First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi Recently Added Resources

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #12

The Spirit of Adoption

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 access. We can come boldly to God and call Him Abba Father. Access. Secondly, in verse 16, because we are adopted children of God we can enjoy th...

Did Gideon Check Out?

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 unlikely purposes in unlikely ways. And He does that so that He may demonstrate His own power, His own strength, and that He receives the glo...

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #11

By the Spirit Put it to Death

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, here are the implications.” And he structures his encouragement and exhortations to us around two controlling metaphors. Do you see them in ver...

Grace for Gideon

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 read verses 1 to 27 in Judges chapter 6. 

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #10

The Spirit Who Gives Life

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 that together in a few moments. Residence. Then verse 10, regeneration. That is, when the Spirit comes to dwell in us, He gives us new life in...

The Stars Fought From Heaven

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 happening than meets the eye. “The Stars Fought From Heaven.” Another way to say this - act one, we will look at the great story and act two...

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #9

A Mind Set on the Spirit

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.

Double Trouble, the Fat Man, and Cries for Help

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 anger and discipline. And that’s exactly what we find in this chapter in the book of Judges. But we also find good news. We also find good new...

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #8

Walking According to the Spirit

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 moment you’ll notice immediately that Paul structures his teaching here around the doctrine of the blessed Trinity. 

The Meaning of History

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 and they are oppressed by a foreign nation, a different people group. But then God unexpectedly comes in and sends a judge, a rescuer to save ...

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #7

Virtual Reality

A Half-Hearted People in the Promised Land

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 world did we get here? What is going on in this story?” Because that’s the case, we’ll consider first the place of Judges in the story of the ...

The Law of the Spirit of Life

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 death.” So verse 1 is about justification. Verse 2 is about sanctification. Verse 1 is about God’s gracious verdict with regard to our legal s...

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #30

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #29

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #6

Unfettered Access to Evil

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #28

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #27

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #26

No Condemnation

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 that offer more help to us than the eighth of Romans. It is rightly beloved because it surveys, doesn’t it, the entire landscape of Christian b...

That in Which the Lord Delights

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 that we already had. Taking inventory is time consuming. It’s tedious. And it doesn’t seem to accomplish anything tangible. It would be easie...

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #25

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #24

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #5

The Book

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #23

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #22

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #21

The Broken Heart

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; that we have broken hearts. We’ll talk about the human heart, it's importance, why it breaks, the cure, and seeking a wise heart. 

My God Will Supply All Your Needs

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 to see that He supplies. I want you to see the supplies from which He supplies your needs. And then I want you to see the Savior. 

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #20

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #19

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #4

The Automobile

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #18

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #17

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #16

Christ, The First Fruits

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 been raised, and so he goes on to tease out for us the implications of that glorious fact.

Remember All He Said

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 begun He will bring to completion. It’s the hope of heaven and being with Jesus Christ, seeing Him face to face. And you see, all of our hope i...

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #15

Three Crosses

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 tragedy of a resistant heart. Hanged on the second cross is a thief who turns from his sin, who seeks for mercy. The second cross reminds us of ...

Stories of Faithfulness Episode #3

Life Toward God - A Daily Devotional #14