Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church

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 reali...

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 possibili...

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 ou...

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 hi...

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’ cravi...

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 o...

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...

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...

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 expe...

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...

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 dee...

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. H...

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...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 no...