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RTS 2024 Generosity Report

Many of our Reformed Theological Seminary friends and supporters have probably been receiving the RTS 2024 Generosity Report that was just recently mailed out. It is a testimony to God’s generous provision and to the faithful, sacrificial giving of thousands of our partners. We give thanks for what the Lord has supplied, what he has enabled us to do, and indeed what he has given us the privilege to do for him, for the church, this last year. Below are just a few of the highlights. In 2024, RTS donors contributed $12.9 million to RTS, supporting 2,038 students, and enabling them to take…

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Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: The…

The Lord's Day Morning September 30, 2012 “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: The Man of Lawlessness” 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. We’re going to be looking at verses 1 to 12. And as we said before the service, this is one of those passages that commentators on the apostle Paul mark as one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, in all of the apostles to interpret. This is especially because of what Paul says in verse 3. He speaks of a “man of lawlessness” or a “man of sin,” and no small amount of ink has been spilt over the last two thousand years by commentators attempting to explain and identify who Paul is speaking of. And then…

In Praise of…God

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 145. As you turn there, I would mention that this is the last of the psalms of David. We've gotten to that point in the Psalter. And it's an acrostic psalm, like seven others that we find in the Psalter. That is, each of its stanzas begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Five of the eight acrostic psalms in the Psalter are David's. He apparently really liked following the letters of the alphabet in the composition of his psalms. The five previous psalms that we've studied just prior to Psalm 145 were prayers in which the author lifted up often urgent supplications to the Lord for help in times of trouble and trial. The five psalms that follow this psalm are praises. And so it's very…

Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: What…

The Lord's Day Morning September 23, 2012 “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: What We Pray for You” 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 11 and 12. The apostle Paul often fills his letters with prayers that he prays for the congregation that he's writing, sometimes there are prayer requests that he asks them to pray for him and for the mission team that they’re supporting and that may be writing them, other times he actually exhorts them to prayer, and then there are prayer reports where he tells that congregation what he has been praying for them. The passage that we're reading today is a prayer report. Paul is telling the Thessalonians what…

The Lord, My Only Hope for Strength, Love and…

If you have your Bibles with you, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 144. This psalm draws on phrases and words and ideas found in a number of other psalms, at least four, but puts them together in a unique way. It's a royal psalm; a psalm of David. It's a psalm for he and his successor kings lifted up in petition to the Lord for the whole nation. And so it combines the kinds of content that you would expect in a psalm on the occasion of the coronation and installation of the…

Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: You?…

The Lord's Day Morning September 16, 2012 “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: You? Worthy of the Kingdom of God?” 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. We’re going to be looking at verses 5 to 10. This is a passage about persecution and it's the passage from which the theme of our study of 2 Thessalonians is drawn. We have called this, “Enduring Trials in…

Lord, Have Mercy

If you have your Bibles now, turn with me to Psalm 143. Psalm 143 is the last of what the church has called, for hundreds of years, the penitential psalms. There are seven of those psalms that have been grouped together and called penitential, meaning that when you read the psalm you find a prominent theme of self-confessed guilt. The psalmist realizes he's guilty and that he deserves God's judgment, and so he calls out for mercy with a repentant spirit. And that's a prominent theme…

Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: What…

The Lord's Day Morning September 9, 2012 “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: What We’re Thankful For” 2 Thessalonians 1:3-4 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. We’ll be looking at verses 3 and 4 today as we continue our way through Paul's letter. Last week we looked at Paul's greeting; today we look at the very first order of business Paul has with the Thessalonians in this…

No Other Refuge

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 142. This psalm is a companion of Psalm 57 and it's very similar to psalms 140 and 141 where we find a faithful person praying for protection from persecutors. Now this psalm is what is called a complaint or an individual lament, which means that it is a poem about a distressing situation which a believer has encountered, and in that poem, the believer is offering a prayer, a plea, a help to God with no inhibition. He is…

Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: More…

The Lord's Day Morning September 2, 2012 “Enduring Trials in Light of Jesus’ Return: More than Hello” 2 Thessalonians 1:1-2 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you’ll turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians, we’ll begin together a new series. We've been working together through 1 Thessalonians for a number of months and we concluded that study last Lord's Day, and so today we take up the greeting that we find here in this little letter of 2 Thessalonians. Paul…

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