Sermon Notes

Standing on the shores of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's army buried under the water, Moses leads Israel to praise God for his powerful victory. And in Exodus 15:13, he sings, 1Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to theLord, saying, "I will sing to theLord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.2TheLordis my streng...

Lies and liars. Our world is filled with them, and we often struggle to know what to do with them. This is true when are deceived, but it is also true when we are the deceiver. On Sunday we saw another deception story in Joshua. And to play on wordsJoshua 9 teaches us again that (first) looks can be deceiving. For instead of seeing how the lies of Gibeon are met with swif...

So far in Joshua, we have seen connections between Joshua and Jesus, as well as Rahab and the Church. These connections remind us how this book of history is written for us on whom the end of the ages have come (1 Corinthians 10:11; cf. Romans 15:4). Incredibly, the inspired words of the Old Testament are not just Israel's historical chronicles; they are prophetic messages...

Tamar and Judah. Rahab and Salmon. Ruth and Boaz. Bathsheba and David. The Church and Jesus. What do these couples have in common? They are all in the Bible? Yes. They are all in Jesus' genealogy? Yes. And most astoundingly, each had a history with harlotry. Respectively, the dress, the (former) identity, or the actions of these couples contain some element related to id...

This week we kicked off a new sermon series at our church called "Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament: A Study of the Book of Joshua." You can listen to the sermon here. Response questions and additional resources on Joshua and seeing Christ in the Old Testament are below. Response Questions When think of Joshua or the book about him what comes to mind? What are the cha...

What is expositional preaching? And why is our church committed to it? If you have ever wondered what the Bible says about preaching, Sunday's sermon is for you. As we considered preaching in relationship to worship, I argued that expositional preaching is not only the best way to preach Scripture, it is also modeled by Moses (the first preacher) and many other inspired a...

On Sunday we began a new sermon series considering what Scripture teaches about worship. Over the summer we will learn from Moses, David, and Paul, but this first Sunday we beganby hearing what Moses said about God's pattern for worship at Sinai. While our worshipis not at Mount Sinai, but Mount Zion (Hebrews 12:2224), the pattern of worship revealed to Israel teaches us ...

As we took another look at worship this Sunday, we focused on the covenantal history outlined by Moses in Deuteronomy 4. In these verses, Moses directed Israel to remember the covenant God made with them, to guard themselves from idolatry, and to take comfort in Yahweh's ongoing faithfulness. While there are many differences between Israel on the Plains of Moab and the pe...

Flee wickedness. Pursue righteousness. Fight the Good Fight. Take Hold of Eternal Life. These are the commands that Paul gives Timothy as he finishes his letter to his true son in the faith. They are good for us today too. Scripture calls us to run from sin and race towards Christ. But how? What will motivate us, strengthen us, and enable us to finish our race? On Sunday...

A. W. Tozer once said that what you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you. In his statement, this Chicago pastor captured the way our thinking drives our living. If we could only order our thinking about God and everything else rightly, we would be headed in a good direction. The problem is that we are not just "thinking-things," we ar...