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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…

Father, into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit

The Lord's Day Morning November 20, 2011 “Father, Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit” Luke 23:44-49 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 23 as we continue to make our way through the gospel of Luke. The last two times before this time we've been together we've been in a passage in which Jesus is on the cross. Luke gives us the first word of the cross in this passage and he gives us the last word of Jesus from the cross in the passage that we're studying. The very first word has to do with forgiveness, and therein Luke reminds us that Jesus is on the cross in order that our sins might be forgiven. That's illustrated, and we saw it last time we were together, in the story of the penitent thief…

How I Love Your Word, O Lord (2)

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 119. If you weren't here last Lord's Day evening we read all one hundred and seventy-six verses of Psalm 119. I was told by those who were clocking it that it took about twenty-four minutes to read the psalm out loud and then we just very briefly meditated on the overall content of that psalm. I also told the congregation then that I would be preparing a twenty-two week, and now it's twenty-three week, devotional guide to the psalm — not week, twenty-three day devotional guide to the psalm. The psalm is broken down according to letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We have twenty-six; Hebrew has twenty-two. So there is a section of eight verses for each of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. If we were…

Remember Me

The Lord's Day Morning November 13, 2011 “Remember Me” Luke 23:39-43 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 23 as we continue our way through the gospel of Luke together. I can remind you, a couple of weeks ago when we were last in the gospel, we were looking at the passage immediately prior to this in which Luke begins to describe the crucifixion. If you look especially at verse 34, Luke will give you the first word of Jesus from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing,” and in so doing, Luke is not only being a faithful historian and recording exactly what happens, what Jesus said, he is pointing you to specific historical facts that elaborate the theology of the cross,…

How I Love Your Word, O Lord

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me to Psalm 119. We've been working through the fifth book of the Psalms, the longest book or section of the Psalms, for a number of weeks now, and for a couple of months the ministers have been asking me, and other friends have been asking me, “What are you going to do with Psalm 119?” Some have wondered, are you going to do a twenty-two week series on Psalm 119 where we take each section of the psalm, structured around the Hebrew…

The Reason for Giving

The Lord's Day Morning November 6, 2011 “The Reasons for Giving” 1 Chronicles 29:9 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan If you’d take your Bibles in hand and turn with me to 1 Chronicles 29, we have been working our way through the gospel of Luke and we're going to take a break this morning to look at the passage that our Deacon's Stewardship Committee has chosen to be the theme during our stewardship season. We do that because this is a teaching moment, not because if I preach a…

Lovingkindness. Forever

If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Psalm 118, in many ways, the perfect compliment for what we studied together this morning in the gospel of Luke because the psalm that we're about to read is the last song that Jesus sang before He was crucified. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, any time we're reading and hearing Your Word we are on holy ground. But it especially moves us when we are contemplating the things that surround our Lord's death on our…

Father, Forgive Them

The Lord's Day Morning October 30, 2011 “Father, Forgive Them” Luke 23:32-38 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 23 as we continue to work our way through Luke's gospel. We’ll be beginning in verse 32. As we do, this brief section describes the beginning of the crucifixion itself, and it's very interesting that as to the details of what Jesus underwent physically on the cross, Luke tells us this in…

All Peoples

If you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn with me to Psalm 117. This very short psalm, one psalm removed from a very long psalm, is a jewel and quoted in the New Testament — quoted in the New Testament in a very, very important passage on a very, very important topic because it's succinctly explains something about the plan of God in history that is vitally important for all Christians to know but it was especially important for them to understand it in the days of the early…

Weep for Yourselves

The Lord's Day Morning October 23, 2011 “Weep for Yourselves” Luke 23:26-31 The Reverend Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III If you have your Bibles, I'd invite you to turn with me to Luke 23. We’ll be looking at verses 26 to 31. Luke has us following along the way with Christ on the way to the cross. As you look at this passage together, I'd like you to see two things in particular. In verse 26, Luke tells us about Simon who bears the cross for Jesus. It's an irony, isn't it —…