First Baptist Church Las Colinas

A message from 1 Timothy 1:11-17, where Paul describes what he used to be: a blasphemer, a persecutor, and by his own reckoning the chief of sinners. Pastor Robert Rohlin sets that testimony beside a modern one, Reza Safa, a former radical Shi'ite Muslim who came to faith in Christ, and gives a good portion of the message to the origins and early history of Islam. The point he keeps driving at is...

Guest preacher Dale Thornton opens the book of Amos. Amos was a sheep breeder from Tekoa who later told the priest Amaziah plainly that he was no prophet and no prophet's son. Brother Thornton sets the timeline, the reign of Uzziah in Judah and Jeroboam II in Israel, two years before the earthquake, and reads the opening line where the Lord roars from Zion. The point he draws out is that God does...

A study of Isaiah 11. Pastor Robert Rohlin works first through Isaiah 10, where God calls Assyria the rod of His anger and uses a pagan empire to discipline His own people, then holds that empire accountable for its pride. Israel's leaders had written unjust laws, stripped the weak of their rights, and preyed on widows and orphans, and judgment followed. But the judgment is discipline and not dest...

Part two of a study on the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-17. Pastor Robert Rohlin makes a point that is easy to miss: the command to be strong is passive in the Greek, so the believer receives strength rather than manufacturing it. He also notes that Paul never hands one piece of armor to one Christian and a different piece to another. Each of us puts on all of it, because the armor is the whole...

The opening message on the armor of God in Ephesians 6:10-17. No soldier walks onto a battlefield without armor, and Pastor Robert Rohlin argues that Christians face a field more dangerous than any earthly one. He works through the first movement of the passage, which is to seek the Savior's strength, since being strong is something the believer receives rather than produces. He also insists on th...

A message on cultural decline and the hope that answers it. Pastor Robert Rohlin uses Cole Porter's 1934 song Anything Goes as a marker of the moment moral relativism took hold in American culture, and then tells Porter's own story, which ended in depression, illness, and a refusal of faith to the last. His secretary's remark becomes the image for the whole message, that without faith a person is...

A message on materialism, treated as one of the marks of the last days. Pastor Robert Rohlin opens with Warren Buffett, who still lives in the Omaha house he bought in 1958, as evidence that wealth and materialism are not the same thing. He works through the command in Matthew 6 to stop storing up treasure where moth and rust destroy, and Paul's warning that in the last days men will be lovers of...

A Mother's Day message built around Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. Hannah could not have children in a culture that read barrenness as a curse, and she had to live alongside a second wife who taunted her for it. Pastor Robert Rohlin follows her to the tabernacle, where she prayed so hard the priest thought she was drunk, and where she vowed to give the child back to God if God gave her one. The portrait he...

Part one of a message asking where America stands with God. Pastor Robert Rohlin starts at the top of the Washington Monument, where the words Laus Deo, praise be to God, are cut into the aluminum tip that the morning sun strikes first, put there for God to see rather than for people. He works down through the cornerstone, which holds a Bible among its buried items, into the question Peter Marshal...

A study of Revelation 18 and the fall of Babylon. Pastor Robert Rohlin opens with the Titanic, called practically unsinkable by her own builders and owners, who kept her near full speed through an ice field with the lookouts' binoculars locked away ashore. Two hours and forty minutes after the collision she was gone. That is the picture he sets against Revelation 18, where a world system that beli...

A message that puts Psalm 6 next to 1 Corinthians 15. Pastor Robert Rohlin points out that of the sixty-six books of the Bible, sixty-five are God speaking to man, and one, the Psalms, is man speaking to God. Psalm 6 is one of the rawest of them, a man flooding his bed with tears and asking God how long. The message treats lament as worship rather than weakness, and brings in Elijah under the broo...

The second part of a study on Ezekiel 38 and 39. The question Pastor Robert Rohlin takes up is whether the Bible actually points to Russia here, and he is careful with the answer. The Hebrew word rosh in Ezekiel 38:2 most likely means chief or head rather than being a proper name, and he warns plainly against identifying Meshech with Moscow or Tubal with Tobolsk just because the words sound alike....

The opening message on Ezekiel 38 and 39, the prophecy of Gog and Magog. Pastor Robert Rohlin works through who the players actually are, starting with Gog, which is most likely a title rather than a personal name, in the same way Pharaoh or Caesar is a title. He walks the list of allies Ezekiel names, Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth Togarmah, and asks which nations sit on those lands today. He...

A study of Daniel 7 and the vision of four beasts rising out of the sea. Pastor Robert Rohlin sets it beside Daniel 2, and the contrast is the whole point. In chapter 2 the world empires appear as a majestic statue, which is how man sees them, while in chapter 7 the same empires are savage animals, which is how God sees them. He identifies the four as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, then s...

Guest preacher Dale Thornton preaches on two of the best words in the Bible: but God. Ephesians 2 says we were dead in trespasses, and then Paul turns the sentence with mercy that is rich and love that is great. Brother Thornton spells out the condition that made an intervention necessary, that we were dead, diverted, depraved, and doomed, and then walks the intervention itself as personal, precio...

Pastor Robert Rohlin examines Daniel's dream in Daniel 7 and shows what will be happening in Europe during the end times and how you can see Europe's recent history carrying out Daniel's prophecy. In one respect, it is frightening to see how Europe and other parts of our world are being set up to make way for the reign of the antichrist. But in another way, we can take comfort that God has already...

A prophetic study of Israel's place in God's plan. Pastor Robert Rohlin builds it around May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion stepped to a podium in the Tel Aviv Art Museum at four o'clock and read the declaration that created the State of Israel, and around Harry Truman signing American recognition eleven minutes later. He sets that day beside Isaiah 66:8, which asks whether a nation can be born i...

Guest preacher Dale Thornton preaches Ephesians 3:1-11 on the mystery of the gospel. Paul writes as a prisoner in Rome awaiting trial before Nero, and Brother Thornton makes the point that every Christian has two addresses, one on earth and one in Christ. The mystery Paul was given to announce is that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the same promise, something h...

Guest preacher Dale Thornton preaches Ephesians 2:8-9 on grace. Grace is one of the most common words in Christian conversation, and Brother Thornton argues that is exactly why it gets misunderstood. He sets a dictionary definition beside the Bible's own, the unmerited favor of God shown to lost sinners, and shows that the mystery of grace lies in its simplicity. It is by grace through faith, and...

Pastor emeritus Dale Thornton talks about his favorite subject -- GRACE -- about which he preached as a missionary in Taiwan for 40 years.

A study of Genesis 11:31 through 12:5 about a family that stopped short. God called Abram out of Ur to a land He would show him, but Terah led the family only as far as Haran and settled there, and there he died. Pastor Robert Rohlin uses that detour to ask what kind of legacy a father leaves, and he names the pastors in his own family line who shaped the generations after them. Children are bless...

Pastor Robert Rohlin is passionate about his responsibilities as a father and grandfather. He has 8 children and 21+ grandchildren at the time of this sermon. In this sermon, he uncovers a mathematical difference about the age of a patriarch between Old and New Testament accounts and how it reveals to us that we can lose our spiritual legacy when we fail to obey God or take a detour from His revea...

An expository study of Galatians 6:11-17, the close of the letter. Paul takes the pen from his scribe and finishes in his own large handwriting, which Pastor Robert Rohlin treats as Paul underlining the point rather than as a note about his eyesight. The men pushing circumcision on the Galatians wanted a good showing in the flesh and wanted to avoid persecution for the cross. Paul answers that he...

A study of Galatians 6:1-10. Paul tells the spiritual ones to restore a brother caught in a trespass, and the word he uses is the word for setting a broken bone. Pastor Robert Rohlin holds on to that image, because a bone is set gently and with the aim of healing, and the same verse warns the one doing the setting to watch himself. From there the passage moves to bearing one another's burdens, to...

A study of Galatians 5:24 through 6:1 on living by the Spirit. Pastor Robert Rohlin starts with what is already settled, that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh, a decisive act completed at conversion rather than a project we are still working on. Sin was not made inactive when we received Christ, but it was judged and paid for, and the believer is told to reckon that true. The me...