First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Morning Service First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Morning Service https://www.fpcjackson.org/resource-library/service-index/morning-service The Unseen Battle Ed Hartman Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.fpcjackson.org/resource-library/sermons/the-unseen-battle https://www.fpcja…

First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Evening Service First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Evening Service https://www.fpcjackson.org/resource-library/service-index/evening-service Jephthah of Gilead Cory Brock Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 -0500 https://www.fpcjackson.org/resource-library/sermons/jephthah-of-gilead https://www.fpc…

Our passage today, Romans 8:17-25, is all about that. It’s all about suffering and finding hope. It’s about understanding the design of God in suffering, seeing beyond our suffering, and learning to wait in patience in the midst of suffering for the glory that is yet to be revealed in us. So this is a passage, in my judgment, that we really need in…

Please turn with me in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Judges, Judges chapter 8. This summer on Sunday nights we’re in a sermon series in the book of Judges, and tonight we are looking at the conclusion of the narrative of Gideon. It’s a sad story; it’s a tragic story, this pathology of decline. It’s an all too familiar story, and so we’ll…

If you look at the text with me for just a moment, I want you to see Paul highlighting three aspects of our adoption in particular. Verses 14 through 17, three blessings that are entailed in the fact that we have become the children of God. First, verse 15, he says because we are adopted children of God we enjoy the blessing of access. We have acce…

Judges chapter 7 is about weakness, and the truth is, whether we feel it or not, we are all weak. All of us. We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that money and training and status will get the results that we desire. But that’s not how God works, is it? Instead, God works through unlikely men and women, unlikely boys and girls, to accomplish …

And as we turn our attention this morning to verses 12 and 13, I want you to see that Paul is beginning now to draw some preliminary conclusions. He is applying at this point all that he’s been saying so far. Notice how verse 12 begins, “So then, brothers.” “So in view of everything I’ve been saying, given all of these glorious truths, brothers, he…

Well we’re carrying on in the book of Judges tonight as we’ve been marching through it all of these Sunday nights lately and we’ve come up to, as Wiley mentioned, chapter 6, which is the story of the call of Gideon. And it’s a little bit of a longer reading tonight, so I just want to dive right into the text. So I’m going to pray and then we’ll rea…

This time, we’re going to focus on verses 9 through 11 where Paul elaborates on what it means to have the Holy Spirit come into our lives. And we can sum up the teaching of these three verses very simply in just three words. First in verse 9, Paul talks about residence. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell, to reside within us, and we’ll need to unpack t…

And tonight, we’re going to look at Judges chapters 4 and 5 and I want to do it in two acts. So first, act one, Judges 4, which gives us the narrative; it gives us what everyone could see. And then act two, we will look briefly at Judges chapter 5, which gives us the song. And it tells us that more was happening than anyone could see, that more was…

There is some graphic and potentially offensive material in Judges chapter 3, but do you know what is the most offensive part of this chapter? The most offensive part of this chapter is sin. It is Israel’s turning away from God and turning to idolatry and doing evil in the sight of the Lord. All sin is repulsive, it is ugly, and it deserves God’s a…

This week, in verses 5 through 8 where our attention will fall, Paul is unpacking the basic contrast with which he has been working - the contrast between the flesh and the Spirit. He wants to make particularly clear that the whole world falls into one of these two categories. Either we live according to the flesh or according to the Spirit.…

What we just read, commentators typically call the cycle of the Judges, and this pattern, it’s a pattern or a cycle that makes Judges really easy to outline. First, in the book of Judges there’s always peace in the land, peace in Canaan, and then the Israelites sin against God through idolatry and God judges them and gives them over to those sins a…

This week, we turn our attention to verses 3 and 4 which are really a continuation of Paul’s argument about our transformed lives, about how we are being sanctified. He wants us to understand how it is that God has done and is doing that great work - the grounds and basis for our sanctification. And if you look at verses 3 and 4 with me for a momen…

So we’re looking tonight at a half-hearted people and a whole-hearted God. And because starting a sermon series in the book of Judges is kind of like picking up The Chronicles of Narnia halfway through. It’s like starting to watch the “Star Wars” movies in the middle of the story. You start reading or you start watching and you think, “How in the w…

Today, as we turn to the second verse of Romans chapter 8 the metaphor changes. We’re no longer thinking about a judicial sentence pronounced over us. Now, we’re thinking about freedom from the bondage and the shackles of cruel slavery and that changes the entire trajectory of our lives. Verse 2 says we have been “set free from the law of sin and d…

Well let me invite you now please to take a Bible in hand and turn to Romans chapter 8; Romans chapter 8. We are beginning a new series working our way through this great chapter. As I thought about what might speak comfort and encouragement to our hearts during this strange, uncertain time, it seemed to me there are very few places in Scripture th…

We’re going to look in our Bibles tonight at Jeremiah chapter 9, and we’re going to look at verses 23 and 24 together tonight. And when I was in my teens, I had a couple of different jobs, but whether it was packing bolts and screws or selling shoes, the thing that nobody really wanted to do was to take inventory, was to take a count of the things …

But into that situation of weakness and neediness, God speaks a word of grace through the lips of the apostle Paul to needy Christians in Philippi. “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” And this morning I just want you to see four things very quickly. I want you to see who the supplier is. I want you …

So I want to come back to Proverbs tonight and look again, because we didn’t cover in that series something that’s treated pretty regularly and specifically throughout the book, and that’s that Proverbs over and over again talks about the human heart, and specifically talks about the heart in the condition, or the fact that the heart is broken; tha…

The Corinthians were asking, “What if the dead are not raised? Would it really make that much of a difference to us?” So Paul teases out the disastrous consequences of rejecting the doctrine of resurrection. And then in verses 20 through 28, he deals with an “In fact.” So, “What if?” -12 through 19; 20 through 28, “In fact.” In fact, Christ has bee…

Friends, if ever there was a day that reminds us and gives us hope it’s Resurrection Sunday, isn’t it? It’s a celebration that Jesus is alive, that in Him we have hope both in the here and now but also hope in the life hereafter. It’s the hope of forgiveness. It’s the hope of peace with God. It’s the hope that we have assurance that what God has be…

We’re going to focus on the three crosses that we see in the passage, these three figures on Calvary, because each of them shows something to us, something important about how we respond to Jesus and about what Jesus offers to us. Hanged upon the first cross is an unrepentant thief. The first cross shows us the tragedy of a resistant heart. The tra…

Well tonight we’re doing something a little different from the usual sermon that we have. It is going to be a message, a sermon from God’s Word, but rather than the regular exposition of a single text, we invited you over the last several weeks to submit questions about theology or the Christian life or about the Bible or about the present crisis.…

Would you look at the passage with me again for a moment? First of all, Peter reminds us there is grace in the Word of God, verse 12. There’s grace for you in the Word. Secondly, he says there is love in the Church of Jesus Christ. That really comes out in all three verses, though it’s explicit in verse 14. There’s grace for you in the Word. There’…

Well we’re going to look at another miracle that Jesus performs in Matthew chapter 8. Five short verses in 23-27. It’s a short story, it’s a great story, and it has an enormous point. And that is found by answering the question, really the question of all the gospels, the question at the center of all of Christianity. And it’s what the disciples as…

Well do please take your copy of God’s Word in hand and turn with me to 1 Peter. We’re working our way through 1 Peter on Sunday mornings. This is the penultimate message from 1 Peter, so we’re in chapter 5 and we’re looking at the second half of verse 5 through verse 11. Peter has said a few words to elders, to shepherds of the flock. We saw that …

The psalm is organized around these two interlocking illustrations. The first, and the most famous, and really the governing illustration, is the shepherd in verses 1 to 4. This psalm is known as “The Shepherd’s Psalm.” But there is also in verses 5 and 6 this illustration of God being our generous Host. He is the host in hospitality as He invites …

We’re going to think about it under four headings. We’ll think first about the elder’s office. In our contemporary scene, not every church has elders. You may even never have been in a church that has elders before, so is this just a quirk of Presbyterian churches like ours or is it a Biblical office? So we’ll think briefly about the office of the …

We could sum up the themes of our passage this way then. We could say it is first of all about responding to suffering. Responding to suffering. Then secondly, it’s about remembering sovereignty. Responding to suffering. Remembering sovereignty; the sovereignty of God amidst our trials. And thirdly, it’s about resting on the Savior. Responding to s…

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 93 as we face a unique time in our country and our culture; a time in which our fear is elevated and in which there is a great threat against our friends, our families, our neighbors and our nation. It’s important to turn to God and to His Word. And in this psalm we will see the psalm…

Well would you take your hymnals out and we’re going to turn to page 835 in our hymnals this morning. The Psalms are found in the back of our hymnals in a way that we can read them responsively. And this psalm has a refrain that runs throughout it and is actually the same refrain as a popular gospel song. It’s, “Lord, You are good and Your mercy en…

You understand, of course, Paul says “if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Over and over again, the Gospel writers tell us that there’s something about the resurrection that changes everything. And we have to understand the difference that it makes, not just to our own personal lives but also to mission. I’d …

But McQuilken asks, “How do you measure how you’re doing in mission?” And his answer is - here are the metrics - “100, 50, 10 and 5.” They’re not drawn from specific verses in the Bible; they’re drawn from the whole sweep of New Testament teaching on the spread of the Gospel. One hundred is 100% of our people are praying faithfully for the spread o…

The same God who condescended to redeem us in Christ, the One who has promised and told us in Scripture that He prepares a home for us, He is the same one who calls and who burdens and who sends His church - local congregations, ordinary men and women in local congregations - into the world to bear witness to His grace, making the Gospel of Christ …

We’re going to read this morning from Exodus chapter 3, and this is the story of the burning bush. It’s one of the great stories of the entire Bible, and especially the Old Testament. The question is, “Who is God?” and we learn two things from God here about who God is. And the first is that He is the God who comes down to find. And secondly, He is…

We have been working down the Beatitudes on Sunday nights. And the Beatitudes, we said the very first week, is the description of the blessed life found in Matthew chapter 5. The blessed life is a life of beauty, and a life of beauty is where truth and goodness meet together. In other words, it’s what life looks like for the citizens of the kingdom…

And so we’ll work this evening just section by section looking at this single verse, verse 6, and we’ll look first at our appetites, our spiritual appetites - that we are hungry and we are thirsty. Second, we’ll consider the righteousness that Jesus has in view here. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” What is Jesus talking…

Peter is offering a final word on a series of reflections we’ve been examining together for some time now on the reality of suffering in the Christian life. And as we study it together, I want to highlight four themes, really four apparent paradoxes, that describe in verses 12 through 19 the Christian’s response to and engagement with suffering in …

Last time, in the first six verses, we noticed that Peter gives some instruction on how the church, Christians, are to relate to the world. And he brackets his instructions between two poles. In verse 1, he talks about Christ who suffered and provides an example that we are to imitate. But then in verse 5 and 6, he speaks about Christ’s return at t…

In terms of the Beatitudes themselves, they are the character qualities of those who are part of the kingdom of God. These are the virtues that describe all believers and all believers give evidence of all of these. They’re a whole. Through them, we really view fundamental Christian character from eight different angels. None of them points to a na…

We’re starting a new series tonight for the next several weeks on the Beatitudes. And you can find the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. And tonight we’ll not only look at the first beatitude about being poor in spirit, but also the second, about a life of mourning and sorrow. You’ll find the Beatitudes in…

There simply is no way to live in obedience to Christ and in conformity to the world at the same time. And that one hard reality is very much at the forefront of Peter’s thinking as he pens the passage before us at the beginning here of 1 Peter chapter 4. He wants us to understand and to embrace the character, the cost, and the calling of Christlik…

So I want to turn us to a passage, to a verse tonight that deals with the topic of patience, wisdom in the area of patience, from the book of Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiastes chapter 7. I want to look at this verse along three points tonight. One is - questions without answers. Two - wisdom without answers. And then three - hope without question.…

We’ve been working our way steadily through 1 Peter together here at First Church on Sunday mornings, and one of the major themes we’ve been considering has to do with living for Christ when doing so will bring suffering, opposition, hardship. We’re going to tackle it under four headings. First, in verse 18, we learn about Christ our substitute. Ch…

If Psalm 90 is for pilgrims - they don’t have a home but God is their home. If Psalm 91 is for danger - you’re in danger but God is your shelter. Then Psalm 92 is a psalm for worship - your delight is not in the world considered apart from God, but your delight is in the God who created the world and everything in it. And so you delight in Him and …

Now if you would take a Bible in hand and turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 3 on page 1016 of the church Bibles. We have been working our way through 1 Peter together on Sunday mornings. We’ve come to 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 13 through 17. Peter has given us some counsel on how to navigate opposition. He wants to help us face the possibility of suf…

And if you look at the passage, verses 8 through 12, you’ll see it focuses on Christian behavior in three directions. First, Peter has counsel for how we are to live toward one another within the local church. There in verse 8, do you see that? “Finally, all of you” - he’s writing to the church - “all of you who hear this letter read or read it tog…

Are you sad or lonely or lacking in hope? Then this is a psalm for you. Are you so content with this life that you have not learned to count your days, to contemplate eternity? Then this is a psalm for you. In this psalm, Moses points us to God as the solution to our plight. He teaches us that God is home and eternal and just and gracious.…

The title of our brief meditation is at bare minimum a paradox - weeping in heaven. How can that be? Weeping in heaven? Is it possible that we would find weeping there?