Bartimaeus Baptist Temple

In this age of technology, we aren't writing many actual letters. Some of us even find them to be a nuisance. I have often joked that I plan to put a paper shredder in place of my mail box and save myself a step. But a letter can be a thing of great value. Much of what we know of our nation's history comes from the letters written by the people who made that history. They reveal the personality an...

Drawing from Romans 15:7-13, Pastor Larry unpacks Paul’s powerful call: “Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.” Through this passage, we see Christ as the servant who fulfilled God’s promises to Israel and extended mercy to the Gentiles, fulfilling Old Testament prophecies that all nations would praise the Lord and find hope in Him. You’ll discover: Ho...

One survey has identified as many as 50,000 distinct Christian groups who in some way distinguish themselves from others. This number is disheartening to those who feel that we should all be one. That is after all what Jesus Himself prayed (John 17:11.) That particular study named even small congregations of people, and accepted their self-identification as Christian, so the number of groups with...

We highly value our freedom in the United States, but what does freedom mean? Is it absolute? That would be chaos. With freedom comes responsibility. It is as true in our public life as it is in our personal lives. As Christians, we often speak of our freedom in Christ. We are not in bondage to sin. We are not in bondage to a set of rules that could never save us. But does that mean we can do as w...

Sometimes we seem determined to find fault.  I think often this is an unconscious defense against the flaws we see in our own character, but whatever the reason, it’s a destructive tendency.  As we continue through our study of Paul's letter to the believers in Rome, we come to Romans 14:1-12. This passage addresses issues specific to the people and time when it was written, but it contains useful...

We are continuing our study with Romans 13:8-14. Paul has provided teaching and instruction on everything from the basics of Christian theology to its application in our daily lives, and he is not finished yet. It may seem overwhelming, but in this passage he makes it simple, though in application it is anything but. He wraps it all up this way. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; fo...

Chapter 13 of Romans begins with a statement that may be hard for us to swallow.  Most of us recognize the need for law and order and don’t have a problem with the idea that we should submit to proper authority, but what about the next part?  The end of verse 1 reads, “there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”  How can that be?  How can a government that...

This week's study takes us through Roman 12:14-21. Paul continues teaching us what a living sacrifice looks like. Now we've come to some of the harder parts, especially that stuff about blessing people who mistreat us and doing good to our enemies. But if we look to Jesus as our example, we see that these are the things He did. He called out sin, especially hypocrisy, but he also uttered these fam...

In Romans 12:9-13, Paul is continuing his teaching about what a living sacrifice looks like. Verse 9 begins, “Let love be without hypocrisy—by…” I only found one version, the Legacy Standard Bible, that reads this way. I admit to not knowing Greek, but a bit of research suggests that this is how it should read. Now a series of loosely connected exhortations becomes connected to a purpose. Let your...

What does it mean to be a living sacrifice? How can we renew our minds and thus be transformed? These are the first two instructions we find as Paul moves from theology lesson to application (Romans 12:1-2.) In the last message we explored what they mean and how we might begin to follow them, but we really don't have to guess. Paul is going to tell us. The short version might be put this way. Get...