Why the Culture is Crumbling I pastor a church in Jacksonville, Florida full of normal people who love Jesus and are deeply concerned about the direction of our culture. For years everyone has seen our society headed in the wrong direction and most of them understand why. A one-sentence explanation is provided in Proverbs 14:34, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” As a sin-sick society increasingly casts off righteousness, we can know for certain that God’s han…

“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 Kids are People Too Many forget that the famous words about teaching the commands of God to children follow immediately after God gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai in Deuteronomy 5. When God gave the Ten Commandments, he did not intend them to go only to adults. His desire was that they would enter little ear…

Executed for Expression The assassination of Charlie Kirk is an event of generational significance. There are many reasons why this is true. Just one of those reasons has to do with a shocking reality we must allow to sink deep into our minds. Charlie Kirk’s public expression of truth led to his public execution. Kirk’s wife is now a widow, and his children are fatherless because a ruthless man decided he would rather kill him than listen. Kirk’s alleged assassin believed the outspoken conserva…

Winning Souls The great need of our day is for a powerful movement of God drawing a new generation of people to faith in Jesus Christ. More than anything, I want to be a winner of souls. I want this for the people in my church. And I want this for Christians in my generation. Evangelism and The Ten Commandments You may not realize just how intrinsically evangelistic the Ten Commandments are. The people who received the commandments were as normal as you and me. They also were not intrinsically…

Toward A Baptist View of the Commandments Over the years I have read more books on the Ten Commandments than I can count. One of the most significant realities about all those books is how different they are. No Christian author I have read has the same take on the commandments as any other. Sometimes those differences are minor having to do with how we count the commandments. Sometimes the differences are extreme and have to do with disagreements about the basic meaning of the words. It is stu…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Jacksonville, FL — [August 25, 2025] First Press Publishing is pleased to announce the release of The Ten Commandments: A Short Book for Normal People by Heath Lambert. This short, accessible guide walks through each commandment in Exodus 20 and shows how God’s words reshape everyday life—with clear explanation and practical steps you can begin using this week. Why this book matters: It’s simple and pastoral: written for normal people, not specialists. It’s timely: the Te…

I have been preaching weekly for almost 10 years. That means that I am not a veteran preacher, but I am also not a rookie. I still have much to learn about preaching, but the amount of “firsts” I am having in preaching decreases every year. Small and large crowds, indoor and outdoor settings, formal and casual weddings, celebratory “home going” funerals for elderly saints, and devastating wakes for 4-year-old children. I have preached at suburban luncheons for wealthy retirees and in homeless s…

What Makes a Good Sermon? How do you know if a sermon is authentically good? That question is hard to answer because people are tempted to confuse what they like with what is objectively good. In fact, our own fickle preferences often unfairly impact our sermonic evaluations. Our preferences on sermons can be impacted by our sin: we may dislike a sermon we really need to hear. Our sermon preferences can be impacted by circumstances: we may dislike a sermon that is beloved by someone sitting a f…

The Next President I love Clint Pressley. In 2024 and 2025, I voted for him for president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and told others to as well. More than that, I think he has served with distinction. Every Southern Baptist should be eager to serve in any way helping him to serve out the vast majority of his second term. Pressley has so much time left in his term that I am shocked to be writing about the next president of the convention.  The conversations about who comes next ine…

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about admitting we’re wrong. Like Fonzie from Happy Days, who would stammer and clench his fists rather than utter those difficult words, we naturally resist confession. Even when we manage to apologize, it’s often halfhearted: “I’m sorry if that upset you” or “I’m sorry this happened”—carefully crafted words that distance us from actual responsibility. But what if our resistance to admitting wrongdoing is actually robbing us of one of life’s greatest bles…