First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge

If God can restore to us the years the locusts have eaten, if he can make the barren woman the mother of many children, if he can bring dead hearts back to life, he can take the broken pieces and make you whole. That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt or that you’re less of a Christian because it does hurt. Rather, it gives meaning to the hurt. It gives eternal perspective even on the worst we could do. I...

Believers are not exempt from trials. They will come. They will show up at unexpected times. But if we've been listening to the words of Jesus, and doing what Jesus requires of us, guess what? When the storms blow, we will be able to stand because we built our lives upon the rock of Christ.

Jonah knew the truth, “You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” He just had to get on the right side of that truth. He had to move from anger and envy to worship and gratitude. How do you get out of yourself? Get into the LORD I AM. Sounds so simple. But it’s really hard! 

The moment we turn to him, he turns to us. We don’t need to be ignorant of this. He is the God of second chances. The Lord is gracious, slow to anger, full of steadfast love and mercy. Here’s news beyond hope for those blindly groping for God. Not only is he real, but he is also your heavenly Father who loves you and wants to restore you, forgive you and fill you with his eternal life. Believe him...

Jesus would bring a salvation beyond Jonah’s imagining. Jonah got rescued by a fish. The Son of God came and went three days and nights not only into the belly of a beast but into death and hell itself. Three days and nights he left this world. Then returned victorious to save the whole cosmos. Jonah spoke beyond his life to the truth of this story: salvation belongs to the LORD! What we most need...

For many of us, we simply try to wall off part of our minds and souls from God. We don’t speak honestly to our God. We keep very busy and avoid down time. We can even show up at worship and still keep a part of us tucked away. Our prayers are always buffered. We try to hold up “good” parts of ourselves and keep secrets from our Lord. Like that works! The effect on us, though, is that we become spi...

We all take the role of Lazarus. Not worth the King’s attention except that his name is Love. Not presentable in our rags with our sores oozing and showing, except that he has clothes of grace and healing ointments of mercy awaiting. We cannot charm him, cajole him, demand from him or connive his favors. We only trust that his words are true and meant for us.

It’s not just about me personally. It’s about the call to be a soil cultivator. To carry the water of love and mercy that softens hard, stony hearts. To risk getting pricked as you help others untangle from the thorns. To help people dig up the rocks and sink deeper roots. Changing soils is about our each becoming more devoted disciples. Fruitfulness is about helping others become devoted disciple...

The invitations are still out. It is not too late. When the king enters the hall, how will he find us? The classic hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock,” contains the lines, “O may I then be found, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” Christ Jesus has a graceful robe of rightness and wholeness and peace to give us. He wants us at the feast. So for heaven’s sake, put...

We celebrate today how a mother’s love is faithful, often hidden, persistent and ever hopeful. Good mothers reflect to all of us these qualities in our Lord. Our God seeking the lost coin of our humanity, got down on hands and knees to come find us. He laid aside his glory and took up the confines of flesh. He offered himself utterly, even to the last drop of blood on the cross.

We turn to the Word first and always on ourselves. Then, and only, then, out of our brokenness, out of the mercy we have received, out of our gratitude to God, do we dare to speak to others as God leads. In this way, we live within this text, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”

Psalm 110 directs us to a mighty king who brings peace, a priest who offers bread and wine and blessing. He already exists and yet is coming. He will share rule with the I AM himself. Remind you of anyone? This swirls our minds. But we need to realize the depth of the person of Jesus. To know him rightly, we need to see how Jesus alone pulls all the threads of Scripture together. He is our savior....

Sin isn’t a spiritual parking ticket, or a little too much dessert after a nice meal. Sin is adultery. It is a betrayal of our love, and a profoundly hurtful act. It’s saying we can be engaged to two fiancés at once, that the bloodshed, the life given up on our behalf is a laughable, somewhat provincial gift, and we’re trading it for the latest trending fashion to come across our phone. I’ve seen...

These terrible pains, these days of falling into dark wells, get used by our gracious Father to create resurrection hope in us. They are not punishments. Our Father does not delight in them with some perverse pleasure in our suffering. But he has provided a way that they need not destroy us. In fact, our broken hearts can open a path to becoming compassionate people. Uniting what has been done to...

Jesus is the cornerstone on which our new lives can be built. Jesus is also the rock of truth against which we can wreck our lives. This is true if you’ve never been a Christian, someone joined to Christ. You can continue on your own, and never solve guilt, never solve loneliness, never solve death. Or, you can cry out to Jesus, “Lord, save! Hosanna” and discover that he answers all those question...

Jesus understands fully our experiences of betrayals great and small. He knows the pain more deeply than anyone has ever felt. We can draw on the times we have been betrayed to connect to Jesus. To tell him we know a bit about what he was feeling. We can sorrow with him. We can tell him we would like to stay with him when others desert him. We share a bond of emotions with Jesus in his betrayal. B...

Jesus zeal for his Father led him to enter the city and bear the reproach of disappointing all those awaiting a military messiah. He who loved the Father with all his being would be slandered as a God-hater and a blasphemer. Jesus’ passion for his Father would lead him to take a heap of shame on his Father’s behalf.

God is light, salvation, and strength. The enemy may seem larger than life to us. But the enemy is not as big as our God. The LORD reigns. He is sovereign over all. Enemies can hurt us, no doubt. But on another level, they can’t hurt us. They can’t reach beyond this life to the next. They can’t make good come out of suffering. They can’t possess our peace, our faith and our love. #enemies #compani...

Jesus the Son is an imitator. Jesus does what he sees his Father doing. Jesus the man enacts the personality, the mission, the passion of his heavenly Father. In all he does, Jesus reproduces what he has seen his Father doing. That’s why Jesus can say such outrageously huge things about himself and not seem like an egotist. Because Jesus is not about himself. He is about his Father.

The gospels recount historical events in Jesus’ life. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not mere reports. Something else happens when we read that record in reliance on the Holy Spirit. These events from two thousand years ago become charged with present power. We meet the Jesus who lived then right now. These stories have immediate potency.

God designed our souls for Jesus. Not just a divine Father, and not just a human friend, but God himself in human flesh. God himself, in the person of his Son, becoming one of us — God with us, as fully God and fully man, in one spectacular person. #beautyofchrist #firstpresbyterianbr #sermon #revelation #lambofgod #lionofjudah

Do freely more than is asked because you do it for Jesus. Serve the ones who demand, assign and expect. Do the work with joy knowing that only Jesus is the boss of you. He asks that you serve as a gift to him. With a good will and a great joy, do whatever you are asked and more. It all counts. It’s all for him. That’s the secret. Serving Jesus makes you free in every situation.