You can watch or listen at the YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcast links below.

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Today we talked about the book on the CBMW podcast. I hope you’ll take a listen but also get a copy of the book and read it. The YouTube video of our discussion is below along with Spotify and Apple Podcasts versions below that.

Links to the video and podcast versions of the interview are below.

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

YouTube

[You can listen to the rest of the message at the Apple Podcasts and Spotify links below.]

Today, however, is his first Sunday back in the pulpit at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, and it was glorious. He launched right into the sermon without even acknowledging his absence. In other words, Mark preached like he wasn’t the point. Not until the last three minutes does he reflect on what happened and give a stirring tear-stained invitation for sinners to trust in Christ and be saved.

All the personal stuff aside, the sermon itself is wonderful. He takes up the difficult question of whether the American Revolution was justified. He concludes that it was and gives a defense of it and the reasons outlined in the Declaration of Independence. But that is only the introduction. The main part of the sermon is an exposition and application of Romans 13:1-7.

I am so grateful for this message. I am so grateful that God spared Mark’s life and preserved his ministry. I am so grateful for Mark Dever. Hallelujah. Listen to all of this one.

The sermon page is here. You can download directly here or listen below.

And really, it’s pretty much been going on all summer because of the World Cup coming to the good old U.S. of A. And it’s not just the tournament. It’s the countless international fans who have been swarming the country to watch their national teams play. These good people have been documenting on social media their reveling in Americana. From Buc-ee’s to Taco Bell to free refills, people from the world over are America-maxing with us. They are sharing over and over, “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive across it.” It’s enough to stir patriotism even in the most cynical among us.

@whitehouseIf you want to hate the U.S. listen to the media, if you want to love the U.S. experience it ♬ original sound – The White House

It’s even enough to get a guy like me—an American football fan who can’t stand soccer—to actually watch matches and cheer for our boys in red, white, and blue. I don’t know what’s happening half the time, but I’m still watching and cheering from my easy chair as if it’s LSU vs. Alabama in November. What do I care about soccer? Not much. But you wouldn’t know it from my patriotic fandom this past week. “Country Road, Take Me Home” anyone?

‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ plays in San Francisco Bay Area Stadium after the @USMNT Knockout Stage victory pic.twitter.com/tBtFoqh0xC

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 2, 2026

Our family has our plans for tomorrow. My wife will make a special holiday breakfast. I will be cooking up meat on the grill for lunch. Then tomorrow night we’ll gather for an annual event that our church puts on at a home with a lot of property out in the country. Everyone will dress in their campiest patriotic best. The kids will swim and play games. We’ll have some contests for everyone. We’ll eat a bunch of food in the shade until it gets dark enough to send up the fireworks. We’ll be thankful that we got to be together, and we’ll celebrate the country we love so much for Jesus’ sake.

In the movie The Sandlot, there is a great scene set on July 4, 1962. A group of boys play baseball all summer at the dusty old sandlot, but Independence Day is their one opportunity to play under the lights (i.e., the fireworks). So the boys load up on food at the block party and then race to the sandlot in time to play under the lights like the big leaguers. As the field lights up and the game starts, Ray Charles is singing “America the Beautiful,” and the boys can only play momentarily before all of their attention is carried away from baseball to the lights above. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes in all of film (see below).

I watched that scene again a little earlier tonight, and I couldn’t help but wonder—and maybe even worry a little—that rising generations may not even be able to recognize the greatness that the scene represents and evokes. Even though the boys are unaware, the song playing over their lives says “God shed His grace on Thee.” Do kids today understand that? Does this generation cherish the providential blessing that is America and the ideals she was founded upon? It is hard to tell sometimes.

My hope and prayer are that cynicism and moral dissolution do not win in the end within our nation. There seems to be a lot of that going around, and they are a poison to a people—especially a nation that was birthed as an idea. And not just any idea, but a conviction that all men created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Those statements from the Declaration are moral claims deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. If we lose that, we lose everything.

But it’s not lost yet, and I’m not giving up on America. I’m going to pray for us to be a nation that rises up and lives out “the true meaning of its creed ” and for God to shed His grace on us for another 250 years. That’s what I will pray when we play under the lights tomorrow night. I hope you will too.

During World War 2, Allied forces identified overtrained German spies by testing to see if they knew the last verse of the National Anthem. If they knew it, you knew they were a spy because almost no authentic American even knows there is a last verse. Which is too bad, because the last may be the best, and I leave you with it:

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[Click here to read the rest of the article at CBMW.org]

“The Bleating of the Sheep and the Tearing of the Robe”
— 1 Samuel 15:22–27

The amendment would revise our constitution to specify that churches with female pastors or with women who preach to the gathered assembly are not in friendly cooperation with the convention. In other words, the amendment is simply an attempt to make explicit in our constitution what the vast majority of Southern Baptists already believe and what is reflected in our doctrinal statement, The Baptist Faith & Message.

The measure passed overwhelmingly on the floor of the convention (75% to 25%), but it must get a two-thirds supermajority at next year’s convention before it becomes a part of the SBC Constitution. Which means that this thing is far from over. Based on this year’s result, I heard some people predicting that this amendment is going to be adopted easily next year in Indianapolis. I couldn’t disagree more with that notion, and I’m concerned that Southern Baptists may become complacent if that attitude sets in.

The truth is that there is a determined minority in the SBC who for a variety of reasons don’t want this amendment. I expect them to pull out all the stops before next year’s meeting and at next year’s meeting in order to defeat this amendment. And their task is a straightforward one. They can defeat this amendment simply by winning 34 percent of the vote. That’s only about 9 points more than the 25% they got this year. They are going to turn out their vote in Indianapolis, and they are going to be making the case between now and next year that Southern Baptists don’t need this amendment. If they can get 34% of the messengers in Indy to agree with them, they win, and the amendment dies.

I suspect we will see a litany of specious arguments over the next year: “We don’t need this”; “This is a made-up problem”; “Amendment supporters are being divisive”; “Those people just don’t like women”; “They’re against women in ministry”; “They wanna kick your church out for having a female children’s director”; “They don’t want women to share the gospel or their testimonies”; and on and on it will go. And those of us who support the amendment will have to answer those arguments in turn.

But when you boil it all down, many of their arguments are going to amount to this: It’s bad for Southern Baptists to apply consistently the Bible’s teaching about the qualifications for pastor. They will argue that the SBC is stronger when it makes space for cooperating churches to have women named as pastors and sometimes preaching to the men and women of the congregation.

They are not going to make the case for female senior pastors or for a woman being the primary Sunday morning preacher. They would lose with those arguments because Southern Baptists aren’t egalitarian. Not by a longshot. Opponents are going to argue for cooperating with churches that have women named as associate pastors and that allow women to preach occasionally to the gathered assembly. If they can get an additional 9% of messengers to agree with them about that, they will defeat the amendment next year in Indy.

I am writing this because I don’t want supporters of this amendment to become complacent. This is not the time for that. You need to start making plans now to send your full slate of messengers to Indianapolis next summer. As your church starts its budget cycle later this year, set aside whatever you need to set aside to make sure your pastor and whatever messengers you can support are able to attend the meeting in Indy.

My hope and prayer is that Southern Baptists will not be scared away from their own doctrinal standards by fallacious arguments. We need to show up in Indy and get this thing done. I look forward to seeing you there.

Photo Credit: The Baptist Paper photo