Brownwood Church

Jesus' feeding of the 4,000 demonstrates our reliance on the work of God for provision and salvation, as opposed to the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who taught a self-reliance based on the work of their own hands.

When a Canaanite woman requests Jesus heal her daughter, he tells her He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and that it wasn't right to throw the children's bread to the dogs. As a Gentile, she had no right to the things of God, yet she cried out to the Son of David to have mercy on her. And in her great faith, she gives one of the most brilliant responses in all the gospels: t...

As the Pharisees formed and mandated their human traditions, they increasingly did so at the expense of God’s Word. When they confronted Jesus and His disciples about not observing the traditions of the elders, He demonstrated how they were invalidating the word of God for the sake of their tradition. Though much of our self-made religion seems impossible to let go of because it has functioned as...

In this prayer of David we see that God hears his people, he keeps the faithful in their trials, and even graciously calls the rebellious to repentance. In Psalm 4 we find that God is always ready to show his goodness to mankind, if they but trust in him.

Peter walked on the water because he was standing on the rock. As he stepped on to the Sea of Galilee, he had done what the other disciples hadn't: taken courage. But faith is not just a single step, and it wasn't until he was away from the boat that he began to fear the storm. He had already overcome the impossible and walked on the water, yet it was a mere storm that caused him to fear and doubt...

Jesus demonstrates His ability to multiply the little His disciples had for them to give to the crowds. As He instructs them to bring the 5 loaves and 2 fish to Him, He begins to continuously give back to them to be generous with the masses. What could have been a meager shared meal for the apostles is multiplied to fill the crowd and have enough left over for each apostle to take home a basket of...

As a true prophet, Jesus was rejected in His hometown and in His household among His relatives. In their natural understanding, the Nazarenes could only comprehend His humanity and missed His divinity even in light of His great wisdom and miracles. His townspeople thought Him ordinary, His family thought Him out of His mind, and His countryman thought Him a blasphemer. A true prophet! And more tha...

Just as God is revealed as Trinitarian at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in his baptism, He is revealed as Trinitarian at the end of His ministry in the great commission. In Jesus' baptismal formula, He commands His disciples to baptize in the singular name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can never be the forgotten Person of the Godhead if we know Scripture because He is...

In the incarnation, the eternal Son became what He was not without ceasing to be what He was. Through divine conception by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was demonstrated to be fully God. Being born of a woman, He was shown to be fully human. How would God suffer without a body? How could God be lifted up on a cross to die for our sins if He couldn't die?

The baptism of Jesus was the greatest manifestation of the Trinity in all of Scripture. God was heard as the Father spoke from heaven. God was touched as the Son entered the waters of baptism. God was beheld as heaven was opened and the Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove. In this moment, unlike ever before, God revealed His eternal Trinitarian relations to the world in the baptis...

How did we get the Bible as it exists today? Can we trust that it hasn't been changed over time? Are today's translations accurate to the original text? Join us as we equip Christians to answer all of these important questions, and to give believers a reasoned defense for their hope (1 Pet. 3:15).

From the first words of Scripture to the last, the one God has revealed Himself as Trinitarian: Father, Son, and Spirit. Without the Trinity, there is no creation, no salvation, and no redemption. There is no true God outside of the One who has revealed Himself as the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. This was concisely and precisely expressed in The Apostle's Creed, one of the earliest bapti...

Isaiah 55 offers us a uniquely New Testament perspective which God uses to invite us to greater urgency, better listening, and deeper soul satisfaction.

Jesus finishes his parabolic discourse with one last description of the kingdom as the result of a gathering and separation in the end. On one side of the separation is eternal joy and peace; on the other, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus combines these Old Testament imageries to describe the eternal misery awaiting all who are not clothed in His righteousness on that day. Now we as disciples...

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in this world. Some stumble onto treasures and others seek to find them, but none who find the great pearl of the kingdom sought it out. But when it is seen, the believer has found an eternal kingdom, a perfect King, a redeemed people, a new law, and a better land. And if we understand its value, we will gladly forsake the things we possess in this l...

Becoming a doer of the word (and not only a hearer) prevents us from being self-deceived and from our religion becoming stained by the world. The Puritans, perhaps more than any other people, went to the greatest lengths to ensure their religion remained pure and undefiled. Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet brilliantly saw through the tendencies in her day for religion to be corrupted by the world. The...

There is a blessedness to taking refuge in the unchanging God who saves.

We behold the glory of Christ by faith in this life and by sight in the next. We have difficulty by faith because we only perceive a reflection, are limited by our lack of faith, and are constantly losing sight of His glory as we are distracted by other earthly matters. In his last work, the great Puritan theologian and "Prince of the English Divines," John Owen, compiled his meditations and disco...

Isaiah prophesies of a Servant who would bring forth justice to the nations, yet do it without breaking a bruised reed or extinguishing a faintly-burning wick. The English Puritan Richard Sibbes wrote of the bruised reed as those who have been damaged by the effects of sin, and the smoking flax as those with only a spark of faith. Christ will not be the one to break the bruised reed or quench the...

Every circumstance in our life is given to us by God and intended at its exact time to mature us. If God desired to shape us in a different way, He would have placed different trials in our path. Scottish Covenanter Thomas Boston understood this as he wrote "The Crook in the Lot" during a volatile time of uncertainty among the Puritans. Boston knew that considering the crook in our lot as the work...

We will to do that which we desire, which is the great problem for sinful humanity. By nature, we are born into sin and imprisoned by it, so we must be set free by the One who was never bound by its shackles. The Puritans understood freedom the Biblical way, which was to the ability to worship and serve God. As many of the separatists fled the Church of England, they did so not to live any way the...

The Christian journey is a pilgrimage that begins by entering the narrow gate (Christ) and walking the narrow way (Christ) that leads to life. The wide gates through which many others enter and broad roads the masses walk all lead to destruction. In John Bunyan's allegorical dream of a believer's life, Christian must flee the City of Destruction, enter through the gate to which Evangelist points h...

Why do the nations set themselves against the only One impossible to defeat? David warns the kings of the earth to submit themselves to the King of Kings who was coming to take back what was rightfully His. We must kiss the Son, and pledge ultimate allegiance not to the nations, nor riches, nor men, horses, chariots, or the sword; but to the Lord's anointed, our only refuge.

Like a mustard seed that grows into a tree or leaven that spreads through flour, the kingdom is growing and spreading in the earth. Jesus' parables remind us that what He brought started small, yet assuredly continues to grow. This kingdom is hidden to our eyes, yet like leaven, affects all it touches as it spreads throughout all the earth.

It is tempting to try and uproot all the evil in the world, but impossible for us to do so without damaging what God has sown. In human attempts to rid the world of every evil historically, most only add to it. The world will be rid of all evil, but not until the Lord returns with His reapers to perfectly separate the wheat from the tares at the harvest.