Matthew Everhard
Reformed Champion We desperately miss R.C. Sproul (1939-2017). There are so few men like him. As I grow older (I’m 45) and labor longer in the ministry (23 years) I appreciate more and more those rare, faithful men who make it to the end of their career, having held fast the faith. So few remain […]
In 2021, I challenged myself to read the entire New Testament in Greek. I failed. If the purpose of my resolution was to complete the entire NT in under a year, I clearly fell short. I just began 2 Corinthians with only a few weeks to go in the calendar year. But if the greater […]
Resolution 6: Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.[1] Life is short. When we were children, it seemed like ages from one birthday to the next. We marked our lives by six-month increments because years were too long to comprehend. We boasted, “I’m five and a half!” Now into my fifth […]
The Glory and Necessity of Doctrine Teaching theology is one of the most important things that pastors do. In Scripture, Paul strongly exhorts Titus to, “teach what accords with sound doctrine.” (Titus 2:1). In fact, the importance of teaching trustworthy theological fundamentals to the congregations of Christ’s people is among the most earnest and soul-preserving […]
The Worn Path or the Taller Grass? Reading Soren Kierkegaard is a journey that takes the daring reader off the familiar path of Reformed theology and into the taller, wilder grass of spiritual existentialism. Through his writings I am brought into a whole new field of philosophical exploration that makes me feel at once both […]
Great Endurance By many accounts, this has been a difficult season for believers in general and pastors in particular. We have experienced as much hardship as we are able to stomach in the past year. Many of us have been physically ill from the virus. Our people too have gotten sick. Some have even died. […]
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:4-5, ESV The Living Dead When I was a kid, one of the most terrifying movies I ever saw […]
The Humble Dandelion Like the gospel itself, the humble dandelion was brought to the shores of America on the decks on ships ferrying pilgrims to the New World. A non-native species, they spread rapidly through New England, across the plains states, and now can be seen inhabiting nearly every suburban lawn and rural landscape. Originally, […]
“The year was 2081 and everyone was finally equal.” So begins Kurt Vonnegut’s incredible dystopian short story, Harrison Bergeron. The short, fictional piece prophetically depicts the extremes to which an authoritarian government might go in order to create a society in which each and every individual is “equal” to all others on every conceivable plane. […]
There is an incredible line in the second volume of The Lord of the Rings in which Bilbo describes his current emotional state to Gandalf the wise wizard: “I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” I am sure many […]
I can almost guarantee that at some point in the last six months, you nearly threw the remote through your flat screen and blurted out, “What are they thinking?!” I might be able to answer that question: They weren’t. When you nearly launched your remote and asked that question, it was partly exasperation, and partly […]
The Bible begins and ends with statements related to the concept of time. The first verse of Genesis includes a time marker, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” while the penultimate verse of the Bible includes a reference to time as well, “Surely I am coming soon” (Gen. 1:1; Rev. 22:20, […]
People from history are strangely and frustratingly complex. Few are as wicked as the devils; none as pure as the angels. This gives us good reason to be equally careful in erecting statues to honor them as in tearing them down. Jonathan Edwards was such a complex individual. His theological genius is hardly challenged today, […]
I cannot wait to hear the sounds of children laughing and playing again in the Narthex. I cannot wait to share hugs with a dozen surrogate grandparents who dote on my kids as their own. I can’t wait to shake the hands of the greeters without worries of hand-sanitizer scarcities running through the back of […]
According to Scripture, Mathuselah was the oldest living human being on record. Genesis 5:27 tells us that he was given some 969 years to live in all. Imagine what one could do with all that time: the books you could read, the essays you could write, the degree programs you could pursue, the home repair […]