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Looking BACk to Advent is only part of the meaning of Christmas. Looking FORWARD to Jesus' second coming was his main fixation. (Special thanks to Rev. Elliot Cherry of Midtown Fellowship Church- 12 South Site- in Nashville, TN for the insights provided here. Check Elliot's pulpit ministry out here.)

God is now ready to mark Abram out as a unique family of God, his agents of transformation in a broken world. But the manner and means that he does that will strike many as bizarre, but when you understand the meaning of circumcision, the purpose of the church emerges.

As God makes big promises to Abram, the patriarch asks a perfectly natural question, "How can I know this is all going to work out." God's response to that simple question results in one of the most astounding passages in all of Scripture, and the key to what we mean by "grace."

Genesis 12 is the break-through point in the "story thus far." Suddenly, God calls a childless pagan to be the head of a new family that'll carry the mission of God through to completion. It's a commission that God's people still have even in our day, to remake the world for his glory.

We live in a world that totters on the brink of collapse, it seems, from a lack of certainty about the world. But God's covenant (contract) with Noah shows that God's people can have a radical foundation for our relationship with the world, with justice, and in our own hearts.

There is a very strange tidbit of a story in Genesis 6:1ff that is so odd that many are tempted to consign the Bible over to an absurd document of superstition. But if you dig into its meaning, you might find it opens us up to an unseen realm where God orders the world.

How do you embrace the effects of evil in life and the dire consequences of sin but look to forgiveness as God's only remedy. This is something in our culture that we don't do very well, but if we don't figure out how to love forgiveness, we'll splinter into oblivion.

There are few things like human sexuality to polarize our secular culture's opinions of Christians. But rooted in Genesis 2 is a profound confession by Adam as he looks at Eve about God, and how he's going to save the world that will likely shock you.

We live in a day when sex and gender have been torn apart in the culture's imagination, only to suggest that our sexual differences are merely skin deep. Genesis 2 says otherwise. Quite the contrary, our sexual differences are a window into the very love of God for his people.

For most adults, the singular formational activity in which we are engaged is our jobs. Which is probably why our work is so fraught with opportunities for difficulty in life. But Genesis 2 lays out a framework for how God intended for his image bearers to think about their work.

The opening book of the Bible reveals a God who speaks things into being with a majestic artistry that forms the foundation of humanity's search for what is good, true and beautiful.

Genesis 1:1 cuts across our present Western context with a clear and radical proposition: there is a God and he is the creator of all things. From that one premise comes the foundation of a Christian view of the world.

The average "person on the street" doesn't have a fair knowledge of the vast amount of scholarship that has been spent on establishing an undeniable fact: the Bible is the most reliable document of antiquity existing today. "Why," is our topic in this sermon.

Perhaps the reason why we are disinterested in the Bible is because we don't fully apprehend what the Bible claims to be. The truth is: if you are committed to the status quo in your life, then by all means don't dive into the transforming power that is the Scripture.

More times than not, we want to read the Bible like an answer book, looking for a technique that always produces a good result. But the Bible is wisdom literature. It teaches us to be wise, only as we immerse ourselves in its story and truth.

So is the Bible a book created by God or by the hands of sinful men? While we often say the correct answer, "Both!" oftentimes we fail to realize how differently that conviction leads us to look at the world around us and how we picture a Christian's mission in the world.

The vast majority of the objections our secular world has with accepting the Bible for what its come from the failure to understand the kind of tool the Bible is. Getting clear on the nature of Scripture is essential to growing in the wisdom it wants to impart.

Paul says that there is a life altering metamorphosis that changes every Christian into a servant of Christ. But HOW that transformation happens very succinctly gathers together all the grace Paul has unpacked throughout the book and shows us that it all happens, "by the mercies."

Paul says that there is a life altering metamorphosis that changes every Christian into a servant of Christ. But HOW that transformation happens very succinctly gathers together all the grace Paul has unpacked throughout the book and shows us that it all happens, "by the mercies."

Paul cares so deeply for his fellow Jewish countrymen that he writes an extended explanation of exactly HOW they are to come to faith, if they do. In so doing, he provides modern believing people with a new way of thinking about the challenging topic of evangelism.

Paul entertains a question about God's faithfulness to "bring us all the way home" that is potentially undone by Jewish rejection of the Gospel. The answer takes us deep into the mind of God and his purposes in election and a "love that will not let me go."

Insecurities plague us everyday and are often the root cause of the anxieties that shorten our lives. But Paul's exposition at the end of Romans 8 gives us a picture of a totally secure and convinced life, resting in the certainty of the Christian vision of the future.

Romans 8 is a chapter that is preoccupied with the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians. But what exactly does the Spirit do? How does he drive home the "no condemnation" that Paul pronounces at the beginning of this magnificent chapter?

The law of God has picked a fight with believing people. Because what was started by grace can never be completed by law. This inevitably leads to conflict. Understanding and locating this conflict is THE key to Christian growth and sanctification.

It is the express intention of the Christian faith to bring about a change of life in the believer. The whole forward motion of the Bible is to fix the world from sin's destruction. HOW Paul leads us through that in Romans 6 is revolutionary for the doctrine of sanctification.

Justification by grace through faith is the medicine that cures believing people of doubting lives. Paul wants the Romans to live assured lives. So in Chapter 5 he unpacks the logic of assurance of salvation and how we can really know that we are standing in his grace.

Paul has hung a lot of theological weight on the doctrine of justification, but the means by which those benefits come to Christians is through "faith." But what does it mean to "have faith?" Turns out that imbedded in the life of the Jewish patriarch Abraham is the powerful answer!

Paul says that no one will be justified by the "works of the law." That was his way of confronting Jewish people for their adherence to exclusionary cultural norms. But we still have those ourselves. What are the ways we seek to justify ourselves in OUR day?

We LOVE to catalogue the details of good news! How much more does Paul revel in the precision and details of God's provision for his people in Christ. Three massive concepts: justification, redemption and propitiation, are all laid out for God's people to mine for joy.

Nothing can break up the ordinariness of our day quite like an insult can. And yet, Paul unpacks a sweeping condemnation of all people (both religious and irreligious) in the middle part of Romans 3. This week, we look at the Christian doctrine of Total Depravity.

Having broadly condemned the irreligious in the latter half of chapter 1, Paul then turns his sights on the religious community, who demonstrate their own depravity through their condescending to others, while they do the very same things themselves.

Paul says that the Gospel is about salvation, but salvation from what? His answer is not one that this generation wants to hear: we need salvation from the very present wrath of God. But is that an archaic way of talking about God? What good could possibly come from this idea?

Paul opens his letter to the Romans announcing his overwhelming desire to preach the Gospel to the Romans. The energy behind his message is a powerful antidote to the mundane and ordinary versions of the faith that occupy "Christ Haunted" churches in the South.

The last years of Paul's life bring some of the most dramatic suffering he'd ever experienced. There is no triumphalism in the last chapters of Acts. But how do Christians face the inevitability of suffering in this life? How can Paul's last years of missionary work instruct us?

In the latter half of Acts, Paul is seen engaging in the most effective long term evangelism strategy ever conceived...church planting. This pattern of establishing Jesus Communities is the model for all those seeking to be faithful to be Jesus' witnesses in whatever generation.

Many people think that in order to embrace Christianity you have to check your intellect at the door. But Paul marches right into the epicenter of Greek culture and goes toe to toe with the philosophy of the day and shows how only the Creator God can make sense of life.

One of the more compelling traits of the Christian faith is the fact that it is not locked into one culture or people group. A remarkable diversity is seen in Acts 16 of Philippian converts. Yet, through it all, the Gospel remains the same message of the Cross.

One of the more compelling traits of the Christian faith is the fact that it is not locked into one culture or people group. A remarkable diversity is seen in Acts 16 of Philippian converts. Yet, through it all, the Gospel remains the same message of the Cross.

Paul's first sermon is a master class on how the young missionary begins to present the Gospel to religious people. He roots his message in the relevance, facts and overwhelming joy of the work of Jesus on the Cross.

The action in the book of Acts leads to a dramatic vision by Peter who begins to see that Jesus' mission in the world will not be limited to a Jewish revolution. Instead, he is creating a worldwide, multi cultural, multi racial people of God worshipping around the Throne.

The story of Saul (soon to become named "Paul") is repeated no less than three times in the book of Acts. Clearly, Luke wants Christians to relate this powerful conversion. But how can we do that when we rarely see so many fireworks surrounding our own experiences?

The execution of Stephen looks to our modern eyes as ludicrously extreme. What could have caused this rioting mob to go to these extremes? Only when the Gospel exposes your deepest commitments, and threatens them, can we hope to see its freedom.

The early church was growing! But no sooner does it start than the problem of divisions in the church arise. But rather than make the new converts feel guilty about it, the Apostles appoint a new office to insure that the ministry of the Word and Deed remain together.

Opposition from outside the church is one thing, but hypocrisy from within is equally (if not more) dangerous. Only the fearlessness of a Spirit filled community could create the integrity needed to firmly establish this new revolutionary movement.

Jesus' mission to repair the world from the effects of sin meets almost immediate opposition from the religious elite. Their opposition to the disciples message still resonates with attacks on Christianity even our day.

Many people who traffic on the outskirts of Christianity have weird notions of what it looks like to live a "Spirit filled life." But in the wake of Pentecost, there were tangible signs that the Spirit had come in power to transform a fledgling group into a worldwide movement.

The coming of Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the "shot heard around the world" for the Kingdom of God. This was the decisive event for the church, but it can be hard to understand the meaning behind it. What does Pentecost mean for us today?

The mission of Jesus continues with him taking his place beside his Father at the Throne of the universe. Without this key insight, God's people can (and often have) severely missed his purposes for what his kingdom is like AND how it's going to advance.

The book of Acts is the second part of Luke's Gospel, so it's not a new movement that's being started, but God's advance into the world to plant Jesus Communities and heal the world. Father, Son and Holy Spirit working together to advance a Kingdom.

There are few greater questions that a Christian can get answered than the question of "How do I change?" The world offers many paths to transformation, but Christianity is unique when it says that we only change when we abide in Christ. What does that mean?

Peter lays out the foundation for a life of service for God's people with a simple premise: we serve because we have been served. That means a unique gifting for all of God's people to be hospitable to the strangers around them. This is where real healing starts.