Sermons

The beginning of everything except God himself is found in this book we call “Genesis.” It is at once thrilling and intimidating to dive into this book, for “the truth—and this may sound shocking—is that almost every important church doctrine is found in ‘seed’ form in the book of Genesis.”[1]

The title of the book is a word that has come to mean “origin” or “source” in English just because of this Old Testament book. It was called genesis in the Greek Old Testament, because the word is found in key places throughout the book (2:4; 5:1; 6:9;…

In the 80s a one-hit wonder Timbuk 3 asked these questions,

Hairstyles and attitudes—are they connected?
Are the styles we embrace a matter of taste, or of values rejected?
Timbuk3, “Haircuts and Attitudes”

(And no, that wasn’t their hit. Their hit was an equally sarcastic, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”)

Well, in answer to their questions, the apostle Paul would say, “Yes!” Our “hairstyles” speak. They say something—even about our “taste” and “values,” values we embrace and “values rejected.”

Recently we looked at 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, where Paul speaks to a related…

“Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.” (Prov 26:17)

This is what we call a “proverb,” and it’s from the Old Testament book of Proverbs. This is a favorite part of God’s word, because of verses like this one: you get bite-size nuggets of truth about things that help us know how to live well. Some have even defined the “wisdom” we get from Proverbs and other Wisdom books of the Bible—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon—as “skill in living.” Given the complexity and unexpectedness…

It's hard not to slow down to look at car wrecks. Even though you know it's wrong and you feel guilty for doing it, it's hard not to. Reading 1 Corinthians is a bit like looking at a wreck—except in this case, you're supposed to look! This Sunday, that's what we're going to do, slow down and begin our look at this glorious letter of Paul's to a church he loved.

The Corinthian church is famous for its dysfunction—relationally (they struggle with unity, so much it even affected their celebration of the Lord's Supper), sexually (they have all kinds of bad…

Tomorrow (Oct 2, 2022) we begin our series in Ezra-Nehemiah, so let’s get oriented to these great OT books. (We’ll pretend for a minute that we all have power and the church building will have power, and these remnants of Hurrican Ian are behind us).

Leslie Allen opens his Ezra commentary by writing,

Ezra-Nehemiah is the OT equivalent of the Acts of the Apostles—it is a book of new beginnings. Acts opens with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised to God in Joel 2 (Acts 1:4–5; 2:16–21, 33). The fulfillment of ‘the word of the LORD spoken by…

"Ruth the Moabitess" speaks one of the great passages in our Old Testament. It is a picture of conversion, an affirmation of what it means to be "all in" for a new life of embracing the true God as our God:

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.
For where you go I will go,
and where you lodge I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die I will die,
and there will I…

Ben Garner recently preached on 1 Peter 2:11–20. The middle section of this concerned a Christian's response to government. Because of Ben's work in state government and the numerous insights he made on his topic, we decided to take offer that part of his sermon as a blog entry. The historical context of this post underscores the need to think well on these issues. We hope you find it edifying and informative.

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I find Peter's words in 1 Peter 2:13–17 particularly relevant because of my work. I’m an attorney, and for the last several years I’ve worked…

Last Sunday I mentioned the idea that the Holy Spirit in 1 Peter 1:10–11 is called “the Spirit of Christ.” This is a mysterious title for the Spirit and is worth reflecting on a little more.

In my passage, Peter told us something unexpected about OT prophecy. He told us the prophets spoke because they were inspired by “the Spirit of Christ”:

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted…

What do we find when we open up Peter's first epistle? Perspective. Perspective on so many of the things that confront us in life: identity, gender, marriage, Christ and his cross, salvation,  government, what God asks of us as Christians, what God accomplishes in us as Christians, the church, leadership in the church, work (vocation), our purpose, suffering, our past, present, and future, how we should think of ourselves in the midst of this fallen world—and where we should think of our true home. And there's more. These five chapters (or 105 verses) are packed with God's truth for God's…

If Jesus himself asked you, "Who do YOU say that I am?", how would you respond? It's one thing for a friend or your dad or even a pastor to ask that question. But what if Jesus himself was the one asking it? That would be unsettling. In that moment you'd realize any pretending would be foolish. Borrowing someone else's answer wouldn't work. Drawing on all that you know and have read and have observed, you'd have to go on record and tell Jesus the truth. Whatever the consequences might be, you'd have to just lay it out there. 

The apostle Peter…