Feast and Follow with Knollwood: Recent Episodes
Knollwood Presbyterian Church
What is the most important thing you personally know how to do, and do you think it will still be done that way in twenty years? Many of us are working with computer programs that will be obsolete in two. Mechanics tell me how different car motors today than they were at the start of their careers. It seems like the information we know has an expiration date that arrives faster every year. How do you prepare a generation for what's next?
Titus has the answer for us: Teach them sound doctrine.
What is the most important thing you did this week? Did you get something fixed at the house that could have caused major damage down the line? Did you lay out some plans that will course correct your life? Did you have a hard conversation with someone about sin? If it was the third option, according to James, that was far and away the most important thing you did.
In a letter full of admonitions and commands, we might be left wondering what to do if we or someone else violates these commands. If we recognize that in ourselves, then we need to, in obedience to verse 16, confess our sins to those whom we sinned against. But if we see someone else going astray, what do we do? Simply put, we are to go talk with them and try to turn them back.
While I think James has in mind here serious sin or doctrinal error, it doesn't have to be a "blow up your life" kind of sin for you to need to be brought back. When approached correctly, guiding someone away from their sin and to Christ is the most loving and important thing we can do. Whether the person is in the church or outside the church, sin needs to be lovingly confronted.
I think these two verses can be split into equal parts warning and hope.
If you want someone to remember what you tell them, where do you put the most important information, the main takeaway you want them to remember? Maybe you want to lead with your important concept because that is when people are paying the most attention. Maybe you want to put it at the end so it is the last thing that people hear you say.
James does both.
"Dad's coming" gives hope or dread depending on the type of day you've had, doesn't it? If you have been frustrated trying to get something to work, hearing "Dad's coming" is hope. If you've been misbehaving, "Dad's coming" is a dread. It doesn't matter when in the day this is said, hearing those words will have their intended effect immediately. I remember getting a lego robot set one year and I had put almost all of it together, however, I thought I had turned the page on the manual only to discover I had built, after a day's frustration, two left legs. And now it was time for bed. But Dad was coming home. I woke up the next day to find my lego robot—standing—on the kitchen table. All was set right.
Now, most of us have much bigger problems than a lego robot with two left legs (although, kids, I do still see how this as a big problem for your worlds, so blessed are you), so do the recipients of this letter. However, the letter is invoking a much more powerful Being than my dad. James is telling us that the Lord, Jesus Himself, is on the way.
James finally gets to the most practical point of all: how we use our wealth.
James isn't here denouncing riches in and of themselves but their abuse, and the Old Testament is in perfect harmony about that. We find in the Proverbs "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous." (13:22) Or 22:4 "The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life." Or 3:9-10 "Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine." Abraham was a wealthy man as was Job, whom the Lord points out specifically to be a great servant. Solomon asked for wisdom and as a reward for such a request was given more wealth than the nation had ever seen before or since.
We've all heard the phrase "the final word on the subject." It is meant to get across the idea that once something is said it is authoritative. We exercise this right as parents, don't we? "I've said it, so that's final." We see this in the scientific world once something has been tested and retested a sufficient number of times, that can be considered "settled" science. In the political world, we hear that from the Supreme Court. Once a case has been decided there, that is the final word on the matter.
Or is it? We find as parents that that final word on no ice cream might start to give once a headache starts. We have found that even a Supreme Court decision isn't finalized for all of time, but when new judges ascend the court, such a final word is replaced seemingly by another "final" judgement. Even science isn't static.
There is no human being who is able to utter the true last, authoritative word on a subject because we are not divine. And when I put it like that, we of course all agree in principle, but that is not how we think or, in terms of this passage, talk in practice, is it? James, in returning to the topic of the tongue warns of judging our neighbor and speaking presumptuous plans. These actions are related because they assume the same thing: that I myself am the determiner of other's character and my own future. James is here to tell us that this isn't true. This will come as both a conviction and a comfort as we look at our two points today: You aren't the authority, so don't judge. and You aren't the authority, so don't presume your plans.
This week, we welcome guest preacher Jackson Hice to show us the Good Shepherd out of John 10!
We are catching up on uploads this week, so here is last week's sermon on James 4:1-10!
How do you know that you are wise? Is when you can answer most questions asked of you? Is it when you have an understanding of how life works and how to navigate it? What does it mean to be wise? And do we really want to be?
James, as we have seen over and over again is intensely practical, really to the point of discomfort. James is all about showing your work. A Christianity that is just another thing to occupy your mind isn't worth much. Sure the nerds have fun, but Christianity isn't a life of the mind thing. It needs to actually do something to be worthwhile. It needs to change me. That is what James is interested in. He wants something that motivates the care of widows and orphans. He wants something that looks out for the poor, changes how I speak, and rules how I live. He wants something that makes a real difference in the believer's life and those around them.
And because it makes a real difference in our lives, that means a lot of things have to change, including what we think about wisdom. Usually we try to define wisdom as knowledge used well. It's knowing that a tomato is a fruit but doesn't belong in a fruit salad. It's knowing how money works but also what it is truly for.
In our passage today, we see that wisdom isn't just what goes on in your head, but it is the outpouring of a shaped soul that looks a lot like holiness. James' wisdom doesn't come out just in sage words, but sanctified actions. He isn't the only one to think this, either. Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 11:19 "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”" and more poetically in Luke 7:35 "Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.” They were falsely accusing him, yet if they would look at his actions, they would see his wisdom.
Over the next chapter and a half,James will present the difference between wise and unwise living, shows in greater detail where unwise living takes us, and ultimately provides that solution on how to be wise. We will look at just the first one today.
Talk isn't enough to prove you're going to heaven, but it is enough to send you to hell. Both thoughts are true for the same reason: talking is so easy to do, in fact, it has never been easier. Nearly everything in our lives has made it faster and simpler to talk. We came up with the landline to share voices immediately. Then we made the cell phone so we could have this ability anywhere. Then we made the internet so we could permanently place our voices out there to talk for us even when we are not talking. Now with AI I can build things just by talking. Indeed, what hath man wrought?
The way that this promise was presented to us was that all of this communication would be like sending torches into the darkness. Truth as it really was could be revealed for all to see in the flickering digital light. Injustices could be corrected, power could be held accountable, yes, even the gospel could be communicated faster and wider than ever. All of it was and is true. However, as James tells us, the darkness we bear those torches within is a bone-dry forest, branches and leaves everywhere ready to lap up the least spark. It is no wonder that James spends so much time on speech and the tongue, as this is quite a power to steward.
The solution isn't to extinguish the torch. How can the Savior known as the Word have silent followers? Woe to us if we preach not the gospel, but woe to us if we do not tame our tongues.
The solution that James gives to us is implicit rather than explicit, but the way he details the problem is a useful teaching tool in itself. When I began the process of learning how to drive my mother's day one lesson was this: I was driving a 3 thousand pound death machine to myself and others if I use it improperly. It was a sober start, but it was necessary. I had to come to grips with what I was doing. Today, James gives some us talking lessons with the sobering introduction to begin.
For those who are a little less familiar with the Bible, this passage may sound odd. Even for those who are very familiar with the Bible might wonder how this passage fits with the rest of the Bible. After all, isn't the main message of Christianity is that you cannot work your way to heaven? Isn't salvation by grace through faith?
These are the sorts of questions that we bring to this text, but this isn't really James' point. As we will see, James isn't trying to tell us how one gains faith, but what true faith actually looks like. We can know this even before we come to this text. One thing that we remember is that the Bible doesn't have a bunch of different authors but there is One Author, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't forget what He intends to say, so He isn't going to say that salvation is by grace on the one end and that salvation is at least partially by works on the other.
What is the first piece of information you want to know about a person? What is the first thing that you notice when you meet them? For those in sales, the most relevant thing about you is how much money you have, and they often tell by looking at your dress, particularly your shoes. For others, it's what kind of job you do, or whether or not you have kids, what color you are, or your denominational affiliation.
Collecting this information isn't necessarily a bad thing, but how you treat them based on what you think you now know about them might be. Do you assume once you've noticed their brand-new, brand-name shoes that these people are more valuable to know? Do you think that because you know where they are from you know what they are really like?
For this week, we are taking a break from James to look at Ecclesiastes 3 and see how everything has a season, each a gift. If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend the book, Everything is Never Enough by Bobby Jamieson. It is one of the better books I've read so far this year.
Is the Christian life something that happens to you or is it something that you are actively involved in? This isn't a trick question, but is meant to make you think. The answer of course is yes. Jesus comes and sovereignly resurrects your soul. He takes out your heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh. You are then given the Holy Spirit to empower you for good works. As Voddie Bauchum once put it, "The gospel does not require obedience, it produces it.” After Paul tells us that we are saved by grace through faith (Eph.2:8-9), the very next verse tells us that we are saved for good works (v. 10). We are not floating through the Christian life but are actively involved in making decisions that reflect our new standing.
Our passage in James here is even more direct. Verse 22 tells us very plainly, "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." Good works here are not a suggestion. Without good works, our faith is self-deception. What sort of works is he talking about?
James offers to us a couple of areas to look at in our lives. They aren't exhaustive, but they are foundational. After covering our endurance under trial, James moves to the more everyday sort of concerns in the Christian life. The Christian life isn't just lived when the diagnosis of cancer comes in. It is lived in the moment right after someone says something stupid to you. And you'd like to finally give them what's been coming for years.
Let's get practical.
Today, we look at the Chalcedonian Definition, where the Church Fathers wrestled through the two natures and one person of Christ.
If God is the one who strengthens us through our trials, then does God bring us temptations to sin as well? Does God tempt? Today we look at James to see that God is not the bringer of temptation but life.
One of the amazing things about the up to the second news cycle today is how we can be aware of the wall to wall suffering in the world and yet still be surprised by our own. We are surprised by the big things, the diagnoses, the divorces, the deaths and the little things, insomnia, dead spark plugs, and that one red light that you always seem to catch. You would think given our constant stream of bad news we would know how to respond to hardship or at least expect it. Yet suffering always seem to catch us unexpectedly, flat-footed, and unprepared. Much of the time all we can do is sputter questions like "Why this, why now" and "What in the world am I supposed to do next?"
Maybe the reason why we are so surprised by our own suffering is we spend too much time on the other side of the internet, the social side, because we find the exact opposite of suffering: seeming endless highlight reals of other people's lives. Where that guy seemed like a real solid guy in real life, and then he got that car and became insufferable. Then when good things happen to us, we just as quickly run to the socials to perform the same insufferable brag. Trials come in many forms, and we could sure use some wisdom in how to deal with them.
Enter James chapter 1. James begins his letter with realistic expectations for life. He doesn't sit on the fence with "if you find yourself in trials," like he is unsure if you will ever experience this. He tells us what to do when we find ourselves in trials of various kinds. And it is exactly what we need.
Today, we begin our look at the most important week of history since Genesis. This is the week that Christ was born to live through, die at the end of, and rise at the beginning of the next. There are many complexities in the Christian life. There is a lot of theology that we need to wrestle through, personal ethics that we need to consider (especially as we begin James in a couple week), matters of wisdom to think through, but we must never forget the center: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Jesus is not the founder of Christianity; He is the object of its worship.
The entire Bible has been building up to and looking back at this moment. So we do well to sit up, consider this moment afresh, especially if your walk with Christ has been wobbly lately. Consider this your opportunity to be reawakened to what is really important in life, what our main goal is.
Today we are going to see Jesus do two things: Jesus produces the hope of the Old Testament and Jesus previews the hope of the New Testament.
On today's episode of Church History 101 we examine the growing divergence of the East and West Church as well as introducing one of the greatest minds of the West, Augustine!
We've just spent the last eight weeks looking at what happens in corporate worship, the thing we gather to do on Sunday morning. But what about what happens the rest of the week? While we are not gathered together on Tuesday morning, does that mean that worship ceases Monday through Saturday? No. Gloriously not. While there is something special and necessary about Sunday worship, God hasn't left us twisting as to how to think about our lives the majority of the time. There is a wonderful specificity that God gives to us, not just as a body of Christian believers, but as individuals.
Why do we end our worship service with a benediction? We will be finishing our series on worship this week by answering that very question. As we have seen, our worship is meant to be very God and His Word centered. Things are done for God, as God commanded that they be done. Our service opens with an invitation to worship from God's Word, and now we will look at the close of our service from God's Word as well, the benediction or blessing. Is that something important? Is anything really happening?
In order to answer those questions, we need to look at a more basic question: What is blessing? There is a lot of confusion about what is a blessing. Is it physical things? That seems too unspiritual! Is it just spiritual? That seems like that doesn't take into account all that God does in our lives! We will attempt to get some clarity around this issue, and I hope by the end of it, you will see the benediction for the real blessing that it is.
We will look at two points this morning: God's blessings are comprehensive and All God's Blessings are in Christ.
On this episode, we look at one of the most foundational creeds of the Church, The Nicene Creed.
There are some funny rules about what you are allowed and not allowed to talk about in polite society. You can ask people how tall they are, reciting a basic fact about their body, but you can't ask what they weigh. We are ok talking about vertical dimensions but not horizontal dimensions. You can ask people what they do for a living, but you can't ask them how much of a living they are making.
This seems to apply doubly in the church and what we might here on Sunday. The idea of the pastor preaching on money, particularly the giving of said money, just seems distasteful at best and self-interested at worse. This isn't helped by jet-setting prosperity preachers often talking about the same thing. So it is easy to simply decide that there are other things to preach on, and just skip the passages and opportunities to talk about money. Or if we do talk about money, we try to make it as little as possible.
And this is a great shame, because that means the the Church either speaks wrongly or not at all about the real thing our culture is obsessed with, money. Our entire culture is built on acquiring stuff, and the prosperity preachers fit right in to that message. Theirs is, "Give to God so you can get the stuff you actually want: more stuff." That's what secular culture does, too, just with even less attention given to God. "Give to your company (your time, body, attention) so you can get the stuff you really want: more stuff."
Now, when the church does decide to speak on it, it can be framed in a couple different ways. It can say something to the effect of, "Well, you just gotta do it, and 10% is the number." Or it can say, "Well, God has been pretty gracious to you, and to show your gratitude you should give something, and maybe start at 10%." Both of these approaches miss the mark slightly.
What I am hoping to show you here out of 2 Corinthians 9 is a larger vision for your giving that gets at your heart. I'm hoping that after today you are not guilted into giving but awed into giving. Our main point today is: Your faith filled giving shows God's grace.
On this episode of Church History 101, we look at the lead up to the Council of Nicaea!
We resume our series on worship by looking at the wonderful things that God is doing in and through us in our singing!
Thank you for your patience as we catch up on podcasts! This episode is from our Mission's Conference with Vapor's Micah McElveen!
Here is part two of Church History 101! Tonight we look at the Gnostics, Polycarp, and everyone's favorite heretic, Marcion!
Thus far in our series, there has been a lot of talk about Who worship is for (God), and how that is directed (God's Word). We've seen the Word visualized in the sacraments, and declared in the sermon. In other words, we've covered in depth the things that are declared to you. We have to have these as our starting points. We have to know what has been said to us before we can respond. And that is what we are going to talk about today, how do we as a congregation, as worshipers, properly respond to God's Word and work. We will be looking at this in three parts by covering the last three elements of our worship: praying, singing, and giving.
Now, as before, each of these elements themselves are ordered by the Word of God and find their content in the word of God. So how does that work for praying? Does that mean that we are only allowed to follow scripted, word for word prayers from the Bible? While that in itself would be a lot to pray through, that isn't what we are told to do, nor is what we see in the Bible itself. Scriptural figures didn't only pray Psalms, but they lifted up their requests to God. As we see in our text, we are to pray about everything. Yet the Scriptures can guide what those prayers can look like, and in those times where we just don't know what to pray, we have a deep well to draw from in the Bible.
Welcome back to our Sunday Night Lecture series! This semester we will be looking at Church History! In this episode we look at how God used three different cultures to build the world of the New Testament!
Is there ever a time on Sunday where it feels like the worship stops? Many would assume that occurs right about now. This was an assumption that was hammered out of us at seminary. Someone from a church would talk about how we would "have a time of worship AND THEN we will hear the sermon." Did you catch what is being assumed there? Worship is all about the singing, because that is when we are feeling it. People's hands don't go up during the sermon. If they did, I would think you are asking a question. It looks instead like maybe this is the pastor's turn to worship, and the people will join back in at the closing song, but that isn't what the sermon is meant to be. It isn't just me worshiping up here. You are worshiping here, in this moment, as well.
In our worship services, you may notice that there isn't much to look at. There are no elaborate stain-glass pictures of Jesus. There isn't much choreography to my movements. There aren't a lot of mysterious symbols and rites. But should there be? After all, is that not what many people are looking for these days? A return to older, embodied, dare I say, enchanted ways of doing things?
God knows this, for He knows our frame, which is why He has given us those things in two pictures of the Word that are right in front of you: The Lord's Supper and Baptism. Wonderfully, these aren't symbols that you just sit there and watch. You didn't not come here to watch me worship with my body while you spectate. These are acts of worship that you equally participate in with your senses. These acts of worship are loaded with meaning that fully informed by the gospel. Yet these elements contain mystery to them, too. Not because they are unexplained. But because it takes a lifetime to fully comprehend what these elements do in your life.
The mystery that is there is that these elements aren't just show pieces to point you back to the Bible. These also, through the Word preached and by faith believed, are a means of grace for your soul. Your soul is grown by baptism and the Lord's Supper when they are taken alongside the preached word faithfully believed.
Before I was a pastor, I was a photographer. I remember one of my first weddings I did, I was assisting a friend. The wedding was to take place on this beautiful outdoor venue looking out over a mountainside. Lovely location in the middle of a state park. There was one issue, however. The GPS didn't know where it was. We had no clue what it looked like. The wedding was starting in 45 minutes. And we were lost. Thanks to my friends confident driving (and his beautiful Chevy Camaro's roaring engine), we finally came across it (in time!). But we would have much rather had a guide.
While missing a wedding would have had consequences for us, there are far higher stakes when it comes to worship. Displeasing a bride on her wedding day is a sad thing, but it is a sadder thing, and actually much scarier thing to displease God.
As you know we are in the midst of a series on worship. We saw that worship simply defined is bowing down in awe and joy before God. Having felt that awe and joy, what should we do with it when we are all gathered together? That was the question we left off with last time.
If you could improve one thing in your life right now to make your life so much better what would it be? I think for many this time of year, the answer to that question is health related. If we could just lose weight, moving and pain would be eased. Or maybe it is financially related. If only I could make/save more money live would be easier. But even if we do those things it only does that, makes life a little easier. It doesn't make it a life worth living. What makes life worth living?
Have you ever resolved to become a better worshiper in the new year? I'm not talking about being busier at religious things, reading more chapters, attending more small groups, adding Sunday Night, per se. I am talking becoming better at worship. How does one do that? In order to answer that question, we have to remind ourselves what worship actually is, a question we will explore in a moment.
The decade thus far hasn't been known for its predictability. With everything changing around us every day is there something that stays the same?
On this episode of Feast and Follow, we explore exactly what this one constant is out of Lamentations 3.
Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the various, individual offices of Jesus. We have seen Him as Prophet, Priest, and King. But there is a more common title that we use for Him that in some way wraps all of these titles together, Savior. Now, like all church terms we have some sense as to what they mean, but if we are actually stopped in the street and asked to give a definition, we might have to think about it for a minute. Once we have supplied that definition, we are then given the task of saying what precisely we mean. A great example of this is the word “Holy.” I think if you were to ask your average church goer what “holy” means, you’ll get something like “sin free” because we know that God is Holy, Holy, Holy, because that is how the song goes! It actually means, “separate.” God is “different” from us. Certainly that includes not sinning, but that is only part of it.
The same thing I think applies to the word “Savior.” What that word means and how we are supposed to respond to it will be the focus of our time together here.
Our main point is Jesus, Our Savior, delivers us from sin.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus came so long after Genesis 3? “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” has the line “late in time, behold him come.” We know that Jesus isn’t one of those folks who has a hard time getting out the door on time. So why wait? Could it be that Jesus coming down was Plan B? Let’s think about that possibility. I mean we do see this elaborate system of worship in the Old Testament. Worship was done in a particular place and in a particular way. Leviticus is an entire book dedicated to outlining Sabbath as well as daily worship. There were daily sacrifices, thanksgiving offerings, sin offerings, vows, things that took place, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, as well as a litany of health regulations and prescriptions for daily life. All of this was meant to guide and maintain a relationship with God. There was an entire tribe of people who’s sole job was to help the people maintain that relationship, helping them sacrifice, teaching them, maintaining their temple, and even helping them with some of their physical disease as well.
Why have this entire system that, at the end of the day, according to verse 11 of our text, “can never take away sins?” Was this a system that if the people just did it a little bit more faithfully it would have worked but since they didn’t Jesus swoops down and just does it? Is Jesus like a parent trying to let their child do something on their own, realize it is never going to happen, and just does it for them?
No. God knows everything. God plans everything from before the beginning of the world. Acts 2:23 tells us this: “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” It was always the plan that Jesus would die for the sins of the world. But in order for us to understand what that actually means we need the Old Testament to compare Jesus’ sacrifice to. It is like trying to point out the difference between a million and a billion. A million seconds is 11.5 days. That’s a while! But a billion seconds? Why that’s over 31 years! I’ve only been alive for a little bit longer than a billion seconds.
In the same way, we look at Jesus’ ministry and ultimately dying on the cross and ask, “What am I really seeing here?” The Old Testament is the background to that answer, and for today, we will look at the office of Old Testament priests. That is what we are going to look at today when we see that Jesus is the ultimate priest.
Jesus as priest makes us perfect.
Jesus as King is probably the hardest part of Jesus’ identity for Americans to understand, much less submit to. The only king we ever had we threw off with a cup of Boston Harbor tea. Ever since, we’ve built our national identity on the concept of self-rule, by the people, for the people, able to swap leaders every four years, potentially handicap their authority every two, and, at least in theory, impeach at any time. Since the only permanent authority we must pay homage to is the electric company, it will be helpful to remind ourselves what a king even does. Or at least we will remind ourselves of what a king was supposed to do. No king but One ever fulfilled the royal law perfectly.
Our main point is Jesus as King Rules All of Life with Care
Who is Jesus? Who is he fully? There has been a recent survey that's gone out.
It's called the State of Theology Survey, where they're asking people, both your average everyday Americans and even your regular churchgoing folk, a series of questions as to what is the Bible? Who is Jesus and this sort of thing. And one of the things that was amazing is when they asked the question, who is Jesus?
Is he just a great teacher? And what we found was that at least, I think it was 20% of even church going folks, would say that yes, he's just a teacher. He's not God. But is meant to give us an example as to what we're to follow. Well, like most lies that are damaging, there is a bit of truth. Yes, Jesus has given us an example.
Yes, he was a great teacher, but that's not all he was either. We can also make the mistake, especially when we come to our seasons of Advent, when we see little manger scenes everywhere that we see Jesus as the baby. The harmless little thing that we've all come to worship and adore.
And we forget that there is a lot more to this baby as well. In theology, there is a term that's given that Christ occupies three offices, which is just a fancy way of saying that God has the Son of God Jesus, has three titles, three things about him, three jobs that he occupies to help us in our Christian life, to show us the way. And those three offices are prophet, priest, and king.
What do we think about saying, "Thank you"? Is it just something that we are expected to do, or is there more to it than that? As we look at 1 Thess. 5, we will see that thanksgiving is an essential foundation of the Christian life.
The more modern the world gets, the more relevant passages like this are. I know it doesn’t seem that way at first reading, but if you follow along with me, I think you will see that this is a very interesting passage with a critical concept for us to grasp. That concept is regular times of celebration before the Lord.
One of the challenges of modern life is a loss of the sense of time. I don’t mean we are all so busy now, I mean that we live as if we aren’t as bound to it anymore. Let me give an example. When our phones could get email, a little over 15 years ago, suddenly we could be working anywhere, anytime. The idea of “office hours” vanished and suddenly all of life could look the same. Any day could became Monday just in the time it takes for your phone to chime. This is just an extension of what has happened in the last 50 or so years when a lot of people’s work stopped being dependent on what time of the year it is. Farming is very dependent on the month of the year. Email works the same whether it is June or January, so many have lost the connection to the natural rhythms of the world.
I came across a quote from Dr. Ross, my old Hebrew teacher, that sums up what I’m hoping to preach about today: “Only when worshippers begin to see how creation and redemption inform their use of time will they fully appreciate what it means to enter into the Lord’s rest and enjoy fellowship with the holy God, and with one another in Christ.” (Recalling the Hope of Glory, 240). Let’s unpack that.
In this section of Scripture, and in other places in the Old Testament, we see feasts or celebrations to God that correspond to certain seasons of the year, the creation. They were times that called for everyone to stop and remember the past, recognize the present, and rejoice for the future. Each one is filled with meaning not only when it comes to what is happening in the world, but even more so what is happening in redemption.
Our main point is to embrace the opportunity to celebrate, knowing that you always have reason to do so.
Today, we look at the final passage in Genesis. It has been quite a journey. We’ve watched God create a world, see Adam ruin it, yet a promise of care in the very same chapter. We’ve watched the world flooded yet out of that a sign of the covenant written in the sky to this day. We’ve seen the rise and fall of Babel, divine blood oaths, and stairways to heaven. Yet we’ve also seen the humdrum waiting. Yet in each one of these chapters, we have been exposed to yet another demonstration of the sovereignty of God.
It all wraps up here with yet another reminder of God’s sovereign control of the world. Though here, we have a unique application of that doctrine. It is one thing to flatly say, “God is in control.” That’s good and true, but has been said so often we begin to become overly familiar with it. This passage says, “Since God is in control, there is an obligation on your part: forgiveness.” We will see how this occurs in our passage and our main point: God’s sovereignty requires us not to seek revenge.
What do you want the end of your life to be like? Or to put it in a slightly more morbid way, how do you hope you will behave at your death? I know those sound like odd questions, but really of all things that we can prepare for in life, this is the one certain thing. Only the Christian has the answer for how to prepare oneself for such an event. Only the Christian can view death for what it is, a hated friend. What do I mean by that? How can one be a hated friend? Death is hated because it is a result of sin. The reason why we die is because of sin. Yet death can be a friend in its capacity to deliver us to heaven, something only Jesus could accomplish.
Today we are going to look at two points today The Christian faces death with hope yet Christians rightly grieve death.
As we celebrate the Reformation, we will take a brief pause on our journey through Genesis to take a look at another hard won recovery of the the doctrine of the Lord's Supper
This is an important question that a surprising amount of the American church gets incorrect!
Don’t you wish you could know the future? I think all of us if given the chance would love even a glimpse or a hint of what is to come in our lives. But as many popular stories tell us, how that future gets to us is often very confusing.
Israel is about to die, but before he does, he is going to place his blessing on all of his sons. The last verse of our passage is going to reiterate that each blessing is “suitable” for each one, and we are going to see how that plays out for many of them here this morning. We will see that some of them, like Reuben, are getting “blessings” that are a result of what they have done. Some are getting blessings seemingly despite what they’ve done, like Judah. Others get blessings, but seemingly not the right ones, like Joseph. What are we to make of these things, how did they play out in history, and what does this mean for us today? We will tackle those questions as we look at our main point today: God’s blessings are suitable yet still need to be trusted.
In light of recent events, there has been a robust online discussion about whether Mormons are really Christians. In this episode, we examine some of the basic beliefs of the Mormons and see that they are not compatible with Christianity.
How do you think about God's promises? For Christians, they are the central hope of our lives, because God's promises can't be stopped even by death itself. Because of this, we want to be able to pass on these promises to our children, and a big part of our ability to do that is because of this passage right here. Abraham has been promised that there will be a seed that will bless the nations. Ultimately, that is Christ. The promise is going to outlive Jacob, and we will see the transfer of that blessing here.
Now, our passing on of the blessing looks different. In this passage, the blessing comes ultimately from the Lord but only through Jacob. As we will see, the blessing is going to be extended to the rest of the nation of Israel with the tribes forming their own contribution to God's plan. Today, the blessing ultimately comes from Christ but is shared through every Christian that opens their mouth for the kingdom.
Last week, we saw that there is a certain restlessness amongst the people of God. The family of Abraham has been wandering the entire book of Genesis, knowing that they will eventually settle in the land that God has promised them. We also, in our own way, are wandering through a strange land waiting for our final, promised inheritance as well. But what do we do in the meantime? Are we just sitting around for 80 to 100 years just waiting to for our lives to really begin? How does God settle His people when they are waiting?
Our main point that we will consider is how God Faithfully Settles His separate people in a Strange Land
One thing that often isn't mentioned in Christian circles is fasting. With the great help of Don Whitney and his book The Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life, we will attempt to fix that!
Do you feel unsettled where you are? That’s normal. There is a feeling of something missing here in this world. We aren’t settled here. We shouldn’t be. The world actually isn’t our home, and we are wanderers within it, journeying towards our final destination.
Sometimes it can feel aimless, inefficient, and looping. A lot of “Why did we spend so much time there?” But we aren’t charting our own course. The Christian life isn’t a choose your own adventure. It is being led, no matter how much it doesn’t feel that way sometimes, by the Good Shepherd Himself. God is a journeying God, a God of the wilderness, the desert, the strange land far off, but not because He’s a gypsy. Not because He has commitment issues. It is because He is seeking the lost sheep, the wanderers, to bring them home. And He will wander with them all the way. Indeed, not all who wander are lost. In fact, only the wanderers after Jesus are saved.
In this passage we will see that God leads His people on a journey home.
After discussing prayer, Bible reading, and meditation, we might wonder if we are falling into a trap about seeing ourselves as "brains on a stick." How are we to address that? With some help from Matthew Bingham and his book A Hearth Aflame for God we will answer that question!
Some circumstances can seem impossible for God to work with much less bless through. The people of Israel needed to be reminded of this. Genesis was originally written to recently freed slaves, slaves who have known nothing but forced service for 400 years. They have just been let go, and are now wandering through the desert looking to one day enter the promised land.
Now it is hard to have hope in a desert. There’s not much food or water. Everything is hard in a desert, and some might be tempted to believe that even God has a hard time working in the desert. Is He able to provide in hard circumstances?
Joseph’s brothers are likely wondering this as well in this moment. They have been shocked to hear that Joseph has forgiven them, but as we will see from this text, the reason that they are about to be blessed is because God has been the one watching over them.
We will look at some of these things as we look at our main point: God promises to provide for His people more than they could deserve to point to Himself.
In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, how is the Christian supposed to respond? There is a lot of advice online, most of it unhelpful. How do we sort through this? That is what we wanted to tackle in this edition of our Sunday Night lecture series.
In the wake of the very public murders of Charlie Kirk, Iryna Zarutska, and Julie Gard Schnuelle, we took a break from Genesis to remind ourselves of the Kingship of Jesus out of Psalm 2.
Tonight, we continue our look at studying the Bible by examining the lost arts of memorization and meditation!
Do you know how forgiveness works when there is some real offense committed against you? It’s one thing to forgive a misunderstanding or a hurtful action that was well-intended. What I want us to know today is how do we forgive someone when the offender did what they did in order to hurt you. There is hate in their heart towards you. What if they, I don’t know, sold you into slavery, on purpose? How do you find it in your heart to forgive things that actually changed the course of your life? That is what this chapter is going to be revealing to us today.
What we are going to encounter is some deep theology about God’s control of all things, including His ability to work through human sin. This is where an understanding of these fine points will actually make a real difference in your life. Because unless you understand what God is revealing to us here, you are going to find it nearly impossible to forgive much less reconcile with your offender.
Today we are going to see that you are able to forgive because God works through your hurts.
We continue our series on the Spiritual Gifts! Our topic this time is Bible Reading to actually change your life!
In a day and age with GPS, I’ve grown so used to it that using verbal directions given by someone else spikes my anxiety. You know those directions: keep going until you see the hot dog place, turn right at the gas station, and it’ll be the big building on your right. Can’t miss it (yes, I can)! If you see the grocery store you’ve gone too far! The longer I drive without seeing the hot dog place, the unrest in my soul grows steadily. But then! The joy when I see the landmark, just as my guide said, comfort floods my soul; I’m on the right track.
How do you know you are on the right track with your Christian life? What are the landmarks that indicate you are indeed on the road of salvation? How do you know the faith you have in Christ is a real faith that is having an impact on your life? While there will be peaks and valleys, good days and bad days, looking at the whole of your life, do you see evidence of repentance from sin? Are you turning from sin to Christ?
We saw Joseph not sin but what if you’re more like Judah?
The passage that is before us gives us a remarkable demonstration of what it looks like to have repented. We will look at the person of Judah and see the remarkable change that has occurred in his life, and what we can expect from our own.
Today we will see that Repentance requires you to change what you love and how you live.
On this episode, we finish our walk through the book If God Already Knows, Why Pray? by Doug Kelly!
What are you waiting for in your life? Really sit back and think about it for a second. Maybe you are in the midst of a family situation or physical pain that you would say you are waiting for it to stop. Maybe you are waiting for kids to get a bit older, or have a bit more money in the old account, or hit a certain level of your career. Why are you looking forward to these things? If I could venture a guess, based on my own mind, we’re really looking for peace. It’s not really looking for nothing happening in our lives, just the ability to move through life only thinking about what is in front of you.
The characters in our passage this story have many things occupying their minds. We’ve got a famine, a grave concern we’ve not had to feel; we have lingering guilt from a two decade’s old betrayal; we have a family conflict stemming from favoritism strengthened from loss; most severely, we have the crushing parental dread of a child potentially in harms way. Where on earth does this family find peace? They are so far in the hole. We can say that they need to trust God, and we find evidence here that they do, but it is pretty buried in a lot of other motivations? Can they find peace, and if they can, can we?
Today, our main point is this: God can use even fear-filled obedience to bring peace to His people.
We begin a new series in our Sunday Night Lectures looking at the Spiritual Disciplines in the Christian Life. We start by looking through the book by Doug Kelly If God Already Knows, Why Pray?
How can we use our fear to grow spiritually? What do your fears tell you about yourself? Have you ever gotten an out of the blue or late night call from someone who doesn’t normally call you like that? There is often a sense of fear at least wondering what might be wrong or what might suddenly be expected of you. The cryptic “We need to talk…” text is even worse! The three dots means you did something! The worst case scenario is when you know, or at least are pretty sure you know, what those three dots mean. You know what you did, and now you have been discovered.
Now, it is one thing to receive that communication from a friend or parent, but what if on the caller ID it read, “God”? What comes to your mind? “Did He see what happened the other night? What is He going to ask me to do? What topic do I need to make sure we stay FAAARR away from?” When we feel the twinge in our conscience, that is something like getting that phone call. Or when we feel our chest tighten up when thinking about a worry of ours, it is an invitation to consider what God might have to say about those emotions.
Today we are going to consider our main point: God prods our fears to shape our faith.
We are going to see these next few chapters develop our characters in some pretty profound ways. There will be many echos of what we have seen before in Genesis that will resolve in some interesting ways. I invite you over these next few weeks as new semesters start, as we approach the back half of the year, to consider along with these characters how God may be calling you to grow. This week, we will see how God lays His hand on them and in the coming weeks, we will see how God shapes them.
On this episode, we finish our series on the Apostles' Creed looking at what the eternal state is going to be after we die!
What is God doing? It’s a question we ask from time to time, and what we are really asking is how do we find out? How does God speak today?
Joseph’s life is about to take a radical turn. God is about to reveal the reason why everything has gone the way that it has and give another generation deep confidence in his ability to work through all circumstances, including through some rare means.
Central to this passage are these two dreams of Pharaoh and Joseph’s ability, with God’s help, to reveal the interpretations of them. We will see this pop up again in the Old Testament when we get to the prophet Daniel of Lion’s Den fame. These are the only two occasions where we will see a Hebrew practice dream interpretation, so this is a rare moment in Scripture (Matthews). Both times are strange visions with no real obvious interpretation. We know that God can speak very clearly, even with pagan rulers, through dreams. We have even seen that in Genesis when God warns Abimelech in a dream not to touch Sarah, Abraham’s wife: Genesis 20:3 “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” No ambiguity there, huh? God was able to protect Sarah even when Abraham wasn’t.
So why not just do that here with Joseph? Couldn’t God have intervened on Joseph’s behalf through a very clear dream like that to Pharaoh? Couldn’t he have just spoken to Pharaoh plainly about a famine coming and, oh by the way, you need to use Joseph as your administrator? He could have. So why? Let’s explore that as we tackle our main point today: God’s control is comprehensive, and God’s control is good
Why does God bother with our bodies? What happens to them when Christ returns, and what does this mean for how we treat them now? Find out in this edition of our Sunday Evening lectures on the Apostles' Creed!
Could you have predicted what the last five years of your life would contain? I can tell you that there is at least one year none of us saw coming. The number of jokes about 20/20 vision, seeing clearly the way forward in a new decade were made viciously ironic in arguably one of the most confusing years of our generation. Even here locally, we could never have guessed exactly who we would lose and when, leaving us astonished year after year.
But we also couldn’t have predicted the joys of the last five years either. Who would have guessed the number of children that now sit in our midst! Many of them didn’t even exist five years ago! We’ve added many new families, grown our school, and seen our denomination grow and stay faithful to God.
As much as things have indeed changed in the last five years, most day to day operations felt like, well, day to day operations. It seemed like many weeks or months would go by where we just waited. That great theologian Dr. Seuss once weighed in on waiting in his book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go. In the midst of a lifetime of travels, the great doctor said, you will find one place that will fill you with dread, the waiting place. It is a place where everyone is just waiting, waiting for a phone call or a train to come in, and he calls this “a most useless place.” Instead, he says, you should be going where the boom bands are playing, where things are happening.
Now, the venerable doctor is onto something, but his emphasis isn’t quite right. Though waiting is often seen as a blight, and stirs our minds to see it not right, it isn’t the wait that is useless, you see, it is often the means God forms you to be. Things aren’t only happening with the boom bands. Things are always happening, even in the waiting place, because our God is always at work, not in fits and starts, but never slumbering or sleeping.
We will see our two points today God is working even when you don’t see it and God’s return motivates our faithful working.
Tonight, we come to a most critical part of the creed. This is critical for a number of reasons, not the least of which because this is the gospel. The good news is that sins can be forgiven. This is our message that we preach to the world, and we are the only ones able to proclaim it. Political organizations can preach help, but they can't preach forgiveness.
Getting the gospel wrong has led to just about every problem that the church has. We can so easily misunderstand it because we are sinners. We are born with a bias against understanding it. So we need to take the time to walk through this carefully. Some of these things are going to (hopefully) not be news to you, but this is a great opportunity to see where you heart might have missed the comfort and encouragement you are entitled to or where it has gained undue complacency that you are not entitled to.
You have heard it said that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. I’m here to add a third certainty to life: temptation. Temptation exists everywhere because we still have sin within us. Its power has been broken by our putting our faith in Christ and having the Spirit living inside us. This means that we don’t have to sin every time temptation comes along like we did before Christ. But we aren’t away from sin’s presence yet. And if there is anything we learn about temptation is that it is persistent, usually more so than we are.
Joseph’s case turned out to be different than a lot of ours. Despite the constant temptation, Joseph, quite impressively, resisted it. One theologian thought that Joesph’s ability to rule himself was more impressive than running the country of Egypt (Matthews). How do temptations actually work? How did Joseph resist them so well? How can we learn how to resist temptations better? Do things always go better when you resist temptation? We will try to answer those questions as we look at our two points today: Temptations want your loyalty, yet only God will be loyal to you.
In this episode, we cover the doctrine of the Church. Once again, special thanks to Third Mil Ministries for the outline I am teaching from.
The recording starts abruptly, but I was in the middle of explaining that all of these lectures have been adapted from some other curriculum from Third Mill ministries. This one is about the Holy Spirit!
Our series continues this time looking at the Son! Note: I got the Day of Atonement sacrifices mixed up with the Sin offering in this lecture. Sending out the goat into the wilderness is the Day of Atonement offering procedure, not the sin offering!
Our continuing study on the Apostles' Creed, this evening focused on the section on God the Father.
We've added a Sunday time of study together going through the Apostles' Creed. In this introductory episode, we explore the Creed as a whole and define why we should study it.
What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase, “God will be with you”? For many, I think, this is a phrase that has been heard so many times, it has lost its meaning. It has become part of the Christian language that we actually stopped thinking about a long time ago. What does it really mean for God to be with you? How does that make a difference to your life, particularly when things are going well? What difference might it make in other people’s lives that God is with you? We will explore these questions as we take a look at this chapter over the next two weeks. Today I hope that you will be convinced of our main point, that God’s presence in you impacts your world right where you are.
Genesis 38 doesn’t get nearly the respect and love it should. Many look at this chapter as an unnecessary and disturbing interruption to the story of Joesph, a generally positive story of redemption. Looking at the content of the story, it is easy to see why people think that. We all have some section of our lives we regret, and it would seem that we are looking at Judah’s season of regret here. Why dwell on the gross sins of one of the brothers when we could be focusing on the more positive portrait of Joseph? After all, this doesn’t describe most of our lives as good Presbyterians, so what is there even to learn from here?
But this is actually a critical chapter for the story of Genesis, our Christian lives generally, and even contributes to the overall story of Jesus.
Genesis 38 is critical to the book as a whole because Joseph is not the only character in this section of Genesis. Judah’s roles is arguably equally important. Rather than just focus on God’s redemption of Joseph’s circumstances, we are seeing in this chapter, the beginnings of God’s redemption of Judah’s character (Matthews). We can’t see how far God brings him if we don’t know where he started from, and this chapter shows us that sinful starting line. Hopefully, this will give you hope for what God can do in your life.
This chapter is critical because of what it has to say for your Christian life today. Because of the sexual misadventures aplenty we see here, we tend to focus on those and not look at all the foundational sins that actually lead to those moments. There are many “smaller” sins that are actually quite common to us all shot through this passage that we can learn a great deal from. Hopefully, this will make us more grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice for those sins after seeing them in their proper light.
Finally, this chapter is critical because of what it tells us about Jesus’ family.
We are going to tie all of this together under our two points, Little sins are big obstacles to family commitments, yet Jesus has died for the little sins, too.
We have come to the final turn in our story of Genesis. We’ve been on quite a journey. We have seen how God has been faithful to three generations of Abraham’s family, and now we turn the corner to see how the story of Genesis concludes.
At first glance, it would seem that now we are going to look at the life of Joseph as the main character going forward, but that would be a mistake. For sure, Joseph is going to be featured prominently in the chapters to follow, but the story really is about three men, not one. By keeping that fact in mind, we are going to have a much better idea why God includes the details that He does in the upcoming chapters.
Today, we are going to take an overview of the section ahead of us, and because it is Father’s Day, we are going to look at it through the lens of three fathers, Jacob, Judah, and Joseph. They are going to compare and contrast in general, and we will see deeper details as we much through in the coming weeks. We are going to look at two points today that while addressing fathers in particular are nonetheless applicable to everyone. Fathers have a deep impact on their children yet Our impact is not beyond God’s mercy and control.
How do you think about your enemies? It can be a complex question. On the one hand we are to be kind to our enemies, bless those who curse you and all of that. But how do you get to that point? How are you able to bless your enemies, even if they come from your own family? This passage doesn’t directly answer that question, but the rest of the story that this chapter sets up, does.
We will look at two points today: Your enemies are under God’s control and Your enemies can be made family in Christ.
How do you meet with God? How do you have a soul satisfying, hopeful relationship with God in this world? The question of hope and happiness has never seemed more elusive in a culture as prosperous as ours. We have never had more of our immediate needs taken for granted as we do today, and yet we find ourselves in the midst of the most anxious, psychologically burdened generation we’ve ever seen. Every day I am seeing best selling books and articles acknowledging this problem, sounding the alarm that all is not well in a world that just 150 years ago would have been considered a paradise.
This revelation is a mercy from God. It’s a mercy because we now have the surest evidence that we can stop wasting time thinking we are just one more discovery from finding hope. The answer to hope is found in God’s Word, and we will see how this chapter displays that for us.
Wonderfully, that hope is found in the midst of real life. As you no doubt noticed in the back half of the chapter, there isn’t a ton to be happy about. The hard things of dying in child birth and a scandalous son cannot overshadow the hope that God offers. No matter how modern we get, these are among the worst problems we can imagine. Yet God’s promises ring through even this and point to how we, too, can have a hopeful relationship with God.
Let’s look at this together in our two points Hope in God requires exclusive worship of God and Hope in God requires eternal waiting for God.
Some sermons are harder to make than others. Some texts you read and think, “Well, that’s a sordid tale. Not much to uplift the soul here. Let’s move on.” There are others where you encounter a story like this, and those brave souls who attempt to spend some time in there can see multiple ways of looking at the story.
Unfortunately, this is a story that isn’t unfamiliar to our culture. Versions of this happen every day. Something like this may have even happened to you in this room. Because this topic is so familiar, it can blind us on how best to see it, because our various cultures and upbringings crowd around us as we read.
A mistake that we can make in looking at this text (and really many others) is to try to find the main villain. We try to make it simple and reduce the story to pure good guys versus pure bad guys. And that’s just not what we see here. As one commentator put it, there is “ostensibly nothing…commendable” in this chapter (Matthews). He’s right. Yes, there are some actions in this chapter that are worse than others, but there is something that everyone in this room can identify with.
This is a hard story, but there are two points for us to draw from it that Tim Keller, I believe, famously said: You are worse than you think but You are loved more than you know.
IntroductionJacob has had quite a life thus far. There have been a multitude of twists and turns, deceptions and deals, and they have been leading up to this point, this last (?) conflict. The eventual confrontation with Esau has been a long time coming. It has been twenty years since he’s seen him last, and at that time, Esau was just waiting to kill Jacob.
We happen to know how this story is going to shape out, so I must put on my imagination to try to feel what Jacob had to be thinking about here. How many pleasant moments were interrupted by the sudden remembrance that Esau is still out there? How did it feel to successfully tell off Laban only to remember that there was someone else way more upset out there? Now lets imagine just the last 48 hours. Jacob found out that Esau is on his way, with 400 men! He’s been bustling about getting camps ready, sending advance servants with gifts, reordering his family to protect his favorites, and then capping it all off with an all-night wrestling match with God! By the time we get to our passage, it can be tough to imagine how Jacob is even seeing straight.
Maybe you’ve been here. Hopefully you’ve not had conflict where you fear for your life, but perhaps you’ve encountered such conflict, you can’t imagine it ever going away. Maybe you are even the reason that the conflict is there. No matter which position you find yourself in, I think this passage holds out hope for you today.
As we will see today, and I’m leaning heavily on my old seminary prof, Alan Ross for this main point, Reconciliation is a gift from God.
Mother’s Day is a mixed blessing for many. On the one hand, it is a wonderful occasion for families to show their appreciation for God’ precious gift to them. It’s a hard job, and setting aside time to honor and acknowledge such effort is a good and necessary thing to do. Mom’s deserve their honor, and today is a day of great blessing.
However, this can be a hard day for many. Today is a reminder to many not of what they had but what they lost, or maybe never got to experience. Even for those who did get to experience both sides of motherhood, today can be tinged with guilt for past or maybe even current failures.
The text that is before us today speaks to both of these categories and to the rest of us. Fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, regretful or rejoicing, we can all find comfort and encouragement from our text today.
Isaiah is a prophet in Judah about 700 years before Christ was born. He was confronting sin and warning of coming judgment to the nation of Judah, the southern part of Israel. Israel (the northern kingdom) had experienced an exile about halfway through Isaiah’s time. Judah wouldn’t experience their final exile for another almost 150 years. Isaiah alternates throughout the book between statements of coming judgment and future restoration after that judgment. That future restoration happened in part through God’s working through secular politics. They at one point got to return to their land, but the major fulfillment of the nation’s hope was in the coming of Christ which Isaiah also predicts. This coming of Christ isn’t just said in the famous passages that we read at Christmas and Easter time. Christ also figures in with this chapter as well.
We are going to look at two points this morning, God will never forget you and Jesus is the reminder
If there is anything a human being distrusts it is authority. And there is actually good, Biblical reason for that. One of the very first things we learn about ourselves since toddlerhood is that we break rules. As we get older, we realize that people continue to break rules, and this is a reality that God Himself confirms.
So can we reason that since we humans are all sinners, does that mean we should get rid of all human leaders, or at the very least make the Church a pure democracy? The Bible tells us, no. God, Our Ultimate Authority, decided to work through human leaders to help His people, and believe it or not, that is actually a better way to do it. Why? Because that is the way He does it. He could have decided to just speak straight from heaven, live streaming Jesus directly into our sanctuaries and church officer meetings.
God decided to do something better. If He lead the Church with Zoom call Jesus, anytime He would tell us to do something, we would respond, “Well, He’s Jesus. He’s perfect! We’ll never be able to reach that.” Instead, He decides to transform sinful men by the Power of the Holy Spirit through their use of the Word and prayer to be examples (however imperfect) of what every Christian should look like. The response of, “I could never be like that” is taken away. The human elder is faithful to his wife, so you, a fellow human, can be, too. The human deacon isn’t captivated by a love of money, so you can, too. Likewise, the elder and the deacon aren’t sinlessly perfect, so they confess and repent of their sins when they arise. So you should, too.
These men are meant to be examples that are actually possible to imitate and learn from (1 Cor. 11:1). So as we go through this list of qualifications, this sermon isn’t limited to the three guys on our ballot this afternoon. All of you must pay attention. These are the marks of a qualified church leader, and it is your responsibility to identify such men and vote for their ascension to this work. It is also your responsibility to expect nothing less than these qualifications, knowing that no one fills them perfectly. It is also your responsibility to live up to these character qualities as well, because that is what these leaders are leading you towards. We don’t vote because a candidate is a friend or would have their feelings hurt. We vote for them because we are saying, “This man is worthy, according to God, of my imitation and trust to lead Christ’s church.” That is a heavy responsibility for all parties involved. So let us listen carefully to what the text has to say to us today.
Thankfully, God has not left us to formulate the ideal candidate on our own. God has graciously given to us the profile of a church leader that transcends time, culture, and our individual ideals. You will notice that the list God leaves us with here looks quite different than what we might see on a job requirements list today, even among church job postings. There is no mention of a dynamic personality or success in business, or even previous leadership experience except the candidate’s own household. This list emphasizes character above ability.
Today we welcome a guest speaker on the podcast, Theodore Woo, as he brings us the word out of Luke 24:13-35.
This week, we have looked at a number of places that people place their hope. We can hope in politics rather than worship, riches rather than sacrifice, even sin rather than holiness. Today we are going to look a one more, extremely common place people put their hope: a new day.
We have come up with a lot of ways to cope with the busyness of modern life, and one of the most popular is the line, “things will slow down in a couple weeks.” Things then don’t, in fact, slow down in two weeks, so we repeat the lie again, hoping this time, it is in fact true.
Now, that is meant to be funny because this is something that we do all the time, but many of us cope with much more serious things this way and use it as an excuse to view pieces of our lives as meaningless and without a job. We look at our lives as a series of “just gotta get through this” moments. We turn our lives as always just two weeks away from fulfilling. Or turning just after potty training as when life really begins, or just after the kids are married, or just after this medical scan, or just after this wedding.
Do you see what that does to your life? Raising children in the fear and admonition of the Lord turns into something you just gotta get through, which means, really, it is a waste of time. Fulfilling your marriage vows before God and caring for a spouse as a picture of the gospel as you await medical results becomes a chore-filled, meaningless, busy work. Joy is always somewhere over there.
This passage, however, should change literally everything, and in fact, it did. Even secular life, non-Christian people have reoriented the calendar around this. It is the year 2025, because it has been (more or less) 2025 years since Jesus was born. For the Christian, however, this passage should change every single part of your life, including those parts that you say, “I just gotta get through this, and then things will be better.”
How?
Well, before I answer that, I need to clear up a few things first.
Number one, I’m not saying that the resurrection makes life easy. It doesn’t (yet). It’s still a fallen world (for now). I’m not saying that the resurrection turns waiting on a cancer diagnosis fun. I’m not even saying that we can’t grieve when sad things happen in our lives, and we look forward to the pain fading. What I am saying is that the Resurrection gives us the hope, the full assurance, mind you, of THE New day when all things are made new, when all things are resurrected from their dying state. On that day, all of these things that are unpleasant and sad and terrible will be redefined as the very things that lead us to the joy of heaven (Romans 8:28). We will see, with redeemed minds with the greatest hindsight capability possible, will look back over our lives from the heavenly point of view, and see that every single struggle eventually led us to this moment. So again, I am not saying that it makes life fun, but it will make life understandable.
Number two, I’m not just giving you a longer time to wait. In other words, you might be saying, “Ok, so you’re just telling us to stop putting hope in two weeks from now but rather 100 years from now when I’m dead? Aren’t you just telling us to do the same thing, hoping for the future, but make it longer?” That’s an insightful question, but no.
Putting your ultimate hope in eternity is very different because, number one, that future is actually guaranteed to you if you are in Christ. Two weeks from now being better isn’t it. In fact, it almost certainly will be the opposite. And number two, life slowing down in two weeks doesn’t change anything about today. Knowing that we will know whether or not it is cancer in a month does nothing for today except remind us of how much we don’t know.
Jesus rising from the dead actually changes everything about today, because it proves that there is a new King Who rules the world, and He has something for us to do during the waiting times. Not only that, but He is also the God of the universe, who brings all things into our lives for a specific, and good—in all meanings of that term—reason.
Let’s walk through this passage to see what this means.
We find ourselves once again at Palm Sunday and the entrance to the city of Jerusalem. This is a significant moment in Jesus’ ministry not just because it begins the road to the cross but because this scene has much to teach us today. So much is happening in this moment that if we don’t stop to look at the details we can miss what Jesus is saying and not saying about His ministry and its startling relevance to 21st century American politics.
Jesus is here to set the record straight in the two areas of life that we supposedly can’t bring up in polite conversation: worship and politics. These are sensitive issues because we tend to wrap our identity both personally and as a group around them. Both are actually important. Jesus has a role to fill in both of them, but we will be able to see which one Jesus prioritizes and will guide our thoughts for the rest of this week.
This week we are going to look at hope and where it is found. We will look at one area that we tend to find hope because that is our cultural default, and see how Christ offers the better alternative. Today, we are going to see that our hope is not in politics but in worship.
We have before us a very unique passage in a couple respects. We’ve never seen God, before or since, physically wrestle a man! Usually God is in the business of revealing Himself rather than hiding Himself. There are a lot of parts to this story that seem strange and confusing.
Yet for those who have known God for a while, there is actually something strangely familiar about this text. It isn’t just because you’ve probably read it before, but because you’ve probably experienced it before, albeit in a more spiritual sense, less dramatic.
Today we are going to unfold what this text is getting at by looking, as we usually do, at two points today. God changes your identity and God changes your behavior.
We have so much to cover here, we are going to skip fancy introductions and jump right in! We find ourselves at a brand new chapter in Jacob’s life with a fresh challenge for him, the dreaded encounter with Esau. It has been twenty years since, from Esau’s perspective, he tricked him out of the blessing of Isaac. It is important to remember that even though Jacob went about it badly, the blessing was always supposed to be Jacob’s. Nevertheless, Esau took it badly and purposed to kill Jacob when he got the chance.
Jacob, at the direction of God, heads back away from Laban to the promised land of Canaan, and back to his kinsmen, meaning Esau. This is going to be one of the hardest things he will ever face, and like the rest of us, there is a mixed bag in how he approaches this test. We will start with what Jacob does well and then make some critique on how this could be better, with the expectation that we learn from his mistakes AND his faithfulness. The main point I want you to draw from this is that we are to Prayerfully prepare for life with God’s promises in mind.
We are not a trusting people, which is probably why we have so many ways of forcing each other to do things they have promised. Business build contracts with built in financial punishments if the agreements aren’t honored. When we have a marriage ceremony, it is done the way that it is for a reason. Couples make promises in public. This does two things. One, it is done in front of people for us all to be witnesses that this happened. Others can call the couple to account if they end up not doing what they promised. Two, this is done in front of God which is a way of saying that if they don’t hold up their promises, then God Himself will judge them.
This second example of a marriage is the closest thing that we have to a covenant today. Marriage has been cheapened as an institution with quick and easy divorce, but the seriousness of what is being done is easy to see, once you know why it is being done that way.
What we are seeing here today is a covenant between Jacob and Laban. We’ve seen covenants many times in the book of Genesis so far. The most common are between God and man. We saw the first one between God and Adam and Eve. Then we saw God and Noah, and since Genesis 12, we have been watching the covenant between God and Abraham unfold.
We’ve seen a smattering of covenants between Abraham and Abimelech and Isaac and Abimelech, but this one feels a little different than what we have seen so far. Here Jacob is making a covenant between members of his family! The Abimelechs were afraid of Abraham and his son, and it looks like this covenant is being made for a similar reason: Laban is afraid of Jacob. Jacob clearly has God on His side, so if one wants peace, then they better make sure that they are on Jacob’s side as well.
God is clearly continuing to move in Abraham’s family further and further away from their original homeland. Abraham moved out at God’s command, but he had to send his servant back to get a wife for Issac. Isaac had to do the same thing for Jacob, but after this moment, there is no going back to the “homeland.” Jacob, in a way, is going to become the homeland. Israel is being created and solidified as a people group on its own, something we will see more clearly as we get into our text today.
Our main points today are God is the true basis of community and God witnesses all that is done and will judge accordingly (Psalm 2)
Do you feel like you have to go through a lot for no apparent reason? I think all of us have felt like that at times in the various spheres of our life whether that is at home, work, church, or school. Maybe it feels like the boss never treats you fairly or your husband never notices all the work done around the house. The word that I think describes what life feels like at those times is “endures.” Have you ever dreamed in those times of enduring getting to make a speech like Jacob has here? You finally get to absolutely lay into those treating you unfairly with the family there to applaud when you’re done. Maybe you even had the chance to do that and didn’t even have to think of a much better answer in the shower three days later! Maybe you got to be free of that time of enduring like Jacob does at the end of this chapter.
If we are honest, though, there will be repeating times of enduring. Most of life is not spent on the other end of a boundary preventing your enemies from returning. More often than not, life will feel like verses 38-42 than 55. What do we do in those times?
Here, Jacob has something to teach us in how to endure well that will be in conversation with a couple other passages. Our main point today is: Live self-sacrificially so that others may not justly accuse you (1 Peter 2:13-25).
After our break for Mission's conference last week, we resume this week our study of Genesis!
Apple Podcasts wouldn't play the last one due to some sort of technical issue on our end. Hopefully, this will fix it!
Do you love transitions in life? We look forward to at least a few of them. Starting life at college, a first baby, a first grandbaby, a new job that fits your passions better or moving from single to married. We look forward to those because we expect them. It is a normal part of the growing up process, and since they are such well-worn paths we know what to expect more or less.
It is the unexpected transitions in life we fear. Those are the ones we don’t see coming and are not a part of everyone’s experience. Suddenly changing a job, losing a pregnancy, getting that dreaded phone call from the doctor, watching a spouse mentally or physically fade away. It feels scary because this new experience doesn’t have the same sort of “well-worn path” feel that the ones I described earlier. It feels like uncharted waters. Familiar comforts are stripped away as you are forced to realize what you are really holding on to.
In this section of Genesis, it is a major transition for the rest of the book. For the final time, a member of Abraham’s clan is going to leave the homeland, never to return. Jacob is about to embark on his solo journey as the sole holder of the promise. He is about to go home, truly home.
Jacob is only going to be able to make this transition by holding onto God’s promises that He will be with Him. It is my hope this morning that by the time we get to the end of our time today, you will realize that God has no borders. There is nowhere where God does not rule, and that applies to whatever country you find yourself in, and whatever stage and area of life.
God will move you when He’s ready and He will be with all the way.
We love a good come back story, don’t we? It is the subject of our favorite movies and stories we like to tell, how people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, facing long odds, and with nothing but their own ingenuity and creativity, they win. This informs our own country’s ethos of rugged individualism and self-reliance, and it is very easy for us to unhelpfully mix this in with our Christianity.
Now, the Bible is all for working hard and taking personal responsibility, but the Bible is quite clear as to Who gets the credit for the outcome of that hard work. Proverbs 21:31 “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Psalm 127:1 “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” These passages (as well as others) are not saying that preparing and building are bad, but we just have to remember who to thank when it is done.
This text in front of us is beginning to drive that message home, although it won’t do so explicitly until the next chapter. Though it is only a short passage, we are about to review six years of Jacob’s life after the 14 years he has spent in serving for Laban’s daughters (Gen 31:41).
The main point we are going to be walking away with today is God is not halted by our adversaries And God is not helped by our antics.
What we have in front of us today is a painful story. We have an unloved woman yearning for the affections of her husband. We have a loved woman who has everything in her life except that which she most desires, a child. We have a passive husband, tossed around by every twist of emotion in the household. We have two other women seen only as objects and means to an end.
The sad news is this is all done entirely to themselves. None of this was necessary. All of it was an attempt to control things that cannot be controlled. The glad news is that God is going to turn petty competition and profound longing into the nation of Israel that will one day bring the Messiah.
Our two points today: Coveting kills joy through false promises, yet God blesses whether we see it or not.
One of the great blessings in modern life is the GPS. I don’t listen to directions very well, mostly because they are entirely absent of street names. When my family moved to Jasper, Alabama, at a time before smartphones were widespread, I would tell people that I had just moved there and needed directions to such and such. Their directions would begin with, “Well, do you know where the old Sonic used to be?” I would reiterate that I had just moved here and thus didn’t know where anything used to be! One time someone used an old fallen tree that wasn’t even there anymore as a landmark!
Enter the GPS! Finally, no more hazy directions! Everything is laid out clearly on a map to take you right where you want to go. Or so I thought. Abby and I on one trip had to drive through Atlanta. The GPS, ever helpful, suggested that we take a detour off the highways in order to avoid traffic. I pushed “yes” and it took me through some very scary sections of Atlanta. This was a very different path than what brought me into the city! I did get home, but it wasn’t the way I expected.
The GPS often makes us think that because a journey starts out one way that it will absolutely continue as it should. We often bring the same attitude to God’s plan for us. We think that because it operated one way for our parents that it will definitely work that way for us. Or even expecting the patterns of our own lives to repeat. When that pattern is disrupted, we can often feel like God is abandoning us. Or if this pattern is interrupted by our own sin, we can feel as though there is simply nothing good that can come from this situation now.
Jacob is about to find out how God works. The path of God’s providence is often bumpy, but we will see God work it out to his good. Today, our main focus will be Trust God with the twists.
How would you react to a portal to heaven? What if it was located in a particular room of your house or out in a certain field. Would you visit it often? Would you feel worthy of it? Would you be scared of it? I don’t ask these questions to be coy or hypothetical. Even though this is probably the first time you’ve had that kind of question posed to you, you already have the answer to all these questions. Believe it or not, you have encountered such a reality. No, it doesn’t look like a literal window into paradise, but when it, or I guess I should say “He,” is encountered, you will find the answer to all those questions I’ve just posed. It’ll be clearer what I mean as we go on.
In this passage we get a small glimpse into this portal that Jacob seems to stumble into, and what it does to a man like Jacob. There is some mystery surrounding this passage, but what is shown here is beautiful and ties in with our taking of the Lord’s Supper here today.
Our two points here are: God condescends to His people, and our only response is worship.
It has been wisely said that when at first you don’t succeed, just do it the way mom told you to do it the first time. We have the tendency as humans to think that we know best about life, especially our lives, and God, while usually having some good ideas, can be ignored without consequences. We saw last week the absolute disaster zone of Isaac passing on the blessing to Jacob. This week, we are going to see the beginning of God’s grace moving in Jacob’s life.
What we are going to cover today is seeing how Genesis is going to move to Jacob being the main character going forward, yes, that Jacob. The rest of Genesis, more or less, is going to be following Jacob finishing with his death at the end. Therefore, it will suit us to get our bearings about where we are going. We will do a little more than that as we will have the somewhat unexpected opportunity to talk about marriage.
Our main point today: God continues His blessings and God’s blessings in marriage come from His commands for marriage
Do you have a perfect family? Everyone gets along, there’s no conflict, no hidden sin, no masks to have to wear this morning? Well of course not! We are all sinners and that includes even as a collection of people called a family. We all realize that and know that we are all in the same boat. Yet there are some of us that think our family is especially dysfunctional, or to use Biblical language, extra sinful. We wonder how God is able to do anything with or through in our family. If that’s you this morning, you may be thinking, “Oh, if you only knew.” Thus far in Genesis, families in such a condition may be feeling even more inadequate. Yes, Noah and Abraham have had their stumbles, but it isn’t like there’s a horror show at every turn. Well, let’s meet Isaac’s family. Before we begin, we must keep something in mind. We are not here to look at this example and walk away like the Pharisees and say, “Whew, glad my family isn’t as messed up as Isaac’s!” Maybe you don’t have sons plotting to kill each other, but we all have the seeds of the sins that we are going to look at here. We are meant to walk away saying, “Now what areas in my family need repentance?” As we will see, God is going to work redemption even through the very sins we see here committed. Yet we will also see that to sin makes everything harder on oneself. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our two points are Fighting God beats yourself and God will use even sin to bring about His purposes.
Putting away Christmas decorations can be a hazard. I saw a photo recently of a ladder leading up into a person's attic. Just to the left of the ladder, sticking through the ceiling's drywall, was a foot. The caption read that the person was warned not to step on the drywall, but they didn't admit to not knowing what drywall was until after stepping through it. If you, too, don't know what drywall is, it is a plaster that is held together between two sheets of paper. It is usually fastened to planks of wood to hold it up. When you are in the attic, you are to place your weight on the wood holding up the drywall, not the drywall itself.
Now, maybe you are bit handier and wouldn't make such a mistake. You wouldn't place your trust in things that can't hold your physical weight. But are you as careful with your soul? The thing about the Lord is He gives wonderful gifts of financial resources, family, and even your local church, but the gifts are meant to be the pointer to Himself, the actual object of your trust. We don't trust the gifts; we trust the giver.
Today, we jump back into Genesis to continue the story of redemption as it relates to Abraham so far. It began with the creation account showing us that God is very powerful. Once we got to Abraham's story, we see that God is faithful. He made promises to Abraham that He fulfilled and was faithful to Abraham even when Abraham wasn't always faithful to God.
Today, we pick up with Abraham's son Isaac. What may be so surprising in this story is how little time we spend with him. Isaac's story only lasts about a chapter before moving quickly on to Jacob who will be the focus more or less through the end of the book. This doesn't mean that he is unimportant or that there isn't so much that we can learn from this chapter.
Our main point today is that we are to Trust in the Giver, not the Gifts.
We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot? Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits! Deuteronomy 8 points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year.
It has been said that the best way to sum up the book of Revelation is to say, “Jesus wins.” Now, that is true as far as it goes, but this doesn’t go far enough. The book tells us more than just Jesus wins, because it tells us how Jesus wins. Details are important, because details give us a clearer picture of who Jesus is and always was. This scene is an important detail in our Portrait of Jesus series because it helps form the final word of the subtitle I stole from Beth McGrew for this series: Jesus, Meek and Wild. This is the wild part. Jesus isn’t a general leading from the rear. His garments have blood on them. He is getting personally involved. His eyes are described as flames, and His mouth wields a sword! This is a very different picture of a Lamb being led to slaughter, but I think a careful study of this passage will enhance your view of Jesus. For one, this picture will help us appreciate how patient Jesus was. At any moment, He would have been justified to slaughter everyone there, especially at the cross. But He doesn’t. I think that this also shows us where Christmas is ultimately going. We rightly talk about that Christmas begins in the manger and goes to the cross, but that isn’t all there is. The cross is the redemptive moment for us, but the ultimately victorious moment is here. It begins in the manger, and it ends on the Throne, all enemies and threats to it being decisively defeated.
We are going to take a look at one of the most complicated and comforting mysteries in the Bible. How is Jesus in one Person able to have a fully divine nature and a fully human nature? There is one sense in which that mystery is simply left at that: a mystery. As one theologian put it: “We are simply told what Jesus is, without any attempt to show how He became what He is…It has always recognized the incarnation as a mystery which defies explanation. And so it will remain, because it is the miracle of miracles” (Berkhof, 321).But just because we can’t explain how this mystery works, doesn’t mean we can’t be awed by viewing it. I can’t possibly explain how a star manages for most of its life not to be crushed by its own gravity or how a hunk of rock and gases emit light, but I can still be captured by its beauty in the night sky. Now, unlike a star, Jesus is more than someone to admire and ultimately worship and obey. He’s not less than that, but the angle that I want to take a look at today is the comforting aspect of knowing who our God is. The last couple of weeks, we have been examining the Person of Jesus. The first week of Advent, we look at Jesus’ divinity, as clearly seen in John 1:1-14. Next, we saw the humanity of Jesus out of Luke 2:52Now, we are going to look at those two elements together and see what it means for Jesus to be the Godman. Again, how this works is a mystery beyond human mental capability, but what this means for us is well within our grasp to understand and worship. We will consider this chapter under a couple of broad headings. The first is Jesus is the King of all Kings. Second, Jesus is the reconciler of all things, and Third, Therefore, Jesus is your sole Hope
Interestingly, one of the harder things for the ancient peoples to believe about Jesus was that He was truly human. When a person rises from the dead, it isn’t too difficult to believe that they are truly divine, but the idea that Jesus was also truly human was a little much. Many at that time thought that Jesus only “appeared” to be human, walking around the earth like some sort of phantom. It was just too hard to imagine. It is hard for us to conceive as well. It is hard for us to express that God experienced limits in the person of Jesus. It is hard for us to believe that Jesus actually does understand where we are coming from. He doesn’t know our weaknesses in just an academic sense. He has actually experienced our troubles physically AND emotionally. All those things that we would say makes us human from a theological understanding to a popular understanding were true of Jesus.
When we think about Christmas, it is so easy to be distracted by all the wonderful things that happen in this time of year. We are reminded by literally all the Christmas movies that Christmas isn’t about the gifts, the lights, the trees, but when asked what Christmas is actually about usually the answer is “the people that you are with.” Of course, as wonderful as family and friends are, that isn’t what Christmas is about.
This might be the moment at which Charlie Brown’s Linus might be feeling a little smug in that he quotes from Luke 2 when asked what Christmas is about. And Linus is right! It is about the birth of Jesus! But what does that mean? We are so familiar with this passage that we can zip right by what that incredible sentence is saying in verse 11 of Luke 2.
Who is Jesus, and how is He able to be that Savior and Lord?
That is the question I would like for us to dwell on during this advent season. Jesus is more than a manger. What happens here in the Christmas story is something that has kept historians and theologians busy for the last 2000 years. More has been written and thought about concerning Jesus than any other figure, and this Christmas, we are going to meditate on why.
I’m calling this series “A Portrait of Jesus” but if I could give a subtitle, I would steal it from an online author I follow, Bethel McGrew, and call it “Jesus: Meek and Wild.”
There is a whole genre of misbehavior online called “being the main character.” This “main character” label is given to people who act like they have the staring role in the world’s story. The camera is fixed on their situation and everyone else is a just an extra, a background character, and NPC. Main character people have all sorts of annoying habits like standing directly in front of elevators getting in the way of people trying to get out, or blocking other people’s view of an area so that they can get that perfect instagram shot. It is a pattern of behavior that says “life is about me, and no matter who else I affect negatively, I am going to do what I want.” Videos and posts online to shame such people are popular because we all understand (at least when WE aren’t behaving like that) that life is not all about us. But if life isn’t about us, then who is it about? If we aren’t the main character in this world, who is? And most importantly, how do we relate to this Main Character and His story? These are the questions that we are going to be asking ourselves as we close our series on the five solas. So far, we have seen in Scripture Alone that by Grace Alone in Christ Alone we find salvation through Faith Alone. Today, we find out that all of this, all of life, is for the Glory of God alone, Soli Deo Gloria.
Today, we are going to be talking about the only thing which separates true Christianity from every other religion or approach to God and life. That concept is faith alone. Faith alone is a humility boosting doctrine. Indeed, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9that it is so that we would not boast. Reminding ourselves that we are only going to heaven because of the work of someone else is humiliating. This is why every other religion that is man made doesn’t like this concept. Every other religion says you have to do something to convince God to like you! Faith alone is also a God glorifying doctrine. God doesn’t need help saving us or need help being convinced to save us. It is His work that He has already done that saves us. He gets all the glory, all the praise, all the recognition that He is the important one here.
If you were given the task to describe God in a single sentence, what would you emphasize? Listen to how the Old Testament describes God:Psalm 86:15 “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Joel 2:13 “and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” Finally, look atJonah 4:2 “And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Is this just some writer’s opinions? How do we know that they have the right view of God? Why does it seem like they are all working off that same line “gracious and merciful”? Sounds like that comes from somewhere. Well, that line does come from somewhere. It turns out that this is the line that God uses to introduce Himself! God is going to use a sentence or two describe Himself. So what does a perfect (by definition) summary of God sound like? Exodus 34:6 “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” Now, there is more that we will get to in a moment, but let’s focus on this first part for right now
How do we know what, if anything, is true in this world?Where do you go when you want to know if something has really happened in this world? Do you go to the TV and tune into your favorite news caster? Do you run to your social media of your choice to follow after those who know the “real story”? Do you pull up your favorite long-form podcast and hope that somewhere in those 3 hours of a comedian interviewing a guest will you find what is really true? Or do you run to your favorite AI bot hoping that the machine will filter out human error (spoiler alert: it won’t).What we are increasingly finding is that really no matter which one we choose, there is some sort of drawback to getting the full truth. No matter who you listen to, there are biases in presenters. It’s just part of being human. There are limitations because of how they present their message. TV presenters are limited to how long their segments between commercials are (usually somewhere between the 7 and 15 minute mark) and podcasters have the opposite problem of making the key point in a sea of content. AI, for as interesting as a field as that is makes just as many, if not more, mistakes as the humans do!To sum it up, we live in an age of information but not an age of wisdom. Don’t you wish there was a reliable source not only of information but of the information you actually need? Well, I’ve got some good news for you: It’s the Bible, God’s Book.
We often celebrate Reformation Sunday for all the wrong reasons. Yes, we rejoice in the work that Martin Luther accomplished, but he shouldn't be our focus. Yes, we rejoice in the proper realignment of Church authority, the translations of the Bible into the language of the people, the return of congregational singing and centrality of preaching, and recapturing of Sola Scriptura, but none of those things should be our focus. None of those things on their own changed the world.
It wasn't Luther nailing his theses to the door, but God nailing His Son to the cross that changed the world. It is the recapturing of that reality, the recovery of the gospel, that turned the world upside down yet again. The gospel has that effect in history. Christ dying for our sins and rising again is what we celebrate every Sunday, and on this Sunday we remember how easily we lost sight of that gospel. Reformation Sunday isn't about patting ourselves on the back that we are right. It is a warning to us of how easily we forget. It's a reminder to us to take heed lest we fall. The sins of the past always return in the present, but they just update their clothing, their mask.
Today, we are going to reexamine the sins of Rome, discover our own version of that sin, but then happily settle on Christ and celebrate Him. Our main point today is Only Christ can purchase our peace
Why do so many heroes of the Bible act so poorly? All of the characters that we have met and spent some time with so far all had this tragic flaw at some point in their story. Adam was the literal first one. He was completely set up for success, but when given the temptation to sin, he did. The same went for Cain, the first born of Adam, until his brother did better than he did. Noah pursued after God for over a hundred and some years building a boat to save the world, but he couldn't escape the allure of drunkenness. Abraham started out with immediate obedience to what God commanded him, even if he did have some fits and starts along the way.
In each of these flaws, however, it seems that they at least started well. Noah was a righteous man in God's eyes before the call to him went out. Abraham obviously started out well, and even the errors that he made along the way were only after much time of waiting and seemingly no move on God's part.
This little episode is different. For the first time, we are getting an intimate look at these twins from the moment of their birth. We met Noah when he was already 500 years old. We met Abraham at 75 years old. Yes, we saw Isaac when he was born and again at probably 14, but there wasn't a whole lot of interaction with him. One has figured out a few things at this age. Yet here, we are meeting these men very early on. We are seeing them without the years of maturity and therefore getting to see God work on someone from the beginning.
We will see our main point today: Bad starts don't have to have bad finishes
You know what is really hard for humans to do? Let God be God. We have a list of things that we think God isn't allowed to do, or at least a list of things that we would rather Him check with us first before He does them. He doesn't give us the reason for why He does things, and given all that we read in the Bible, you would think He should be trusted at this point.
We saw last week that God has a plan for the unplanned. Here God was able to use the sin of Abraham to set things up for turnarounds thousands of years in the future. We've seen God work in all kinds of ways to ensure that the blessing is transmitted from one generation to another. He has planned from the very beginning of this book that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the snake. We've seen that there is a line of the woman and a line of the snake down through every list of names. We had Cain and Abel. The line was clear until Cain killed Abel! Doesn't sound like the seed crushing the head of the snake, does it? But then God brings Seth into the world who ultimately produces Noah. Noah has three sons one of whom (Ham) has a cursed family line that will end up serving the line of Shem. Eventually, we see the line of Shem produce Abraham. It is promised that he will have the seed! We see Ishmael born, but it will be Isaac, the technically second son, who will have the blessing of the seed.
Up to this point, you could be confused as to how these lines are decided. Thus far, it looks like each person has chosen their own adventure. Abel was a right worshiper, and Cain was not. It wasn't until Cain became a murderer that it was crystal clear who was who. Ham didn't stand out until he mocked his father's nakedness. Ishmael stood out from the beginning, but that was because Hagar wasn't the woman of promise. It might look like that God has thus far been reacting to what humanity has been doing. Yes, the blessing has been safe thus far, but is that because God is simply the best at taking life's lemons and making lemonade? Or is God's control more comprehensive than we might imagine?
The present story will make clear how it is that God runs the show. This is a passage that Paul makes reference to when talking about God's control of matters. As we will see today, and in weeks following that God sovereignly directs His plans beforehand, yet everyone is both dependent on God and responsible to God.
One thing I love about a good story is a conclusion where everything is wrapped up cleanly. No threads are left bare, trajectories have reached their destination. This chapter begins feeling that way. We are given the final years of Abraham's life in a rapid fire succession of children's names, activities, and final destinations. He has lived well, scattered his seed into the world, and is now coming to the end of his days, old and full of years. There is something satisfying about this. He made it. He saw the three promises made to him fulfilled. Yes, it took him his full life to see them realized, but it was done. Yes, he made many mistakes and sinned a bunch throughout his life, but here it is all laid out for us, so clean, so complete.
What do you want the end of your life to look like? We are spared the ugly details like what and how much was hurting in Abraham's body, but what do you want this part of your life to look like? Do you want those days of your life marked by gratitude of how God has worked even in the hard times? How does one even achieve a life like this?
Do you think about it, or does the very thought terrify you? I think that there is a shared fear amongst parents and children, leaders and their followers: what life is going to look like without them. Parents can look at their children and wonder how on earth God is going to do something with them. Children can easily look at parents and wonder what will life be like without their guidance, even the guidance that they resent at the moment. When we get used to God working through certain people, certain channels, it becomes harder to remember that God is the one actually making all of this work.
We are in the middle of yet another intense election cycle. Part of the angst comes from the real question of how is God going to bring good out of what is happening today. Once agin, buried in a pile of names, is a story of God's faithfulness and redemption for a truly unexpected people. Our two points today will be God has a plan for the unplanned and God will continue to work through that plan without a patriarch.
Have you heard the refrain, "I just worry about what it is going to be like for you kids in the future." It's a lament that flows from my own mouth now that the weight of parenthood sits on my shoulders. We just want the next generation to be ok, and if you happen to be in that generation, you just want things to be ok, too!
In this chapter, we have such a beautiful slice of life in Abraham's family. So far in Genesis, we have only seen Abraham go through these supernatural problems and triumphs. Abraham was sent on this unknown journey into the wild, hundreds of miles away from anything he knew. In the next chapter, his lying is bringing down and entire country with sickness. The next chapter has him taking his personal army to go rescue his nephew from a coalition of pagan kings. After that, God Himself comes down and makes a covenant right in front of him. After THAT Abraham finds himself in the middle of a squabble between his two wives, and then after THAT Abraham has lunch face to face with God, and then after, after THAT God supernaturally gives Him as son whom he asks Him to sacrifice and then stops him last minute.
Could we get a normal-sized problem to see how to faithfully work through that?
Have you ever worried about the next generation? Have you ever worried about your own future? Well, Abraham has gone through that, too. So let's take a look at how Abraham (but mostly God) works through passing the torch.
How are you faithful to God when it seems like God is not being faithful to you? All the back in chapter 12, Abraham was promised by God to have a land, seed, and a blessing. Despite Abraham's foibles, God consistently worked out His promises, even though they were often at the last minute! There was, however, one promise that hadn't been fulfilled yet: the land. All of the other promises were fulfilled with Abraham and Sarah together, and I could imagine that he might have thought that the land would come through while she was still alive.
Do we not do the same thing? Do you have ideas of not only what God has promised you but how He is going to fulfill them? Do we not sometimes feel betrayed when things don't go exactly as we imagine them?
I can only imagine the despair that such a seeming betrayal contains, yet in this passage, we get to see Abraham reach this point. This chapter is about burying his wife, Sarah, the matriarch of Israel. She was the only woman who could bring in the promised son. Abraham's seed could be delivered only from her womb, a woman blessed with favor from God even if she did laugh at Him! She has been at Abraham's side ever since he left the homeland of Ur. She has seen the delivery of the promise of blessing and of a descendant, but she has not seen a land to call her own. She dies a sojourner.
How does Abraham react to this new test of faith in God, and what can we learn from it? That will be our focus as we look at our two points today: Death comes for all in the end, but death isn’t always the end.
The first week, we looked at how God grows faith which is through trial. Last week, we saw what faith acts like, in that it isn't just a mental affirmation but it is a deep seated trust in Christ that cannot help but be obedient to what God says. Today, we are going to look at what obedient faith brings to the faithful: blessing.
Now, I'm going to start up front by defining what I am not saying here. I am not saying that obedience always brings immediate blessing. God isn't a vending machine where if you pray and read your Bible a certain number of times God will give you a blessing that day. I've seen the reverse of this in folks responding to minor setbacks like traffic or a crashed computer with, "Well, I didn't pray today! That's why all these things are happening to me!" I mean, maybe, but there is no way to actually know that, nor is a prayed for day always going to be a trouble free day. God isn't a formula where you plug in this to get that in a predictable way.
I am also not saying that obedience always brings blessings as we would define the term like riches or health. You will often find the most godly people in the world enduring the greatest suffering, so we can't make one to one comparisons here. My mom got cancer, and it turned out to be a painful but deep blessing. My mom has been able to walk many others through the same valley, a blessing she wouldn't have without having gone through it herself. This was certainly not the path we all desired her to go, but the Lord is able to make blessings out of things we wouldn't wish for.
So what am I saying? I am saying that true blessing comes through obedience. Exactly what that looks like or when it is going to come is up to the Lord, but we see the consistent witness of Scripture is that righteousness brings reward.
What is true faith? What does true faith do? Those are two separate questions. If I were to ask you what a flashlight is you might describe it as a metal tube with a bulb inside. If I were to ask you what a flashlight does, then you would tell me that it shines light.
The same is true of faith. The question "What is faith?" is different from "What does it do?" To hear from our own catechism what faith is: "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel." That is what faith is. Faith alone is what saves you. Faith isn't works. It is a grace to trust Christ, to count on Him alone for your salvation. Even the book of James is very careful to make a distinction between faith and works as we will see in a moment.
Now, the question that our particular passage prompts us to ask is, "What does faith do?" It will focus our attention on externals. Works is the arena where true faith is displayed. And this is what we are going to see from our passage today. Our two points are: True faith works and true works only come from faith.
How do you think God should treat you? What does that practically look like? If you don't have an answer for that, consider what the last thing that you complained about was. The last thing that happened to you that you complained about was likely something that you think you deserved from God. "I shouldn't have to do all this work myself." "Why is all this traffic here?" "Do these kids just DELIGHT in messing up the house?" "My family member shouldn't have to suffer like this." Our complaints give insight into what we think we deserve from God, and will likely inform the sorts of questions we bring to these first few verses of Genesis 22.
We have come to the climax of Abraham's story. We might have thought that the climax was last chapter with the birth of Isaac (Bible Talk Podcast). After all that has been the thing that we have been waiting for, the thing that has been put in danger multiple times, the thing that God kept promising to Abraham in 12, 15, 17, 18, and finally in 21 has happened! But now God is asking Abraham to do the unthinkable: sacrifice him. And it isn't just stabbing with a knife. What God is calling for is a whole burnt offering. If Abraham decides to follow through, there is absolutely no turning back. This would be the total destruction of Isaac's body. There would be nothing to bury but ash.
Why on earth would God do this? The way that we answer this question gives us some insight into who we think God is and what we think we deserve.
What are you known for? It can be something positive or negative. What do you think people think about when they think of you? What would you like them to think?
Here is this passage, we get a glimpse of what is thought about Abraham. And what we find is that there are positive and negative aspects! As one scholar points out, "It is ironic that the two things Abimelech knew about Abraham were that God was with him and that he was not altogether trustworthy (recall chap. 20)." (387) If you remember what we talked about a couple weeks ago, the last time Abraham and Abimelech met, Abraham was pulling the ole' "she's my sister, so don't kill me" routine. Abraham admitted to Abimelech that this was something of a habit of his.
From Abimelech's perspective, he needed to make a covenant with Abraham, but the opening reason actually has nothing to do with Abraham, per se. We are going to explore what that is by looking at our two points today: Our relationship with God is the most valuable thing we have and Bringing others into that relationship is the kindest thing we can do.
Have you ever waited a long time for a blessing? Maybe it was marriage or children, maybe it was entrance into ministry, retirement, whatever you've been waiting for. What did you feel once you got it? In some ways, before you achieved it, it sort of seemed like life would just sorta stop once you got there. We wouldn't have put it that way while working towards it, but it does kinda feel that way, doesn't it? You achieved your goal! Now what? God still has more for you to do. It turns out that once you got married you didn't just ascend into heaven. Once you got your goal, you didn't find total security. You've gotten the blessing, but you still have to trust God.
Well, this is the chapter that Abraham has been waiting for since chapter 12. Thousands of miles traveled, over two decades of waiting, two kidnappings of his wife, and two countries nearly destroyed because of it, here we are, the birth of Isaac! The promise is fulfilled! But life keeps going. The need to trust in God's working is more needed than ever. And if one thought that being asked to be patient was hard, oh just wait until we look at what is in store for Abraham in the next two chapters.
Today, we are going to look at our two points: God provides His promises AND God protects His promises.
Organized people talk about the power of habits, the things that you do everyday without having to really think about them. Most of us don't have to have a check list that includes brushing your teeth at night because that is (hopefully) an established habit! Using the power of habit can be an amazing force for good if you have developed good habits. A habit of exercise, Bible reading, and prayer will make for an incredibly healthy life.
But the power of habits can work in the opposite direction as well. What is your habit when you are scared? Do you jump into over planning mode? Do the opposite and run and hide? Distract yourself? Indulge in a sin? Do you steal what you already own in Christ?
We are going to talk about hope today. We are going to do that today because we are Christians, and it is the one thing that we truly have that the rest of the world does not. I am not talking about hope as some sort of wish or platitude that you put on a coffee mug. But I am talking about real hope. Hope that follows you into the ICU and beyond. This is the sort of hope that cannot be bought or earned. It is a hope that can only be given to you as a gift, because the promise of this sort of hope would be utterly outrageous to offer unless it comes from God Himself. Because, as it turns out, the hope we have isn't a silver lining or a place we will live in someday. Our hope is Christ Himself, and I hope that our time together will be one of worshipping Him and reveling in that hope together.
I've chosen this passage today because it reflects where I think all of us to some degree where we are today. We lost a great man this week. My task here isn't to try to get us to stop grieving. That's not what this passage calls us to do. This passage calls us not to grieve, "as those do who have no hope." We do have a hope, so our grief is different. It is with sobs and smiles. Tears of joy and pain.
Have you ever told someone how to do a particular task but they insist on doing it some other way? Even though no other way exists to do that task, they insist on relentlessly attempting to do that which isn't right. Kids do this all the time, don't they? We have sayings like, "If at first you don't succeed, do it the way mom told you to do it." How much easier our lives would be, eh?
But we can't judge them too harshly because we often find ourselves in the same boat, don't we? God tells us explicitly how to live and even what to do when we don't do it right and still we resist Him. We can see this on full display here with Lot on his way out of Sodom.
Last week, we took a deep, hard look at how Lot got into the situation that he got into. We found that even a man given the grace of God can still get terrifyingly used to evil such that he would use it himself. God is merciful, however, and is still committed to not sweep away Lot with the rest of the city. God begins the extraction process, but Lot seems to be doing his best to not cooperate with the process. This is extremely frustrating to watch, but there is a lot that we can learn here as we finish our sermon from last week.
in is a great trapper. Do you know what a trapper does? A trapper hunts in a seemingly passive way. It would seem that all they do is place traps down and hope animals walk into them, but there is a lot more to it than that. They observe animal tracks, place the trap in such as way that it is disguised. Food is carefully chosen to attract the animal. The prey is sized up to be sure to get the right cage, and of course the trapper places it when they know they won't be seen. It is a very active and effective process. Get the animal to go where it wouldn't go normally by offering it something it wants in a place that looks perfectly safe.
Sin works the same way. Sin offers you something that looks good and useful. It seems safe, without consequence, and entirely reversible. It's like the mechanic who got addicted to drinking break fluid; he can stop whenever he wants. But this is the fundamental lie of sin. It can give you want you want, no, what you need without consequences. Sin doesn't share. It only takes. And that is what we are going to see today as we focus on the fate of Lot in this chapter. We will look at two points: Sin will imprison you, so don't accommodate it. and God's Grace will free you, so embrace it.
Sexual identity is a rising concern in our world that has left many Christians unsure of how to respond. What does it look like to faithfully love those who base their identity in homosexual practices?
In this message, we will look at how the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture informs how we should think and speak about this issue to friends, family, and the wider world who participate in homosexuality in a hopeful way.
This week we welcome guest preacher Theodore Woo, a seminary student preparing to go into the ministry. He brought to us a message out of Matthew 6 about the Fatherhood of God.
Today, we finish up last week's message by looking now at how personally involved God is in judgment as well as blessing.
For a God who never gets hungry, He sure eats a lot. This isn't because God has been dishonest with us about His needs. God doesn't get hungry or need anything from us. Psalm 50:12-13 put it this way "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?" The expected answer is, "No." God doesn't need to eat something because He doesn't have a body. Even if He did need to eat, He wouldn't be waiting around for us to feed Him because He already owns everything in the earth.
So why is He eating here? He doesn't need it. This is meant to draw our attention when God does something He doesn't have to do. It means that God is making a point. He doesn't want us to walk away from this passage to say that God has a taste for beef. He is showing Abraham, and us, something special by coming down to eat with Abraham.
We are only going to get to our first point today: God is personally involved in blessing and judgment.
In our tour of Genesis, I want us to stare at this point for a minute, namely, the imminence of God, His closeness, His intimacy. This was a point that I had missed in my initial study of this passage, so I greatly owe Dr. Allen Ross for pointing me in this direction for this sermon. It is easy to miss the closeness and intimacy with God in Genesis so far because of all the big things He does. He sets up the world, and then He floods the whole thing. He separates all the peoples by introducing different languages. He brings a plague on all of Egypt. He helps Abraham defeat close to half a dozen kingdoms in battle. He is promising that Abraham will have descendants outnumbering the stars! In the next chapter, He turns the green, fertile fields of Sodom into the Dead Sea with flaming brimstone launched from heaven!
And then there’s this chapter where He stops by for lunch.
Symbols are important things. They aren't just images that are nice to have. They are essential to our memory. We have rings for marriage because they are meant to remind us to stay faithful. I don't need reminding that I am married; I need reminding that that marriage makes a difference in how I live. I am no longer just me. I am married to my wife. That doesn't just change what I do in any given bedroom. It changes how I take out the trash, how I spend money, and it even changes things for descendants. My children are greatly affected by my covenant with my wife. Their lives are different because of it.
Today, we are going to be looking at a symbol for a covenant that has effect even unto today, circumcision. Modern life has made this awkward to talk about, but I think precisely because it is such an intimate symbol, it really strikes a cord that this is what was used by God in the Old Testament. Now, just to clarify at the start, circumcision is not required today (Acts 15). You do not need to undergo this process to be saved. There is nothing that saves you but the blood of Christ.
That being said, we will see that there are some elements of this covenant that continue. We will see that though this promise is made to Abraham and Isaac, Ishmael will receive the sign, too. We will see that God works in households, not just individuals. Circumcision gives blessing to all in that covenant, but the full enjoyment of the blessings of that covenant are for those who are circumcised in heart and thus obey the will of God (Redd, 142 Covenant Theology).
Today we will explore our two points: God provides a sign of His covenant and We are called to apply and remember His sign.
What does it mean to believe? When we tell people that they need to "believe in Jesus," what are we actually telling them? This is a key question to answer, because whatever it means to believe is how Abram was counted as righteous before God. And according to Paul, whatever it means to believe in Jesus is how we are counted righteous as well, is how we get to heaven—or not. This passage is mentioned many times in the New Testament, so if they saw it as important, we must see it as important. I will give you the answer up front, and then we will develop it as we go. To believe, simply enough, is to see something as dependable (Ross, 310) or "place trust in someone with confidence..." (Matthews, 166). To believe in God is to see Him as dependable and then live in light of that (Ross, 310)!
This should be a pretty understandable concept because W]we depend on things all the time. Whenever a dad is loading up a trailer and needs to secure the load, what does he reach for? The ratchet straps! After expertly crisscrossing the trailer, tightening it down, what is he practically required to say after giving it a tap? "That's not going anywhere." Why does he say that (every time)? It is because he sees those straps as dependable. While the rest of us nervously look back at the load over each bounce, eyes are forward because he knows what those straps will do. Do you depend on God to at least the same degree your dad depends on those ratchet straps? If not, I encourage you to listen in to what Genesis 15 has to say.
We will unpack this more as we uncover our two points today: God promises what only He can deliver and God gives signs so we won't forget His promises.
What does it mean to believe? When we tell people that they need to "believe in Jesus," what are we actually telling them? This is a key question to answer, because whatever it means to believe is how Abram was counted as righteous before God. And according to Paul, whatever it means to believe in Jesus is how we are counted righteous as well, is how we get to heaven—or not. This passage is mentioned many times in the New Testament, so if they saw it as important, we must see it as important. I will give you the answer up front, and then we will develop it as we go. To believe, simply enough, is to see something as dependable (Ross, 310) or "place trust in someone with confidence..." (Matthews, 166). To believe in God is to see Him as dependable and then live in light of that (Ross, 310)!
This should be a pretty understandable concept because W]we depend on things all the time. Whenever a dad is loading up a trailer and needs to secure the load, what does he reach for? The ratchet straps! After expertly crisscrossing the trailer, tightening it down, what is he practically required to say after giving it a tap? "That's not going anywhere." Why does he say that (every time)? It is because he sees those straps as dependable. While the rest of us nervously look back at the load over each bounce, eyes are forward because he knows what those straps will do. Do you depend on God to at least the same degree your dad depends on those ratchet straps? If not, I encourage you to listen in to what Genesis 15 has to say.
We will unpack this more as we uncover our two points today: God promises what only He can deliver and God gives signs so we won't forget His promises.
Last week we discussed how Abram doesn't have to fight in order to obtain the blessing of the Lord, but we did end it with the fact that Abram doesn't have to be a doormat and is to fight for what the Lord calls him to. Here in chapter 14, we see that call come. As one scholar put it, "Sometimes it requires more faith to take action than to remain passive" (Waltke, 237). Sometimes you need to commit to action, and fighting for the protection of his family calls Abram to arms. But as we will note here, Abram isn't saved by the sword but by the Lord and acts accordingly in his tithe to this mysterious Melchizedek. So let's dive into this passage looking at our two points today: Fight the Lord's battles when called, and Win or "lose," return to the Lord His due. The nature of our conflicts and the weapons we use today as Christians are different, but there is much that we can learn and take comfort in in this passage.
Chapter 13 of Genesis is a life changing chapter for Abram and Lot. Neither of them knew it at the time that this moment sets up the path for the rest of their family's history. Don't you wish you could know when those moments were in your life? While the Bible doesn't promise you that you will be able to know when those moments are, it does show you have to live your life such that it won't matter. If you live by faith, in accordance with God's Word, the right decision will be made.
Our two points today: Faith doesn't need a fight, and Faith doesn't need a sight. For this sermon, Dr. Ross has been very helpful in forming thoughts here.
Have you ever overreacted before? Have you ever responded vastly out of proportion to the supposed threat in front of you? We've all had a piece of fuzz land on our arm that we thought was a spider. We've all been startled by the most innocuous things. Just this past week, I was alone working on the sound system deep in thought when I suddenly heard Keith's voice. I don't know why I made such a screechy, guttural sound in response, but it was out of proportion! We always feel a bit humbled by such an experience.
What's worse is overreacting to something and thinking that it is what saved us from harm. There are people feeling safe only because they've washed their hands in the last ten minutes. There are people feeling secure in their work because they belittle their employees. Feeling secure in their parenting because of their harsh treatment of their children. Feeling like their marriage will only work because one is having an emotional affair online. Feeling confident because they got their morning drink in. Relaxed, because they got their fix. People will talk about needing an outlet, needing the help of some sin in order to stay sane, to stay ahead, and it works! For a while.
This is what we see with Abram. Abram is terrified of interacting with the kings of the earth. The situation that we see Abram in happens twice in his life (once here and again in chapter 20). Twice he is presented with a situation that God has explicitly addressed. All the nations will be blessed or cursed based on how they respond to Abram. Abram has no need to fear these countries. One has to wonder how many times Abram needs to drastically affect other people's lives before he decides to trust God. One wonders how many times we need to learn the same lesson.
Today we are going to look at two points: God is faithful to His glory even when you are faithless, and Sin never makes you safer; God's mercy does.
What does the Resurrection of Christ mean for washing dishes? I don't ask that question to be funny. I ask that question because if the resurrection of Christ has nothing to say to washing the dishes, then it has nothing to say to the majority of your life. Our lives are stuffed with mundane, everyday tasks that we struggle to connect to the Bible's story, particularly its ending. We can do this in specific areas of our lives when national stories hit the headlines. For example, recently you've all thought a bit more about the bridges you drive over in your daily commutes, haven't you? That is connecting your mundane task to a larger story. The Maryland bridge impacts how you think about your otherwise everyday commute. But that story, large as it is, doesn't impact the way you raise your children. It has nothing to say to the way you act at work. It is silent at your kitchen sink.
The resurrection of Christ, however, is the biggest story. And it has much to say to you today, even in your dishwashing.
The resurrection of Christ isn't just one event of a man rising from the dead (category shattering as that alone is). It is a preview for the end goal for all creation, and the starting point for that goal. And we are all a part of that story.
Good Friday is a reminder of the greatest exchange that has ever been made. Jesus was substituted for you and me. It is in this moment that our sin was paid for, and we could go freely to heaven. While there are some who dislike the church calendar, I think setting aside some time to contemplate Christ’s sufferings is helpful.
We tend to avoid thinking about pain and sadness because they are unpleasant, but it is exactly this pain that we need to focus on here. In our lives as Christians, we can spend far more time thinking about the positive moments in Jesus’ life, His teachings, His miracles, and His resurrection. All of these are important, but we mustn't skip over Jesus’ suffering and death. After all, that is a major part of why Jesus came to Earth in the first place and one of the main reasons Jesus was born in a physical body. Think about it. What is the one thing that Jesus needed a body for? He could have healed without a body. He could have done miracles without a body. God did that all the time in the Old Testament. But Jesus couldn’t die without a body. God, having a divine nature, cannot die, but when He takes on humanity, now it is possible to experience pain and death in His humanity.
What is Maundy-Thursday? This is the day of Holy Week in which we come together to remember the Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples. It isn't the Last Supper in the sense that this is the last time that Jesus will eat with His disciples, as He will after His resurrection. It is the Last Supper because this is the Last Passover meal that will ever be observed in the Old Testament way. This is the moment where Redemptive History reaches a tipping point. Everything is going to be new. Elements that used to represent freedom from Egypt for over a thousand of years, are, in a single meal, going to be redefined, given their true meaning. Bread and wine are now going to represent the body and blood of Jesus poured out for them in the ultimate expression of love ever demonstrated. They will become the new signs, sacraments, of the New Covenant, a source of blessing and spiritual nourishment for Christians in the coming millennia.
So what does Jesus do after that? Jesus changed the Passover and is about to go to the cross. What is he going to say to His disciples? What does He want them to know before He dies? Here we come to John chapter 15. It is an immensely popular passage for a reason. Doubtless you've all heard sermons out of it and maybe even have portions of it memorized. I'm willing to bet, though, if you are anything like me, you probably don't rejoice in it as much as you should. So I am going to lead you through this passage as we look together at some of the wonderfully comforting and challenging chapters in John's Gospel. We are going to look at How we are connected to God and How we grow in our connection with Christ.
Do certain passages in the Bible make you scratch your head? The temptation is to go, "Well, I'm just going to chalk that up to divine mystery and move on." The other temptation is to ask different questions than the text wants you to ask. We could look at a passage like this and spend more time wondering why this happens in a different order than Mark has it. It's fine to ask those questions, but only as long as we are asking what this text wants us to ask: "Why is this here?"
So that is the question that we are going to ask today! As we dive into Holy Week this week, we are going to be looking at some of the little details on our way down the road to the cross. Since we have taken in the forest on our past journeys through Holy Week, I thought we would look at the trees, in this case, literally. Jesus makes important points about the Christian life, often using imagery of plants to help us see the point clearly if we take the time to see it. So today, we are going to look at our main point of this passage: Religious actions are no substitute for real faith in Christ.
Do you journal? If you don't you probably should. It is impossible to keep up with all the ways that God moves in your life unless you write them down. In my own practice, I try to sum up the major points of the day into a small, single page. Flipping through the journal shows me how I thought about a particular problem. Something that seemed absolutely dominating at the time, upon flipping through it, was only relevant for a couple weeks. It started, resolved, and now I've moved on. Some problems seemed to be the theme of life for a year or two, but again, those things resolved firmly and are behind me. It didn't seem like that at the time, though.
The Bible, and our passage here before us, is like decades worth of journal entries summarized in a line or two. As we will see, vast stretches of time were spent between chapters, or even between sentences! Because you can read Abraham's life from start to finish in thirty minutes or so, we lose that sense of daily obedience that Abraham offers when it seems like nothing is happening. The majority of journal entries for me start with "Today was a long day," which once you've flipped through ten or fifteen straight pages of that, can feel discouraging. But looking back on the course of years, one can see what the Lord was doing all that time. That is what we are going to see with Abram. God is working in his life, but that does not mean that Abram sits back and does nothing. As we will see, in our single point today, God's authority and control does not eliminate your responsibility to obey.
Can you imagine a world in which the Jews didn't exist? It's impossible for us to do so as Western people. The default religion from a human population standpoint is polytheism or some faceless, person-less Law that governs the universe for no apparent reason. For us to walk around as even secular Americans assuming "a" God who runs the world is due to God making His promise to Abraham. We as Gentiles would have no idea at all that such a concept even exists. We couldn't form a category for this without God revealing Himself to Abram through words and demonstrations of His character. Even more than that, can you imagine a world without the Ten Commandments? It forms the basis of nearly all of our laws, including the principle of the punishment fitting the crime!
But God has done far more than give us some new way of thinking or governing; God has also saved us from our old way of living. Both have been achieved through this promise to Abram. True, without God's promise to Abram there is no concept of monotheism or modern law, but more importantly without this promise to Abram there is no Jesus. There is no assurance that God could fulfill any of His promises without a demonstration of God's faithfulness to Abram.
He promises that He will make Abram a great nation and that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him. And as we can see today, we have been. Today, we are going to finish off point 2, God gives His people a Savior.
What is the biggest promise you've ever made? Most of the time, we don't realize we are making such a promise at the front end. Most of the time, we realize just how big of a promise we've made when we are halfway into that commitment. It can be something small like a bake sale that gets out of control, or it can be something profoundly large like a marriage that needs deep forgiveness within it. When we make big promises, sometimes we can rise to the occasion, and other times we just can't. We often put God in that box. We assume that God may or may not be able to keep up with the promises that He has made. As we will see today, God absolutely fulfills His promises to us, in particular, His promises for our salvation.
It is hard for us to imagine that our salvation is being worked out here with a little man with a funny name from a distant town, but they are. What is happening in these short few verses is nothing less than the shaping of history. This is the working out of one of the most important promise made in the Bible, the Abrahamic covenant. We are going to explore just how important this covenant is by looking at the fulfillment of the three separate promises God makes. God provides His people a place, God provides His people a Savior, and God provides His people a blessing.
Have you ever stopped to think about how it is that you can have a relationship with God? I mean, we hear that a lot in church, but how does that actually work? How do you as a little human being standing on a rock that is floating in space that is 93 billion light years in diameter form a relationship with the God Who made all of that? How is that not an arrogant thing to assume? How are we able to do this? The answer to that lies in this passage in Genesis 12. It has been hinted at in Genesis 3, 6, and 9, but it is going to be spelled out for us in chapters 12, 15, 17, and 22. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Abrahamic covenant.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if you don't understand this covenant, you aren't going to understand any of the others, nor are you really going to understand the New Testament. The promise to Abraham and how it was done is going to provide the basis for Paul's argument for how we are saved by grace in Romans 4. It will form Paul's argument for predestination in Romans 9, and most relevantly for us, it will form Paul's argument for Gentile inclusion in the New Covenant in Galatians 3-4.
And it isn't just the New Testament that finds this important, as it will come up a lot in the rest of the Old Testament as well. While it will be mentioned a lot in Genesis, I want to just draw your attention to Exodus. This covenant will be brought up in Ex 2:24-25 as the reason for why God is about to act. It will be brought back up when Israel needed comfort in Exodus 6 that He really was going to come and save them. Interestingly, it doesn't come up again until God is ready to consume Israel for their sin in Exodus 32, when Moses invokes that covenant as the mediator between God and the nation. What's fascinating is that he doesn't bring up the Mosaic covenant just made on Mountain, but rather he brings up the promise made to Abraham. God spared the entire nation based on the promise that He made to one man.
That is how our God works. When He makes promises, He is going to uphold them. So let's see how God forms relationships and how that applies to us today by looking at our two points: God forms relationships through covenants and God advances His plans through covenants
Does anyone else feel like there's just too much going on? I saw a video of a man saying—well, screaming—that exact sentiment from his car. Life just has so much happening at any given time, and it can feel like there is just no way to keep up with everything. Part of this comes down to our inability to say no to things. We've created such a culture that looks down on people who aren't overworked that we assume being busy absolutely all the time is what is most honoring to God. This ignores the fourth commandment that explicitly commands rest, but that's another sermon.
Perhaps another possibility for this crazy sense of busyness might be because there is a misquoting (and understanding) of the verse that we are looking at here this morning. I've heard this verse in many conversations over the years saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle." This idea that God doesn't overload us can give us permission (or threat) to just keep going with whatever life throws our way. Since God doesn't overload us, then whatever is on our plate must stay on our plate. Since God doesn't give me more than I can handle, then there is no need to ask for help.
As we will see, today, that is not what that verse means—or even says. There is no verse that says that God won't give you more than you can handle. In fact, there is Biblical evidence to show the opposite! One scholar points to 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 "For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death." But then take a look at the rest of the verse:"But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." (Eric Bargerhuff). Do you see the point being made here? God gives you more than you can handle all the time! The very point in doing so is so that you see your true weakness and look to God for help. That is reality! So where do we get this idea from? Well, that likely is coming from 1 Cor. 10:13, which we look at now.
What God does say in that verse is that He is not going to allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able (again, with His help) to escape. That is what we are going to be looking at today as we contemplate our two points today: The danger of falling into temptation is real and **Dependance on God and avoidance of sin is required.
Today, we dive into Psalm 103 to see how we are invited to remember God's blessings to feed our joy.
Join us as we listen to our guest preacher Gary Johnson preach at our Mission's Weekend out of Matthew 6!
Have you ever heard of the concept of a spite house? These are houses that are built for the purposes of upsetting neighbors or making a point. One such house is in Freeport, New York, built in 1906. The builder was a developer named John Randall who didn’t like the city’s idea to make a grid system for the roads. To stop this, he built a house on a triangular piece of land that ruined the symmetry of the roads, a consequence you can still see today, over one hundred years later. There is another one in Boston called the Skinny House. Two brothers got a piece of land, but one was away on military duty. When he came back, he found his brother built a house taking up more than a fair share of property. In response, he built a house right next to his brother's, constructed in such a way to block light from the house! It is so close there isn’t a front door, meaning you’ve got to shimmy your way around to the side door (Source).
In a time before regulation, it was possible to preserve one’s feelings about something for over a century in this country, but this isn’t a new thing. Building something to commemorate an event or a person wasn’t invented in 20th century America. In fact, this goes back nearly to the beginning, all the way to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, the original spite house. God’s command was for the people to go out and fill the earth, but they disobeyed this command pretty straightaway with the idea of staying together and building a name for themselves. God is going to intervene with a judgment that is still around even today but will be lifted on that Great Day of the Lord. Today we are going to see God's commandments and judgments produce ultimate good and A broken world is moving towards reunion.
Genealogies are one of the most encouraging sections of Scripture. The reason why that sounds like a funny statement is because we don't read them. We don't think about them. We assume that what we are looking at is a dull list of names that have nothing to do with me or very little to do with the Bible. Sure, names like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob show up, but how often are the Jebusites showing up, and even if it is a lot, what difference does it make? How does knowing Nimrod built Nineveh make a difference to my life? Well, if you aren't paying close attention to all of Scripture, yeah, this won't make a difference to you. But I can tell you that's true of all the Scripture. We come to this gold mine of the Bible with nothing but a pan. We will find riches even that way, but oh how blessed is the man who meditates, who brings the pick axe to open up the ground. We are going to need to do some work, but there is gold even here.
We have covered genealogies before in our series through Genesis, most recently in chapter 5. There we saw that God was faithful to His promises and His judgments and that walking close with God brings blessing. God promised Eve that she would have children, and sure enough, Eve had children! Adam and Eve were even able to see it come to pass!
We've just seen some invocations made to God from Noah last week for Shem and Japheth to be blessed and Canaan to be cursed. Well, when we get to chapter 10, it is starting to look like it is going to be a while before we see this. The sons of Ham (including Canaan) are doing pretty well for themselves, while it seems like Shem is taking a minute to get started.
I can imagine that this is really hitting home with the original audience. The descendants of Shem have just left 4 centuries of servitude to Egypt. While they haven't been serving Canaan, it's not like they've been enjoying power in Egypt. Ham's kids are oppressing Shem's kids. Now, the tables have turned recently, but right now the descendants of Shem are sitting in the wilderness. They've just finished complaining about their food situation, longing to go back to Egypt. They are about to face the sons of Canaan, and they are scared to death to face these people. From their perspective, this is a losing battle, always has been, always will be. But you and I, with the benefit of the rest of history, can learn a lesson here. Let's learn some family history as we discover our two points: God's people don't look like much, but God is faithful to His promises in time.
While you can make fun of someone like me carrying all these tools just in case, it is no laughing matter that most of us are unprepared for the things that are absolutely going to happen that day. I can tell you with 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin before this day is over. Honestly, I have 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin in the next hour! What are you doing about that? If the answer is, "Not much," then this passage is for you. The horror that sin causes even post-Adam and Eve is worth us pausing.
We have an example of this very thing before us in this passage. Noah was, as we saw, a man of incredible faith and trust in God. He built a boat in the middle of the land to prepare for a worldwide flood. He did this in faith for 100 years while all the rest of humanity likely hurled abuse and possibly sabotage on his work. Nevertheless, the Lord vindicated him and preserved him and his family through the flood. Upon leaving the boat, rather than bitter and exhausted from the trip, spent the first days after the flood in worship, offering sacrifice to God.
After that, we have the sad episode in front of us. While sinners drowned in the flood, sin did not. It was still in Noah's heart, too. One scholar put it this way, "'With the opportunity to start an ideal society, Noah was found drunk in his tent'" (qtd in Ross, 212). As it has been said, the best of men are men at best. Adam's sinful nature is passed down to Noah, and as we will see, there will be generational consequences for sin committed here by both Noah and Ham.
We will be looking at two points today: The best of men are subject to sin and the consequences of sin can last.
It seems to be these days we are always in the midst of an election cycle. We rightly see elections of leaders in our country to be important and not to be taken for granted, as it is a right that not every country grants its citizens. It is a right that has been defended at great cost, and it should be counted as an enormous privilege and responsibility to help shape the country we live in.
As true as all of that is, we are on the verge of something far more important that has impact for eternity. Today, we begin the nominations process for the leaders of our church. Far more is at stake than a tax policy. Far more is at stake than just Knollwood’s reputation in the community. Indeed, the reputation of the gospel in our community and our own spiritual formation is impacted by the decisions that we will make in the power of the Holy Spirit in the coming weeks.
Thankfully, God has not left us to formulate the ideal candidate on our own. God has graciously given to us the profile of a church leader that transcends time, culture, and our individual ideals. You will notice that the list God leaves us with here looks quite different than what we might see on a job requirements list today, even among church job postings. There is no mention of a dynamic personality or success in business, or even previous leadership experience except the candidate’s own household. This list recognizes character not class. It requires integrity not innovation. It prizes a grasp and application of Truth rather than a knowledge and appropriation of trend. We’ve seen the danger of ignoring this list and promoting and then shamefully protecting men who did not have the qualities we are about to see today, so with all of this in mind, let us turn to our points this morning which you can see in your outline. Christ wants character in His elders and Christ wants character in His deacons.
Many of us are starting this year with a renewed sense of hope. It’s a New Year. I love new starts. Fresh calendars, new notebooks, new goals, and new equipment to reach those goals from my Christmas haul. “This year is gonna be different,” I repeat from last year, “I can feel it!” That’s asking a lot from a new notebook, calendar, and productivity app, though. Those things can help my mind, but they can’t really change my heart. I want to remind you of something that you need to keep in the forefront of your mind this coming year: blessing only comes from God. Actual, real, long-term blessing (that’s the kind you want) is only going to come from God this year. And really, you can to a certain degree determine how much of a blessing you will receive. Obviously, I am not talking about material prosperity here. You can’t gin up enough faith to make a new car appear in your driveway. You can’t pray a certain prayer and new toys show up in your room. That’s not the kind of blessing I am talking about, nor what this Psalm is talking about.
Psalm 1 is laying out some wisdom for us that is counter-intuitive, even for Christians. This Psalm is telling us things that we wouldn’t know otherwise without this Psalm’s help. So let’s dive in and find out blessing looks like transformation and blessing comes through the word of God
We say 'I love you,' too much, particularly as English speakers. It's not our fault. English only gives us one word for the most complicated reality in our world. It has become so flat, so overused, that the most common way we see it defined is 'love is love.' What that means, of course, is, 'love is whatever you define it to be.’ For selfish people, that's a great definition. If love is whatever I want it to be, then love revolves around me. But what does God's word say? It says that God is love. That rips the power to define love from us and gives it to Jesus. And, oh, how He has defined it!
We have defined love mostly in terms of what it feels like to us. It’s a very subjective, personal, private, inward thing. It is what happens to me or how I make someone else feel. That way of thinking about love makes it all about ourselves. Everything in love is in reference to me. God defines love in an entirely opposite direction. True, Biblical love is not in reference to your feelings but in sacrificial action towards other people. In order to do this well, at all really, is not to draw from your own well of love. It’s actually quite shallow. You need to draw from love that is coming to you rather than what is inside you, so that is what we are going to be looking at today.
Our main point today is defining love as doing for others what Christ is doing for you.
Joy is a serious issue. We give up too quickly on experiencing it, especially if it has been a long time since circumstances have been favorable. I think part of the reason why we give up on it is because we think that joy is optional in the Christian life, when it isn’t. I said at the beginning of this series that the fruit of the Spirit isn’t multiple choice. You can’t decide that you are going to be peaceful without having any self-control. You aren’t going to choose love and leave patience on the table. And you cannot take goodness and leave behind joy.
So is joy just another word for lack of sadness? Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard many times before, joy isn’t just another word for “happiness,” something that changes by circumstances. Jesus wasn’t slap happy all the time, as His weeping before the then-occupied tomb of Lazurus, and the then rebellious house of Jerusalem. Jesus experienced sadness to the point that Isaiah said that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet in all of that, He didn’t fail God’s commands in any way, including this command to rejoice always.
So what is joy? Joy, as we will see in a moment, is happily self-forgetful worship of the transcendent Christ. And this is to be done in all circumstances, even sad ones. How are we to do that? The quick answer is, “Have a good long look at Jesus and what He has done for you.” My old seminary dean once put it this way when defining joy, “Christian joy is marked by celebration and expectation of God's ultimate victory over the powers of sin and darkness, a victory actualized already in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ…" (Timothy George, 401). Christian joy constantly keeps the cross, resurrection, and consummation in mind.
What is the one thing we are all actually after? Peace. We work hard to earn enough money so we don’t have to worry about life, which is just a negative way of saying that we would like peace. Why do we go to war as nations? Because someone either has upset or threatens to upset peace. Imagine that! War to get peace. Killing each other to get peace. It is the most sought after gift in the world, yet here it is, sitting right in the fruit of the Spirit. It’s not even the first one listed!
Now, what is peace? I imagine that many of you have different answers to what that would mean for you. Some in here, I would imagine, would feel peace if this physical problem would just go away. If only you could hear like you used to, see like you used to, move like you used to, then there would be peace. Peace is found in a return to the past. For others in here, particularly the youth, peace is found in finally reaching the future! If only you could look ahead to see if life is going to be ok for you, you would find peace. For those of us in the middle of those two sections of life, we don’t want the past or the future; we don’t want time to move at all! In fact, if life could just be still for a minute, THEN there would be peace.
All of that is a lie, and it isn’t even the first thing about what real peace is. Those may be pieces of peace, but they are not peace itself or even the things that lead to peace. Peace is a person, the one Who’s arrival caused the angels to sing that verse we’ve just read, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” What impresses angels so much that they would say that? Well, let’s take a look at what peace means. I’ll give it to you up front, and over the course of the next few minutes together, you’ll see it come from the Scriptures. Peace is the feeling of wholeness solely founded on the fact of Christ's work for you.
Editor's Note: You may have seen an earlier recording sent out this morning that was the wrong recording! Here is the sermon that you were expecting!
We have a complicated relationship with presents at Christmas time, don’t we? We wrestle with the idea that Christmas has become too commercialized and hate that stores have taken the meaning of Christmas from good tidings of great joy to great spending on good toys. That is true as far as it goes, but who can deny how good it feels to give a child a great present that they are so thankful for? It’s a great feeling to do that for adults as well, especially if it is a practical gift that they will use everyday. One of the most useful gifts I got from Abby was an electric kettle. You fill the thing up with water, set it on the little base, turn it on, and in a couple of minutes, you have water heated perfectly for tea or coffee! It is a perfect gift for me that has been going strong for a couple years now. The thing is though, it is so much a part of my everyday life, that I often forget that it was a gift. It just blends into the kitchen.
I think that is often what happens with the gifts that God gives to us. They are so freely given to us, and often so perfectly suited to our needs, that they just become part of the background of our lives. And I’m not even talking about the physical gifts like the car you got here in today, or the house you came from, I’m am talking about the gifts that are given to you in your life that you don’t notice are there. I’m talking about the fruit of the Spirit. There is no gift more practical, more satisfying to oneself and others than the fruit of the Spirit. You’ll notice that I say “fruit” not “fruits,” and that comes from something that Pastor Reader would always point out. This list of virtues in its entirety is present in the life of a true Christian; they are not multiple choice. We are expected to have all of them, even if we have more of one virtue than another.
There isn’t a way to cover all of these virtues comprehensively in just a few weeks, so I have selected a few that correspond more or less with the theme of the advent candle for that week. Unfortunately, for this sermon, hope is not on the this list in Galatians, but I think that the one I’ve picked out today is often not talked about, hence the title of sermon, the forgotten virtue of gentleness.
You know what made the holidays so special as a kid? The fact that everything was taken care of by someone else! You could sit back and enjoy watching dad cut down the tree (or struggle to figure out which branches went in which order on the artificial tree), you could smell the food your mother was cooking, and best of all looking under the tree on Christmas morning to see the presents that were bought for you! Those memories are wonderful, but some can look at those days as joys long gone by. Oh, those were the days when someone else took care of you, but now that responsibility is all on you and with it the nagging fear that perhaps you won’t be able to pull it off, that disaster is just around the corner. Now the eggnog makes sense. But perhaps that wasn’t your experience of the holidays. Perhaps what makes them painful to remember was the fact that there weren’t people caring for you when there should have been. The responsibilities of life were thrust on you very early, and now life is viewed through the lens of “I got myself this far, so I think I’ll make it the rest of the way.” This sense of self-sufficiency if it isn’t bravado, is simply the lack of realizing how delicate life can be.
This Psalm has something to say to the both of us. Quite simply the Psalmist is telling us not to trust in people but to trust in God. What made the holidays so carefree when we were children is that we trusted the powerful people in our lives, and when those people were no longer in power, that simple trust has vanished. And in my short time in ministry, I’ve met a few self-sufficient people who suddenly were reminded how delicate they really are and thus lost that confidence.
This Psalm, I trust, will help you regain that sense of childlike joy of this season, not because you are trusting in a new person (even if that person is yourself) but because you’ve got your eyes on Jesus.
Have you ever kept a letter from someone that you love, even if that person is still with you? Or maybe you’ve saved voicemails or text message threads of the same. It is an strange thing that we would keep these messages when we still have a relationship with the real person, but then it isn’t. These messages that we have are moments where the other person has revealed something about themselves, and that act is what is special. I still have the first messages that Abby and I exchanged when we were dating because those messages revealed that budding love between the two of us. It was a witness to the relationship we already had that gave the place for those messages to be exchanged.
Keeping that in mind will help you understand why Presbyterians get so excited about covenants in the Bible. We’re big on this! We name our churches, colleges, even children after this concept because a covenant is like a letter from God. A covenant reveals Who God is, what He is like, and most critically, how He works. Covenants are the first messages that God sends to His people, and in fact, covenants are how God gathers His people (Myers, 2).
When I was growing up, I remember seeing a brand that was outdoors related that had little stickers that said, “Life is good.” It depicted little stick figures relaxing in hammocks or driving little Jeeps. We’ve often used the phrase ourselves after a great meal, or sitting on the back porch watching our kids play in the yard. There’s nothing wrong with that at all; life is good. But when the hammock isn’t out, or when life is hard, another common phrase in our fallen world, the statement “Life is good” can feel glib or in really dark places, can feel like a lie. That’s where this passage comes in to help us. This passage tells us that not only is life good and worthy of preservation, life is precious because it is made in the image of God. Life is good, and because it is, it has real demands, actual, personal responsibilities on how we treat it. Questions 135-136 of the Larger Catechism go into great detail that the command “you shall not murder” goes way beyond just not killing people, but goes into preserving life as well. In fact, in 136, it sees that the sins this commandment forbids goes all the way down to “desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations; provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.” This passage has a lot to say to us today!
Our world is under the judgment of God today. It is not just that the world is doing things that will bring judgment, the things that they are doing ARE the judgment. I don’t have to describe to you what you see on the nightly news about the sexual revolution and transgenderism. I don’t have to rehearse the images that you’ve seen coming out of the various wars around the world. You all see these things plainly every day. And while there will come a day when there will be a great judgment over the whole planet, as we will see in a minute, we already have the seeds of that right in front of us. In Romans 1, we see God hand over people to their sin as part of their judgment. Essentially, God would be saying, “Do you want to bend nature and rebel against God’s rule for marriage and intimacy? Ok, let’s see you do that. Let’s see how far that can take you.” We are seeing this play out in hatred leading to war. We are seeing this play out in apathy to the Bible and faithful living. We are seeing the consequences of God handing our world over to what it wants.
Now admittedly, that seems a little scary, doesn’t it? I mean, we have to go along for the ride! Yes, we will be spared ultimate judgment, but boy, it doesn’t look like things are going to be all that smooth leading up to that either. What do we do? How do we react to seeing the world handed over to the sin that it wants and us having to suffer the consequences of that? Well, this passage is going to tell us how to do that. Noah had to literally go along for the ride of judgment on the Earth. Noah didn’t like anything that was going on in the world, yet a planetary flood was coming to the planet Noah lived on. This was going to make an impact on his life. How did Noah react to being in the midst of God’s judgment? Well, he hoped only in God and responded in worship. Coincidentally, those are the main points for today: God is your only hope in the midst of judgment and The proper response to judgment is worship.
The story of Noah’s ark is one of the most misrepresented stories in the Bible. We see this story depicted in children’s bibles and nursery room walls in cute, colorful illustrations of animals floating in a boat, with a long giraffe neck sticking outside the boat because it is too long as they float peacefully on the waters. You would never see a children’s book drawn that way about hurricane Katrina. There would be no happy looking people floating in boats in New Orleans. Why? Because people would rightly complain that we wouldn’t be capturing the devastation that the hurricane brought. What we are looking at here makes Katrina look like a sunshower. This story is of the judgment of God against sinners who finally exhaust His patience. But those children’s bibles and nursery walls captured something right about this story. Because it is also the story of surprising grace given to Noah and the future humanity that will come from him. God is going to do something amazing through Noah, and the amount of work that Noah is going to do to make that happen is going to provide a great encouragement for us. Our two points today are God really did flood the whole earth for human sin, and God really did save His people from it.
Doesn’t it seem like the world is falling apart? There are many times in history in which one could say this. Just in the last century we have seen two world wars, the development of the atom bomb, worldwide terrorism, and most subtly, the terrifying falling population rates that will cause some countries to disappear nearly entirely in the next century (China is looking like its population will be halved in the next thirty years). If you are watching the news nightly, or heaven help you if you are getting your news constantly on your phone, you will find many reasons to think that this is a hopeless situation.
If you were alive at the time of Genesis 6, though, these days would seem tame! In Genesis 6 we are seeing the beginning of the first end. We are going to find out why a world-wide flood was the proper response to this world.
But there are a number of confusing things in this text! Is this text talking about fallen angels having super-babies with humanity? Is God giving the world 120 years to repent, or is he setting the new human age limit? What is this saying that God regrets making humanity? Did God not see this coming and thus doesn’t hold our future? AHHHH! Indeed, these are important questions, and it is right here, in some of the scariest parts of Scripture and our lives where God’s promises shine the brightest. Some of the above questions are matters of debate and mystery, and some are going to be left unsolved, but what we are going to walk away from our time together with is a new confidence in God’s ability to both know and control the future. Our two points today are Evil has dominated in the world before yet God knows how to save His people
Genealogies don’t get much love. These are often the place where our eyes glaze over in our Bible readings, wondering why these things are even here. There are all these strange names, often strange places they lived that are just so unfamiliar with. But just because we don’t immediately understand something doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it. We covered at the beginning of our time through Genesis that these genealogies serve as introduction to new sections of the Genesis story. You can tell the family that is going to be focused on by whatever name shows up near the end. They also tend to start with the name that the previous section told us about. But they do more than just provide us with a Star Wars-like title crawl to a new episode. As we will see today, there is much that we can learn from the details of this particular genealogy, as well as some of the other ones that we will study in the future.
Sin is incredibly productive in its destructiveness. Sin works harder than we can imagine to make life worse. It is always looking, always on the hunt to see if it can get you into something new, something deeper, or just bring more people along with you. Today, we are going to see an example of exactly this. What we may view as an extreme example of becoming a murderer because a church service didn’t go well, is really an example of the compelling power of sin and how we ought to take it seriously. It is worth our looking at what sin is capable of so that we take appropriate action when it shows up in our own lives. If we never stare at the possibilities, we might not even know what kind of danger we are in.
It is only by knowing the seriousness of a thing do we take appropriate action to deal with it. We are going to see the awesome possibilities of sin and yet the overwhelming power we have access to in order to deal with it. Today we are going to be looking at two points: Sin desires to rule you and Sin will not rule God’s plans.
Today we are going to look at the curses of chapter 3 to get an understanding of God’s grace-infused judgment. That may seem like an impossible thing to put together, but I think that is exactly the beauty that we are supposed to see out of this passage and by extension the rest of the passages in the Bible. We serve an incredibly merciful God that even when He is by no means clearing the guilty, He is merciful in His punishments.
Sin is really hard to deal with honestly. We’ve all seen the fake apologies from politicians or celebrities that did something wrong and got caught. Sometimes the non-apologies are easy to spot: “I’m sorry you were offended.” That’s rookie stuff. Sometimes they are a bit more sophisticated: “Mistakes were made.” A phrase like that gently moves responsibility off of the speaker without it seeming like that. This is a phenomenon related in a really fantastic book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). In the book, the author, though writing from a non-christian perspective, points out all the ways that we justify ourselves when we do something wrong. It is so automatic, subconscious, and universal, all of us can feel seen in a book like that. Seriously, I read that book and questioned everything I was thinking for weeks (or was I?).
However, once we look at our passage today, I think you will be able to see the roots of this sort of response to sinful actions. Right after the first sin on Earth is committed, the first appearance of shame and blame begin. Shame and blame are two ways of dealing with sin that when used in the wrong way just lead us even deeper into sin. We will see the wrong way of dealing with our sin, and then we will see how Jesus’ work saves us from both.
Today, we discuss the very sad topic of sin. It is something that isn’t pleasant to think about and can trigger many painful memories of people sinning against us, or it can resurface deep regrets that we have in the ways that we have sinned against other people. Sin is not a very popular doctrine and has been watered down tremendously in our culture. Sinning comes up more often in the context of dieting than anything else! People feel guilty for that extra cookie and what it means for their waistline rather than their selfishness and what that means for their marriages.
We have to know what sin truly is. It is no exaggeration to say that if you don’t understand sin, you will not understand anything in this world. Why do certain approaches to government work and others don’t? Because one takes into account sin and the others don’t. Why do we have Christian leaders elevated to great platforms only to watch them fall in big ways? Because we don’t understand sin and take appropriate measures against it.
Sin is our enemy, and if we are going to fight our enemy, then we need to know how sin works. By this, I don’t mean that we need to dive deeply into the world and consume all of these terrible things to understand sin. Sin isn’t going to tell you what it is. Sin is just going to lie to you (as we talked about a couple weeks ago). Instead, we are going to dive into God’s Word to see Sin lies about God and God’s goodness offers more than sin.
Last week, we looked at the incredible idea that the God of the universe makes covenants with us. This week, in our last look at this incredible chapter for now, we are going to look at what it is to make a covenant with each other, specifically in marriage. There are many examples of covenants that we see made in the Bible. We see covenants made between two men for example in Genesis 31:44 between Jacob and Laban, and famously between David and his friend Jonathan (1 Samuel 20:16). Covenants have been made between nations, for example, in Joshua 9:15, when Joshua makes a covenant with people from another country.
But there is a special kind of covenant that is unlike the other ones that we have seen in these examples: Marriage. Marriage is a special kind of covenant, a promise of devotion, that points to something more than just a promise between two people. Ultimately, marriage is going to point us towards the relationship between Christ and His Church, a relationship that is the reason for everything existing in the first place. The Bible begins and ends with a marriage, some of the greatest joys and comforts can be found within marriage, which then shows why Satan is so bent on destroying or redefining marriage.
When we hear something like that in Church, we tend to think then of the national state of marriage. We think that I am going to be preaching against the LGBT movement or national divorce rates. Certainly that is something that we will talk about today because the Bible addresses those things directly in our passage, but I don’t want us to miss the trees for the forest. Yes, we want to say something about these obvious assaults, but we can become so focused on national sins that we forget that there are personal sins in our individual marriages that need addressing. Single people don’t get to sit this one out either. Believe it or not, the problems we have in marriage don’t come from marriage. They are simply revealed in marriage. Selfishness, anger, greed, laziness, critical spirits, and lust are all just as available in the single life as they are in the married life. A lot of times, those sins are developed and more deeply entrenched during those single years, and how well you repent of those things now will give you a good indication of how you will repent of those things in marriage. The Christian life doesn’t start when you say “I do” to a fiance, it starts when you put your faith in Christ.
So today, we are going to cover that and more as we dive into our last look at Genesis 2, looking (finally) at point number 3: God convenes marriage.
Titles and names are funny things. Even without recognizing a voice, I can tell who is talking to me based on what title or name they use to get my attention. If someone behind me says, “Sir,” I know that they likely don’t know me, but they are trying to be respectful in getting my attention. Someone who says, “Pastor Jessup” probably knows of me, but again is trying to be respectful. Someone saying Pastor Mark is probably a member of my church, because that is what you all call me. People who say, “Mark” likely knew me before I was a pastor and as such likely know me very well. The title that people use for me doesn’t really define me, per se, but it rather defines the relationship that I have with the person giving me the name. Now, I don’t find my title all that important. If you want to call me either “Mark” or “Pastor Mark” or whatever, that’s fine, but let’s imagine for a moment that you said, “Hey, Mark Buddy, how are you?” and I was to turn to you and say, “That’s Pastor Jessup, to you!” What have I done? I have redefined our relationship, haven’t I? I’m saying, “You and I only know each other professionally; you don’t get to use my first name. We aren’t that close.” Names and titles define a relationship. The Queen of England was “Your Majesty” to everyone, but to her family, she was “Lilibet.” No one amongst her subjects would dare call her anything but “your majesty.” No one would presume to use the name her family used.
Now, as we get into chapter 2, we are going to see another name shift happening, and it is a profound name change that should stir our hearts this morning. In Genesis chapter 1, we see God referred to with the general term for God, “Elohim.” Elohim spoke this, Elohim made that. Here, in chapter 2, we see a new title in verse 4: Lord God. This is one of those “blink and you miss it” kind of things, but this is so crucial for us to understand. The word “God” is still Elohim, but the word we translate as “Lord” is Yahweh, which is God’s name. How do you get to know God’s name? How do you get to be on first-name basis with the Almighty? Today, we are going to cover just that.
If you ever take an art class, shop class, or really any kind of class, one of the first things that you will see is the ideal example of what you are trying to learn about. Artists study the great masters of old like Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and others to see what the best of the best is supposed to look like. While it is certainly discouraging at first to look at works like that and compare it to the stick figures that you can draw, it brings out an appreciation for what good artwork requires. Recently, I attempted to hang some crown molding in our house, which, if you are unfamiliar, is cut upside down and backwards. I didn’t really know that starting out, so it seemed nearly impossible to get that thing hung! Since then, everywhere I go, I stare at the crown molding, breathlessly impressed at how they get that hung up there and it fits! Hope comes in for the painter or aspiring carpenter by the knowledge, that while they likely won’t be as good, their skills will improve. It is possible to be done!
In Genesis chapter two, we see what life was like before the Fall, creation, as the Divine Artist originally made it. Life was beautiful, easy, and totally without conflict. If we had to make a wide-ranging summary of what this chapter wants to tell us that is it. God makes beautiful places and makes a good life. Beholding this helps us like studying those great painters, or crown molding carpenters. We see how it was supposed to be, but our hope is made stronger by the sure confidence of seeing something better than Eden if we are trusting in Christ. God created Eden, but He is well on His way to bringing back something even better.
The Green Bay Packers were having a tough time playing their football game. After one particularly disappointing first half, their coach, Vince Lombardi, gathered the team together, held up a ball and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football,” to which one of the players replied, “Slow down, Coach!” It is always worth it to remind ourselves of the fundamentals and that is exactly what Lombardi was doing—returning to the basics, the foundation, the first things, the things you always have to keep in mind even as you advance to learn the finer details. This is true of every skill. While dancing in ballet, you must never forget that you are always visible, and every position and movement to the next position must be drawing a beautiful line for the eye. In music, you must never forget pitch and rhythm.
And in life, you must never forget that God created the world.
Genesis is the introduction to everything, and the introduction to Genesis begins in the beginning. We are going to be considering the first things, the facts and concepts that drive the rest of our lives whether we realize it or not. So today, we are going to be exploring a few key points, namely these three (though, we could cover so much more): God alone created creation, God alone commands creation, and God alone blesses creation
We are beginning a new series this week through the book of Genesis as we explore the character and nature of God and how He interacts with His people. Please join us on the journey through a most important book!
We hear it all the time, "Jesus said, 'Don't judge!'" but is that what Jesus actually meant? Did Jesus really tell us that we cannot call things good or bad? Find out as we examine Matthew 7:1!
Do you want a promise from God that you will be able to do anything that you set your mind to? Wouldn’t it be a great thing, even a humbling thing, to hear that Christ will promise to be the one to give you strength to parent, preach, fix that leaky faucet, or win that championship football game? This would take the focus off of ourselves and onto Jesus as He gets the credit for every good thing accomplished and every victory won! Enter Philippians 4:13. Many have claimed this verse as they set out to do something, and I have particularly seen this in the athletic community. One NBA star would write this verse on his shoes, and in my youth ministry, would see things like that all the time.
Like most of the verses that we have studied so far, the popular interpretation isn’t too far off the truth. Indeed, the only way that we are able to do anything is because God preserves us. I am not the one keeping my heart beating. I’m not the one who keeps my body going. Anything that I do is because God preserves me. David recognizes this in Psalm 139. In another Psalm, specifically 104:14, we see that God’s control of the Earth extends even to the growing of grass. I’m currently reading through a 700 page book going through all the Bible verses that talk about God’s sovereignty over all things. It is true that draining the game winning basket, catching that touchdown pass, preaching a good sermon, or training up good kids is all credit due to God.
But that is not typically how we use the verse. Because it is also true that when we miss that critical basket, the sermon doesn’t land, or the kids don’t turn out the way we expect, God is overseeing that, too. If we use this verse simply to say, “God is going to empower me to win here based on this verse,” when we don’t win, we can end up disappointed, or at worst, disillusioned with God (Eric J. Bargerhuff,The Most Misused Verses in the Bible,109-110).
What if I told you that the promise God is actually making here is better than victory? What if the promise that is made here will still empower you, even, in fact especially, in defeat? It turns out that Paul has a secret about how to do that, and a lot of us, me included, often miss what that is.
Different people want different things in a disaster. There is one type of person who wants a plan. No matter how bad things are around me, nothing makes them feel better than a solid step 1, step 2 plan to get them where they want to go whether that is budgets or home repair. Some things, of course, are beyond one’s personal ability to fix, like, say the state of a nation. I know many have felt that way about America, particularly so in the last ten years. It gets really hard to watch the news because there is very little that any particular individual can do about the culture of a country. We all know that if there is going to be any sort of real, lasting change, God is going to have to be the one to make it happen. That’s where we find this verse in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that seems to give us the ultimate step 1, step 2 scenario! The planning people are satisfied!
But there is another group of people who would rather have a powerful promise that someone will take care of their problem. These types of folks see the road in front of them, and honestly, a plan is a little overwhelming! They’re not so much into step 1, step 2, because they know that they are not powerful enough or confident enough to implement those things. They would rather have someone that they can lean against to do it for them, thus ensuring that it is going to be done correctly. For folks like this, Jeremiah 29:11 seems like the perfect place to land on, and indeed, many have made this verse a theme for their lives, claiming it on everything from business to highschool graduation cards.
Both of these passages are absolutely perfect for an “Oh, so close” kind of interpretation. People are tantalizingly close to correct in what these passages mean, but those promises were made to different people, and the way we tend to claim them puts our focus in the wrong place. It is true that God will work things out for our ultimate good, and in the end, the glory that awaits us will make all of our problems seem small (Romans 8), but if we think that Jeremiah 29:11 means that we will never go through any long-term struggle, we are simply wrong. And while it is true that prayers and repentance do bring blessing even to a whole nation, 2 Chronicles 7 isn’t a blueprint or formula to course correct a nation. There is actually a greater Kingdom coming that should be our greatest focus (Bargerhuff, Eric The Most Misused Verses in the Bible, 76).
Have you ever noticed how many guarantees there are offered to you? People promise guaranteed satisfaction on so many sorts of products and services because people want to know that the money they spend or the effort they expend will be worth it. No one wants to pay a bunch of money only to have buyer’s remorse or work super hard on something that turns out to be a waste of time. Now if there is anything that parents want is a guarantee on, it is that their children are going to do all right in life. Parents put more effort, more of themselves, into their children than anything else in their lives (if they are doing it properly!), so they, of all people, want to know that what they are doing is the right thing. We’ve all heard the horror stories of parents who seemingly did everything right and yet the kids did not turn out the way their parents hoped. This puts us on the hunt for some sort of technique, some sort of verse, some sort of something that will help us sleep at night knowing that no matter how anything else turns out in life, at least the kids are going to be ok.
Many believe that they have found their answer in this verse. All you have to do is train up your kid! This means that any kid that wasn’t trained, or at least wasn’t trained properly, will turn out poorly. Now, I think we all know that life isn’t that simple, but we still have this verse here. We can’t just say, “Well, that is not how my life has turned out, so the Bible must be wrong.” That is a very dangerous way to do Bible interpretation. We can’t interpret the Bible through our own life experience, so what are we supposed to do with it? What is this verse really promising us, if anything? Well in order to understand this verse, we need to understand a little bit about how the Bible works, and specifically how Proverbs work.
We are going to be starting a new sermon series for the month of July that I’m calling “Oh, So Close!” There are a lot of verses that are misquoted, misapplied, and misunderstood today in our wider culture, so I thought that we would take a few weeks between Bible books to look at a few of them. The point of this series is not to condemn people who have misunderstood or misapplied the verses we will cover. This is part of the reason why I have titled the series the way that I have. Sometimes, these misapplications are very close, but not close enough. Some mistakes are worse than others. If you have misapplied the verse in Matthew 18 that says, “where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them” to a prayer meeting of a few people, you can still be saved. You are not applying that verse correctly, but you can still go to heaven. Other times, the misapplication of verses can set you up for a real problem in the Christian life. People can take Jeremiah 29:11 and think that based on that verse God only intends to bring good things into their lives as defined by them. When troubles come into their lives, they can think that God has abandoned them.
The real point of this series is I want to give you a helpful set of tools in your own interpretation of the Scriptures. If you can apply the things that we will see in the next few weeks, you will have a greater chance of interpreting the Bible for yourself with precision. It is not enough to be correct that a certain topic is taught in the Bible; you need to be precise as to what that verse specifically is saying about a given topic. To use the Matthew 18 passage again, it is true that God is with us, even when our numbers are small, but that is not the precise meaning of that passage. As we will explore when we get to that one, the truth that God gives to us in that verse is more profound and comforting than just a general blanket statement of God’s presence with us.
We live in a fast-paced world where unless you are constantly moving, it feels like you are falling behind. This world has trained us to think this way even about our Christian lives. “Fast-paced” isn’t typically what should come to our mind when we think about prayer. Prayer feels slow, dare we say it, unproductive. But it is prayer that Paul emphasizes so much here at the end of this letter.
As Paul makes the final turn in his letter to the Epehesians, he suddenly drops the military imagery and instead exhorts the Ephesians church (and us) on the importance of prayer. He spends quite a bit of time on this here, highlighting its importance to the spiritual fight. He also breaks out the word “all” four times in this brief section before finally requesting that this gift of prayer be applied to him and his calling.
As fathers, we all want to make sure that our families are well provided for and protected, but we can easily miss the most important thing to pass onto them: wisdom. Obviously, in order to pass it on, we need to get a hold of it ourselves! How? Listen to find out!
If you are going to be in a battle, you are going to need more than defense. You will need a weapon! God has given to us just such a resource in His Word. Will you learn how to use it?
What is faith? We throw this word around a lot as Christians, but we tend to not define it carefully. It is easy when we talk about the shield of faith to think that it is about the power of belief itself rather than the object of that faith. Find out how Paul means to define faith in this episode of Feast and Follow!
As we being our series on the Armor of God, we look at the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes of the gospel of peace. God has made us well-equipped for the spiritual war that is coming for each of us! Learn how to use each piece!
Happy Mother's Day from Knollwood Presbyterian Church! Whether you are a mother or not, you have likely felt the burden of responsibility keeping you up at night. Today, we look at Psalm 127, where we find the promise that God gives His beloved sleep because He is the one taking care of everything.
Today we begin a new series on how God has equipped us for spiritual warfare. In this episode, we look at the reality of spiritual warfare and how we need to prepare for it.
We've all had to answer the question, "What do you do?" as an icebreaker in conversation. It is not the most important part of who we are, but it takes up a significant portion of our time. Does Jesus have something to say about what we do to pay the bills? Find out as we dive into Ephesians 6:5-9.
You know, there is often a temptation when we hear a sermon that applies to someone we know, especially when that person happens to be sitting next to us, to nudge them and say, “Hey, he’s talking about you!” There is no bigger temptation for that when it is a sermon for your kids! When you hear from the pulpit, “Kids, listen to your parents,” you want to elbow them and say, “See? I’m not the only person telling you that!” I’m sure that was the case when this letter was originally written. Parents would have said, “See? The Apostle Paul even tells you to listen to me!” But then Paul in one quick verse addresses the father (and the mother by implication) to care for their children well. Just like we saw in our marriage series, God takes care to address both sides of the power structure. One is called to humble submission or obedience while the other is called to use their power to serve. So today, there will be an opportunity for both sides to throw elbows, as it were, into everyone’s ribs, as is usually the case when sinners come before the holy Word of God. The two points that we are going to look at today are, Children, obey your parents and Parents, help your children obey.
This week, we conclude our study of marriage by talking about the little talked about but much worried about topic of sex. This isn't something that we have to be ashamed of but rather something that the Church has got a lot to say about! Far from the typical cultural discussions on sex, this week we talk about God's design for this in marriage.
Welcome to our Resurrection Sunday sermon! He is risen! Today we will examine what it means when we say that Jesus rose from the dead. It changes everything!
Jesus is so in control of your salvation that even His enemies proclaim it! Find out how as we dive into John 11 and 12!
Here we continue our marriage series by looking at what Christ calls husbands to do in their marriages. Men often look for purpose outside their families, but is that what God calls them to? Find out in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Ephesians 5:21-24 is an often misunderstood passage, or at the very least, often winced at! It shouldn't be, though. This is a portion God's directions on how to operate in His institution of marriage that, whether we realize it or not, is good and needed.
Marriage is a great gift from the Lord, but so few know what it means or truly what it is. Today, we will explore the reality of marriage and how it is a promise, a privilege, and a presentation.
As we dive into chapter 5:3-21, we will find that personal holiness isn't just personal. It is meant to be a light that ushers people out of darkness and into the light.
If you were going to create a study of love, what would you call it? You could call it “loveology” or perhaps “Valentinianism” if you wanted to be fancy. But what if I told you that such a name already exists for the study of love? You may be surprised to find out that the study of love is named “Ethics.” Ethics isn’t ultimately a study of yes vs no, right vs wrong. That is the practice that comes out ofa proper study of love. Now, I’m not just saying that because it is February and love is in the air. I’m not even saying this because it's a particularly original idea. This goes all the way back to Jesus. In John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me,” What? “Keep my commandments.” If you want to study how to love Jesus, then you need to study His commandments. If you want to comprehend how to love your neighbor, then you need to know God’s laws.
We continue our march through Ephesians 4:17-24 as we examine the futility of the unChristian life.
Have you ever received a gift that you ended up giving away to someone else? Well, this is encouraged with gifts God gives you. Give of those gifts to others to help build the Church. Find out how we do that as we take a look at Ephesians 4:7-16!
How do we go about maintaining the unity God has given to us? It comes through having our character transformed into being humble, gentle, and patient. What does that look like, and what is the basis for this unity anyway? Find out as we dive into Ephesians 4:1-6. Be sure to check out the Pastor's Blog on our website to find the manuscript for this sermon and others! https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com/pastors-blog
This week, we return to our study of Ephesians. Do you ever feel like you have peaked in your life? Well, that is an unchristian way of thinking! There is always another mount to summit in learning (and experiencing) the love of God. He loves you so much, you need His strength to even comprehend it!
Happy New Year from Knollwood Presbyterian Church! As we think about how we want to live this new year, let's hear some absolutely critical planning steps from the book of James! To plan our year without using the key principle from chapter 4, we are in sin!
Merry Christmas from Knollwood Presbyterian! We have spent some time looking at who we are, who Jesus is, when He arrived, and what He has done for us. Now, the time comes for us to answer the question, "Now what?" Jesus is the King! So are you going to submit to Him, and what does that look like? Find out as we dive into Romans 12:1-2.
Are you getting all the comfort you should out of your Christian life? Romans 8:1-4 is a profoundly comforting passage but only if you grasp how much you need a Savior. Come join us for our fourth message in our Advent series!
Today, we examine the phrase, "born this day in the city of David." God promised long ago that He would send His Son to rule the world, and that day has come (and will come again) on a very specific day on the calendar. God's promises always come true in real life, so come hear how in this episode!
The miracle of Christmas is Jesus' birth, and it is a lot more profound and mysterious than you think. Far from being just a theological fine point that only seminarians need to worry about, God the Son taking on a human nature has a lot to say about your salvation and the level of comfort you draw from it. Take up and listen as we explore John 1:1-14 and a few other important passages talking about Jesus being 100% man and 100% God!
This Sunday marks the beginning of the Advent Season! This month, we are looking at the sentence, "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." Today, we will look at "for unto you" trying to answer the questions, "Who are you?" and "Why are these such glad tidings?" Find out as we dive into Scripture to answer the question, "Who Am I?"
We have been given an amazing gospel that has not only reconciled us to God but also to each other. How has that been done, and what are we supposed to do with it? Find out as we dive into Ephesians 3:1-11!
Today's sermon comes from Ephesians 2:11-22. We will see here the only foundation we can build unity on is Jesus!
In this message, we finish up the sermon we started last week! We saw what it meant to be dead in sin, but how do we go from dead to God to devoted to God? That is the question that Ephesians 2:4-10 answer!
If you ask most people if they are good, they will almost certainly reply, "yes." Paul gives a very different view of the natural state of people: they are so insensitive to God and goodness that they can only be described as dead! Find out how dead people can be invited to the Lord's Supper this week out of Ephesians 2:1-4!
Today we look at the surpassing power of God, and how He uses that power to the Church's benefit!
In today's sermon, we examine Ephesians 1:15-19. It is said that what you don't know can't hurt you, but it can't help you either. In our passage today, Paul prays that we would know what the Holy Spirit can reveal to us about God and His work in our lives.
Today, we examine one of the Spirit's roles in our salvation! This message was taken out of Ephesians 1:11-14.
When we look at the world around us, it would appear as if all things were heading straight down. However, as our passage today tells us, we just aren't looking far enough ahead into the future. If we do, then we will see why this message is titled as it is.
Today we examine the first of the many spiritual blessings God gives to us, the first one mentioned being predestination. We don't often think of that being a blessing, but there is a reason that Paul starts with this one. Join us to find out why! This sermon was from September 11, 2022.
In this lesson, we take an overview look at the book of Ephesians! Here, we will take a look at the promises that God makes and how we should respond to them! This sermon was from September 8th, 2022.
Today we examine the final chapter of Ruth and see the long lasting effects of faithfulness in ordinary life!
Do you ever feel like your life is in someone else's hands? It is hard not to be stressed in the present when you feel like your future is uncertain! What we learn in Ruth 3 is that even when our lives seem to be in the hands of others, God always holds our future.
As we examine Ruth 2, we will see that God works through both circumstances AND character. God's plan is set, but that plan includes your decisions and will (which are also guided by God!). Come and behold this wonderful mystery with us!
Coveting is one of those sins that just doesn't seem like a big deal compared to some of the other commandments. However, as we will see here in this sermon, this is hardly the case! This commandment might just be one of the most important and comforting commands of all!
We've all heard that honesty is the best policy, so why do so few of us follow it? Perhaps it is because we don't really grasp how terrible of a sin it really is. How do we commit this sin, and what do we do if we are "forced" to lie? Listen and learn with us as we dive into the 9th Commandment!
The 8th Commandment prohibits stealing, and we tend to think that as long as we haven't physically taken something, we have obeyed this one! As we will see, there is so much more to this commandment than just not taking, but it also requires generous giving as well!
BE ADVISED: This sermon deals with sensitive topics that young ears might not be ready for. In this sermon we look at the seventh commandment governing our sexuality. We will look at what God's design for sex is, how the world has twisted it, and how the Lord can forgive and transform those who have broken this commandment.
We tend to think of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not murder," as a pretty easy command to keep! What we find, however, is there are so many implications for this commandment that goes all the way down to our thoughts! Listen and learn as we examine this surprisingly hard commandment to keep!
We tend to think of the fifth commandment as the one for kids, but there is much more to it than that! In fact, there is much that this commandment has to say to those in authority as parents and beyond! Find out what in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Today we dive into the Fourth Commandment regarding the Sabbath. What are we allowed to do and not do? Is that even the right question? Find out in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Earlier, we posted the wrong audio! Here is the sermon out of the third commandment!
They say that talk is cheap, but it actually does have some value; namely, it reveals what is in our hearts. While taking God's name in vain can be done with more than our speech, our speech does reveal what is in our hearts. How do we change this? Listen to this episode to find out!
They say that talk is cheap, but it actually does have some value; namely, it reveals what is in our hearts. While taking God's name in vain can be done with more than our speech, our speech does reveal what is in our hearts. How do we change this? Listen to this episode to find out!
Last time we saw that God wants us to only worship Him, but how are we supposed to do that? Do we have to guess? Not at all! Find out how God wishes to be worshiped in our look at the second commandment!
Today we examine the first of the ten commandments that is foundational to the rest. The central question is, who are you going to worship? Find out what this important concept is and how to get it right in the power of the Holy Spirit in this episode from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
This week we begin our series through the Ten Commandments and explore what they really mean for our lives today!
Mary was a mother to a very special Child, but what makes her special and blessed is something that we all can access! Listen to find out what it is as we take our last look at the Gospel of Luke!
We come to the final passage in Luke after a wonderful journey of discovery! But now that we know all of this, what are we supposed to do with it? Find out in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Join us as we walk along the road to Emmaus and continue to celebrate the resurrection of Christ out of Luke 24:13-35!
Our message today covers the crucifixion from Luke's Gospel on our Good Friday service.
Does it feel like sometimes the work you are doing for the Lord doesn't seem to be doing all that much? Do you sometimes wonder how your job fits into the rest of God's plan? If you are, come look at Mark 11:1-11 with us as we look behind the scenes at Jesus' triumphal entry!
Have you ever wondered how the chief priests and people could mock Jesus as He died? Didn't they know Psalm 22 and were playing the role of the bad guy of the Psalm they grew up singing? Find out how in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Church Discipline is not often talked about and even less often practiced, but this is a command of Jesus for the church today! Jesus tells us what we need to know, including the process of discipline. However, this command to discipline comes in the midst of some of the most beautiful passages of forgiveness! How do we keep this tension? Find out in this week's episode out of Matthew 18:15-20.
Have you ever wondered as you see all the evil that is around us these days, "What are people thinking??" Well, as we will see from our passage today, trying to explain sin with logic will always leave you frustrated! Instead, we can look at sin through the lens of God's sovereign grace to work even through it to accomplish His will.
What was the most unjust trial in history for? Find out in this episode out of Luke 23:1-12!
How is it that the one who knew no sin could be on trial? How is it possible to even get a death sentence? Why would Jesus allow Himself to go through all of that? The answer may surprise you as we finish up Luke 22 in this episode of Feast and Follow!
Peter's denial of Jesus is a heartbreaking passage. It shows us that fear in the heat of the moment is possible even for an Apostle! How can we avoid this sin? Find out in this episode from the podcast of Knollwood's preaching ministry!
How does Jesus respond to His enemies? More importantly, who are Jesus' enemies? The answer to these questions and more can be found in this session of the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church!
Today, we look at Jesus' prayer on the Mount of Olives. How did Jesus have the strength to go to the cross? How did He avoid temptation, and how can we do the same? This and more is covered in our lesson out of Luke 22: 39-46.
We all have ideas of what makes a person important or great, but Jesus has very different standards than we do. Find out what Jesus is really looking for in a leader by listening to today's episode!
What was something that Jesus looked forward to? The answer may surprise you as we look at the meaning of the Lord's Supper!
Luke 22 contains the story of Judas' betrayal of Jesus. It says that Satan entered into him to begin these process. How does this work, and is it possible for it to happen to us? Come with us as we wrestle with these questions in this episode from our teaching series through Luke.
As each day goes by, it seems like the world is just getting closer to the end. We hear of reports of pandemics, earthquakes, and potential wars everyday, and it can feel like it is all just spiraling out of control. But Christians don't have to feel hopeless. Quite the opposite, in fact, as we shall see from this week's sermon.
As the New Year approaches, we often make resolutions rather than repentance. What is the difference? What even is repentance? Find out in this episode as we conclude the Advent season!
With our world the way it is, we wonder if Jesus can really handle it? Was the ancient world like our own? What can we say to suffering in this world? Find out the answer to these questions and more in this third Advent message out of Matthew 2.
How is it possible that Gentile astrologers have a better view of Jesus than the people in His own town? What does it mean for us to have a Newborn King? Find out in this examination of Matthew 2:1-12!
Do you have a hard time trusting God when things are hard or uncertain? The cure for this is staring at the doctrine of Providence, God's way of guiding all things to fulfill His loving plan. See how this works at a national and personal level as we look at Matthew 1:18-25!
Join us as we look at Christ's genealogy out of Matthew's Gospel! What can we learn from a long list of unfamiliar names? It turns out that we can learn about one of the best gifts of Christmas. Find out what it is in this our 100th episode!
Paul calls us to have joy in the Lord at all times, but how is this possible in a world where it seems like everything is falling apart? How we practically do this is right in God's Word in Philippians 4:4-9! Join us to find out what joy really is and how you can have it—always!
Technical note: the reading of the passage got missed in the recording, so please read the passage before you listen! Everything else is there!
Have you ever moved states or changed jobs? One of the biggest things that changes in those transitions is how you are evaluated. Standards can be different from place to place, but no standard is more different than Jesus'. Jesus evaluates us in a way that no one else can, so find out how that is by listening to this week's message!
What do you tell yourself after a bad day? Are you tapping into the greatest hope that you have? What is that greatest hope? Find out as we look at Luke 20:27-40!
In these days of mandates and divided opinions of government, how do we cut through the political noise and know how we are to relate to government (and those that disagree with our approach!)? Luke 20:19-26 along with some other passages gives us valuable insight into this sticky question!
The drama of Jesus' passion week continues to unfold as we look at the challenges and challengers of Jesus' authority and find that none of them stand! Take comfort that your King can oppose all threats to Him as we look at Luke 20:1-19!
We use the word "authority" to describe someone with capability either in knowledge or power. While we look at various authorities all over the world, none compare to Jesus as we shall see in this sermon out of Luke 19:28-48.
What is the point of being faithful to what Jesus says? What is Jesus really looking for in our lives? What are we supposed to do with the harsh language we see in Luke 19:25-27? All these questions and more will be looked at as we examine the Parable of the Minas in this week's podcast! Sermon delivered at Knollwood Presbyterian Church in beautiful Sylacauga, Alabama.
Do you have someone in your life that you think is impossible to save? Is that person you? Today's message takes a look at the mission of Jesus which is to see and save the lost as well as transforming the found!
How well can you see? You might have 20/20 vision yet be completely blind! The test isn't how well you can see the big "E" on your optometrist's chart but by how well you see Jesus for Who He really is! Test your vision with us as we look at Luke 18:31-43 at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Who gets into the Kingdom of God? Would it surprise you to find out that it isn't the powerful, rich, and competent but rather the helpless and poor? Find out how to be helpless and poor in this study of Luke 18:15-30 given at Knollwood Presbyterian Church in Sylacauga, Alabama.
The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector at prayer is a rather common story for us to be familiar with, especially if we've grown up in church. It is so familiar, in fact, that we can very easily get it wrong! Which person are you most like in this story? The answer might surprise you!
Have you ever wondered why it is that answers to prayer are slower than we would like? Why is it that Jesus has (so far) waited 2,000 years to return? The answer may surprise you and motivate you to continue in your prayers as we look at Luke 18:1-8.
Have you ever heard (or asked) "are we there yet?" Sometimes we can think that way about Jesus' return. We want to know when, but we should be asking "why?" In this episode, we are going to examine why Jesus is coming back, and if you are not in Christ, it isn't going to be pleasant.
Are there Gold Medals in Christianity? Is there any way that we are able to go above and beyond the call God has for us? Find out in our sermon out of Luke 17:7-19.
Today we welcome guest preacher and church planter, Harris Bond to take us through Acts 2:1-13!
We know that Jesus commands us to forgive, but what happens when something REALLY hurtful happens? How do we forgive when all of our experience tells us it isn't possible? Find out in part 2 of our series on forgiveness.
What do you think is the hardest part of the Christian life? For many, it is forgiving others when they really hurt you. When should we forgive and how can we when it really hurts? Find out in this message from Luke 17:1-10 delivered at Knollwood Presbyterian Church in Sylacauga, Alabama.
Hell is a topic not as much discussed these days, to our detriment. In this sermon, we look at the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus and what it can teach us about proper use of resources and the reality of hell.
Divorce is a very difficult subject to think about, but it must be addressed. In this sermon, we will look at what the Bible has to say about divorce, when it's allowed, when it's not, and what to do if you experience one. I hope that this sermon can be an encouragement to you.
We know that God is a good Father, and that means that like a good earthly father, He needs to discipline us. If we're honest, discipline hurts sometimes! Is there a purpose to that? Find out in our message on Hebrews chapter 12:1-17 out of Knollwood Presbyterian Church!
Did you know that people can applaud you even when (perhaps especially when) you are being disgusting to God? The phrase "Coram Deo" means "before the face of God," and it is exactly in that place that we live our entire lives—even the parts of our lives that we live in our hearts! Nothing is hidden from God, so even if men are applauding, that doesn't mean God doesn't have anything to say. Find out how to avoid this trap as we look at Luke 16:14-17 with Knollwood Presbyterian Church in Sylacauga Alabama!
Join us as we look at Luke 16:1-13, one of Jesus' most complex parables! Is Jesus telling us to make our money dishonestly? Is He saying that all wealth is dishonest? What are we to make of all this? Find out in this edition of Feast and Follow from Knollwood Presbyterian Church in Sylacauga, AL!
What about the second son? We hear about the prodigal son, but what about his brother? What can we learn from him? Here in this second part of last week's message, we will learn about the graciousness of God in saving us not only from our badness but our goodness as well!
Listen and grow with us as we dive into one of Jesus' most famous parable, the Prodigal Son. In this first part, we cover the relationship of the prodigal son and his incredibly loving father. We will see the link between this amazing father, and the even more gracious Father in heaven we have!
What brings God joy and causes heaven to rejoice? Today, we are going to be exploring the wonderful answer to that question as we look at Luke 15:1-10 at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL.
Happy Mother's Day from Knollwood Presbyterian Church! Today we are going to be talking about the person who has cared for you the most in this world, God! Do you feel like the world depends on you? Find relief in the knowledge that God is the one running the world in this episode of Feast and Follow. Sermon Text: Psalm 127
What does discipleship with Jesus look like? Contrary to most American thought, it isn't easy or something that should be entered into lightly. Join us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL as we examine the costly call of discipleship out of Luke 14:25-35.
Today's message is out of Luke 14:12-24. When we want to invite people over who do we choose? Would anyone ever be surprised by our guest list? Find out Jesus' vision for our hospitality on this episode of Feast and Follow! To find out more, please visit us at Knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
Today's message is out of Luke 14:1-11. We are taught in this world to reach for the top spot and take what we want, but is this the way that Jesus would have us live? Find out in this episode of Knollwood's podcast! To find out more, please visit our website at knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL! Today, Pastor Mark looks at 1 Timothy 3 to see what the qualifications are for an officer in the church.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL. Today, in our Easter message, Pastor Mark shows us how Christ worked faith in the disciples to believe in His resurrection!
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama! Today we are in Mark 11:1-11 looking at the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. What all went into making this day a success, and what does this tell us about Jesus as King? Find out in today's episode!
Listen and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. Today we look at Luke 13:22-35 as we examine the danger of not striving to enter the narrow gate.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. Today, our guest preacher Burt Boykin of Evangelize Today brings us a message from Habakuk 2:18-20 that applies just as much today as it did then about the idols we all worship.
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama! This is the sermon from March 7th, 2021 where we talk about the unstoppability of the Church!
Learn and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacuaga, AL. Today we are going to be looking at the doctrine of repentance. We will see that Jesus had the chance to answer one of our most burning questions, but instead chose to talk about repentance! Why? Listen to find out!
Listen and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL! Today we hear about the coming judgment, what that means for humanity, and how we can best reach people that would oppose us.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL! Today, we are looking at how we can remain vigilant in our Christian service for Christ. What do we do when nothing seems to happen? Find out as we dive into Luke 12:35-48
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL as we dive into the sins of greed and anxiety. We will discover how these sins are flip sides of the same coin and how we can defend against them!
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL! Today, we take a look at Psalm 42 for a lesson in how to grieve.
Listen and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA! Today's sermon is on the topic of fear and provision.
Learn and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. In this message, we learn how legalism brings about the opposite effect it is intended to have.
Listen and grow with us as we dive into Luke 11:33-44 to examine the disease of religious hypocrisy!
Listen and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. In today's sermon we look at the blessedness of following after Christ as the only was to true reform.
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama! Today, we look at how Jesus defended Himself with logic and the good news!
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga Alabama! Today, on a special edition of the podcast, we bring you our Christmas Eve sermon!
Listen and grow with us as we finish our Advent Sunday series with a look at the covenant God made with David!
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL. Today we are going to see how God was faithful to the Israelites in the Passover, a pointer for a greater salvation.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL! Today, we are learning about God's covenant with Abraham and how that applies to us today!
Learn and grow with us here at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, AL. This week begins the Advent season as we explore the promises of the first coming of Christ. Today, we look at what made the first advent of Christ necessary by looking at Genesis 3.
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. Have you struggled with prayer? Do you feel like God isn't answering you, or at least, not answering the way that you want? Is God still good when He does that? Find out in this message from Luke 11:5-13
Join us as we learn and grow together at Knollwood PCA in Sylacauga, Alabama. Today's message is going to look at the Lord's Prayer to answer the question of how do we pray and what should we pray for in our Christian lives.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA as we dive into Luke 10:38-42. Do you feel like you're always running around and weary in your well-doing? Maybe it is because you've lost sight of the one thing needful. Join us as we explore what that is!
Join us at Knollwood PCA as we uncover what our real hope is (hint: it's not the result of the US election!).
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA! In this sermon, Pastor Mark explores what Baptism is and the encouragement that it can provide to us as Christians.
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA! Today we take a look at the subject of communion and the gift that it is! Sermon from 10/18/20
Learn and grow with us at Knollwood PCA. Today's sermon comes from Luke 10:25-37 as we explore what it looks like to be a neighbor to those around us. Sermon from 10/11/20
Join us at Knollwood PCA as we continue our study of Luke! Today, we are going to be looking at the unique calling and blessings of our discipleship with Christ. If you would like more information please visit knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA as we look at Luke 9:51-62. We are going to see the different ways that we can reject Christ.
Listen and grow with us at Knollwood PCA! In this week's episode, we look at four key truths that we are prone to forget as disciples of Christ.
Join us as we feast on God's Word and follow after Christ at Knollwood PCA. In this lesson, we learn about the majesty of Christ and how His suffering (and ours) will give way to glory! Message from September 13, 2020
Join us at Knollwood PCA as we feast of God's Word and follow after Him. This week's study looks at the costly nature of following after a Suffering Messiah. Message from September 6, 2020
Listen and grow with us as we study God's Word together at Knollwood PCA. Today, we are learning that Jesus controls the uncontrollable and even controls His enemies! Find out what that means for your life in today's message.
Learn and grow with us as we hear from God's Word at Knollwood Presbyterian Church (PCA). Today, we are in Luke 8:16-21 to understand what a life transformed by Scripture looks like.
Learn and grow with us as we explore the riches of God's Word together. We resume with Pastor Mark Jessup through the book of Luke. Today we look at Luke 8:1-15 as we explore our standing with God!
Learn and grow with us as we explore the Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church, PCA! Today, we hear from Bill Nikides out of 1 Peter, as he reminds us about who we are: Ambassadors in Exile!
Listen and grow with us as we listen to God's Word together and Knollwood PCA. Visit knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com to learn more!
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God's Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
Listen and grow with us as we learn from God’s Word together at Knollwood Presbyterian Church.
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com
This podcast is from the teaching ministry of Knollwood Presbyterian Church. To learn more, please visit our website at https://www.knollwoodpresbyterianchurch.com