First Baptist Church Las Colinas

A study of Galatians 5:22-24 on the fruit of the Spirit. Pastor Robert Rohlin makes a point the English hides, that the word fruit is singular, so this is one fruit with nine sections, like an orange, and not nine separate items to collect. It is also not our fruit but the Spirit's, produced in us rather than manufactured by us. He groups the nine into three for worship, three for outreach, and th...

Guest preacher Dale Thornton preaches on two of the best words in the Bible: but God. Ephesians 2 says we were dead in trespasses and sins, and then Paul turns the whole sentence with mercy that is rich and love that is great. Brother Thornton names the condition that made an intervention necessary, that we were dead, diverted, depraved, and doomed, and then walks the intervention itself as person...

A study of Galatians 5:13-21 on what Christian freedom is actually for. Paul says we were called to freedom, and then immediately guards it, because freedom is not an opening for the flesh but a reason to serve one another in love. Pastor Robert Rohlin spells out what the believer is free from, which is the guilt of sin, the penalty of sin, the daily power of sin, and the demands of the law. Then...

A Christmas message that takes apart the nativity scene most of us carry in our heads. Pastor Robert Rohlin shows what Scripture actually says and does not say, since there is no donkey, no innkeeper offering a stable, and the wise men came to a house rather than to the manger. Then he asks the question most Christmas sermons skip: why this particular manger, and why did it have to be this one? He...

A Christmas message from Galatians 5:1-12 on the freedom Christ purchased. Pastor Robert Rohlin connects it to the end of Galatians 4, where Isaac's birth to a woman long past childbearing age points ahead to the supernatural birth of Christ, and he calls that freedom the ultimate Christmas gift. The warning that follows is sharp. Paul says that a man who is circumcised in order to be justified ga...

A Christmas message from Galatians 5:1-12. Pastor Robert Rohlin ties the chapter back to the end of Galatians 4, where Isaac's birth to a ninety-year-old woman prefigures the supernatural birth of Christ, and he calls freedom in Christ the ultimate Christmas gift. Then comes the warning. Paul says that if a man is circumcised in order to be justified, Christ will profit him nothing, because adding...

A study of Galatians 4:21-30, where Paul uses Sarah and Hagar as an allegory of two covenants. Pastor Robert Rohlin explains the ancient rule that makes the point work, since the status of the mother settled the status of the son. Hagar was a slave, so Ishmael was born into slavery, while Sarah was free, so Isaac was born free and was the child of promise. The manner of conception mattered too, be...

A Thanksgiving message built on twelve reasons to thank God, drawn from Psalm 100. Pastor Robert Rohlin begins with the five kernels of corn some families still put beside each plate. That custom remembers the winter when the Pilgrims' rations fell to a few kernels a day and nearly half of them died before spring. He tells how they kept giving thanks for what little they had, how Squanto taught th...

A study of Galatians 4:1-11 on the difference between a slave and an heir. Paul compares living under the law to a child under guardians and managers until the date his father has set, which is exactly what the law was doing until Christ arrived. Pastor Robert Rohlin presses the question the passage raises: are you still living like a slave when God has already made you an heir? He spends time on...

A study of Galatians 3:19-29 that answers an obvious question. If the law never justified anyone, why did God give it at all? Pastor Robert Rohlin lays out Paul's answer, that the law was added because of transgressions, to show us our sin and to restrain it, the way a speed limit does. He works through 1 Timothy 1, where Paul says the law is good when it is used lawfully, and it was never given f...

A study of Galatians 3:13-18. Pastor Robert Rohlin starts with the hardest sentence in the passage, that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Then he turns to the argument Paul builds on a single letter. The promise was made to Abraham and to his seed, singular, not seeds, and that seed is Christ...

Please note: the recording for this service did not capture. Every audio and video file from that Sunday morning contains room noise only, with no speech on it. This has been verified twice, by two separate transcription engines on different hardware, and both returned no speech at any point in the recording. The message itself was "Faith or Law," the fourth in the study through Galatians, working...

A study of Galatians 2:11-21, where Paul opposes Peter to his face in Antioch. Peter had been eating with Gentile believers until men from the circumcision party arrived, and then he pulled back out of fear and led others into the same hypocrisy. Pastor Robert Rohlin sets that against Peter's own rooftop vision in Acts 10, where God told him plainly not to call unclean what God had cleansed. The c...

Part of the series Living Before the Audience of One. Paul answers the Judaizers by pointing to his own testimony: his message came not from men but by the direct revelation of Jesus Christ. An autobiographical apologetic of authority, and a portrait of what amazing grace does to a persecutor.

The opening message in Galatians. Paul asserts his apostleship and pronounces a curse on any perverted gospel, because there is only one gospel and only one audience that matters. A study of the four things false religions do: add to the Bible, multiply salvation requirements, subtract from the deity of Christ, and divide the body of Christ.

A short message on 1 Corinthians 14:15, where Paul says he will pray with the spirit and pray with the understanding also. Pastor Robert Rohlin walks through why the mind cannot be left out of prayer, since a man praying without understanding does not know what he is asking for. He explains the difference between body, soul, and spirit, and describes the soul, the seat of mind, will, and emotions,...

The closing message in a study of Jude, covering verses 16 through 25. Jude describes the ungodly bluntly as grumblers and faultfinders who follow their own desires, speak swelling words, and flatter people for advantage. Then he turns to the believers with four things to do: build yourselves up in your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, and look for the...

The closing message in a study of Jude, covering verses 16 through 25. Jude sums up his warning by describing the ungodly as grumblers and faultfinders who follow their own desires, speak pompous words, and flatter people for advantage. Then he turns to believers with four commands: build yourselves up in your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, and look f...

A study of Jude 12-16, where Jude stops describing false teachers gently and starts naming them. They are hidden reefs at the love feasts, clouds without water, autumn trees without fruit and twice dead, wild waves foaming out their own shame, and wandering stars. Pastor Robert Rohlin unpacks each image and then turns to the prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, about the Lord arriving with te...

The opening message in a study of Jude. Jude was the half brother of Jesus and the brother of James, the senior elder at Jerusalem, and he could have opened his letter with either connection. Instead he calls himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Pastor Robert Rohlin explains what that word carried in Israel, where a servant who loved his master could refuse his freedom in the seventh year and ha...

The second message in a study of Jude. Jude had planned to write about the salvation believers share, and changed course because certain men had crept in unnoticed, turning the grace of God into license and denying the Lord who bought them. Pastor Robert Rohlin works through the three examples Jude uses as warnings: Israel delivered out of Egypt and then destroyed for unbelief, the angels who left...

A study of Jude 1-7. Pastor Robert Rohlin spends real time on the word Jude chose for himself, bondservant, and on the Old Testament law behind it, where a servant who loved his master could stay for life and have his ear pierced at the doorpost as the sign of it. He also reads the law's requirement that a bondservant be treated with dignity rather than harshness. Then he turns to Jude's three des...

A study of 3 John. The letter is written to Gaius, and John opens by praying that he would prosper and be in health, just as his soul prospers. Pastor Robert Rohlin stops there to correct a common misuse of that verse, since it is not a promise of money and good health to anyone whose walk with God is right. He moves on to what actually gave John joy, which was hearing that his children were walki...

A study of 2 John, the short letter John writes to the chosen lady and her children. Pastor Robert Rohlin explains who that lady most likely is, a local church pictured as part of the bride of Christ, which is why the letter reads like a note to a family. John's joy is simple: he found some of her children walking in the truth. Along the way Pastor Rohlin draws a useful line between flattery and p...

A study of Philippians 3:1-16. Paul lists the credentials that once made him confident, circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless as to the righteousness in the law. Then he counts every bit of it as loss, and calls it rubbish, for the sake of knowing Christ. Pastor Robert Rohlin works the passage in four movements: the wrong basis for con...