the eternal life he came to provide.5

There are a few other clues within the text that bring this out as well, not the least of which is the day on which this miracle took place. “On the third day,” John tells us, “there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee” (John 2:1). From approximately the midway point in Chapter 1 through Chapter 2, John seems to focus on the first week of Jesus’s public ministry in an intentional way (John 1:29, 35, 43; 2:1, 13). Clendenen’s essay includes a fairly convincing outline suggesting that the miracle at Cana actually occurred on the seventh day of the inaugural week of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.6 And much like the first “third day,” Jesus’s last “third day” sees the new wine of his blood poured into stone-dead hearts, making them alive by his grace and resurrection.

But perhaps my favorite detail from John 2 is its prophetic connection to Moses and Elisha, the former of which appears in Richard C. Trench’s nineteenth-century work Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord:

The first miracle of Moses was a turning of water into blood (Exod. vii. 20); and this had its fitness; for the law, which came by Moses, was a ministration of death, and working wrath (2 Cor. iii. 6–9). But the first miracle of Christ was a turning of water into wine; this too a meet inauguration of all which should follow, for his was a ministration of life; He came, the disperser of that true wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Ps. civ. 15) . . . This prophetic aspect of the miracle we must by no means miss. He who turned now the water into wine, should turn in like manner the poorer dispensation, the thin and watery elements of the Jewish religion (Heb. vii. 18), into richer and nobler, into the gladdening wine of a higher faith.7

The full gamut of Jesus’s earthly ministry is seen in abbreviated form in water turning to wine. Contrasted against Moses’s miracle of water into blood, which spoke only of judgment, Jesus’s miracle of water into wine speaks only of grace. This distinction works even better once you remember that John just got through telling us that while “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Just as John’s Gospel itself opens with the sudden incursion of the new upon the old, as God’s Word becomes flesh, we are made to see the same thing within the scene at Cana.

But along with the connection to Moses, there’s another prophetic tie to Elisha, who, in 2 Kings 2, undertakes a prophetic sequence, if you will, that Jesus ultimately fulfills. In brief, the beginning of 2 Kings 2 sees Elisha’s predecessor, Elijah, swept up into heaven on a chariot of fire, graphically depicting the new succeeding the old. After Elisha takes up the mantle as Yahweh’s prophet, he proceeds to demonstrate his capacity for both blessings and curses. In Jericho, he removes the bitter curse from the spring so that the people could drink, while at Bethel, he pronounces judgment on a mob of young men who mocked him and the words on his lips.

Similarly, in Cana, Jesus turns empty waterpots for purification into brimming vats of wedding wine, while in Jerusalem, he pronounces judgment on a bunch of temple merchants who had turned God’s grounds of grace into a marketplace of religion. Elisha’s healing of the poisoned spring coincides with Jesus’s metamorphosis of water into wine. And just as Elisha cursed those who scorned the prophet’s words, so Jesus curses the place where that Word should’ve been heard and honored the most. But what neither Moses nor Elisha could do, Jesus does. He absorbs the curse by becoming a curse so that we might be redeemed (Gal. 3:13) and reconciled to himself.

Grace and peace to you.

Whether it’s angelic beings showing up unannounced or God himself appearing to troubled prophets and patriarchs or petrified apostles caught in a torrential storm on a fishing boat, the Bible’s most oft-repeated promise goes something like this: “Don’t be afraid.” Those two words — “Don’t fear” or “Fear not” — pepper both testaments, greeting sinners and saints alike with buoyant hope amid life’s perpetual pressures. And while there may not be three hundred sixty-five occurrences of it as some devotional blogs might lead you to believe, its prevalence can’t be overstated. Nor should it.

Life is full of fearful things. Events and crossroads and decisions come with truckloads of fear-inducing thoughts about making the right choice or going the right way. Relationships, career paths, college applications, friend groups, church membership, etc. — seemingly every facet of life as we know it is backdropped by the fear of things not working, of being ostracized, of not fitting in, of not being successful, of being overlooked. As Pixar made sure to remind us in 2010’s Inside Out (easily one of my favorites), everyone has a Fear avatar in their head that keeps you safe when you’re young, but can keep you trapped as you age.

I think whether we’d admit it or not, there’s something we fear. And I don’t just mean like heights or spiders, even though those are legit. I mean the profound existential fears, like mattering in this life or what happens in the next. You know, the kind that keep you awake at 2 a.m.; the kind you don’t have to look for because they find you. Maybe we wouldn’t be apt to admit that there’s a corner of our mind, or maybe multiple corners, where we’ve harbored those fears, let alone put those fears in print. But that’s exactly what my friend Luke Kjolhaug has done with his latest book from 1517 Publishing, Fear Not: How the Gospel Transcends Our Deepest Anxieties.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know Luke over the last few years, initially in pixelated form via the conceits of connection that modernity affords, but then through the much more profound flesh-and-blood association of participating in the same ecumenical pastors’ network — Ken Jones’s brainchild, the Iowa Preachers Project — the purpose of which was to think deeply and communally about how to preach the gospel of Jesus more compellingly. As preachers who have a shared vested interest in the art of preaching, Luke and I bonded over many things that preachers in my orbit do: the law-gospel distinction, Reformation history, etc. But I think what also drew us together to the point where I’d consider him a dear friend is our shared fears and the ways we’ve found solace in the person of Jesus.

The best way I can introduce Luke to you, if he’s in need of an introduction, is to tell you that he’s an earnest, heartfelt preacher, committed to preaching the good news of Christ crucified and risen again for everyday people. This isn’t to comment on his capacity for heady theology that academicians love to argue about; it’s just to say that heady theology often has little bearing on everyday sinner-saints who are desperate for ways to stay hopeful, even as they navigate the everyday onslaught of trouble, anxiety, and fear. This was definitely true in Luke’s first book, Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer for the Christian Life, in which he endeavored to unpack Martin Luther’s simul iustus et peccator, that is, “simultaneously justified and sinner,” and the profound impact that has on daily life. But this non-ivory-tower approach to theology and pastoral ministry is even more apparent in Fear Not.

There are times when life in “East of Eden,” as it’s often called, can feel as though we’re treading shark-infested waters. And whether or not the next fiasco to hit headlines and occupy our attention will be as menacing as Steven Spielberg’s original Jaws or as non-threatening as one of those less successful or memorable sequels, who’s to say? Regardless, fear is palpable and perennial. Fear is pervasive. Open your phone, and you’ll quickly find a cavalcade of things to be afraid of, or at the very least, dread. We live in a marketplace that trades in fear and information about fear-inducing revelations. And we’ve become so saturated in all of this fear talk that we’ve resorted to putting our phobias in our Instagram bios. Fear is just part of our identity now.

There are myriad reasons why this notion feels incredibly modern, a crisis of the now, but this is nothing new. From lying patriarchs to a panicky multitude to runaway prophets to trembling apostles, the prevalence of fear is part and parcel of the human condition post-Genesis 3. There’s a tremor in our souls that manifests as an undercurrent of panic, almost like a low-grade fever. Sometimes it’s obvious; other times, it’s subtle. But always, it’s there. And no amount of Advil can quell it. We might not be able to diagnose it, but we are governed by fear more than we’d ever care to admit.

What makes Luke’s work in Fear Not so resonant is that he dares to show you his fears and faults and foibles. He refuses to write in theological platitudes or with scholarly posturing about all the ways you shouldn’t resign yourself to fear. Rather, he insists on writing as one in the thick of it, as one whose past is marked by fear. “God used my fears to drive me to my knees,” he admits, “to a posture of dependence rather than independence, where I could rely on the strength of another.”1 Fear Not wasn’t a book that was written at a distance. It was written by one who’s been there and back again, whose fears aren’t mastered so much as they are taken to the one who can do something about them.

Without trafficking in clichés or offering saccharine slogans dressed up as spiritual solutions to all those things that cause us to tremble, like a good theologian of the cross, Luke calls a thing what it is, stares down some of our deep-seated fears, even some of his own, and gestures to the one whose love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). “Only the Word of the Gospel,” he says near the end of the book, “is powerful enough to tunnel its way through the subterranean layers of our fear-prone hearts.”2 The fear that haunts us, that lurks inside us, is only deafened when we hear a word outside of us, which is precisely what “Don’t be afraid” is meant to communicate. To put it bluntly, “fear not” on Jesus’s lips isn’t a command so much as it is a promise, and so should it be on the lips of preachers, too.

Much like the gospel itself, Luke’s Fear Not isn’t a book that crushes you. It’s not a book of tips, tricks, and techniques on how to dispel fear from your life. The point isn’t for every reader to suddenly become fearless and live life with reckless abandon like those “Fear Not” bumper stickers. Actually, when you get to the end of Luke’s book, you might have just as many fears as when you started. But what you’ll discover along the way is that fear never has the final say, ever, and that even in all those days, times, and seasons of fear, even when your fears are thick and your faith is thin, you are never alone. There is one who is with you, whose promise of “Don’t be afraid” is invariably followed by, “For I am with you” (Gen. 26:24; Deut. 31:6, 8; Josh. 1:9; Isa. 41:10).

I know I may be a little biased because I wrote the foreword, but Fear Not is a gem of a book. It’s a gift to preachers and those who listen to preachers alike. It’s a book that meets you where you are, in the middle of your fears and doubts and worries. I hope you will get yourself a copy, because, in so doing, you’ll find yourself within earshot of the Word that speaks the same promise to you over, in, and through every fear: fear not. Not because life has suddenly become less fearful or less threatening, nor because your fears have suddenly gone mute. But because the Christ of God has come close with enough grace for every fear you carry. And those whom he holds fast, he never lets go.

Grace and peace to you, my friends.

Title: The God Who Has a Knack for Showing Up in Caves
Text: Psalm 142:1–7
Originally delivered on 6 September 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

After witnessing the Lord split a body of water in two, turn a bitter stream sweet, and even cause a fresh spring to flow from a boulder, the sudden shift to the pragmatic in Exodus 18 feels almost like a banal interruption. This narrative is different from the ones that precede it in almost every way, devoid of any earth-shattering miracles and garnering little attention outside a sequential study of the book as a whole, such as this. Indeed, in many ways, Chapter 18 feels largely out of place, which might not be that far off.

Skipping ahead for a moment, Chapter 19 picks up right where Chapter 17 leaves off, with the multitude setting out from Rephidim and arriving at Mount Sinai (Exod. 17:1, 8; 19:1–2). Chapter 18, however, disrupts the natural flow by having Israel already encamped near the foot of “the mountain of God” by the time the narrative gets underway (Exod. 18:5). What’s more, when Moses explains his role, as he sees it, to his father-in-law, it’s understood that God has already given him the law, or at least part of it (Exod. 18:16).

All of which to say that, for a brief moment, the biblical narrative ceases its chronological ordering and goes off track, begging the question of why. Why stop being chronological? Why is Chapter 18 put here? What’s the point? Why would you interrupt the flow? Well, in so many ways, Moses seems to be telling us something crucial about what it means to be “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:37). Here, he gives us a glimpse at how the Lord not only saves a people but also organizes them around his Word.

1. The House That God Built, and Is Building

As God calls Israel and builds them up into “a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5), we’re also made to see how God does the same thing with his church. Whether via Israel or the church, God’s penchant is to take dead stones and turn them into “living stones,” making them into “a holy priesthood,” the goal of which is “to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus” (1 Pet. 2:5). He is forming and fashioning a people for himself, after his own likeness, who live for him and him alone. However you look at it, the same essential truth comes to the fore — namely, that ours is a God who is keen on liberating slaves and forging them into a congregation that subsists on his words (Rom. 6:17–18).

As Exodus 18 opens, we’re greeted with the arrival of an unexpected guest, one whom we haven’t heard from since Chapter 2. Jethro’s arrival means Moses is reunited not only with his father-in-law but also with his wife and sons (Exod. 18:2). The details of this reunion were likely just as fresh as the day it transpired, filling Moses’s mind with all the emotions of seeing his family for the first time in years. Whenever it was that Zipporah took their boys back to Midian for a spell, I wonder if he questioned whether or not he’d see them again. I don’t want to read too much into it, but there must be a reason why Moses rehearses his sons’ names and the meanings behind them:

The name of the one was Gershom ( for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land”), and the name of the other, Eliezer (for he said, “The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh”). (Exod. 18:3–4)

I am inclined to say that laying his eyes on Gershom and Eliezer reminded Moses of precisely what God had done for him. Even though he had been a stranger in a strange land, the Lord was with him every step of the way. He was his help at all times. In other words, Moses’s sons bookend his own life story, one which God had been authoring the whole time.

2. Witnessing to What’s Been Done

This emotional reunion soon turned evangelistic, though (Exod. 18:5–7). Despite Moses and Jethro having much to catch up on, Moses was eager to relay a very specific message to his father-in-law — namely, “all that the Lord had done” (Exod. 18:8). News of Israel’s exodus had spread throughout the surrounding regions, Jethro’s homestead in Midian included. Rumors had circulated about plagues crushing the might of Pharaoh, of seas splitting in half, and of former slaves being led by a personal God, prompting Jethro to pay his son-in-law a visit, perhaps to see if those rumors had any merit to them.

As the priest of Midian (Exod. 18:1), we can infer that he was a figure of some rank and authority in his hometown. And yet, here he comes to hear about what Israel’s God had done for them — an especially surprising revelation once you recall how Midian grew to be a thorn in Israel’s side, leading them into idolatry and eventually oppressing them for nearly a decade (Judg. 6:1ff). But as Moses recites Israel’s story, he places a singular emphasis on “all that God had done” (Exod. 18:1, 8).

3. Grace for Outsiders

It’s noteworthy that there’s no mention of any of the wonders he and Aaron did in Pharaoh’s court, nor of his fortitude in the face of his own people’s reluctance, nor of anything that would’ve drawn any attention to himself. Moses’s message zeroes in on what the Lord did — that’s all that mattered. And it is precisely this message that precipitates the most unexpected response from Moses’s father-in-law:

Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the Lord had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” (Exod. 18:9–11)

For all intents and purposes, this is Jethro’s confession of faith. As he acknowledges the supremacy and might of Yahweh above all other gods, we ought to see this for what it is: a Gentile priest rejoicing and professing belief in the covenant-making God. And lest you think this is just an emotional outburst on Jethro’s part, he doubles down on his confession with a formal offering in the presence of Israel’s elders (Exod. 18:12). This pagan priest is thereby shedding his paganism and embracing the God of Israel, the one true God, who is “greater than all gods” (Exod. 18:11; cf. Ps. 95:3, 97:9; 135:5).

In a truly profound way, this is one of the earliest indications we get that the congregation of Israel didn’t exist for itself. They weren’t supposed to isolate themselves in an echo-chamber of monotheistic piety. Rather, they carried with them the divine promise that in them and through them “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.

What Jesus makes so apparent throughout his earthly ministry and what’s eventually revealed to Peter through a supernatural vision (Acts 10) is that God’s saving acts were meant to be broadcast among the nations, because his kingdom, that is, his church, is comprised of the people whom God has ransomed for his own glory — people “from every tribe and language and nation” (Rev. 5:9; 7:9). Indeed, one of the many reasons Jesus got so flustered with the religious elite of his day was due to their pietistic exclusivity, leading to one of the Lord’s best curveballs when he showed up to show all those stuck-up Pharisees that the kingdom of heaven wasn’t a kingdom just for Jews. It was a kingdom for Gentiles and Samaritans and prostitutes and tax collectors and lepers.

Dale Ralph Davis articulates it like this:

The climax of the deliverance section consists of a gentile confessing his faith in Yahweh as the supreme and saving God. So Yahwheh has not only delivered Israel from bondage but delivered a gentile from blindness. We needn’t wait for those stories of Rahab and Ruth and Naaman — already in and with Israel’s salvation Yahweh is at work bringing light to the nations. Already he is bringing the riff-raff under the truth of God and into the kingdom of God.1

The power and pathos of this scene emerge when we remember that we are all converts, just like Jethro. We’ve all been “grafted in” to the “spiritual Israel” as the “true sons of Abraham” (Rom. 11:17–18; Gal. 3:29). Although we were all alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to all the covenants of promise, we’ve been brought near by the blood of the Lamb, who is Christ himself (Eph. 2:12–13). God is, therefore, fashioning us into “one body through the cross.” He is making us into “fellow citizens and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:16, 19). And the tremors of that good news are felt all the way back in the foothills of Sinai.

4. The Unbearable Burden of Ministry

But then the scene shifts, with Moses waking up to business as usual (Exod. 18:13). As the leader of the people of God, and the one who received God’s laws on the mountain, Moses understood his role was to govern the people by hearing from them and interpreting God’s words for them. This proved to be an arduous task, as is emphasized by the repeated phrase “morning till evening” (Exod. 18:13–14). As Moses sat down to undertake this enormous responsibility, Jethro noticed he did so alone (Exod. 18:14). He was shouldering the burden of shepherding God’s people all by himself, prompting his father-in-law to want to know why. “What is this that you are doing for the people?” he inquires.

Instead of answering that question, though, Moses just proceeds to further explain what it was that he was doing. “Because the people come to me to inquire of God,” he rationalizes, “and that’s just how we’ve always done it since God has given us his law” (cf. Exod. 18:15–16). Moses’s sense of responsibility is honorable, to be sure, as he understands his momentous task to serve as God’s mouthpiece, the channel by which and through which God’s words are made known to God’s people (cf. Exod. 4:15–16). And yet, Jethro perceived that what he was doing was neither good nor sustainable:

What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. (Exod. 18:17–18)

One man attempting to settle disputes and function as the voice of God for two million people is a short road to burnout. This was a burden that was too big for Moses to bear on his own shoulders, and the longer he attempted to carry it by himself, the sooner it’d crush him. And rather than being a comment on Moses’s ability or supposed lack thereof, this is a fitting commentary on the weightiness of his God-given assignment.

Jethro recognized the significance of Moses’s mantle, perhaps more so than even Moses did, at least in this moment (Exod. 18:19–23). Even though the priesthood hadn’t officially been established yet, his son-in-law was essentially acting as Israel’s go-between. He was their representative before the Lord, the one who’d been charged to admonish them in all of God’s words so that they would know how God intended them to live. But in that moment, Moses was getting entangled in the minutiae of daily disputes. The importance of hearing and interpreting the Word was getting lost in all the petty squabbles of a growing congregation.

So, to alleviate his burden, Jethro suggests a series of deputized and able-bodied men to help govern the people (Exod. 18:21–22). In so doing, Moses’s load would be lightened, the community would be preserved from the pitfalls of leadership burnout, and, most importantly, the ministry of the Word would flourish. And to his credit, Moses does exactly that (Exod. 18:24–27). Jethro soon departs the Israelite campsite, ending his involvement in the biblical narrative and leaving behind a community compellingly centered on the words of God.

Unfurled throughout this narrative is the way in which God forms and preserves his people by situating his words at the core of who and what they are. Notwithstanding all the other things Moses could get himself involved in, representing the people and making known the Word were paramount — and leave it to the Lord to have a Gentile priest from Midian to help him see that. But the point is that this is still true for the church right now.

5. Preserving the Ministry of the Word

The early church faced a crisis eerily similar to the one that plagued Israel in the foothills of Sinai. As the word of the gospel and the hope of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth spread like wildfire, changing lives and liberating sinners from the clutches of sin and death, the apostles soon became overwhelmed by the burgeoning congregation that soon fell under their care. The church’s numbers were increasing so rapidly that a cavalcade of practical matters soon became overlooked or incorrectly prioritized, to the detriment of the rest of the body (Acts 6:1).

Thus, The Twelve, led by Peter, summoned everyone together to institute a better method to meet everyone’s needs without neglecting what was of chief importance — namely, “prayer and the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). Their solution was to identify and appoint “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (Acts 6:2–6) — a.k.a. able men, who fear God and are trustworthy (Exod. 18:21; cf. Deut. 1:15; Acts 15:23; 2 Tim. 2:2) — who could lighten the apostles’ load, thereby preserving the growing Christian community and helping the ministry of the Word to flourish. The rest of the congregation gladly agreed to this plan, and the church thrived as a result (Acts 6:7).

Accordingly, even in the earliest days, God had in mind what the community of faith was going to look like: a congregation centered around his words and sharing the responsibility for telling all that he had done.

6. The Word Is What Matters

The Word is what matters. This is what carries on when everything else gives way. While there are many traditions in the life of the church that can be held with open palms, God’s Word isn’t one of them. He has ordained his church to be an organism that keeps the Word absolutely central, not one that pushes it to the margins for the sake of the pragmatic (Eph. 4:11–12). The community that God has been forming since the days of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness has always been bigger than anyone could ever imagine, and it has always been held together by one thing. Not the brilliance of its leaders, the charisma of its preachers, nor the efficiency of its programs, but always, and only, and forever, by the Word — the Living Word of God, which is made known to God’s people, and which goes out to the nations.

This is what Jethro came to hear; it’s what Moses was called to make known; it’s what the apostles refused to surrender; and it’s what the church gathers around every Lord’s day. God’s Word holds God’s people together, both now and forever. And while Jethro rejoiced when he heard what God had done at the Red Sea, the church rejoices at something greater since we have heard what God has done at the cross, where the true and better Exodus transpired, where our slavery to sin was ended, and where we were freed.

What changed Jethro is still what changes us. It’s not some manual of spiritual wisdom or moral code. It’s the Word about what God has done, and the marvel is that that Word has a face, and fingers, and hair, and a forehead that bleeds. That Word has come to where you are to bring you to himself (John 1:14). We may be the “church in the wilderness,” but we’re not lost. We have a Word who brightens our every step (Prov. 3:5–6), and so long as that is what we gather around and revel in, declaring all that God has done, we will endure.

What if our efforts to better Christians are actually taking our eyes off Christ? In this edition of Ministry Minded, I sit down with Justin Perdue to talk about just that, as well as how the Bible’s message of “Christ for you” is understood through the law-gospel distinction and why that distinction is so important for pastoral ministry and the life of the church. Despite what you might hear or think, the church doesn’t need a new message for each new cultural moment. We just need the gospel that tells us Christ is enough.

Justin lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife Michelle and their four children, where he serves as the lead pastor has served as lead pastor of Covenant Baptist Church since it was constituted in 2015. You can follow him on Twitter/X and Instagram, and on his website tethered.org.

Resources:
Romans, Robert Haldane
Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Martin Luther
Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment, Bradley Gray

Sponsor:
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Credits:
Intro music: It Just Makes Me Happy
Composer: DJ Quads, soundcloud.com/aka-dj-quads
License: Creative Commons (BY-NC 3.0), creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Music powered by BreakingCopyright: breakingcopyright.com

Title: Saving the Best for Last
Text: John 2:1–11
Originally delivered on 30 August 2026 at Stonington Baptist Church, Paxinos, PA
For more content like this, visit www.graceupongrace.net

A while back, I considered the moment when Jeremiah was called into prophetic ministry. Before he was even born, God had appointed him to bring God’s words to God’s people (Jer. 1:4–5).1 That is, he was called to be a preacher — to proclaim the words of the Lord that “pluck up and break down, that destroy and overthrow” (Jer. 1:10). Of course, Jeremiah didn’t hide how reluctant he was to take up this assignment, citing his inexperience and ineloquence as sufficient reasons why God should look for someone else (Jer. 1:6). However, both “reasons” are brushed aside and deemed irrelevant, as far as God’s purposes are concerned.

But the Lord said to me,

“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
(Jer. 1:7–10)

As consoling as this moment was, there was surely a residue of trepidation stemming from the words that had been put into Jeremiah’s mouth. The time had come for God’s people to reap what they had long sown through decades upon decades of iniquity, idolatry, and vice. Disaster was on its way (Jer. 1:13–15), which, as you can imagine, didn’t earn Jeremiah any popularity contests. Exacerbating his misgivings concerning his new God-given assignment was the very message he was appointed to proclaim, which wasn’t going to be well received.

1. The Word That Wrecks Us

In fact, as the Lord informs him, his own people will end up fighting against him and his message, even as he preaches the most urgent, necessary words they could ever hear (Jer. 1:19). Jeremiah’s undertaking would be like going to war for people who are throwing rocks at you the whole time. That his task was difficult is an understatement, leaving little to the imagination as to why he is often referred to as “The Weeping Prophet.” Part of me wonders if this young prophet knew what he was in for. I really doubt that he did.

God tells him that he has put him in a position to speak authoritatively to some of the most powerful people on the world scene (Jer. 1:10). And he wasn’t called to dote upon them, entertain them, or merely enlighten them — he was tasked with breaking them down and bringing them to their knees by announcing God’s words to them, words that “pluck up and break down, destroy and overthrow.” The image of something being plucked up paints a violent scene. When a tree stump is unearthed, it leaves the surrounding ground in shambles, with roots and twigs covering the scene like a messy crime scene.

With similar brutality, God’s inflexible word of law leaves sinners in shambles, with nary a smidgen of hope left that they might be able to save themselves. That notion is swiftly overthrown as soon as we come face to face with God’s uncompromisingly holy law, which, as Stephen H. Tyng once said, is “a description of himself.”2 Far from functioning as a ladder to ascend into the heights of the Father’s love and favor, the law is a mirror,3 revealing to every onlooker the blistering truth of their sin and sedition. For preachers and prophets, the law is an albatross, ringing in the ears and souls of those who hear, leaving them exposed and wanting. Christopher J. H. Wright puts it like this:

Jeremiah’s heaviest task would be delivering words of searing rebuke and judgment, tearing down strongholds of political and religious arrogance and prejudice, dismantling traditional certainties of faith, and announcing the uprooting of a whole nation and the destruction of its most precious assets. But out of the dug soil new planting could begin.4

2. The Word That Raises Us

Jeremiah’s commission, of course, didn’t stop at announcing words that “pluck up” and “break down.” Integral to his errand are words that build and plant, and lead to new life (Jer. 1:10). “The final two verbs of Jeremiah’s call, ‘to build and to plant,’” Philip E. Thompson comments, “bespeak an assurance that God can work newness ex nihilo and create historical possibilities out of unmitigated chaos.”5 Out of the crater of his people’s failure and faithlessness, God speaks — through measly mouthpieces — that which refreshes and restores. “God speaks,” writes Jonathan A. Linebaugh, “to the ungodly and the dead; and this word, this gift, impossibly, creates righteousness and makes alive.”6

When the words of God go forth, an oasis springs up in the desert and gardens flourish in the wasteland. In the echo of “Thus saith the Lord,” sinful corpses are given new sinews and skin, and new life, a feat that has nothing to do with the messenger and everything to do with the Lord himself.7 “God’s words are impregnated with his power,” J. Kent Edwards insightfully says. “And when God speaks, things happen. They are an effectual cause. When God speaks, results must occur.”8 The words that have been put into the mouths of God’s mouthpieces are teeming with creative and restorative resonance. It’s his words that never return void (Isa. 55:11), not those of the preacher.

3. The Only Words Worth Saying

This, to be sure, is enormously relieving. If the hope of building and planting something new, pristine, and Edenic was up to the eloquence of God’s prophets, his people would surely be subjected to ruin and oblivion. But the words that fashion beauty from ashes and life from corpses are words of promise that never fail (Jer. 31:31–34). They are words of gospel — of good news — the refrain of which isn’t “Do this and live,” but “Here is the one who makes you alive.” This is the word that has been put into the mouths of the Lord’s preachers. Edwards says it well:

It seems that our job, the job of the preacher, is not to speak one’s own words, but to speak the words of God to the world. It is God’s words that make the difference. It is God’s words that make a preacher powerful . . . When God asks us to speak he doesn’t ask us to speak our words, he asks us to speak his words. And when we speak his words, our words have a supernatural power and authority that they never could have otherwise. We don’t speak on our authority and our power, we speak with God’s authority and God’s power.9

This is why the Lord puts a premium on his words as he invites Jeremiah to give voice to them among his people (Jer. 1:2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 17). The point is, he wasn’t commissioned to scratch all the itching ears of God’s people by telling them only what they wanted to hear. Rather, he was sent by God to preach God’s words to them — words that both destroy and build up; that pluck up and plant. And the only words that can accomplish both of those things belong to the one who brought everything that exists into existence with a mere word.

Twentieth-century American Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson once said that “a text is understood as biblical text only when it casts us down and raises us up, and when we grasp that it is doing this. A sermon is a real sermon only when it casts down and raises up.”10 Jeremiah’s prophetic call, therefore, isn’t a one-off moment. Unique though it was, it wasn’t wholly exclusive. Rather, it is indicative of the ongoing means by which and through which the light pushes back the darkness, love is poured out on the ruined, mercy finds the rebels, and life is given to the dead.