First Baptist Church Thomson, Ga

Psalms 111 and 112 together remind us of God’s blessings on His people, and His expectations of His people. While these psalms are about God’s blessings on and expectations of the people of Israel, we can apply them to ourselves today, and I think they especially apply to men who are husbands, fathers, leaders, and mentors.

This sermon in the Psalms is connected to our church's VBS theme for this year: SCUBA--Diving into Friendship with God. We could spend lifetimes searching and studying the ocean depths. Scientists are constantly finding new forms of life in the deepest, darkest reaches of the seas. We can spend not only our lifetimes, but all of eternity searching out God's wisdom and ways, and still not fully plumb their depths! Our friendship with God—an adventure that will never end, a treasure chest we’ll never fully unpack! There’s no better psalm to pair with this VBS theme than Psalm 139, in which David seeks to understand the depths and heights of his relationship with the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God!

A.W. Tozer wrote, “God wants worshippers before workers; indeed, the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the art of worship.” Tozer was commenting on our tendency to elevate serving the Lord as workers above serving the Lord as worshippers. If we’re not careful, worship becomes a performance, a job to accomplish. We can allow our egos and preferences to get in the way. When that happens, who or what are we actually worshipping? God, ourselves, or other people’s approval? Psalms is a great place to turn to evaluate our hearts, motivations, and understanding of worship. In this message, we look at Psalms 100 and 150, two of the best-known hymns of thanksgiving and praise in the Bible, to help us master the art of worship.

Just as Psalm 1 gives us the purpose of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 2 reveals the message of the Psalms: that no matter what is happening in our lives or world, God is on His throne, and He invites us to live as citizens of His eternal Kingdom. Through this messianic psalm of hope, we discover how we can respond to world around us with confidence and compassion, trusting that Jesus is King and is coming again!

In this first sermon in this series of messages from the Psalms, we discover how Psalm 1 introduces us to the overall purpose of the Psalms: to reveal how God's instruction is the pathway to a life of blessing and abundance, of happiness and holiness. The psalmist presents two pathways we can chose to walk down--an ascending path that leads to the presence of God where we experience the abundant life Jesus promises, or the spiraling descent into depravity and corruption that ends in ruin. Which path are you walking?

Jesus’ longest prayer is found in John 17—the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus prayed this on the night He was betrayed. This sermon focuses on Jesus’ priorities, the kinds of things Jesus prays for His followers—for us! This can give us some clues as to what we should prioritize in our prayers.

Through Luke, we see that Jesus is the perfect Son of Man, what Paul calls the new and better Adam, and how He came to serve and save by God’s transforming power. And in today’s passage, we will see how Jesus meets us at our greatest point of need, in our lowest moments, and sees us through seasons of suffering.

It's no surprise that Jesus calls Christians to have a servant attitude and to be generous with our time and resources. But we can struggle to follow Jesus’s example of selfless service. We sometimes need a refresher to sharpen our skills as servants of God. Following the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus uses the failure of the disciples to cast out a demon to illustrate the qualities and attitudes we need if we are going to follow His example and have the heart of a servant.

In this new sermon series, we will look at a snapshot of Jesus from each of the four Gospel accounts, focusing on how that Gospel writer emphasizes an aspect of Jesus's character and/or ministry. In this message, we look at King Jesus and what He preached about God's Kingdom using parables. Matthew 13 contains several parables about what the Kingdom of God is like and how we relate and connect to the Kingdom.

Easter changes everything! We serve a Living Lord and one day we will join Him in Heaven and enjoy Him for all eternity. But that’s not the whole story. We must not only look to Jesus for a ticket to Heaven. Like Mary, we have an opportunity to encounter the risen Jesus TODAY! And that encounter has the power to change everything in our lives and in our world. I want to challenge us to think about Jesus’ Resurrection and how an encounter with the Living Lord can give us new life right now—not just for eternity, but for every day!

The Garden of Gethsemane was a favorite spot for Jesus and His disciples to spend time together when they came to Jerusalem. It is a beautiful garden, a peaceful garden perfectly suited for prayer. But it is far more than that. It was a garden of pressure, prayer, and priorities. Through this message, we discover what Jesus faced that night out of love for us and submission to the Father's will, we see a pattern for our prayers, and are forced to examine our priorities.

In the middle of God’s judgment on Adam and Eve and the Serpent, God reveals His plan to redeem fallen humanity: A descendant of Eve will someday confront the snake. The snake will deliver a wounding bite to his heel, but this Promised One will deliver a fatal blow to the snake. Despite our sin, God has not given up on us and His world. He will someday make it good once more! Revelation gives us a beautiful picture at the end of time, where we see the effects of sin completely reversed. Paradise Lost will become Paradise Regained—and it will even be better than before!

The world is not how God created it to be. We no longer live in Paradise. What went wrong? How did we get here? And what do we do about it? We'll start with Genesis 3, but we can’t just lay all the blame at Adam and Eve’s feet. That’s where it started to go downhill, but they are merely the first example of a pattern we are all guilty of, and are still tempted by every day, and it’s a pattern Jesus overcame so that we might be set free to resist it as well. In this message we look at the pattern and progression of temptation and sin from Eden to the Exodus to how Jesus overcame temptations in the Wilderness.

When God created people in His image, He gave us moral agency--free will, the freedom of choice. Representing that freedom to choose, God placed two special trees in the Garden of Eden: The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In this sermon we consider this basic choice that God wove into Creation. A simple choice that is essential to what it means to be human. A simple choice that turned Creation upside down, introduced sin, death, and suffering to all humanity, and necessitated God’s redemptive mission through Jesus.

We desperately need a reset when it comes to a healthy work-life balance. We need a new rhythm--the one God created us to live by—work, rest, repeat. Too often, people fall into the extremes of either overworking to the point they neglect family and health, or being lazy with no drive to achieve, produce, or provide. The Bible tells us both are equally sinful and unhealthy. By lookin at Genesis 1-3, we can discover God's plan for how we are to work and live in a 6-and-1 rhythm of work and rest.

The environment, especially the topic of climate change, is on the forefront of a lot of minds. We hear and read stories in the news, hear a lot from politicians, as well as in the entertainment media. However, the ways we think about the climate and how we care for the Earth all depends on our worldview. In this sermon, we begin by looking at what the Bible teaches about where we’ve been and why we’re here, what the source of evil and suffering is today, and where this world is heading. Based on these truths, we will then look at our mandate from God in how we steward His good creation.

We've heard expressions like "a match made in Heaven," but we all know there are no perfect marriages, because there are no perfect husbands or wives. But at one time, there was a marriage made in Paradise. Genesis 2 gives amazing insights into the truth about marriage and some principles that will go a long way in helping us to develop thriving marriages and families.

Last week we looked at what Genesis 1-2 tells us about the WHY of our creation. But in this message, I focus on the WHAT—what makes us different from anything else God made? What is our relationship with the rest of creation? What difference does all of this make in our lives and world today?

Last week we looked at what Genesis 1 specifically teaches about who God is. Today, we turn to what the Creation account tells us about who we are. The shift is evident in Genesis 1:26. In this sermon we will see what it means to bear the image of God, how sin has masked and marred that image, but how Christ came to redeem us and restore the image of God within us, as we are conformed into the image of Christ.

Since none of us were there when "God created the heavens and the earth," we have to rely on what He has revealed to us in His inspired Word. As we saw last week, one of the purposes of Genesis 1 (and of the entire Bible) is to reveal to us the truth about God. In this sermon, we discover seven truths about God that are revealed within Genesis 1:1-2:3.