Hill Country Bible Church Dripping Springs Sermons

Temptation is anything that promises satisfaction in place of obedience to God. God is faithful and will always provide a way out.

The devil's main strategy against you is lies. Spiritual Warfare is first and foremost about the war to believe truth over lies.

In the first century, the cross represented shameful, torturous death. Yet Paul points to Jesus’ redeeming work on the cross as the only source of confidence in a Christian’s life.

A life led by the Holy Spirit produces personal fruit (Galatians 5:22-23a). However, His influence does not end there. He leads us in Christian community as well.

While grace seems “stunningly free”, we do not have the option to walk our own path. We are called to be led by the Holy Spirit. We follow His lead in the spiritual war for believers that continues between our flesh (human nature) and His desires.

Gospel transformation is different from moral reformation. Gospel transformation is centered on Jesus’ redeeming work. Moral reformation depends on individual effort. One leads to a motivation from freedom and the other is motivated by fear.

Scripture teaches us that we keep our freedom in Christ through faith in the Gospel. Reverting to reliance on our own means leads to slavery, not salvation.

It is easy to replace one for of slavery for another or to desire to go back to what was once familiar and "safe". Paul reminds us to push forward in grace.

We cannot over-emphasize the importance of the doctrine of justification, for every follower of Christ needs a strong understanding of this biblical teaching. But justification is not the end of the gospel. In fact, it may not even be the greatest truth in the gospel. The doctrine of justification makes us right before God the judge, but in the doctrine of adoption we are loved by God the Father.

Salvation comes through a promise from God and therefore cannot come from keeping the law. Then why the law? Paul explains promise and law in this passage.

Most Christians understand imputed righteousness (we are declared righteous by God through faith in Jesus) but we struggle to understand imparted righteousness (living a righteous life). We must understand that the same thing that saves us also keeps us.

Legalism leads to fear and fear leads to hypocrisy. Our hypocrisy condemns us but grace justifies us.

We must contend for the purity of the gospel and never compromise a single point. Anything we add or subtract from the gospel makes it no gospel at all.

In this passage the amazing, powerful, counter-intuitive grace of God is on display. Paul gives us a picture of God's transforming grace by relating his own story. Paul was transformed by his encounter with Jesus.

Paul writes to churches that are being tempted to trade the simplicity of the gospel for a false message of works. We need to learn how to recognize legalism in our lives and fight against it with the truth of the gospel.

How do you find joy in trials? Habakkuk has discovered the secret and leads us to the answer.

This week we looked at Habakkuk 3 where we are called to rely on God, remember who He is and rejoice in Him. In doing that we learn to look up to God instead of our circumstances.

If God is infinite, sovereign, all-powerful, all knowing and can do whatever He pleases, then what do we do with pain, suffering, loss and hurt? What do we do with those things since God is good and He is sovereign and those things exist? The Bible says we’ll have one of two reactions to that kind of thing.

What does it mean "to wait on the Lord"? How do we do that in the midst of struggles and suffering?

In moments of hardships and trials, we are going to have questions. Habakkuk show us that we can bring these questions and complaints to God. What we can’t do is come puffed up before God when his ways don’t make sense. We are not peers. We cannot take the position that God must do things in our understanding.

When our circumstances overwhelm us, when God's promises seem unfulfilled, where do we turn? For starters, we long for answers: Why, God? It is a question we have all asked at one time but it is not a new question.

The resurrection means that moving from darkness to light is possible.

How does prayer fit into the armor of God and spiritual warfare?