Sunday Service

In the book of Romans the apostle Paul is going to explain to his readers the gospel, the good news in how an unrighteous human can become a righteous man. How somebody who is not right with God can be made right with God. That's the gospel. And Paul breaks the book of Romans up into four sections. The first section is all about 1. The wrath of God. Chapter 1:18 to chapter 3:20. 2. The grace of Go...

Like a good prosecution attorney Paul is verse by verse systematically laying the groundwork to show that every person is guilty before God. You recall in chapter 1 verse 18 Paul started his case for the worlds guilt dealing with the obvious guilty people, those who would claim there is no God, the pagan and the heathen who do not worship God but instead worship creation. Starting there was an exc...

How many by a show of hands have ever heard the expression, “Be careful when you point your finger at someone else because when you do you have three fingers pointing right back at you.” Here in chapter 2 we are studying the bad news of the gospel. If we didn’t have bad news there would be no need for good news. Chapters 1-3 removes the argument that we just live and die and that there are not con...

You recall that the theme of Romans is “the righteousness of God.” That's the theme of the whole book, the righteousness of God; or put another way, how to get right with God. Whether you're Jew, Gentile, religious, not religious, poor, rich, or anything in between, Romans teaches how anyone can be made right with God.

When you look around the world today what do you see? Let people answer out loud…. You know what God sees? God sees potential… God sees opportunity.

Last week we began a new series in the book of Romans titled, “Made Right” as the apostle Paul lays out for us the Gospel and what it really means to be saved, to be made right with God and how we go about that. Paul uses the term gospel which means “good news”— some 60 times in the book of Romans. That's how he begins the book, with good news. As a matter of fact Paul sees the gospel as such good...

The book of Romans has been called the Christian manifesto of freedom. Romans tells about how God, through Jesus, sets people free from the slavery of sin and old behaviors and sets us free to become slaves of Christ. We have a new slavery that leads to freedom, a slavery of freedom. I appreciate when people ask me what leads me to pick a particular book of the Bible to teach on. Why I choose the...

Apostasy, or to apostatize or an apostate, it's a word that means those who defect from truth or abandon the truth, or they never really had the true faith but they pretended to be a part of it.

In studying the book of Philippians the overriding theme is that of JOY. Paul speaks of the joy filled life that is not based upon the circumstances of life but is constant. Here in just three verses Paul shares with us the secret of contentment.

Its been well said, “OUR LIVES ARE ALWAYS MOVING IN THE DIRECTION OF OUR strongest thoughts. What we think shapes who we are.” “Finally” means the rest or the things that remain. “In conclusion” Verses 8 and 9 contain two verbs… Paul is calling his listeners to action. Not just action to do but as we see in verse 8 the action is to think, to mediate, to ponder. And the second verb we see in verse...

Are you aware that the number one threat to our joy is fear, worry, anxiety so when the apostle Paul speaks about deep lasting and satisfying joy its only right that he addresses the very thing that stands in our way. What you have to love about how the apostle Paul goes about addressing the issue is he does so in two short verses. I like that. The solution to our worry and stress is not as comple...

Let me begin this morning by asking you, what first attracted you to Jesus? What was it about Him that made you want to give up everything this world has to offer to follow Him? If we are like any of the apostles or earliest disciples at all, it is His love. Ephesians 3:17-19, “being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and dept...

In Philippians chapter three we read an autobiography of sorts of the apostle Paul’s life. He tells us about his past in verses 1-11 and his present situation in verses 12-16 and then his future in verses 17 through verse 1 of chapter 4. This morning we want to look at how the apostle Paul was able to not to live with a victims mentality or to live only for today and missing out on the blessings o...

If I had to sum up the apostle Paul’s words in verses 1-8 in a thought it would be from the American missionary Jim Elliot who said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” This is what Paul experienced: He gave up his religion and his reputation, but he gained far more than he lost. Paul gained a personal experience with the risen savior, with the living L...

Finally… The word finally here isn’t like Paul is saying “In Closing” and then like any good preacher continue on for another 20 minutes. No, the word “Finally” here means, “for the rest” as the apostle Paul has much to say and the word “finally” is simply introducing a new topic Paul wants to address which happens to be “false teachers” Judaizers. Judaizers were a group who taught that faith in C...

I cant give what I don’t have… If you are dehydrated you need to drink water. If you are starving you need food. If you are tired you need rest. What do you do when you read a passage like John 13:34-35 where Jesus is calling us to love one another as He has loved us? My point is this… Often times on Father’s Day dads can feel like a failure. That’s the last thing I want you to feel like today. I...

The book Acts covers a period of about thirty-three years. J. B. Phillips has pointed out that in no comparable period of human history has "any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these men 'have turned the world upside down!'" How did a small group of 120 huddled together in the upper room ultimately, “Turn the wor...