In this very personal gratitude psalm of great deliverance, we come back to the simple truth that God's grace has radically liberated us from death. The Gospel changes everything, and we are called to sing this with everything in our beings. No matter what stage of life we are in, if you are in Christ then you have been delivered. With that, our praise of deliverance should come forth in our public worship. But, how often do we truly live like this? If we are alive in Christ, then why are we still doing dead things? And how can we live like the psalmist giving daily outbursts of thanks to God's honor? How does this psalm challenge the way you give thanks to the Lord? Where in your life can you give an outburst of praise to the Lord and honor Him?

Faith is a way of seeing, and the saints in the second half of Hebrews 11 saw two things: solidarity and resilience. From Moses through the judges, the prophets, and early Christian martyrs, faith chooses to identify with the people of God rather than the "fleeting pleasures of sin." And when suffering threatened to undo them, faith strengthened them to endure, contributing to what Augustine called the City of Man while waiting most of all for the City of God.

Faith is a way of seeing the present through the lens of the future. The first half of Hebrews 11, often called the "Honor Roll of Faith," illustrates how the Old Testament patriarchs "saw" two vital elements of life: God's approval, and God's inheritance.

Psalm 123 is one of 15 Psalms of Ascent, so named because God required his people to make the mountainous journey to his temple in Jerusalem three times a year. Psalms of Ascent were written to sing and were very communal, drawing God’s people together as they made their uphill journey toward the temple. Outside of whatever difficulties we face in attending church each Sunday, we really can’t compare the journey God’s people took to get to Jerusalem. However, something we do have in common is that we are all to take a journey toward God, whatever it may entail, to celebrate him. But there was no laughter here, just real frustration in their voices; singing their cries for mercy as they walked. Let’s consider together how we can journey to celebration through the tension lamenting brings with looking and longing found in Psalm 123.

How do we draw near to God? Hebrews 10:19-29 describes five essential ways: Through Jesus, with a true heart, without wavering, all together, till the Day.

If Christians permanently, perfectly forgiven, why don't we feel it? Hebrews 10 suggests that we still tend to lean on the old repetitive patterns of the law, including Baton Theology (Jesus saves us, and we take it from there), A Debtor's Ethic (we earn our ongoing forgiveness), and Gamifying God (we try to measure our performance rather than lean into his love). Because Jesus completed the work of redemption once for all time, none of these efforts work. Yet this very fact then becomes our greatest motivation to hate sin and love righteousness. Liberated from the burden of satisfying God's justice and indwelt by his own Spirit, we can progressively become more like him in practice.

Jesus draws a contrast between the intoxicating agony of ministry and the helpless wonder of salvation. It's not wrong to rejoice that Jesus is pleased to channel his power through us, but it is infinitely more awesome that he saves us at all. Ironically, those who rejoice in their salvation above all become more effective channels of his power. Walter preached this sermon for the opening worship service of Metro Atlanta Presbytery.

Joy is possible despite our circumstances because we know Christ and have an identity not based on our efforts but based on all that Christ has done. It is tempting to put our confidence in the value system of the world around us, but what Christ offers us is far superior than anything else we could ever possess. Our achievements or accolades cannot be the basis for our identity because ultimately God doesn't want you to impress him; he wants you to trust him.

In this passage, we meet a man in crisis: His life has come apart, and he comes to Jesus for rescue. But he is afraid: even if Jesus can help him, would Jesus even want to? This story reveals Jesus as more than simply a miraculous healer, but also a compassionate God, who knows us better than we might suspect. 

The old covenant sacrificial system viscerally illustrated the truth that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Jesus perfects this principle, presenting his own blood “once for all” in the true tent, the actual presence of God. This new and better covenant doesn’t just purify our bodies, but even our consciences—assuring us that we belong with him forever. For all who believe, the Bible’s constant talk of blood and sacrifice is not an embarrassing relic of primitive ages but an ongoing cause for gratitude and wonder.

What kind of story are Christians living in? Hebrews 8 reveals a sharp contrast between the default story of human progress and the Gospel story of grace.

In this message Rev. Dr. Lloyd Kim, Coordinator for Mission to the World, challenges believers to heed Jesus’ calling to carry the Good News to the ends of the earth. But we can’t do it on our own. This calling requires a kingdom vision (an authentic relationship with Jesus), a kingdom mission (bigger than our personal transformation), and kingdom power (the indwelling Holy Spirit). What if God is calling YOU to do something different than what you are currently doing?

Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones is a dramatic picture of the hope of the Gospel. Not only will all who trust in Jesus be physically resurrected, as Jesus was, but his Holy Spirit both dwells in us and fills up in us. As a result, we like Ezekiel can preach to the dry bones in our lives, and pray to the Breath to give them Life.

A meditation for Good Friday.

Everyone needs "priests" to give us authorized external confirmation that we are good enough, but all of our earthly priests will fail us, consigning us to a life of perpetual struggle. Jesus, however, is better than every priest who ever lived, even the mysterious priest-king Melchizedek, because his offering for us was final, and his prayers for us are perpetual. His once-for-all sacrifice on the cross, and his constant intercession for us at the Father's right hand, enable us to engage in the imperfect, two-steps-forward, one-step-back work of sanctification without fear.

Why should we trust the promises of God? Hebrews 6 gives us three reasons: a compelling example, a proven principle, and a satisfying metaphor. The compelling example is Abraham, patiently (and sometimes impatiently) waited for God to fulfill his promises. The proven principle is God swearing by his own self. Though oaths like this are less relied on today, they expose the personal acts of trust at the heart of all knowing. The satisfying metaphor has three parts: an anchor, the holy place behind the veil, and a forerunner—Jesus himself. Altogether, these reasons provide those who have fled for refuge with strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

It can be hard to tell the difference between an immature Christian and an inauthentic one. According to the author of Hebrews, the main difference is growth. While it is possible for people with significant spiritual experiences to "fall away," those who receive the gift of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus cannot lose it. At the same time, God wants us to keep growing into this salvation—to build on foundational practices and graduate from milk to solid food, giving us practical wisdom for every situation in life.

Many of us wake up each morning weighed down by the stress of life’s difficulties, pains, miseries, and so on. The world is constantly looking for solutions, but so far every man-made effort has failed. However, Jesus met every qualification to be that better solution. He became human, with limitations, who suffered and endured weakness, just as we do. And because of this, he understands us.

Christians who believe the Good News of Jesus can be confident that they will one day enter eternal rest with God in the new heavens and new earth. Until then, we can also rest in God’s peace, regardless of our circumstances. But this, too, requires strenuous believing, starting with the promise that Jesus has achieved our rest for us—so we don’t have to! It also involves practicing sabbath in community, embracing our limits and letting the Gospel expose the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.

When believing gets painful, Christians have a choice: Either let your heart get hardened, which is easy, or hold fast to your hope, which is hard. Thankfully, your heavenly calling was already secured for you by the Father, earned for you by the Son, and sustained for you by the Holy Spirit. This means you only have to “take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of you” (Philippians 3:12 NIV). And you don’t have to do it alone. As Hebrews will keep reminding us, we must “exhort (or encourage) one another every day.”

Jesus was made like us so that we could be made like him. The author of Hebrews reminds us, citing Psalm 8, that we were made to be kings and queens, ruling God’s world on his behalf. At present, however,  sin has made us slaves to the fear of death instead. To remedy this situation, Jesus had to become like us in every respect, forging bonds of shared understanding that help us to trust him. And by suffering in all these ways, even through the cross and the empty tomb, Jesus blazes a trail of transformation for us to follow.

God is speaking to you. Are you listening?  If Jesus is not supreme to you, something else will be. And you’re not paying close attention, the current will carry you away from him. But if Jesus is supreme to you, and if you are paying closer attention to what he has said, you can become an agent of his divine speech.

Elijah was considered the greatest of all the prophets. But despite all his victories, he still runs in fear into the wilderness to escape death, falling into a state of depression, and asking the LORD to take his life. Instead, God sent an angel to comfort and provide for him. This experience taught Elijah that God does not always show up in powerful events. Sometimes, it's in the small whispers.

The Old Testament law of tithing does not carry over neatly into tithing our income today—but it does illustrate that the heart of God is to include us in his generous feast of grace. The more we grasp his heart, the more we give away with more freedom and more joy. God's priorities for our giving start with ministries that support the worship of God's people, especially local churches, and also the poor and marginalized.

To live ”not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” includes obeying God’s moral laws, but it never stops there. It also means trusting his commitment to bless us abundantly with literal food and every other material thing we need. Scripture is a feast that orients us to all of life: Who God is, who we are, why we are here, and where it’s all going. Above all, it means trusting in The Word, Jesus, whose life, death and resurrection is the interpretive key to understanding every other word from God. When the fulness of God’s Word “dwells richly in us” (Colossians 3:16), we lack no good thing.

Joseph's dramatic meal with his brothers illustrates the complex currents flowing around all of our tables. In different relationships, we find ourselves in the Guarded role like Joseph, the Guilty role like his older brothers, or the Graced role like Benjamin. Only the sovereign hand of God can steer these stories toward redemption, and that's exactly what God does. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, the Bible's only hero, whose death on the cross makes us graced, and whose Holy Spirit makes us agents of grace to others.

The only story about Jesus' childhood in the Bible is bookended by two summary statements which cover about 90% of Jesus' life—from infancy to age 30. Together they remind us that Jesus' entire life was one of physical, spiritual and relational growth. He shared the secret of this growth when his parents found him in the temple after the Passover: "I must be in my Father's house" (v. 49) — or more literally, "about my Father's business." This daily dependence on his Father is how Jesus, who already had the favor of God (v. 40) could also grow in favor with God (v. 52). In the same way, we who believe already have the favor of God through Jesus' sacrifice for us, yet we can grow in that favor as we depend on the Father like he did.

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Isaiah's prophecy of the Suffering Servant suggests that Jesus was not physically attractive, and nothing in the Gospel accounts suggests otherwise. Why? Why wouldn't he be the most beautiful human who ever lived? The answer, Isaiah suggests, lies in his mission to rescue humanity from our dead-end quest to trust in our own beauty. Jesus challenges us to fight to find beauty in the ugly places of grace, and to follow fading beauty to the unfading beauty of God himself.

During Advent, we look back at the birth of Christ and ahead to his return. 

In this passage today, we see that Martha is a lot like us. She is driven and has goals and a plan for the evening; she has an idea of how the night will go. She also knows that she has to take charge because Mary isn’t doing it. Martha is also restless and anxious. What we find, though, is that Martha and Mary have different postures around Jesus, the King of kings. Yet, one has chosen something completely different from the other. What does this look like for us today?

God's call of Abram sets the mold for the entire Bible: One man is chosen in order to bless the whole world. This blessing doesn't just save individuals; it builds a flourishing society. And Abram's participation in the blessing is entirely free, yet it costs him everything.

The tower of Babel is a powerful picture of human cooperation gone wrong—and of God’s overruling grace to make things right. It’s not really about pride and folly as much as the drive to find security and identity apart from God. When we resist being drawn with God into the thrilling diversity of his world, we find that: we’re always exhausted, our fear never goes away, we’ve got company, it doesn’t work, and it scares people away.

Noah’s drunken final chapter reminds us that all of us are shaped by the models around us, especially our families, but that God always works through fallible people. Ultimately, Jesus is re-gathering people from all the scattered descendants of Noah into his new family where grace reigns.

After the flood, God leads us to expect that life and blessing will continue to multiply, but in the shadow of death and judgment. This includes a new relationship to animals where we, the “apex predators” are accountable to God for how we treat animal life and especially human life. It also includes God’s covenant to preserve creation until Jesus returns to make all things new. In the sign of this covenant, God commits to redeem humanity, even aiming his “war bow” at his own heart. Millennia later, Jesus will fulfill this covenant promise on the cross.

Waiting is hard, but God is at work while we wait. During Noah's long year in the ark, God reconfigured his posture toward the animal world, making him a more humble, cooperative, wondering steward of their lives. Above all, God was training Noah to trust him. We need to learn that same trust today. For Christians, our hope is not just in the "wind" that God uses to blow away the waters of chaos, but in his own Holy Spirit who lives within us, comforting, teaching, correcting, empowering and guaranteeing our permanent future with him.

Genesis 7 lingers in the devastating details of the flood in order to deepen our appreciation for the mercy of God. Noah is not the hero of this story; God is. God gathers the animals, God shuts the door, and God preserves every creature within from the rising waters. 1 Peter 3 says the ark is a picture of baptism, which saves us because of the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus himself reminds us in Matthew 24 that his own return will come as unexpectedly as the flood—therefore we must not delay to hide ourselves by faith in the ark of his mercy.

In the time of Noah, unrestrained sex and violence revealed that human beings didn’t want to serve God; they wanted to be God. Rather than an angry overreaction, God’s plan to flood the world was a grieving act of uncreation and re-creation, bringing judgment and mercy at the same time. But Noah didn’t earn the right to receive this mercy; as verse 8 emphasizes, he “found favor in the eyes of the LORD” before he is described as righteous. This upside-down order of grace forms the pattern for the whole Bible and a preview of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which continues to make people increasingly righteous in God’s sight.

The book of Galatians is a case study in loving well and loving poorly. Paul’s letter highlights the importance of building, nurturing, and protecting a relational culture shaped by the Gospel. The Gospel creates a very unique relational culture—a culture that affirms our beauty, acknowledges our brokenness, and anticipates the Day we will “be made perfect in love” (1 John3:1-3). We who love poorly now will love perfectly forever. The local church is called to inhabit this tension with honesty, humility, and hope. 

The genealogy of Seth raises several hard questions about patriarchy, gender, literalism and biblical authority. Ultimately, though, it illustrates the sovereign grace of God working through broken people to restore us to relationship to him, forever. 

Human culture always has the capacity for good, for evil, or for some combination of both. The descendants of murderous Cain engaged in good pursuits: city-building, livestock farming, music, technology, family-building and poetry. Yet because they rejected God’s loving rule, the way they practiced them was often corrupted, most heinously by Lamech’s polygamy and violent hyper-retribution. Enosh, however, the first descendant in the godly line of Seth, presents a contrast. According to biblical scholar Bruce Waltke, his name means weakness—and it was in the time of Enosh when people began to recognize their need for God. Today, Christians who live by faith in the “just mercy” of Jesus should still engage in all the worthy pursuits of culture-making. And rather than seeing all corruption as “out there” in The Culture, we must recognize that sin also exists in us and in Christian subcultures. A godly attitude toward culture-making, then, is both humble and curious, expecting that God can use unbelievers along with us to develop his world.

The story of Cain and Abel shows us ourselves, and more important, it shows us the heart of God:·      We are stubbornly independent from God, but God is stubbornly interested in us·      We are half-hearted toward him, but he is relentless in pursuing us·      We are envious of others, but he is curious about us·      We are vulnerable to sin’s sneak attacks, but he is powerful to fight with and for us·      We are murderous, but he is just, making sure sin is paid for·      We are self-pitying, but God is mercifulWalter's 2018 sermons on Genesis 1-3:Genesis 1:1-2:3 DesignedGenesis 2:4-25 DefinedGenesis 2:21-3:24 Misaligned

Joseph of Arimathea is the patron saint of sharing your circles—all the human networks that connect resources to needs. Even Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary," despite their apparent powerlessness, used their nonthreatening social status to become vital eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection. In the economy of God, grace is free and our participation is a gift, opening up limitless possibilities to be used by him for the good of the world.

Resources Consulted:- A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends, from Every Moment Holy- How to Stay Married, by Harrison Scott Key- Making Room, by Christine Pohl- Living into Community, by Christine Pohl

People who share the burdens of others must be willing to share their own. Jesus modeled this habit throughout his earthly ministry, especially in his agonizing night in the garden of Gethsemane. While his burden was utterly unique, Christians can follow his example by first sharing our burdens with our Father, then sharing some things with someone (not everything with everyone). And even when people fail us, we still need them.Resources Consulted:A Praying Life, by Paul Miller

Attention is the most basic form of generosity. Jesus modeled this attentiveness in his unusual interaction with the Syrophoenician woman. Like her, we who know the gracious attention of Jesus are liberated from self-absorption to give our attention to others, even if only for a few minutes. Seen people see people. Resources consulted:- Making Room, Christine Pohl- Secular Creed, Rebecca McLaughlin

The entire book of Colossians

Paul closes his letter to Colossae with personal greetings that illustrate what grace looks like in community. It includes humbling the exalted and exalting the humble; sharing ordinary life together; a deep desire to reconcile with people who hurt or disappoint us; gratitude for those who "get" us culturally and above all for those who "get" the Gospel; inconspicuous service and persistent prayer; holy agnosticism about what we don't know and holy curiosity about the storylines God hasn't finished writing.

Healthy faith involves talking to God about others—steadfastly, watchfully, and thankfully—and talking to others about God—wisely, graciously and saltily. All of these behaviors flow out of a firm grasp of the Gospel of Jesus, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.Resources:- Molly Worthen on the Gospelbound podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CwAeiZm4EasJfNFJxikh5?si=-2DgXZqfQ6S1ze7iJ5Ujmw- Lectio365 app on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lectio-365/id1483974820

Sometimes we follow, sometimes we lead;in every relationship, Jesus is King.United to him in his death and his life,we build up all others, and him glorify. Resources:Westminster Larger Catechism, questions 123-133PCA Report on Domestic Abuse and Sexual AssaultWalter’s August 2022 Sermon on Ephesians 6:1-9

Paul's positive vision of Christian transformation in community is incredibly attractive—and incredibly hard. Qualities like meekness, patience and forbearance are not natural to us, nor are forgiveness, sacrificial love, peace, admonishing one another, and thankfulness. It is possible, however, to "put on" these qualities because of what Christ has done: choosing us, making us holy and beloved, forgiving us, ruling us with his peace and empowering us to give thanks.

One of Paul’s favorite metaphors for growing as a Christian pictures change like clothing: putting off the rags of our old life and putting on the robes of our new life in Christ. Verses 1-11 focus on putting off, which involves situating ourselves in God’s past-present-and-future story, agreeing on death’s address (that is, why we should put off certain behaviors and dispositions), and killing the dead: whatever belongs to our old way of life.

Spiritual elitism, or legalism, attempts to exclude Christians based on religious performance. Paul names three specific forms of it here: majoring on the external, pretending to transcend the physical, and being known by your don'ts. The true Gospel opposes all of them, training us to distinguish shadows from substance, not to fight flesh with flesh, and above all to hold fast to the Head, Jesus himself. This inevitably means leaning in to the very place where spiritual elitism often thrives: the church.

Everyone walks through life “rooted” in some core beliefs, whether explicitly religious or not. Paul argues that only the person and work of Jesus can give us the life we truly want. But in order to choose him we must understand how captivating the alternatives can be, why Jesus is superior to all of them, and what only he can do for us. 

In this section of Colossians, Paul opens up about the nature of ministry; it's many challenges and joys. Paul also makes clear that anyone and everyone who desires can enter into the mystery of union with Christ because it has been completely revealed in Jesus. It is not for a select few, but for all who come with simple, humble repentance and faith.

Paul wants to expand our vision of Jesus, deepen the roots of our trust in him, and tighten our grip on his Good News. In the process, he exposes multiple ways that we tend to shrink Jesus to a manageable size. Do you think of Jesus as so darn nice that it’s hard to imagine ever being intimidated by him? Are you so cynical about the church that it’s hard to take Jesus seriously? Are you offended that Jesus calls you evil? Are you so hung up on the mechanics of how Jesus saves that you fail to celebrate your own salvation?

People who understand and believe the good news of Jesus increasingly bear good fruit in their lives. This is part of why the good news is good: Because it changes us! Paul's thanksgiving and prayers for the Colossians subtly challenge us to actively participate in our own transformation.

What difference does it make to believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Paul says it means carrying the death of Jesus, and looking for the life of Jesus—in our bodies. This dynamic engine of grace includes repentance and release, along with expectation to see the “weight of glory” in the mosaic God makes of our own stories and the people around us. The very physical, bodily nature of God’s redemption dignifies the “jars of clay” through which he accomplishes his work. 

Like Facebook or One Drive attempts to do, considering the evil, misery, and sadness we all face in our lives, this story of Jesus entering Jerusalem is meant to bring hope through seven pictures, pictures that give us subtle, but important details of God’s love for us.

By calling a tax collector as a disciple and eating a meal with his friends, Jesus sparks a debate: What sort of people should God's people associate with? His response uses metaphors about weddings, garments and wine to reframe the whole question. Rejecting simplistic binaries like righteous vs. sinners, fasting vs. feasting, or new vs. old, Jesus centers everything on his own person and work. Before we can decide which people to associate with, we must ask what sort of people we ourselves are, and how Jesus is working in our lives.

Jesus' healings remind us that his grace always comes first, and our faith is always a response to it. Faith means confidence in the absolute power of Jesus and a willingness to follow wherever he leads. Actually following him in the details of our lives is harder. Learning to trust him requires us to name our own internal obstacles and compare them to the soaring promises of Jesus to those who follow him. 

An imaginative exploration of what Jesus’ first three days might have looked like, to help us understand the mystery of the incarnation.

Both celibacy in singleness, and sex in marriage, are valid choices for believers. Paul's counsel demolishes multiple assumptions of our current culture, including: a) that sexual orientation or practice is at the core of your identity, b) that marriage is always Plan A, and c) that your decision is entirely up to you, or entirely up to God (it's both). In its place, Paul casts a vision for a life of "undivided devotion" to the Lord in which celibate Christians bear witness to our eternal marriage in Christ, while building up the church in relationships with both single and married believers.

Following Jesus means our supreme allegiance belongs to him alone. This commitment can generate conflict in our relationships, even within our own families. However, it does not leave us alone with Jesus against the world. Rather, we express our allegiance to him by “receiving” or welcoming into relationship everyone who belongs to him, from great prophets to the “littlest” disciple. Jesus underscores this reality by promising to eternal reward for those who do so. These rewards are not earned by works but gifts, a grace upon grace. 

What frees us from fear of people is the fear of God. Fear of people paralyzes us, whereas fear of God energizes us. Here Jesus names four particular fears and counters each with a powerful promise of God:1. Fear of exposure with the promise of public vindication2. Fear of death with the promise of bodily resurrection3. Fear of meaningless suffering with the promise of providential care4. Fear of abandonment with the promise of permanent belonging in his familyUltimately, Jesus pays infinitely more to associate with us than we ever pay to associate with him.

The cost of following Jesus is persecution. It takes different forms in different times and places, but there are no exceptions. Thankfully, Jesus provides for us in the midst of persecution, including opportunities for mission, the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and escape for the sake of mission. Ultimately, Jesus’ promise that “the one who endures to the end will be saved” is based on his own enduring commitment to love us to the end.

If Jesus calls you to follow him, he will always send you to represent him to the world with both your words and your actions. This doesn't look exactly like the disciples' initial ministry to their fellow Jews, but it does include sharing fellowship and the tasks of ministry with all different kinds of other believers. Ultimately, God holds us accountable for what we know, and supremely for what we know about his love for us.

When Jesus heals two blind men and warns them not to tell, they tell everyone. When he heals a mute man, the crowds are wowed, but the Pharisees think he's in cahoots with evil. We might expect Jesus to be frustrated by these divergent reactions to his ministry. Instead he has compassion for the "harassed and helpless" crowds. He sees us as sheep needing a shepherd, and like a harvest field needing laborers to gather us in. It turns out that the Good News of his kingdom is about more than healing or even forgiveness. Jesus wants us to become sheep who shepherd, harvested harvesters, and followers who lead.

A distraught father and a sick woman who come to Jesus have more in common than we might think. Both exercise desperate, risk-taking faith in the power of Jesus to heal, and both are rewarded with a bigger vision of Jesus and a new relationship to him. As we learn to distrust our own limited resources, we discover Jesus to be more than enough for us, too. 

Jesus healed a paralytic in front of the religious leaders, which, perhaps unexpectedly, sparked a controversy. This is because Jesus healed the paralytic by saying, “your sins are forgiven,” which the scribes felt was a right only ascribed to God. Exactly. Jesus is clearly revealing that he is God, not just some teacher or healer. Moreover, we won’t see Jesus is God if we fail to believe that God forgives for the same reason he heals: out of mercy and kindness. His authority is not only powerful, but merciful. This also means that if you’ve experienced one form of God’s kindness, believing in Christ means you can depend on him to provide the other.

Jesus’ healing of two demon-possessed men illustrates his authority over the forces of darkness. It also raises some sticky questions about the reliability of the Bible and the reality of evil. By wrestling with them we learn that Scripture is reliable and trustworthy, even if it keeps us a bit off-balance with some of its little riddles; that demons are real and active in the world, but they are created beings destined for destruction; that until then, their main goal is to divert our worship using lies about God and accusations about us; and that Jesus has absolute authority over evil, and he exercises it to deliver us not just from evil and suffering, but from sin and death itself.

Jesus' calming of the storm reveals his authority over all of creation, not just sickness and evil spirits. His disciples' surprise suggests that even they hadn't fully grasped who he is—and Jesus' gentle challenge confirms it: "Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?" (v. 26). Our faith in Jesus, then, can be little or great, weak or strong, and everywhere in between. Ultimately, though, the question is not "How big is your faith?" but "How big is your God?"

When Jesus heals people, it's not just about their bodies. The leper needs more than being restored to community, and the centurion needs more than a healed servant. Like us, they both need a deeper kind of inclusion that only Jesus can give and only Jesus can ensure. That's why faith—trusting in the absolute power and wisdom of Jesus—is the instrument for entering into his new kingdom reality, both now and for eternity. Then, once we have entered in, he gives us the privilege of drawing others in with us.

The familiar images of Isaiah 40 surprise us with a powerful duel message: God wants to comfort us with his coming, and he wants us to prepare for his presence.

Isaiah 11 has three peaks of prophetic fulfillment: in Isaiah’s time, in the first coming of Jesus, and finally in his second coming to make all things new. When we put our hope in the God of this story, he enables us to live lives marked more by wonder than worry.

God tells us that he desires to bring peace to us - not just the end of the conflict, but the full flourishing of all things. That's why he sends the Messiah, Jesus Christ, to us. To be a King over us who brings endless boundless peace. God wants to make you whole, but to do it, he has to rule over you. Refusing to let God rule will lead to a self-wrought ruin and darkness that comes from rejecting God's truth. Accepting his rule gives you access to more peace than you could find by ruling yourself. But we can rejoice, God's own zeal will establish his gracious rule.

Matthew 1:23 declares that the birth of Jesus fulfilled a sign promised by Isaiah over 700 years before. Isaiah's original prophecy, however, was not a simple prediction of a future event. The same God who took on flesh in the person of Jesus was present with his untrusting people through centuries of perilous uncertainty. Isaiah's challenge to be "firm in faith" (v. 9) is our same challenge today. When our hearts are shaking, we steady ourselves in the heart of God, rejecting the temptation to “use God to run from God” and to seek help from any source but God. 

Five short responses clarifying the preacher's interpretation of the passage, about whether God can be present in hell, about why faith is the mechanism for salvation, about predestination, and about hopelessness... also three longer responses about how God can hold people accountable if they haven't heard the Gospel, about how there could be no sadness in heaven if people we love aren't there, and about a grab bag of questions generated by reading NT Wright and Karl Barth.

The doctrine of hell is repugnant to most people today, yet no one talked about it more than Jesus himself. In his parable-like picture of separating sheep and goats, Jesus shatters our stereotypes about his final judgment and presents a costly vision of how he both saves us and transforms us by grace. Along the way, he gives us some insight into what hell is like, why it exists, and what to do with it.

Distorted versions of Christianity aren’t good for anyone, but true Christianity is. Jesus refuses to let Christians narrow the circle and scope of their love, but instead compels us to love our enemies, just as he loved us when we were his enemies. Even if non-Christians never believe, the generous, pursuing love of God through his people should always bless and benefit them.

Questions about how God can be all-knowing, all-powerful and al-good; about distinctions in interpreting Romans 8:28; about inviting God into the journey of suffering with us; about knowing whether Christianity is true or prayers are answered; about where sin came from, and about free will in light of God's knowledge of the future.

God doesn't tell us why suffering exists, but Romans 8:28 does give us hope in the midst of it. Unfortunately, this verse has also been misused as a band-aid that overreaches and silences sufferers. In order to find its true comfort, we must see how "all things" includes the bitterest forms of suffering, how God uses bad things for good without calling them good, and how the cross of Jesus leads us through suffering, in love, to eternal glory.

Six short responses to questions about polygamy, homosexuality, gender dysphoria, marrying not-yet-believers and moral shades of gray; five longer responses about whether people out of sync with he Bible can actually be saved, about our denomination's statements about gay or same-sex attracted people, about flourishing single sexuality and about married and single people flourishing together in community.

Few teachings are more incomprehensible to the modern secular person than traditional Christian teaching on sex. The heart of Paul’s argument is that Christians have been “bought” with the blood of Jesus, therefore everything we do with our lives, including our bodies, should be aligned with his purposes. In fact, the  bond created by human sexual intimacy is actually a shadow of the ultimate intimacy of being united to God by faith. This teaching stands in direct contradiction to the secular creed of absolute individual sovereignty. Yet while it flows from the Gospel of salvation by grace, it is still secondary to it. When we make secondary matters primary, we undermine both.

Questions about God's greatness as "unsearchable," about women in the church, about local & global outreach, about Christians justifying wealth, and how Christians experience the Holy Spirit.

Worship is weird. When Christians pray, sing, recite old words, ponder scripture, and participate in sacraments, those who don't yet believe may wonder what on earth is going on. Is it a concert? A seminar? A variety show? In Psalm 145, David helps us understand worship by worshiping. As we ponder and speak and sing his words, we find ourselves drawn into the act of worship ourselves.

Questions on the canonization of the Bible, logic vs. feelings, identifying fake Christians, interacting with inconsistent Christians, how to know if we're not elect or just hypocrites, and asking hard questions vs. childlike faith.

No one is more critical of the failures of God's people than Jesus. In his six "woes" to the Pharisees and teachers of the law, Jesus not only eviscerates the hypocrisies of false religion, but warns true believers against falling into the same errors. Ultimately, the integrity of the Gospel is not preserved by Christians behaving perfectly, but by acknowledging their chronic weakness, returning constantly to the well of God's grace in the Gospel, and seeking the power of the Holy Spirit to keep changing over time.

Whether faith can include doubt depends on what you mean by faith and by doubt. According to James, faith is not just a set of theological beliefs, but a lived, embodied trust in God that can only come through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. This personal faith can vary from weak to strong or from little to great, and it always includes some degree of struggle with what we don't know or can't understand. The struggle is what we sometimes call "doubt" or "unbelief." By contrast, the word translated "doubting" in James 1:6 is about hedging your bets, putting some of the weight of your life on God's promises and the rest of it on other sources of hope. This kind of "straddle doubting" forfeits your access to the wisdom of God, which only comes through active trust in the person of God.

Six short-ish responses to questions about faith and doubt, and two longer responses about the distinction in the sermon between "struggle doubt" and "straddle doubt."

The Bible claims that God speaks true and authoritative words to us through fallible human authors. Peter explains that the Holy Spirit "carried along" these authors, without bypassing their unique personalities, languages, cultures and times. Accepting the Bible as we find it today means accepting the Spirit continued to work through people in history to authenticate, preserve, transmit and translate it into other languages. While Scripture is not as tidy as we might want, the Spirit continues to speak through it, illuminating the abundant grace of Jesus to all who will receive it.

Christianity claims not only that God exists, but that we can know him — despite the fact that none of us can access him in physical, visible or audible form. Christians believe this knowledge of God is nonetheless real, because we experience him in both indirect and direct ways that progressively change us, inside and out.

Why isn’t God more obvious? Paul addresses a pluralistic audience in Athens with three broad arguments: 1) Because we interpret the evidence differently, 2) because we are more religious than we think, and 3) because our love is out of whack. Thankfully, God not only makes himself findable but seeks us out through the person of Jesus, whom Paul refers to in v. 31 as “a man he has appointed.”

Hebrews 13:4 teaches that all Christians, whether single, married, widowed or divorced, are called to “hold marriage in honor” and to “let the marriage bed [sex]” be undefiled. This includes the bracing standard that God designed sex only for the marriage covenant between a husband and wife. Closer investigation of the context around Hebrews 13:4 reveals the surprising genius of God’s design, as well as the surprising grace of Jesus for all of us who repeatedly fail to meet his standards.

Paul’s charge to children and bondservants applies to spiritual children as well: We should honor and obey our spiritual parents as if they were the Lord himself. Knowing how easily this challenge can be abused, however, God places firm limits on the authority of mothers and fathers. At the same time, Paul commends the limitless blessings of honoring and obeying them.

Every Christian has both the responsibility and the privilege to build up people who are spiritually downstream from us. Paul's example of how to do that is characterized by God's Gospel proclaimed with God's energy, humble accountability, God-pleasing, gentleness, self-giving, sacrifice, integrity, and muscular mentoring — exactly the way Jesus builds us up!

Faith in Jesus adopts us into his family, giving each of us a vast number of brothers and sisters with whom we will spend eternity. Whatever additional roles we may have, this is the fundamental way that men and women should see each other in the church. Paul’s final greeting to the Roman Christians models ways that we: 1) commit to each other’s adoption, 2) celebrate each other’s differences, 3) respect each other’s accomplishments, 4) delight in each other’s names, and 5) honor each other’s gender.

The root of all temptation is distrust in the goodness of God. All kinds of circumstances, then, can be tempting – not just obvious enticements to engage in illicit behavior. Tempting circumstances include any form of evil, or the Evil One, which can overwhelm us and lead to cynicism, resignation or despair. For this reason Jesus encourages us to ask our Father to spare us from the worst of both. Because Jesus himself was not delivered from temptation, yet resisted it anyway, all who trust him are spared the full force of it.

God‘s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are related: you can’t have one without the other.

"Give us this day our daily bread" is the most straightforward petition in the Lord's prayer, yet it has multiple layers of meaning. The surface meaning reminds us of our daily physical dependence on the Lord. The social meaning challenges us to help feed other people. The spiritual meaning  reveals that our deepest need is for communion with the Triune God, given to us by Jesus. The eschatological meaning reminds us that a greater feast awaits, so that every meal is an act of hope.

Asking God for his kingdom to come and his will to be done is one of the most comforting and most dangerous prayers a Christian can pray. It's comforting because it validates our experience and invites us to lament; because Jesus prayed it for us in Gethsemane and secured our adoption in his family; and because Jesus has guaranteed that the fulness of the kingdom will come when he returns. At the same time, praying it is dangerous because it asks us to submit our kingdoms to his, to be active participants in how he answers our prayers, and to obey him even when it hurts.

To "hallow" God's name means to honor him as holy, both with our lips and with our lives. Dozens of verbs could flesh out this definition: glorify, bless, adore, exalt, revere, esteem, praise, fear, worship, etc. The more we recognize how singularly holy God is, the more amazed we are that we are able to come near him in Christ.  We can't make ourselves feel God's holiness, but we can cultivate the conditions that grow it. God grows bigger in our hearts when we pay more attention to smaller things, including: being careful with how we use his name(s), devoting ourselves to public and private worship, and being careful with how we treat people who are made in his image.

The Lord's Prayer doesn't just teach us to pray. It summarizes the entire Christian life, starting with the terms of our relationship with God. Only Jesus has earned the right to call God Father. By inviting us to call him our Father, too, Jesus preaches the Good News: That all who trust in his death and resurrection can be adopted into God's family. This means he is not only willing to hear our prayers, but eager to hear them! At the same time, he is no mere human father, but our Father in heaven, ruling over the universe with all power and glory at his disposal. Holding both qualities together – his nearness and his otherness – ensures that we are praying to the real God, not performing for others or trying to manipulate him into blessing us.

In Matthew 23, Jesus is going to teach us how grace and accountability go hand in hand. How inward righteousness is more important than visual obedience; internal faith is closely followed by external action. In other words, the kingdom of God requires all of its members to be servant leaders just like their king. Here is the bookends message - God’s kingdom is not a community to be defined by power.

John's little letter is a compass for ordinary faithfulness in the daily valleys of the Christian faith. In the face of false teachers, he challenges us to examine ourselves for healthy faith: Where do you anchor your hope? Are you a truth person or a love person? and What are you willing to lose? Ultimately, he refuses to pit truth and love against each other, and commends instead the transforming power of face-to-face fellowship.

Psalm 18 is a picture of resurrection that finds fulfillment in Jesus. In particular:• God rescued David from death because he delighted in him. • God rescued Jesus from death because he supremely delighted in him. • God rescues all who are united to Jesus by faith – because he delights in you, too!When we understand this delight at the heart of God the father, it frees us up to delight right back in him, to fight the enemies of our soul with the same ferocity, and to delight in others the way he delights in us.

Psalm 72 offers a template for godly leadership, measured in terms of flourishing, compassion and worship. Solomon’s own record as a king was mixed, but Jesus’s record is perfect. Palm Sunday celebrates his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as our humble king, who is then crowned with thorns, lifted onto the cross, raised from the grave, and ascended to the right hand of the Father. This “coronation” of Jesus effects a seismic shift in God’s pattern of relating to the world: not through a human king of a single nation, but through the Spirit working in all of his people throughout the nations, as prophets priests and kings. With Jesus as our king, we are both liberated from ruling our own lives and also empowered to be princes and princes who reflect his character in the world.

The inevitability of death should change the way we live, but not in the predictable ways we might think. Three popular temptations are variations on the YOLO theme (You Only Live Once): YOLO nihilism, YOLO hedonism, and YOLO moralism. Ecclesiastes teaches instead that we always live before the face of God, whether alive or dead. This confidence in his character is what enables us to trust him as our Creator, Uncreator, and Recreator; as our Wise Shepherd and Just Lawgiver, as our Judge and Savior in the person of Jesus. With this trust in Jesus' finished work, we can enjoy God's gifts in this life, trust him through the trials of aging, and have firm hope in his promises of eternal life in his presence.

We can rest knowing that God's hidden hand is always at work in our work and in our relationships. It takes a lot out of us to do good work and to keep what we love safe. But it will only be worth the effort if we're trusting that our Heavenly Father is active all along the way, and it's not all up to us. And having your own family is a good thing, but it's not the best thing. The best thing is being God's beloved now and forever, which only comes by faith in Christ.

A yoke is a metaphor for shared labor and/or harsh oppression. The choices made by Rehoboam and Jeroboam illustrate how we all wear yokes, and every yoke is a heavy yoke, except Jesus’ yoke. As we consider the yokes of followership, of leadership, and ultimately of worship, it drives us away from idols toward Jesus, who bore the yoke of sin so that we might wear the yoke of salvation.

Solomon’s late-life turn illustrates some of the common dynamics in a recent phenomenon called deconstruction, where some Christians are re-evaluating, modifying, or in some cases rejecting their faith. Whether we are deconstructing or constructing faith, we all need to do "why work," asking at least three questions: 1. Where do I get my yardsticks?2. Whose opinion matters most to me?3. What is my deepest need?*If you’re not deconstructing, please don’t just forward this sermon to someone who is. Instead, consider using these questions to start a discussion.

One way of reading the Song of Songs is to see Solomon as a sad contrast to the simple monogamy of the young shepherd and shepherdess at the heart of the poem. In this contrast we find surprising strengths of marital intimacy, but without idealizing the many non-sexual "lanes" on which love travels for all people, whether single, married, divorced or widowed. Ultimately, Jesus is our Better King who loves us with deep wells of grace and equips us with fresh draughts of transforming power to love others well.

The Queen of Sheba experienced the wisdom of Solomon and saw through it to the goodness of God. This is the hope of every believer, but it is often hindered by two problems: broken mirrors and untested muscles. In the Gospel of Jesus, however, neither problem is insurmountable. Broken mirrors together can still reflect a flawed but faithful image of Jesus, and the muscles of faith in Christ can bear far more weight than we realize.

Power is the ability to influence reality, and everyone has it. While Solomon had more power than any of us today, each of us exercises multiple forms of power every day. Pete Scazzero names six of them: Positional, Personal, Representative (or "God factor" power in ministry), Projected, Relational and Cultural. Solomon exercises various forms of power in his relationships with Hiram and Pharaoh, in his administration of Israelite land and labor, and in his religious leadership. In each case, the person of Jesus shows us a better way: laying down our power in order to empower others.

1. Worry Can be a Good Emotion (v.34, Philippians 2:19-20, 2:28, 2 Corinthians 11:28, 1 Corinthians 12:25).2. Worry Can be A Troubling and Even Debilitating Emotion (vv. 25-33)3. How Can You Replace Anxiety with Peace? (vv. 25-33; Luke 12:32)

Solomon's prayer of dedication and benediction teaches us how to pray. We have to know who we're praying to (a God who speaks, acts, sees, hears and forgives), who we are in relation to him (sinners, sufferers and saints in desperate need of his help), and what he's up to in the world (blessing the whole world by inviting them into relationship with him, too).

Solomon’s temple spared no expense to create a house for God, with at least three purposes: 1. to preach the point of life (communion with God)2. to showcase the character of God (trustworthy, priceless, beautiful, perfect, holy and merciful)3. to situate us in our story (Garden -> tabernacle -> temple -> spiritual house -> body of Christ -> New Jerusalem)Knowing this, we have all the more reason to prioritize gathering together as a church, so that our lives will increasingly showcase his character.

Solomon's wisdom led Israel into an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, but at no small cost. His expansive "breadth of mind" illustrated the numerous ways we can serve and glorify God today. God even used him to partially fulfill many of his ancient promises to Abraham: for people, place, protection and a program of blessing the nations. Yet Solomon's achievements still fell short of God's full design for human prosperity, which seeks the advantage of all, not just some. Christians today can pursue God's design not by seizing power or angrily decrying injustice, but by applying God's wisdom to the places he has planted us, and then sharing the fruits of that wisdom as generously as possible.

Solomon's famous wisdom was not a clever trick but evidence of a deep attunement to the heart of God. Three marks characterize it: 1) taking people seriously, 2) listening for the heart, and 3) keeping mercy and justice together. All three are embodied most fully by Jesus, whose cross finally explains how God can show us both mercy and justice. By the grace he earned for us, ordinary Christians now have access to that same wisdom by asking God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.

God’s extraordinary offer to Solomon challenges us to consider how we ourselves might respond.  Solomon’s bases his answer on three assessments: of God, of his father David, and of himself. Ultimately, his request for wisdom – for, literally, a “hearing heart” –  doesn’t prioritize his own needs, but the common good of God’s people whom he is called to lead. This godly choice can only come from a clear vision of God’s generous, patient, forbearing love, which we experience most fully through trust in Jesus.

We can forget that for God’s people before Jesus came, waiting for the Messiah involved some risk. If God comes in power, is that good for us or bad? When Gabriel visits Mary to announce the Messiah’s birth, we see that God’s mighty power is pointed toward us in love and because of his grace—to save us. What’s more, it’s worth the risk to obey God while we wait for him to come again, even at personal cost, because through us, God is at work saving others.

The first advent of Jesus was marked by the presence of angels, but who are they, and what is their relationship to him? Hebrews 1 explores this relationship, emphasizing the absolute supremacy of Jesus over all things, including the scary-cool angels. Even more striking is that both Jesus and his angels have stooped to seek and serve human beings. We, then, are called to respond to this great salvation with the same trust and obedience that the angels give Jesus.

Embracing limitations does not mean lowering expectations. When we acknowledge our real physical, spiritual and emotional limitations, God delights to show his power working through them, or through other people. Embracing our limitations becomes, paradoxically, a way of maximizing collaborations, expecting God to do more than we could ever try to do ourselves.

God designed people to live in dependence on him and in interdependence with the created world: In Hebrew, humankind is adam, and the ground is adamah. This design has been complicated by our fall into sin, but it is being redeemed by the work of Christ. When Christ returns, he will fully restore our relationship to himself, to our bodies, and to the earth. Until then, Christians have the privilege of living in alignment with our design, while resisting many of the ways our society tends to deny it.

The story Zaccheus illustrates how the grace of Jesus restores us to a healthy relationship with God, with each other, and with our community.

The Good News of Jesus is not just preached but felt, embodied in the lives of people in community.

What steeps in your heart steers your whole life – either closer to the Lord, or farther away from him.

This sermon explores the model of conflict resolution modeled in Philippians 4:1-3, which is one way to fulfill our third handshake vow, "If we ever have conflict, I will work with you to resolve it Biblically."

Our second handshake vow, "I won't gossip about you," seeks to heed James's command not to "speak evil against one another." This means any speech that unduly damages the reputation of another believer, whether it is sharing false information (often called slander) or true information (often called gossip). James knows such speech can poison communities, but here he focuses on how it poisons gossipers themselves: It functionally sets us above the law and in the place of God himself. The implied answer to James' question at the end of v. 12, however, is surprising. A Christian is both humbled under God's rule and law, and also secure as a beloved child within God's family. This Gospel truth empowers us to resist the delicious poison of gossip from a place of trust in God's care, God's mercy and God's justice.

Walter Henegar preached this sermon on Matthew 7:1-6

Walter Henegar completes our series on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Walter Henegar on 2 Peter 1:1-11

Prayer serves as the open line of communication between God and His children. But all prayers are not the same. When we are surrounded by problems and our minds are overloaded with thoughts of anxiety, we often ask the question, "Where is God?" Today's sermon examines an instance in Scripture where the believer seeks answers and help from God through prayer. As we eavesdrop on the Psalmist's experience, we find a resolve that informs our faith in troubling times. Prayer springs out of faith, to a faithful God, in faith that one will be both heard and helped. When all the believer has left is their faith, the prayer of Psalm 13 exemplifies the way in which we can learn to be okay, even when nothing is okay.

God has invited us to participate in His global purposes of making Him known. He has privileged us with the opportunity to share the message of the gospel that has transformed our very lives. When we explore the depths of what God has done for us through the person and work of Jesus, we should be motivated and excited to proclaim the gospel to our neighbors and the nations. We should be committed to tell of His glory among the nations, to summon the people to be converted and come to salvation in Christ, and to warn those without Christ of the impending judgment. May evangelism become something that we are excited about!

Habits form us. We make habitual choices that move deeper and deeper into our hearts and eventually define us. We make those choices because of the counsel we take. We take that counsel and are formed by those habits because they feed us in some way. Every habit pays off in a way that keeps us coming back for more. Habits rooted in wickedness and sin will leave us feeling like chaff: hollow and discarded. The habits of the righteous make us bear fruit when it’s time and keep us from withering before it’s time. Christian habits themselves don’t make us healthy. Those habits merely keep us near God, feeding on him and being nourished by him. What’s more, even in our bad habits, God is moving water that comes to us where we are, which he did most pointedly in sending Christ to us. Even when we don’t know the way to him, God knows the way to us.

Welcome and hospitality in community is not just a command, but ultimately it is a response to what Christ has done for us, and it is one of the ways we get to experience blessing in community. Therefore, we should eager to show the same hospitality Christ showed his disciples and continues to show his church today. John 13 reveals the way our pride and fear get in the way of ways of responding to Christ's work appropriately, and the way the gospel gives us the ability to respond rightly.

If your faith is in Christ, his Spirit has already made you a vital “body part” of his church: not only accepted, but honored, respected and needed. This is one of the sweetest fruits of the Gospel and one of the primary tools God uses to grow you in grace. Experiencing this reality, however, will cost you. The cost is commitment: not to the church as an organization, but to the actual people who make up the church — and especially those who are different from you in any way. Neglecting this bond with other body parts will cost you, too. When you try to live the Christian life alone or on the fringes of the community, it deprives you of nourishing truth, challenging perspectives, personal encouragement and opportunities to serve.

Christians expect interpersonal conflict in the church and learn to work through it. Often it is fueled by deeper conflicts between groups within the community. All of us have preferences and “patrons” who represent our particular beliefs, but we must not allow them to encroach on the unifying centrality of the cross. Only Jesus was crucified for us, and we are baptized only in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This reality frees us to lean toward each other with our inevitable differences in preference and even in matters of substance.

Celebration is essential to community. Before we can work through conflict or strive together toward common goals, we must remind each other how fully God has already provided for us. Here Paul makes at least four celebratory “toasts”: We are already saints, we are never alone, we have everything we need, and we are living a good story.

Yo Soy Libre is not just a Spanish phrase meaning “I am free.” It’s a Christian declaration and motto. A motto for this new year that declares who we are because we’ve put our faith in God who through Jesus has made us free… free to love and free to live with confidence.

Rev. Michael Phillips kicked off our series on Transformative Community with this sermon from Hebrews 3 and 10. He is the Reformed University Fellowship campus minister at Georgia Tech.

The abundant life Jesus came to give is a life full of God, and God is full of abundance: Abundant grace, abundant resources, and abundant generosity. God's abundance does not insulate us from suffering, nor does it cancel it out. Instead, it enlarges our soul to experience life more fully in every respect, both now and in eternity.

God became human to know what it’s like to be you. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, Jesus was (and is, although he’s ascended) a real, normal human being, just like us. Not only does he identify with us in our human-ness, he is not ashamed of us, and is proud to call us his little sisters and little brothers. Even more, he is able to help us no matter what we’re up against; because wherever we are right now, Jesus has been there. God knows what it’s like to be you.

Jesus came to make God known more than ever before. Christians tend to think we “know” all about God because we’ve heard a lot of Bible stories, especially the Christmas ones. John reminds us that we’ve still barely scratched the surface of who God is. The God who “tabernacled” among us in the glory of flesh comes to us full of grace and truth, which he pours out on us over and over again. We can examine our grasp of this reality with three tests: The Staring Test, the Gathering Test, and the Least of These Test. Ultimately, growing in the knowledge of God satisfies us in him, while always leaving us hungry to see him face to face.

Even in the promised land, God anticipated a world of both accidental and intentional violence. Mercifully, he provided cities of refuge as way to curtail vigilante justice while taking seriously the consequences of death by human hands. New covenant believers no longer live in a theocracy, but we can learn from it in the way we relate to others today. Jesus showed in Matthew 5:21-22 that both actual violence and verbal violence are liable to judgment. As our great high priest, he has not only given his innocent life to atone for our guilt, but he has sent his Spirit to empower us as humble agents of reconciliation.

God has given his people eyes to see and faith to walk. Often we prefer sight over faith, especially when there’s something hard we just got out of or are about to get into. Walking by sight energizes our individual preferences, even as it runs up against our trust in God. But God, being rich in mercy, has called the household of faith to walk together, having confidence in Him no matter what’s behind or awaiting us. Guest preacher Steven Gilchrist brought this message.

The daughters of Zelophehad demonstrate that we can trust God with our future. Shattering the notion that women must always be responsive, their bold request came from deep faith that God would bring his people into the promised land. God’s affirmation of them and the statutes he enacted illustrate both the necessity and the weakness of laws. And their concern for land and a name speaks to our universal longing for stability and meaning. We who trust in Christ are now freed from gender stereotypes, legalistic striving and fears about the future. Instead, we can love others boldly, obey imperfect laws humbly, pursue the holiness of Christ with the power of the Spirit, and trust our future hope entirely to him.

The bronze serpent is an unlikely symbol of grace. Like the ancient Israelites, we all have the same tragic impulse to resist dependence on God and choose the way that leads to death. But God had mercy on them, and ultimately, as Jesus explained in John 3:14-15, his “lifting up” onto the cross, and out of the tomb, and into heaven, would provide our permanent cure. Rather than always trying harder, we simply have to repent, admit our wrong, and then look in faith to his finished work on our behalf.

Everyone experiences exasperation; how you respond to it depends on your relationship to God. The people of Israel had a real need, but they blamed their human leaders instead of crying out to the Lord. Moses and Aaron initially did the right thing – falling on their faces in prayer – but ultimately they failed to “uphold the Lord as holy” (v. 12). Both leaders and followers fixated on human realities more than the presence and power of God. But those who trust in Christ now have “the spiritual rock that followed them” (1 Corinthians 10:3) through the “living water” of the indwelling Holy Spirit (John 7:38). The more we depend on him, the more we see him generously meeting our real needs, and the more we are able to respond constructively to exasperating situations.

The Bible’s view of sin is dramatically different than the way most people think of it in our current cultural moment. Biblically, sin can be individual or communal, unintentional or defiant (“with a high hand” v. 30) – with many variations in between. Today’s “cancel culture” rightly identifies communal and unintentional sins, but fails to treat them differently, and also eliminates the possibility of forgiveness. The Bible treats sin even more seriously, yet still provides a way of forgiveness for those who repent and call on the final sacrifice of Jesus. In the end, sin is devastating but forgivable, and gradated but stable.

We all tend to “spy out” our future to predict what we think is possible or likely. Whatever we find, two questions determine how we will respond to it: a) What has God actually promised us? b) How might God expect us to participate in accomplishing it? When we answer these biblically, we experience our future as simultaneously more scary and more exciting than anything we could have dreamed up ourselves. More important, we experience God’s character as simultaneously more generous and more powerful than we ever could have imagined.

We all have areas in our lives where we aren’t content with what God has spoken and we wish we could speak for God. Miriam thought her own righteousness gave her a right to speak for God; Aaron thought the same with his gifting. The irony of this is that in trying to speak for God, we cut ourselves off from receiving what God wants to give us—himself. The good news is that God has already given himself to us in the person of Jesus. To be a Christian to not bring anything to the table—either our goodness or our giftings—when we come to God, but rather to bring our whole selves (both strengths and weaknesses) and to receive all of God as he has given himself to us in the person and work of Jesus.

Contrary to popular belief, God does sometimes give us more than we can handle. Two reasons he may do this are: a) so we will share our burdens with others, and b) so we will give up idolatrous cravings that will never satisfy us. Moses was right: The burden of leading the Israelites was too much for him. So, God put his Spirit on 70 elders to share Mose’s burden. And because the Israelites’ craving for meat was effectively idolatrous, God gave them so much meat that it became loathsome to them. In both cases, God’s “too much” became an instrument of grace. By stripping us of the illusions of self-sufficiency and stuff-sufficiency, we are liberated to trust in the all-sufficiency of Jesus.

Complaining is the worst way to deal with real hardships. It’s highly contagious, talks to everyone but God, idealizes the past, minimizes God’s present provision, and abdicates our ability to redeem the situation. In short, it breeds mistrust in God. Believers, however, have rich resources to resist complaining – starting with a better mediator than Moses: Jesus himself – who absorbed the wrath of God that we deserved. Jesus invites us to lament our hardships directly to God as a way of sharing in his sufferings. And the better we understand the death-and-resurrection pattern of Jesus’ life, the more we trust that good things await us, too. Even better, his Holy Spirit empowers us to improve and redeem our hardships in ways that bless others with contagious hope.

God customizes his guidance to fit what he knows that we need. During the Israelites’ 40 years in the wilderness, God guided them with a supernatural manifestation of his presence as a fire-cloud over the tabernacle. Now that the Spirit of God lives within those who believe, he uses multiple means to guide us, including scripture, prayer and providence – all interpreted in community. Whatever the means, God’s goal is to make us both wise and dependent on him. To do that, we must trust his character, understanding that he is both present but not conspicuous, soothing and but not safe, reliable but not predictable. Especially when it seems like our lives are going nowhere fast, he is still hard at work changing us.

Aaron's stunning benediction reminds us that God's heart is to bless us. The blessings from his hand are positive circumstances of provision, protection and peace. The blessing of his face is his gracious presence with us, lit with delight and lifted in attention. Knowing how the two relate is essential to Christian growth, and the Gospel of Jesus is the key. When we seek first the blessing of his face, the blessings of his hand grow sweeter. But when we seek first the blessings of his hand, they fail to satisfy, and we grow distant from him. God’s face beats God’s hand every time.

Satan is the deceiver, the accuser, and the tempter, but Jesus is our teacher, our defender, and our savior.

Busyness is a malaise that affects us all in different ways. Growing in this area of life is a group project that requires multiple sources of wisdom applied in community over a long period of time. At root, we need to see ourselves the way God sees us: as his beloved agents in the world.

Acts 15 doesn't tell us which denomination to join, but it does give us a melody we should hear in every church and denomination. The three main "chords" of this melody answer the questions: What are they guarding? Where do they appeal? and How do they decide? Ultimately every church should guard the unity that Jesus creates in the Gospel; we should submit our interpretations of tradition and experience to scripture; and we should seek to make decisions with humility and an eagerness to sacrifice for the sake of unity.

Tribes can bind us together, but they can also blind us to the beauty of the Gospel. Judges 12 illustrates what happens when the normal human desire to belong warps into sinful self-protection and other-harming tribalism. We use “shibboleths” to actively or passively exclude people from our circle of trust. In today’s polarized climate, tribalism also cuts us off from learning ways that we may be wrong and ways others might be right. Jesus, it turns out, was also a repeated victim of tribalist judgments, but he refused to judge people through a tribalist lens. Christians who have been forgiven of their tribalism have the privilege of reflecting his love by rejecting shibboleths, asking questions and defining terms. Ultimately, anti-tribalist believers reflect more of the beauty of Jesus’ Gospel.

The Bible's view of sexuality is grounded in the Gospel. The heart of sex is a reflection of the permanent, exclusive, covenant that God makes with all who are united to Christ by faith. The revolution of sex is the way the Gospel invariably pulls against parts of the dominant cultural narrative. The power of sex is its ability to either domineer and waste our energy in unfruitful ways – or to deepen the bond of marital love. The weakness of sex is its temporary character in light of eternity and the way its blessings inevitably require sacrifice and "deaths" on the way to resurrection life.

Discipleship Administrator Abrm McQuarters preached this sermon on James 5:7-12.

Elder Byron Johnson preached the sermon on Psalm 46:1-3.

One of the most significant and yet least-talked-about factors in every other controversial national issue right now is class. Whether James is addressing nonbelievers or believers, none of us is immune from the temptations to hoard, exploit, live self-indulgently, and participate in injustice. More important, Jesus frees us from the reasons we tend to seek wealth, which all inevitably backfire. His Gospel gives us an expansive family to belong to, an eternal security that no amount of money can provide, and a righteousness that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

Few issues stir more passionate and politically charged debate than abortion. Job reminds us that suffering lies behind it, pushing Christians to respond in ways that demonstrate both grace and truth. The way of Jesus, we find, is characterized by handmade compassion, handmade redemption and handmade engagement in the political sphere. Ultimately, Christians must demonstrate our confidence in God as creator by actively loving, in both word and deed, every person made in his image, both born and unborn.

Men and women have more in common than we have different, starting with the Gospel that saves us all by grace through faith. We also have differences created by God. How we exercise our differences in the church calls for much wisdom and discernment, deconstructing false interpretations as much as reconstructing faithful ones. Ultimately, every aspect of our unique identities are tools for loving God by serving one another.

The Christian faith makes exclusive truth claims, and so does every other view of the world. This fact raises several challenging problems, yet we find that the Bible's claims are both necessary and glorious, enabling Christians to relate to the world in a humble, generous, teachable way.

The Gospel of Jesus compels Christians to engage in politics. At minimum, we must pray for all people, especially our political leaders. This affects the peace of society, and the way Christians live together in it. Both of these realities play an important role in how God saves and sanctifies people. And while first-century Christians had no influence over who their political leaders were, twenty-first century American Christians do. Therefore we must not only pray for our existing leaders but also seek God’s wisdom in which ones we vote for. Beyond that, we have freedom to serve according to our gifts, resources and opportunities. And regardless of which leaders are currently in office, we must seek God’s help to conduct ourselves in society in every way that is godly and dignified.

God wants you to know that you are okay, you can change, and you will be everything you were made to be, all because of Jesus.

Misdirected desires can cause anxiety, but gazing at Jesus can change us. We can have confidence in God’s plan, even when we suffer. This confidence comes when our greatest desire is intimate relationship with God. God invites us to seek him and wrestle with Him. When we wait for the Lord and believe God’s promises, we will have real hope and strength.

Christians’ ultimate hope is not going to heaven, but heaven coming to us. Peter explains why this “new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells” (v. 13) has not arrived yet, why the world must be refined by fire, and how we are to live while we wait. Other parts of scripture reassure us that those who have died in faith are present with Jesus now in the “intermediate state,” but even they still wait eagerly for the fullness of the resurrection.

Former Westside attender Michael Gregory, now planting a church in Los Angeles, shared this message from Psalm 17.

Covid-19 (and many other circumstances) leave us feeling small and childlike. Our tendency is to want to despise feelings of smallness and to move toward places of competency, achievement, and status. But Jesus shows his disciples that the only way into the kingdom of heaven is through childlikeness, and ultimately, it is also the only way to grow into maturity in his kingdom. Jesus himself has not despised childlikeness, but became a child who grew in stature and maturity in order that he might die for our sakes. Our relationship with God the Father is our only relationship where we can know that we will never have to be the grown up.

The conversion of Saul was dramatic, but it illustrates three universal features of believing in Jesus. Whether we are trusting him for the first time or the millionth, we must experience these three “flashes”: recognizing ourselves, confronting the person of Jesus, and learning dependence. As we do, Jesus transforms us from self-blind, self-righteous law-chasers to self-aware, humble, curious people who increasingly love others like Jesus.

Luke’s account of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance on Easter Sunday evening demonstrates the complex nature of faith. Rather than giving us a simple factoid to believe or reject, Jesus invites us into a whole-person process of coming to accept reality and living into it. This process includes at least six stages: Evidence, Personal trust, an Opened Mind, a Story, a Role to Play, and Power. Together, they help us to “practice resurrection” in a dynamic relationship with him.

Tomo Ito, our soon-to-be-graduated seminarian and volunteer coordinator, preached this powerful message connecting Abraham's offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah with God the Father's offering of Jesus on Good Friday.

Jesus’ question to Mary Magdalene gently challenges her to align her internal sense of reality with the new reality of his resurrection. The Gospels bear witness to this claim in a way that’s uniquely persuasive. Because Jesus ascended to the Father, he has inaugurated the Kingdom of God – the new world where Cosmic Spring is always breaking through until he returns. And because he calls us “brothers” (and sisters), we can join his family purely by grace, enjoying his constant presence through his Holy Spirit. All of these blessings come to those who personally trust him, like Mary did, as our Rabboni (my Teacher) – the Cosmic Gardener who knows your name.

Jesus’ question in v. 12 invites us to consider why he washed his disciples’ feet. We can discern at least three reasons: First and most obviously, so we will wash each others’ feet in humble acts of service. Right now, doing this wisely requires creativity! Second and most importantly, so we will know our own need to be spiritually cleansed by faith in Jesus’ finished work on the cross. As Peter learned in vs. 8-11, only those who are “washed” by Jesus have any share in him. Third and most practically, so we will continue applying the finished work of Jesus to our own ongoing need for forgiveness. Just as our feet need regular washing, so our souls need regular repentance and faith to keep growing. All of these reasons are fueled by Jesus’ amazing love for us “to the end” – or as some translations put it, “to the uttermost” (v. 1).

Following Jesus creates temporary division until he brings permanent peace. Jesus was separated through a baptism of fire so that we could be Included through a baptism of water. Ultimately, Jesus divides humanity into those who are united to him by faith and those who aren’t. Counterintuitively, this positions Christians to be “us-for-them,” or even “us-for-those-who-are-against-us.” Through the power of Jesus working in us, we can share our faith, serve sacrificially and resolve conflict in healthy ways.

Jesus' parable about a persistent widow is not about bugging God till he begrudgingly gives us what we want. It's about praying when we feel helpless, binding us to the heart of God, and liberating us both to cry out to him and to join him in his redeeming work.

Every "desert" season of uncertainty is ultimately a test of our trust in the Lord. This short homily was preached in our first-ever only-livestream worship service, in response to the worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19.

When Jesus heals people, it’s always about more than healing. The simple question that punctuates this scene – Who touched me? – reveals his compassion for both the hurting and the hurried. More than healing the bleeding woman, Jesus’ words affirm the value of her faith, and confirm her peace with God, and signal to the town that she is no longer to be treated like an outcast. Jesus calls her “Daughter” because what she needs above all else is a clear-eyed relationship with him, which can only be secured by his cross. The hurried disciples, on the other hand, are so eager for ministry success that they miss the bigger miracle Jesus is doing along the way. His question helps them to see their own need to be made whole, and ultimately to receive others as a gift.

Jesus knows that it can be hard for us to trust him, just like people did when John the Baptist got thrown in prison. On top of that, every generation or age has its own unique distortions of reality, bullying dissenters while blind to its own contradictions. To help us navigate these challenges, Jesus gives us two simple, interlocking tests: 1) Is there consistency between how a person lives and the message they profess to believe?2) Is there consistency between the message they believe and the way things actually are?When all three are consistent with each other – the person, the message, and the real world — we gain greater confidence to trust Jesus in every aspect of our lives.

After hundreds of years of persistent unfaithfulness to God, the Israelites were finally reaping the consequences of their actions—exile is imminent. Even so, the Lord did not abandon his people, but redeemed them and pursued them. He does the same with us: we are betraying him every time we sin, but he keeps loving us anyway. Because God’s heart for his people is unchanging, we never have to wonder how God feels about us, even when we don’t feel good about ourselves. His never-stopping, never-giving-up, unbreaking, always-and-forever love is for us, because of Jesus.

Elijah’s moment of despair illustrates how God relates to us when we do the right thing but things still go wrong. He does not rebuke Elijah but leads him with gentleness and compassion, ministering to Elijah’s physical exhaustion with sleep and bread and water. And when Elijah begins to doubt the effectiveness of God’s Word, God gives him a special manifestation of his word in the form of a “low whisper.” Then God gives him a new job to do that will enlist the help of others, including a pagan king and his own soon-to-be successor, Elisha. Finally, God reminds Elijah that he is not actually alone, because God has kept 7,000 faithful in Israel. In Romans 11, Paul cites these verses as evidence of the “remnant, chosen by grace” who are included in God’s eternal family through person and work of Jesus.

When our relationship with God goes sideways, God pursues us to repair it. In the 8th century BC, God sent the prophet Micah to Israelites who had grown spiritually complacent, economically corrupt and socially unjust. Micah’s “covenant lawsuit” called them to clear the air, review the facts, stop bargaining, and sync with the heart of God.

The book of Job is not just about why bad things happen to good people, but about how to trust God in a world where all kinds of things happen that we don’t understand. By asking Job dozens of questions, God presses Job to recognize the natural limits of his own understanding and the necessity of trusting him. Yet instead of making Job smaller, this dependence actually expands his dignity and his capacity to engage in God’s world. The paradox of Job is just one example of the paradox of the Gospel: We are utterly incapable of saving ourselves – not by knowing things and not by doing things, but when we recognize that and trust in Jesus, he actually expands our capacity to know and participate in his rule over the world. In Jesus, the last become first, and the humble are exalted.

The strange story of Balaam illustrates four vital principles for how those who trust in God should relate to those who don’t: 1) People change people. For good or ill, the people we spend the most time around will inevitably shape our perception of what is possible, desirable or good. 2) If you belong to Jesus, you are blessed – but only because of grace. Balaam’s prophecies and their fulfillment in Jesus mark the life of every Christian as fundamentally blessed.3) Total isolation from “the world” is not only impossible; it’s ungodly. God calls his people to be distinct, and then to bless the world around them. David Mathis says we should be “not of, but sent into” the world.4) It’s possible to see a great deal and still be blind – just like Balaam, the great “see-er” whose donkey saw more than he did. Ultimately, we must all answer God’s question to Balaam, “Who are these people with you?” Some should be fellow believers whose influence we welcome, and others should be non-believers we are seeking to bless.

God asks Moses, “Who made your mouth?” to shift his focus from his own limited self-knowledge to God’s own powerful knowing. And so we also see that God knows our story, because he’s the one writing it. We see that God knows our capacity, because he made us and is with us. And we see that God knows our frame, because he is does not leave us alone. All this is only possible because of Jesus, the Greater Moses, who experienced every hardship we do, and much worse, in order to lead us to God’s eternal Promised Land.

The first question God asks humanity is still the central question for all of us: Where are you? – that is, Where are you in relation to God? To help us answer it, God asks three more questions. The second, Who told you that you were naked? invites us to consider what other voices we are listening to to define reality, other than God’s? We can never silence those voices, but we can pursue habits and practices that make God’s voice loudest in our lives. The third and fourth questions are similar, asking Adam and Eve to admit their particular role in the fall. There really is blame to go around, but in order to have a relationship with God, we must own our part. Paradoxically, this radical honesty with God (also known as repentance) is the only way to avoid hiding from ourselves. The cross of Jesus gives us this freedom to repent and be covered by God’s grace, living humbly and gently before others.

The incarnation of Jesus transforms our experience of Given Family, adopts us into his Eternal Family, and challenges us to build an ever-changing Pilgrim Family along the way. Your Given Family is the family you grew up in, whether biological, adopted or otherwise. Your Forever Family is the family of God, into which you were adopted through faith in Jesus, and with whom you will spend eternity. Your Pilgrim Family are your believing friends who walk through life with you until Jesus returns. Every Christian needs to find Pilgrim Family members through our various stages of life, and the cast of characters in it is always changing.

Christians should enjoy stuff more than anyone else in the world, because Jesus shows us the heart of the One who made it all. At the same time, we should distrust stuff more than anyone else, because Jesus showed us what our hearts are capable of doing with it. We enjoy stuff by receiving it as an undeserved gift from the God who made it and by sharing it with others who don’t deserve it, either. We distrust stuff by remembering that it will always fail us and deceive us and divide us in this world, but it will last forever in the next one, so we can work actively either to do without it or give it away now.

Your body is very good because God made it, Jesus has one, and the Holy Spirit lives there. It’s easy for us to live under a spiritualized worldview—like it’s only the spiritual things that are really good and important to God. But since he is the Good Creator, all of creation, all of this physical stuff, is infused with his goodness. Even though that goodness is damaged by sin, God still cares about his creation and is in the process of redeeming it for himself. When he himself took on a body as the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, it not only amps up the volume of his Genesis 1:31 declaration that creation is “very good”, it accelerated that process of redeeming the whole world. One day, at Jesus’ second coming, this whole universe will be resurrected, and God’s people will have their bodies glorified as they enjoy him in the new creation for all eternity.

What distinguishes the true Gospel from false gospels, and faithful messengers from false prophets, is the cross of Jesus. Just as Paul bears the “marks of Jesus” (v. 17) in the scars on his physical body, so Christians today ought to bear evidence of the death-and-resurrection pattern in our lives. Two ways to uncover the real patterns in our lives are to ask: Whose opinions matter most to us? and What do we want for other people? When we have been “crucified to the world” and vice-versa (v. 14), we are free to value Jesus’ opinion of us over all others, and to serve other people as works-in-progress and evidence of Jesus’ new creation.

Believers saved by grace through faith in Jesus have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us grow in actively bearing each others’ burdens. Because God has ordered the world so that we generally “reap what we sow,” he challenges us in at least three specific ways:1. You should make a habit of helping people carry their burdens, no matter who they are or what they believe, but the category of people whose burdens you should carry most are fellow Christians. 2. If you are not giving at least some of your time and some of your money to share the burdens of the church where you worship, you are sinning against God, and this will yield negative effects in your life.3. If you are helping to bear the burdens of your fellow Christians and also non-Christians, but you’re so tired that every day you dream of throwing up your hands and running away – you should not give up, because God will respond to your sacrifice with eternal blessings. These results are only possible because God is living and active in the world, ruling over the results of our lives according to his own wise and gracious timing.

Christians justified by faith in Jesus are no longer under the burden of law-keeping, but we are called to fulfill the “law of Christ” – that is, to love one another the way Jesus loves us. To do this, we must recognize the difference between a burden (v. 2) and a load (v. 4). A burden is too heavy to carry alone, whereas a load is a reasonable personal responsibility that must be carried alone. Loving wisely begins by soberly assessing our own weaknesses and vulnerability to temptation. This humble self-awareness teaches us to carry our own load, and to refuse to carry the load of others. The same humility trains us also to share our burdens with others, and to help bear their burdens, too. Love like this is only possible because Jesus has fulfilled the law for us, and has empowered us with his own Holy Spirit living within us.

The Christian life is a fight between the desires of what Paul calls the “flesh,” or the sinful nature, and the desires of the Spirit. The desires of the flesh automatically produce ugly “works,” like fungus, that dominate and divide us. The desires of the Spirit, on the other hand, draw out beautiful fruits of character that pull people together in relationship. If you are a Christian, the Spirit in you is “the real you,” and your flesh is a persistent but mortally wounded foe. Jesus has already nailed your sin to his cross; now he invites you to actively crucify your flesh, while actively working to keep in step with the Spirit.

Faith in Jesus rewrites our family tree, making spiritual freedom not only our inheritance but our birthright. Apparently the Judaizing Christians in Galatia were claiming to be the “real deal” because they descended from Abraham and Sarah. Actually, says Paul, those who try to earn God’s favor by keeping the law are not children of the free woman (Sarah), but of the slave woman (Hagar). As a result, even first-century Jerusalem had become a center of spiritual slavery! The Gospel, however, grafts everyone who believes into the true family of God. This means our spiritual family is way cooler than we think. It also helps explain why we don’t quite fit with the world around us: because both religious and irreligious people operate from a default posture of works that is hostile to the Gospel of grace.

In this selected passage, we get a glimpse into the heart of a shepherd. Paul is perplexed about the Galatians because he wants them to believe and walk in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He pleads with them to follow his example by reminding them of their mutual love and to know his jealousy for them. Even though his tone is firm, a shepherd’s tone reflects the Father’s jealous heart for us.

If you want freedom and rest, you will live in slavery; but if wanting God is the center of your life, you will find freedom and rest and more than you can imagine.

Trying to keep the law is like being a slave, but living by faith in Jesus is like inheriting a fortune. Jesus bought this inheritance for us by crawling under the yoke of the law and climbing onto the cross to redeem us. Forgiveness is just the beginning of the inheritance, which includes the Holy Spirit’s assurance that we belong to him, the privilege of participation in the “family business,”and above all, the intimate access of calling God Abba! Father! Knowing we are the beloved “sons” and daughters in the hands of a God this wise helps us trust him as we wait to receive our full inheritance: seeing him face to face in a perfectly healed world, and living together with him forever.

We all want the freedom to be uniquely ourselves and yet fully accepted and valued by others. Paul captures this vision in verses 26-29, arguing that it is only possible through faith in Jesus – not by performing works of the law. He first defends this claim by showing how God’s promise to Abraham precedes, and therefore supersedes, the law that came 430 years later. Next he shows why God gave the law to begin with: as a necessary guardian until the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus is both the One offspring to whom Abraham’s promise points, and also the only true Israelite who perfectly kept the law. As such, he is entitled to share his rightful inheritance with people of every race, class and sex who put their faith in him. And because believers now share this same free inheritance, we must fight vigorously against every temptation to exclude or marginalize others based on our differences. Instead, motivated by the grace and love of Jesus, we should celebrate our differences as gifts that reflect the glory of the Gospel.

Paul resumes his defense of the true Gospel with a simple contrast: To live by works of the law is to be cursed, whereas to live by faith in Christ is to be blessed. Easy choice, right? Yet every human heart still naturally gravitates toward living by law. To convince (or re-convince) us, Paul first reaches back to four Old Testament scriptures that expose the futility of living by law. Then he throws a spotlight on the cross, where Jesus suffered the ultimate cursedness in order to bestow the ultimate blessedness on everyone who believes in him. This blessedness is characterized by receiving “the promised Spirit,” who connects us to God and his whole multiethnic family forever.

If Peter and the Galatian Christians could be foolishly "bewitched" by a false, legalistic gospel, then we can, too. In fact, most Christians default to living as if we are saved by grace and then sanctified by works. Paul dismantles this disastrous error, reminding us that the same grace that saves us also sanctifies us. It's why the Holy Spirit enters us at conversion and continues working in us throughout our whole lives. It's also why Abraham's faith was "counted" as righteousness, so that everyone who believes can be included in the family of God.

Paul rebuked Peter for a seemingly minor inconsistency: refusing to eat meals with Gentile Christians. However, the heart of the Gospel was at stake. As Paul goes on to explain, no law, whether the Jewish Torah or any man-made standard of behavior, can "justify" sinful people – only faith in Jesus Christ can. Faith unites us to Jesus so thoroughly that we are both crucified and raised with him: Crucified, in that we "die" to trying to keep the law for salvation, and raised, in that we live by his power working in us. And everyone who receives this gospel belongs at the same table in the family of God.

Paul was not defending his apostleship for his own name's sake, but for the truth of the Gospel that he was called to preach to the Gentiles. It mattered because Paul was aware of the Gospel's benefits: its nature, freedom, and unity. The nature of the Gospel was to reach the nations. The freedom of the Gospel was in Christ purchasing our freedom from the curse of the law. The unity of the Gospel was to enable us all unify under the Gospel even with our diversity.

Christianity is not just a rescue religion, but a revealed religion that depends on the authority of Scripture. Here Paul insists on what no one else can claim today: that the Gospel he preached was revealed to him directly by Jesus. To defend this bold claim, he simply tells his own story, which shows that he’s not telling us what we want to hear, nor what he wanted to hear, nor what anyone else pressured him to say – and yet it completely rewrote the story of his life. Like Paul, we who trust the integrity of this Gospel today find that it continues to challenge us in ways none of us would invent, rewriting our stories in surprising ways.

Nothing is more serious than getting the Gospel wrong, and we are all in danger of it. Before revealing how the Galatians were distorting it, Paul subtly outlines the true Gospel: the good news that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s old plan has now inaugurated a new era of history, making a new family of people with a new record and a new relationship and a new future that is breaking into the present now.

The trippy visions of Daniel 7 are meant to comfort and encourage believers that God is actively ruling the world, no matter which terrifying or wicked forces may be at work in it. The vision also introduces the enigmatic figure of the Son of Man who receives dominion from God (the Ancient of Days), and then shares that dominion with the “saints” who trust him. Centuries later, Jesus claimed this title, using it almost exclusively when referring to himself. Because of his death and resurrection, those who trust him today are the saints who share his dominion partially now, and will fully share it in the future. Instead of cynically accepting that “it is what it is,” Christians rightly know that it is what it isn’t yet.

Daniel’s rescue from the lion’s den is one of the most well-known stories in the Bible – and also one of the most misunderstood. To read it correctly we must expose two common lies about lions: That God always rescues us from them, and that the reason he rescues us is our own goodness. Daniel actually shows that God often does rescue us in this life, but he always rescues us in the life to come – and that this ultimate rescue is only due to the goodness of Jesus credited to us by grace through faith. Second, Daniel models three "pro tips" about prayer: Routine is your friend; Your body prays; and Thanking re-narrates your life. All who trust Jesus by faith can now rely on his strength to learn these habits of grace, growing in us an "excellent spirit" like Daniel's that blesses the people around us.

The sad story of Belshazzar both comforts those who have been wronged by the sins of others, and also warns us not to follow in the folly of his footsteps. Though he wanted many good things, he pursued them apart from God, effectively opposing God. The Gospel of grace redirects our own "wantings" through God himself, transforming the malediction on the wall into a banner of benediction over us.

Nebuchadnezzar illustrates both the toxic power of pride and the persistent love of God to rescue the prideful and exalt them to new glory. True humility that God alone rules the world, and whatever corner of it we may be ruling now is always a gift.

We don't talk about the ascension very much. But it turns out, the ascension is essential for Jesus' story and for your thriving. It's essential because Jesus has old promises to keep and new work to do.

Often we can become casual in our Christian walks, however 1 John reminds us that being called a child of God means something. In this call, just like children, we should be confident in the assurance of our Father’s relationship and work to imitate Him in all that He does.

Trusting God will always put you outside of some important group of people in the world, and all you have to do to get back in is deny his supremacy. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were able to resist that temptation, even if God didn’t deliver them, because they had ample reasons to believe he was THE God of the universe; his presence with them in the furnace just gave them one more. Christians today have even more confidence to live counterculturally, because Christ has gone through the furnace of the cross ahead of us, and his Spirit is in us, and his church is with us.

God reveals mysteries to people who trust him, primarily through opening up his Word, the Bible. When we study it in community and dependence on the Holy Spirit, he uses it to disclose not only the "thoughts and intentions of our hearts," but the scope and sweep of human history. Most important, God reveals the mystery of the Gospel of grace that pivots around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus, it turns out, is the Rock who ultimately shatters all earthly kingdoms and establishes a permanent rule of justice and peace.

Daniel and his friends excelled in exile because they trusted in the God of losers: a God so committed to their flourishing in relationship with him that he was willing to oppose their nation when it strayed from him. In this way they foreshadowed Jesus, who endured suffering and death to give us new life. When God’s discipline placed them in a climate hostile to their faith, they chose the simple habit of eating to reinforce their confidence in him. Likewise, Christians today must prioritize simple disciplines that continually reorient our hearts to depend on him.

Isaiah is brought into the holy presence of Jesus, the Lord of Hosts, sitting on the throne. He is awestruck by the holiness and glory he witnesses, and he recognizes his sin. Out of his sincere repentance, the Lord forgives Isaiah and makes him holy. With a heart renewed, Isaiah is eager to share the message of the Lord.

The rich fool’s problem wasn’t that he was rich, or that he saved for the future, or that he died like everyone else. His problem was that his life revolved around himself, not God. As a result, he wrongly thought that he earned his riches, rather than receiving them as a gift of God’s grace. This led him to ignore other people, failing both to learn from their wisdom and to share God’s blessings with them. His life illustrates the Bible’s repeated warnings that the more wealth you have, the more spiritually mature you need to be. Whatever our net worth, Jesus calls all believers to be "rich toward God," a posture marked by grateful enjoyment, approachability, freedom from anxiety, and above all, confidence in the extravagant generosity of God. This posture produces habits of hospitality toward the needy, and aggressive, systematic generosity toward every effort to manifest the Kingdom of God.

Christians are meant not only to profess faith in Christ, but to practice it. This encouragement includes a sober warning: that no one might delude us with plausible arguments (v. 6) or take us captive by philosophy and empty deceit (v. 8). Paul doesn’t say exactly how we are in danger, but he offers one clear remedy: to center every truth around the person and work of Christ. And if we pay attention to the particular qualities of Christ he highlights, we can apply them to the many ways we can be deluded or taken captive today. Jesus alone has 1) the wisdom to define reality for us, 2) the authority to include us, and 3) the power to change us. Each of these truths about Jesus can help Christians counter the many distortions that delude us today, like living for expressive individualism, blindness to the influence of literal and spiritual authorities over us, and friendly pity that seeks to release us from the burdens of discipleship.

We often find ourselves attempting to control time and the seasons that come and go in our lives. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes reminds us that life is full of varied seasons and none of us can predict or control the seasons that come and go. We do not happen to time, time happens to us. God alone stands beyond time and only what he does in the world and in and through us will endure. The call of Ecclesiastes is not to passivity, but rather to engaging presence as we respond to the changing seasons of life knowing that God is at work in history. We do not suffer or rejoice alone, but we follow Christ’s footsteps as the one who has suffered and rejoiced for and before us.

Peter’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus shows us how his grace works. Rather than punishing Peter for denying him three times, Jesus cooks him breakfast, gently leads him to face his sin, and challenges him to love – also three times! In the same way, Jesus continues to show merciful compassion toward all who believe in his death and resurrection, entrusting us with his supreme calling to love our fellow “sheep.” Suffering doesn’t stop us, and stumbling doesn’t disqualify us, because the grace of Jesus continues to carry us.

Everyone wants a king: someone or something we willingly allow to tell us what to do, because we believe they will make our lives better. Jesus’ triumphal entry confirmed that we do indeed need a king, just not the kind we think. We want a king who gathers all the most impressive people, but Jesus seeks helpless people who need their hands held even to believe. We want a king who promises to fix our lives fast, but Jesus humbly plods into the mess of our lives, empowering us to participate in our own redemption. And we want a king who prevents pain, but Jesus leads us through the ultimate pain of crucifixion into a resurrected life. Like the disciples on the first Palm Sunday, people who welcome Jesus as their king are marked by exuberant praise and eagerness to use their most precious possessions so that more people would love and serve him.

Although we usually think of Judas as the evil villain in the Jesus story, this scene provides a different picture. If the disciples were uncertain—more like shocked—about which one of the twelve would betray Jesus, that tells us that Judas looked just like the rest of the disciples. It turns out, Judas was a good person. But being a good person doesn’t save you, no matter how impressive your spiritual resume is. We all need a new resume—Jesus’ resume—to replace our own, and that happens when we direct our trust at Jesus and not at our own performance. Because this happens by faith, the only difference between Judas and the Christian is God’s grace.

Jesus gives a blind man both physical and spiritual sight, while a group of Pharisees grows increasingly spiritually blind. At the same time, the man’s neighbors and even his own parents struggle to grasp the reality of what’s happening. John frames the account this way to helps us see, believe in, and worship Jesus. Like he did with the blind man, Jesus is writing our stories long before we were born, pursuing us by grace and inviting us to participate in our own redemption as we gradually gain spiritual sight. As the light of the world, Jesus also exposes the blindness of unbelief in a way that confirms the wisdom of trusting him.

Jesus makes an exclusive claim of being “the light of the world.” To argue with Him, as the Pharisees tried to do, would be to question His authority and the truthfulness of His claim. As the Pharisees argued and wrestled with Jesus in His imposing truth, we also must wrestle with Jesus’s imposing truth in our lives; the hard truths and the good.

This scene, which contrasts two sisters in relationship to Jesus, is easily misinterpreted. Jesus is not saying that active physical service is bad and passive spiritual contemplation is good; both of them are. He’s not saying that Mary is a special exception to the general rule that women belong in the kitchen; both men and women do. And he’s not saying that the only thing women should do is listen; just like men, they should both apply and share their theology. The “one thing necessary,” the “good portion that will not be taken away” is Jesus himself. Whether serving or studying, suffering or singing, our perpetual challenge is not to miss Jesus. When we keep him in view, it changes everything else we do.

Jesus says in v. 35 that “wisdom is justified by all her children” – in other words, that truth is validated by its outworking in human lives. He taught a related principle in Luke 6:43-45: a tree is known by its fruit. The life of John the Baptist raises three challenging questions for applying this principle: 1) What if following Jesus causes us to suffer? 2) What defines a truly great person? and 3) How happy or serious should we expect the Christian life to be? Jesus orients each of his answers around the Kingdom of God, which is already present, but not yet in its fullness. This kingdom of grace frees us to expect diversity in our Christian experiences, including sacrifice and celebration, triumph and defeat – yet always producing lives that show compelling resemblance to the person of Jesus.

Jesus loves us just as we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way. Here he hand-picks one invalid man out of a crowd of sick people, apart from any evidence of faith – a beautiful picture of the Gospel! Later on he pursues the man again, challenging him to “sin no more” – yet another picture of the Gospel! Sadly, both the healed man and the Jewish leaders suffer from the same basic problem: In the face of their suffering and limitations, they try to make life more controllable, sorting people into winners and losers, righteous and sinners. Ultimately, Jesus claims his healing work is an extension of God the Father’s active rule over all creation – which, as the Jewish leaders rightly conclude, implies his equality with God. While our sin is indeed real and consequential, our living wholly and holy must always be a response to the prior and gracious working of God.

Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus reveals an essential teaching of the Christian faith: No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he or she is born again – or more accurately, born from above. Theologians call this regeneration: the gracious and mysterious act of God’s Spirit that makes us alive to God and able to trust him by faith. But why would Jesus emphasize this truth to Nicodemus, a scrupulously moral, highly educated and influential man? Because his very religiosity was getting in the way of knowing his desperate need for grace. Likewise today, we who tend to rely on religious knowledge or activity must learn to renounce our own religiosity, living instead by the dynamic new ways of life in the Spirit. Though the Kingdom of God is not yet here in its fullness, everyone born of God begins to experience it already in this life.

Jesus’ healing of the paralytic demonstrates that our greatest need is for forgiveness from our sins. By forgiving a paralytic – someone whose was clearly a sufferer with no obvious sin in his life – reminds us that every human being sins, rebelling against God’s loving rule in big and small ways. The Pharisees and teachers of the law also illustrate the pernicious nature of self- righteousness that blinds us to our own sin. Most of us identify more with the paralytic, defining our lives based on our suffering, but really we are more like the Pharisees, delighting to judge others and position ourselves as wiser, better, smarter, or more righteous than others. Jesus’ death and resurrection not only heals every kind of sufferer but forgives every kind of sinner, liberating us to “pick up our beds” and live honestly as evidence of his grace.

In the face of impossible demands, Jesus needed to withdraw regularly to find strength and guidance from his Father. This practice was all the more essential in light of the power he possessed and the mission he was committed to fulfill: to preach the good news of the kingdom of God and then inaugurate it through is death and resurrection. Because Jesus was faithful to that mission, we can now follow his example without the pressure to do everything perfectly. Through faith in Jesus’ finished work, we can find refuge as beloved sons and daughters, already accepted and delighted in by the Father. We can say no to some of the expectations of others (and even our own!), knowing that his judgment of us is all that matters. And by practicing the discipline of solitary prayer, we can learn to discern God’s particular priorities for our lives, trusting that whatever he asks us to do, he will provide the time, energy and resources to do it.

John’s sparse account of Jesus’ first miraculous sign raises all sorts of fascinating questions: How did he really feel about marriage? What was his relationship with his mother? Why did she care about the wine supply? Why did he create enough wine that could make people drunk – and why put it in ceremonial purification jars? All answers revolve around v. 11. Consistent with the purpose of John’s Gospel (20:31), Jesus performed the miracle so that people would “believe in him” – that is, dynamically trust him. In order for us to trust him today, we must understand that he cares about the smallest details of our lives, yet he always acts according to his mission (his “hour,” v. 4). This mission was a way of suffering and death that would replace the old ways of purification with the extravagant “new wine” of the kingdom. Until Jesus returns for the final wedding feast, we who trust him must learn to celebrate every foretaste of his abundant kingdom now, even in the midst of sorrow.

There is so much to Jonah’s story following the great fish incident. The Bible shows us this incredible picture of the Gospel in Jonah 3 where God chooses to bless and save sinners who, though their sin was great, called out to Him in humility. However, Jonah resents God’s grace to his enemies. But God remains patient and reveals to Jonah his own hypocrisy and God’s massive and glorious plan of redemption. Similarly, as Christians today, we are often frustrated and angry at our circumstances and the world we live in. That’s when we need to remember who we are in humility, what abundant grace we have been shown in Jesus, and how many more glorious things lie ahead for us as God builds His kingdom and calls us home.

Jesus comes and sees us so that we will come and see him. “Come and see” are not so much two different actions as a whole-person, hands-on engagement with another person. Jesus models this come-and-see practice by drawing them out with questions (Andrew & John), renaming them (Peter), calling them (Philip), praising their honesty, revealing his supernatural watchfulness and intriguing them with promises of even greater seeing (Nathanel). The disciples, likewise, come-and-see Jesus by following the clues offered by John the Baptist (“The Lamb of God”) and each other (“The Messiah,” “The one whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote”), watching Jesus, and testing his promises. The more we recognize Jesus coming-and-seeing us, the more actively we come-and-see him, building a real and ever-transforming relationship with him.

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness helps us fight temptation in our own lives. Behind each of them is a question tempting him to doubt his relationship to God:1. Turn Stones to bread: Will God take care of me?2. Get authority & glory in exchange for worship: Does God know what he’s doing?3. Throw himself down & be rescued: Does God care when I’m hurting?The same kinds of questions lie behind our own temptations today. What’s at stake is not primarily our moral purity but our ongoing, dynamic trust in the Lord. Until Jesus returns, we will continue to face temptations and sometimes fail. Thankfully, Jesus perfectly passed the test that Adam failed, Israel failed, and we fail today. He continued perfectly trusting God the Fatherthroughout his life, all the way through his death and resurrection. As a result, the same Spirit who empowered Jesus now dwells in everyone who trusts in Jesus by faith. This Spirit is first of all the Spirit of Sonship, who reminds us that God is well pleased with us because of Jesus. He is also a spirit of power, love, and self-control (2 Tim 1:7). Because Jesus’ temptation was fully human in every respect, his Spirit is able to help us when we are being tempted (Heb 4:15). And because his Spirit indwells the whole church, we are not alone in our struggle.

Our church’s purpose is to embody and preview the Kingdom of God from Buckhead to Bankhead, which includes the work of racial reconciliation. Actually doing it depends on how well we believe and practice the metaphor of the body of Christ. The unity that we already have in the body motivates us to work hard to love each other and our neighbor. Diversity in the body puts us in uncomfortable positions, but it grows us to be able to love people different from us – which helps us better love our neighbors who are different from us. We do all of this through interdependent relationships, with a real feeling that we need each other to experience the fullness of Christ and to live missionally on the westside of Atlanta.

Mary is an extraordinary model of dynamic faith in God. While her distinct role as the physical mother of Jesus was utterly unique, the way she responded to God’s providence helps us understand how we can exercise faith today. The angel Gabriel declares her “favored” by God, and she responds by welcoming God’s undeserved grace. He informs her that she will bear the Son of God, and she responds by thoughtfully interrogating God’s promises. Without understanding everything that will happen to her, she embraces wonder with her famous response, “Let it be to me as you have said.” And while struggling to understand what it all means, she engages God’s people in the form of her older cousin Elizabeth, who may have been a spiritual mentor, and who helps confirm and extend her unique calling. And for the rest of her life, through many more hard and confusing situations, Mary continues to exercise humble, thinking faith.

Leah is known for the bitter competition with her sister Rachel for the affections of their husband Jacob. Though the New Testament does not highlight her place in the genealogy of Jesus, her story echoes many of his other “mothers.” Most distinctively, she illustrates a universal human experience: We all want to be loved, faithfully and securely – and yet human love inevitably disappoints us. In the midst of this reality, God keeps showing compassion toward Leah in order to reorient her primary attachment to himself. Ultimately, Jesus most fully reveals God’s grace-given, person-specific, perfectly secure delight in us. Apart from Jesus, we starve ourselves and smother others. But when we receive the love of Jesus by faith, we smother people less and love people more, even becoming strong channels of God’s love toward them.NOTE: Since we had to use a borrowed sound system this week, the sermon audio was recorded with an iPhone on the front row. We'll have much better audio quality next week, Lord willing!

Tamar is one of the “mothers” of Jesus listed in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. She was the twice-widowed daughter-in-law of Judah, the leader of the twelve sons of Jacob. When Judah refused to provide for her future by giving his third son to marry her, Tamar took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself as a prostitute, and Judah took the bait. When she was found to be pregnant, Judah initially ordered her killed, but when she produced evidence that he was the father, he declared her “more righteous than I.” And she was more righteous than him, but only in a relative sense. Both were attempting to rewrite the story of their lives apart from the Lord – Judah by trying to cover up his shame, and Tamar by trying to level up her injustices. But it didn’t work, only further isolating and dividing. Thankfully, God was writing their lives into a better story. Centuries later, their descendant Jesus would show a better way: We can be honest about our failures, trusting his blood to cover our shame, and we can petition him about our injustices, trusting him to vindicate and redeem in his timing.

Displaced and disheartened by suffering and loss, Naomi found life no longer sweet but bitter. Yet her condition did not have the final say. God was at work through many agents in Naomi’s life, even her own heart, and brought her back from death to life, from bitterness to joy, from emptiness to fullness. Naomi found sweet redemption from God through Ruth, Boaz and a son through whom would come utter joy.

The tenth commandment is the most explicitly heart-oriented of the ten commandments, and therefore almost impossible to keep. Powerful forces all around us institutionalize and reinforce coveting as the American Way of life. The alternative to coveting, however, is not to kill our desires, nor even simply to moderate them, but to direct them toward God himself. God never promises to fulfill all of our earthly desires, and there will always be inequality between people in this life, but he always delivers on his promise to give us more of himself. In order to want God more than anything else, we need Jesus to keep God’s Law perfectly for us, to bear the penalty of God’s law, and to replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. All this Jesus has done for us, pouring his own Holy Spirit into our lives, so that we can increasingly experience the Good Life he has made us to live.

The ninth commandment applies most directly to giving formal testimony in a legal context. In the ancient near east, most legal disputes were settled by appeal to two or three human witnesses, rather than documents, recordings or forensic evidence. Bearing false witness was an easy way to harm your enemies or advance your own interests. Today, the commandment extends naturally to any verbal misrepresentation of reality at the expense of other people. Because some forms of lying can actually protect other people, a Christian is called above all to “treasure” the truth. This means treating reality as a sacred trust, flowing from the trustworthy heart of God, which must be stewarded carefully for his glory and for the good of others. Every Christian inevitably fails to meet this standard in big and small ways, so we must continually return to the fountain of God’s grace. Jesus, the perfectly wise truth-teller, endured slander, mockery and false witnesses all the way to the cross, so that we could be forgiven. His Holy Spirit of Truth now lives in us, calling us to repentance and empowering us to change.