First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge

Serving God requires faith and commitment. Are we willing to say, “Here am I, send me,” no matter the cost? This verse comes from a powerful moment in the book of Isaiah where the prophet has a vision of God’s holiness and majesty. After experiencing God’s presence and receiving forgiveness for his sins, Isaiah responds to God’s call.

Jesus takes the public stage of his redeeming ministry as the guest rabbi in his hometown of Nazareth. He will now beat back the darkness, still the madness in our brains, overcome the disease unravelling our bodies, forgive the sins that destroy our relationships, and gather home the lost sheep and wandering children. Before his Father calls the whole thing to a halt, there is this season of merc...

How do you face temptation and the devil? With the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We go to work, every day, to learn the signs, so that when everything is swirling, we can still see what’s going on. The commandments of God are not for the times that are easy, when we know what to do. His Word is precisely for the times when things are not clear.

Like John the Baptist and those gathered on the riverbank, we need to hear afresh that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. We need to decide if God is true. For in order to experience the kingdom, we need to prepare our hearts to long for the things of God. We need to have a posture of surrender so that when the Spirit speaks to us about our actions or our heart, we are quick to say, “Yes, Lord. Not...

As the years rolls by and as the Spirit works in you, you should not only experience a greater degree of victory over sin but also an increased hatred for sin. Some of you, as you’ve grown, have come to realize that with each passing year you learn to trust yourself less and less. It can actually feel, in this case, like sin is becoming more of a problem. But maybe your sin problem seems bigger no...

This Christmas, each one of us will have a chance to make the words true for someone else. We can be the proof in the gospel declaration, “The Son of God has made us his kinfolk forever. He wants us with him always. The baby in the manger means, ‘It is good, so good, that you exist.’

The cross is the tree of life restored to us. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reaches backwards in time as well as forwards. He redeemed the people of God who lived before him, who awaited him, though they only knew him in shadows and yearning. In taking all our death upon himself, Jesus reaches back to the very beginning of our human living and dying. In taking the hell due to us, Jesu...

The God who flung galaxies across the field of space will touch, personally and directly, each eye that cries. He will take tears as his own. The God who hears the thunderous cataract of the multitude in praise, attunes to each sigh of his beloved. He attends to us like a father, like a spouse, like a friend. This is our God. We feel him do this from time to time in these dark days. Sometimes by t...

Every worship service between now and Jesus' return is like an engagement party. All the guests come. Everyone anticipates the wedding that will be. So confident are we that the groom will keep his pledge, that we dance with abandon. We lift up our voices in joy. We let our hearts swell for the wedding day that will be here soon, oh, so very soon.

No matter how much theology I read, I cannot scrub out the clear warning in passages like this one from Revelation. There is a judgment. There will be a lake of fire. No can survive it on his own merits. Jesus, however, has made a way. Will we answer his call and rely on him alone?

Jesus comes down fully into the deathliness of our lives so that he can raise us fully into his everlasting life. That life can begin now. He asks that we let him join the song of our life to the mighty song of his life. He wants to take our out of tune, discordant, even grating song and tune it to his satisfying symphony.

So pervasive will be the beast’s power, so seductive its promises, that the whole world will be deceived. Everyone except one group. Those whose names have been written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. That is, those who come to faith in Jesus, a faith that carries on even when the whole world has gone astray. 

The revolution that became the Protestant Church was the discovery that Scripture teaches us to rely on Christ alone. We depend solely on the merits of Christ. I merit nothing. I am joined to Christ by faith, so that his merits become my own, and I am free from having to work for spiritual rewards. Jesus is good enough on my behalf. Now I can joyfully respond in thanks by living for Jesus’ whose m...

 The Church appears as a guttering and flickering flame in the West. But, this is the hour to which you have been called. For such an hour, the Church needs strength, courage, boldness, an unwavering confidence and a steady gaze to conquer. We must not fear to look into the eyes of the beast, clearly proclaiming the truth, genuinely imitating the pattern placed before us. And, come what may, our h...

Paul expresses several times a joyful loop of giving in Corinthians. God gave his only Son to the world in Jesus Christ. Believers receive that gift of mercy with our whole hearts. We give thanks for such grace. At the very same time that we do, we get sent into ministry. God gives. We give. And then the recipients give thanks back to God for the love and salvation we shared. God gets glorified. T...

The multitude of believers arrive before the throne out of the great tribulation of life in a rebellious and wayward world. This is the communion of the saints. All believers of all times and places gather from every tribe and corner of the earth. With one voice, their differences are universally translated into harmony, adorned in brilliant robes. These dazzling robes are lives washed white in th...

Many commentators believe the horsemen of Revelation 6 represent God’s removing of his restraints on human depravity. Our natural tendencies get to progress without being checked. We lust and covet. We seek to acquire and possess. We hurt and kill each other to get it or protect it. A balanced peaceful life and economy disappear. The weak get trampled first, then the rest. Death has a field day. A...

Lesser gods are not worthy. But the Lamb who was slain and yet lives, he is the one who opens the scroll. He is the one who staked his life on a redeeming future. To the degree that we join our hearts and voices to his worship, our faith will flourish. And to the degree that are our faith flourishes, we will live in peace and hope. And to the degree we live in such trust, the world will be drawn t...

At the top of a rollercoaster, you see the entire park laid out before you. Revelation is the same, laying all of the previous books of the Bible out before us and firing our imagination with a vision that will exhilarate us through all of the shaking and rolling in life that will come.

Lukewarm is the problem Christ Jesus found with the church in Laodicea. You know the feeling when you pick up the wrong cup, and you get day old swill? That’s what the Lord was feeling about the church in Laodicea. Bland. Inoffensive and uninspiring. Such independence of course generated not only the good pride of being responsible but the bad pride of needing no one, of not being challenged, of g...

First love doesn’t have to be cartwheels and euphoria. But recovering first love means keeping a line open and clear between where it all started and where you are now. It means scribbling a little star at the bottom of a page or on a bulletin, or even finding a star emoji so you can tell your Lord Jesus, “I really like you. I have for so long. I still do.”

The letters to the angels of the churches call us to examine our lives. What are we putting ahead of Christ? What good things are we substituting for him? What compromises have we agreed to make with the empire? How might we be keeping a true faith and yet colluding with destruction?

The sight was so overwhelming that John fell down on his face like a dead man. But Jesus, in his tender mercy, put his right hand on John’s head, and spoke the words we hear God and angels say to trembling humanity throughout the Bible, “Fear not.” In other words, don’t be afraid, John. It’s me, your Jesus. I have not come to destroy you. But to give you a glimpse of my glory and power so that you...

You can dismiss Jesus. You can ignore him. You can try to say he didn’t say what he said. You can try to wave away this talk of resurrection as the fantasies of fools. But you will see him. You will see him whom you pierced. And it will cut you to the heart to know you got it wrong about Jesus. Of course, that truth does not allow believers to be smug. They too will look on him whom they pierced....