Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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Today, we begin a short series profiling women in the Bible (Who are not named Ruth or Esther). Both the stories of Ruth and Esther are beautiful, gracious, and profound. We love reading and rereading them. However, in an attempt to bring attention to more stories of more women throughout the Scriptures, we choose now to shift our focus. Our first woman, is, the first woman herself: Eve.
We do not live in the greatness of our own deeds. We boast in the greatness of one deed that God himself has done through Jesus Christ on the cross.
The text gives beautiful imagery of the “waters of life” and how they will transform the dead and barren and bring new life.
Calvary is our mountain of pardon. It is the place which reveals most definitively God’s plan to redeem and reconcile sinners to himself.
These statutes are a description of what the child of God looks like—how they walk, talk, teach, live, and have their being!
God picks the unexpected and the unlikely, and goes to the unforeseen places, stacking the odds against himself, in order that age after age might stand in open-mouthed wonder at his sovereignty in and over all things.
Hypocrisy continues to rear its head as the formalistic worship and worshippers neglect their LORD and their neighbor.
For sinners who cannot seem to get out of their own way, Dane brings to bear the gospel of Christ’s heart, which aerates one’s spiritual lungs with undiluted grace.
So many distractions—so many false and foreign gods—so many side paths and rabbit trails. What choice, what decision? Who will we follow?
The Old Testament is a long, strange book that’s not easy for modern readers to understand. What is understandable, therefore, is that people can get lost and confused when studying it. Here are three common misconceptions about it.
God will give you more than you can handle. But he doesn’t leave you alone. Not at all.
Instead of providing a way out, the LORD gave Elijah a way through, which included the calling of Elisha as his apprentice.