Buffalo City Church

Caleb Drahosh \\ In these verses, God turns to address Adam. Adam bears the most responsibility for the introduction of sin into the world because he received the Word of God directly and yet he rebelled. And so God's creative order was fully disrupted. As a result, God cursed the ground so that Adam's charge to have dominion over creation would be riddled with pain and difficulty. And then we're...

Caleb Drahosh \\ In this verse, God addresses the woman. Two things are disrupted here for Eve. First, she will experience pain in childbearing. And secondly, she will be drawn to usurp her husband's leadership. Two of the great blessings given to Eve––displayed in marriage and childbearing––are now laden with difficulty because of Eve's rebellion. Nevertheless, God's promise to Eve is intact: her...

Caleb Drahosh \\ In this text, God turns and addresses the serpent. The serpent disrupted God's created order by assuming a position over God's image bearers, and so God curses him. But within the curse there is an incredible promise––God intended to send Jesus to crush the serpent's head and restore that which would be lost because of sin.

Caleb Drahosh \\ After the man and woman sin, God shows up. They hide, but God finds them. And rather than confess their sin, Adam and Eve seek to justify themselves. God does not deal with Adam and Eve harshly however; He kindly draws them out. In Romans 2, Paul says that it's the kindness of God that brings us to repentance. We regularly shift the blame for our sin off of ourselves, but even sti...

By Samantha Culliton

Caleb Drahosh \\ The first seven verses of Genesis 3 describe for us the events through which sin is introduced into the world. The serpent deceives the woman by making counterclaims to the God's commands given in Genesis 2, effectively undermining the belief in God's generosity and goodness. As a result, the woman takes and eats of the tree and shares with Adam, who in willful rebellion, also eat...

Caleb Drahosh \\ God made man in His image to represent and reflect Him in creation, to work and keep the garden, and to establish families which would continue to carry out God's purposes. And although sin would enter the world in Genesis 3, Jesus came to earth and lived as the new and better Adam; He would carry out God's purposes in creation perfectly. And He would become the way that we are br...

Caleb Drahosh \\ After creating everything in chapter 1, Genesis 2:1-3 records God resting from His work. Once the work is finished, God sets aside a day for the purpose of rest and He also welcomes His people into rest. We are commanded to set a special day aside each week for the express purpose of worshiping together as God's people. While our work here on earth doesn't end, God's creation work...

Caleb Drahosh \\ Once the stage is set in 1:1-2, God speaks into existence everything that exists. God chooses to create through His word and everything that He creates by His word He calls good. On the sixth day, God created man and woman in His image. Humans are created beings, made from dust, and yet bear the Imago Dei. We see the power and grace of God, demonstrated in His word.

Caleb Drahosh \\ The first few verses of the Bible introduce us to a Creator God. We find in Genesis 1:1-2 the story of how things began, not just a take on it, but the objective truth: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." God is the main character of the Bible––His creative acts are what begin His story. We are woven into this story and we find all that we are in who He is.

Caleb Drahosh \\ What is the result of the inbreaking of Jesus into our world at Christmas? The result is the complete certainty of the promise of the realization of hope. Our hope is that God, through the atoning work of Jesus, will set things back to the way that they were originally intended. We often settle for lesser hopes—the weekend, a vacation, a clean bill of health. But God is diligently...

Caleb Drahosh \\ When we act sinfully, we are prone to shift the blame; we seek to justify our actions and attitudes. But just shifting the blame onto others or self-justifying can't actually deal with the underlying problem. Isaiah knows that sin and guilt are the problems and the only way that these can be dealt with is through substitutionary sacrifice. So he introduces us to the Servant, Jesus...

Caleb Drahosh \\ We long for things to be right in our world. We desire the end of conflict, injustice, exploitation, pain, suffering, and fear; we desire to find rest, security, satisfaction, and wholeness. In short, we long for Shalom––the realization of all of these desires. But who has the power to bring about Shalom? God does and He does it through Jesus Christ. What does Shalom look like? It...

Sermon audio starts at 1:03:53 Caleb Drahosh \\ God's jealousy is our joy. Isaiah writes in 9:7 that it is the zeal––or the jealousy––of the Lord that will accomplish God's purposes. God’s purpose is to passionately acquire that which is rightfully His: glory, honor, praise, and worship. Because of sin, things aren’t right, but God is bent on making things right. And when God acts on His jealousy,...

Caleb Drahosh \\ Disciples are hearers and doers. They are men and women who are strengthened by grace, prepared to suffer the loss of all things, and are continually remembering and meditating on God and what He has done on their behalf in Christ as revealed in Scripture. As those who humbly see themselves as part of Jesus’ story and not their own, disciples naturally make disciples by pointing o...

***Sermon Audio starts at 1:26:30 Blaze Culliton // Being radical in mission requires an understanding of the mission: to bear witness to Jesus Christ as fulfillment of the Scriptures in the immediate community and abroad. Or in other words to make disciples who make disciples of Jesus Christ. As followers of Christ and members of the local church, we have been given the knowledge, understanding a...

Caleb Drahosh \\ God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit set the precedent for the fellowship we strive for as a community of faith. The Triune God is three distinct persons, but possess one unequivocally unified nature. We both recognize that those who comprise the local church are created in the image of God and therefore seek to reflect the divine unity of the Godhead, and also inhabit...

Mark Reeves \\ God’s pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in him are one and the same pursuit. God’s quest to be glorified and our quest to be satisfied reach their goal in this one experience: our delight in God, which overflows in praise. As Buffalo City Church, we desire to be faithful in worship. Faithfulness in participation in the weekly worship gathering is a sure indicator...

Caleb Drahosh \\ The Word of God, the 66 books that make up the Old and New Testament, is given to us in order that we might know God and know what He requires. It is without error, inspired by God, and is the basis for all of preaching, teaching, discipleship, and evangelism. As Buffalo City Church, Scripture is our foundation. It is given to us so that we might be taught, reproved, corrected, an...

Caleb Drahosh \\ The Gospel is the good news that despite our sin and sinfulness, God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to live a life of perfect obedience and to die the death that we deserve––the righteous for the unrighteous––so that if we trust Jesus and turn from our sin we will be saved. As Buffalo City Church, this truth must be central: it is not our performance that saves us, but it's the wor...

Caleb Drahosh \\ At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, we find the voice that introduced the Preacher in 1:1. This voice gives us insight into the whole duty of man: to fear God and keep His commandments. We fear God and keep His commands by first delighting in the formational, firm, and final Word of Truth.

Caleb Drahosh \\ While life includes the cheer of youth, the Preacher is urging us to be reminded of our mortality – exhibited by the evidences of old age and death – as a way to remember our Creator and rejoice in our youth. We remember our Creator in light of the truth of the Gospel and what Christ has done on our behalf, overcoming sin and death so that our future is not defined by vanity of yo...

Caleb Drahosh \\ We often choose the things we do based on return on investment. Conversely, the Preacher tells us that we should "cast our bread upon the waters." When it comes to following Jesus, we should invest all that we are and all that we have boldly, wisely, and faithfully––even when the risk seems too high. Why can we confidently invest this way? Because the results are up to God and the...

John Baumgartner \\ Even though wisdom cannot ultimately solve the problem caused by sin, which is death, it does prevent the pervasiveness of sin and help one live a godly life. The Preacher gives us this list of proverbs to train us in wisdom. And while we cannot live so wisely as to escape life under the sun, Christ lived in perfect wisdom. Because He suffered life under the sun and tasted deat...

Caleb Drahosh \\ Our society often applauds those who do big, fast, and notable things. The Preacher shows us that a life that is approved by God is content doing small, slow, and anonymous things. By taking the practical steps to slow down, stay small, and embrace anonymity we will grow in our ability to live into God-approved activities: eating joyfully, drinking merrily, celebrating enthusiasti...