First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi

Be Holy, For I Am Holy

And as we consider Peter’s “therefore” and these implications of the grace of God in verses 13 through 17, I want you to notice with me that Peter is essentially inviting us to look in three directions. He wants us to look in three directions. First in verse 13, he invites us to look forward. He invites us to look forward to the coming of Jesus Christ at the end of the age. The key word here is “hope.” He wants Christians to have hope, though now they are experiencing trials of many kinds he...

Love Poured Out

This evening we begin a short series looking at various texts that speak to us about the familiar New Testament triad of Christian virtues that sort of together sum up so much of the Christian life - faith, hope and love. And to kick things off tonight we’re looking at Romans chapter 5 and we’ll think about verses 1 through 8 together. A brief glance at the text will immediately demonstrate this is an extraordinary paragraph, so full of riches. The distinct work of each of the three persons ...

Things into Which Angels Long to Look

We’re going to consider verses 10 through 12 by noticing there are three groups of people engaging with God’s Word, responding to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in verses 10 through 12. And we’re simply going to think about how each responds. First, you’ll notice there are the prophets. The prophets’ search. Then there are the preachers. We’ll think about the preachers’ message. Then thirdly, the passage mentions the angels. So we’ll think about the angels’ longing. The prophets’ search. The pr...

The Priest-King

So we’re finishing our mini-series tonight on the story of Abram and we’re in Genesis 14. And at the center of Genesis 14 is the story of Melchizedek. And one popular Old Testament scholar today says that “Melchizedek is the most complex subject in all of Biblical studies.” And so it’s kind of silly to do thirty minutes on Melchizedek, but that’s what we have. And we’re going to do - dip our toe into the water a little bit and highlight some of the main ideas. Melchizedek shows up in five ch...

The Tested Genuineness of Your Faith

Verses 3 through 9 rehearse for us our great Gospel privileges. In 3 through 5, the apostle Peter lists those privileges; he outlines them for us in a marvelous summary of the riches of God’s grace and blessing in our lives. And then in 6 through 9, he applies those blessings to the particular context of Christian suffering. You might say in 3 through 5 Peter says our privileges are a landscape - beautiful, exquisite, breathtaking - a landscape to look at that makes us praise God for its bea...

Lift up your Eyes

We are in a mini-series on the life of Abraham and tonight we will be in Genesis chapter 13. Well what do we have here? What’s going on in this passage? And it might not seem like it, but you can actually peer here into the very essence of human sin, into the very essence of our sin, of humanity’s sin. So we’re going to look at three things tonight - the wrong garden, the sin of the garden, and hope found in another garden.

On Mission Together

We are only going to look at verses 1 and 2 today by way of introduction to the letter, but I want you to notice in these two introductory verses that Peter already is setting forth two themes that will be architectonic; they’ll be shaping and foundational for everything else he will say in his letter. First in verse 1, he talks about the Christian in relation to the world. The Christian in relation to the world. How does the world see us and how are we to be oriented toward the world around...

Mercy Ministers

First, in verse 1, we’ll spend some time thinking together about the crisis of mercy ministry; the circumstances that gave rise to the institution of the diaconate. The crisis of mercy ministry. Then in verses 2 and 3, the call of mercy ministry. Mercy ministry is the burden and calling actually of the whole church and every Christian, so we need to think about that and the role of the deacon in relation to the church and in relation to mercy ministry. The crisis, then the call, then in the ...

Down to Egypt

So this story is about Abraham going down to Egypt at the beginning and then getting kicked out of Egypt at the end. And in the middle, God steps in, God intervenes, God imposes, God comes to fix Abram’s mess. And so we’re just going to think about two lessons tonight. The first is that God intervenes, and the second is that God intervenes for a purpose, for a reason.

Singing of Failure

There are times, there are times for all of us aren’t there, when what gets out, where what gets found out, where what you were hiding that was a secret that was kept in the dark, there are times where those things are exposed and you’re unglued. And it’s not fun and light, but it’s heavy and there are real consequences. This psalm is written after that happened to King David. So Psalm 32, “Singing our Failure.” We’ll consider the journey home in verses 1 to 5. And second, verses 6 to 11, th...

Means of Grace: The Church

As we finish our series on the means of grace this morning by looking at the Church, there are three key areas that I want us to be thinking about together. First, I want us to think about the King of the Church. Secondly, I want us to think about the unity of the Church. And thirdly, I want us to think about the purpose of the Church. Or another way to think about it is, we’re going to look at the Head of the Church, Jesus, the body of the Church, God’s people, and the feet of the Church - ...

Theological Habits for a Peaceful Heart - Part 4

Singing of Fear

Charles Spurgeon called Psalm 23, “the pearl of the Psalms.” And so long before Michael Jordan, long before LeBron James and long before David Beckham and long before Ryne Sandberg, King David had his own number 23. And this is a psalm that maybe for you is the most beloved psalm in the Psalter. Maybe this is your most favorite passage in all of Scripture. Maybe this is a passage that was cross-stitched at your grandmother’s house. Maybe this was a psalm that was read or a psalm that was pra...

How We Worship: Baptism

And you know, that makes sense on this side of eternity because the Bible says a whole lot about baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both through shadows and literally in the New Testament. And there are spectrums and nuances and angles and allegories and all sorts of things that are tricky to capture. And this is not surprising because the word “sacrament” in itself means “mystery.” It has the nuance of mystery - that the sacraments are deep mysteries. Just listen to 1 Corinthians 10:2 where Pau...

Theological Habits for a Peaceful Heart - Part 3

The Charm of a Minister's Life

Worship Service 3 - The Glasses of Grace

The Integrity of Christian Ministry

Worship Service 2 - The Fear of Man

Worship Service 1 - The Blessing of a Clean Conscience

Elective Seminar - Greg Salazar

The Biblical Foundation and Focus of the Prayer Meeting

TLF Lecture 2019

Elective Seminar - Fred Greco

Singing of Sadness

That’s the beginning of the book, Lament for a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff who was a former philosophy professor at Yale University. But he writes the book not as a scholar; he writes the book as a loving father. He writes the book for his twenty-five year old son who died mountain climbing in Austria. And he calls the book his lament - Lament for a Son. His expression of sadness, this prayer of mourning for his late son, Eric. And as you continue reading you can hear the sadness i...

The Christian Life in a Word (or Two)

 “Taking the Lord’s Supper seriously is something that deep down most of us simply do not do.” That’s the way J.I. Packer begins the last chapter of his book, Taking God Seriously. Well we’re in a series this July on the means of God’s grace. These are the ways that God uses to grow us, to mature us, and to persevere us spiritually. We’re talking about taking God seriously. And taking God seriously means that we will read His Word and we will pray and we will observe the sacraments and we wi...

Theological Habits for a Peaceful Heart - Part 2

The Front Porch of the Psalms

And before we jump in and read, something to orient us to our text tonight. The New York Times bestseller, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, is the story of the rowing team at the University of Washington in Seattle and their quest for gold at the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin, Germany. And it’s these college guys from working and middle-class families, the sons of loggers, the sons of farmers, these college guys who beat the odds in the most desperate of times, on the ...

The Means of Grace: The Word and Prayer

For the next several Lord’s Days, some of our assistant ministers will be examining what we call “the means of grace,” that is, the means that God has given us for our use in spiritual growth - the Word of God, both in preaching and teaching and personal devotion, prayer, the sacraments, that is, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, corporate worship. These are the tools that God has given to us for our growth in grace, for our coming closer to Him, and His coming closer to us. They happen to be t...

Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly - Part 6

But today we conclude, as I say, the prophecy of Micah. And one of the things we have noticed, a feature of Micah’s prophecy, is the way that he holds two things together. He sort of alternates back and forth between them. On the one hand there is a remarkable honest and realistic view in Micah of the problems of his own immediate context. The elites in Micah’s society are abusing their power. There is oppression and there is injustice. The people have fallen into spiritual and moral decline...

Look to the Lord Our God

This past year at First Presbyterian Church we have been immersed in our theme of “Rooted.” What does it mean to be in union with Jesus Christ? More specifically, we’ve been looking at some of the questions - How do I get into union with Jesus Christ? How does our union impact our identity and our ongoing transformation into the likeness of Jesus? And on top of that, what are the right covenant blessings that are ours as a result of our union with the Lord Jesus? And one of the great benefit...

Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

Let’s read together from 1 Kings chapter 18:17-45. This is the story of Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and Elijah’s confrontation of the gods, the false gods, at Mount Carmel. And it unveils really the big theme of the whole book of Kings, the first and second books of Kings, and that’s that in every story throughout the books of Kings there’s a choice to be made, and that choice is often based upon the first commandments - “You shall have no other gods,” on...

Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly - Part 5

We have been working our way steadily through the book of Micah and we’ve come to the penultimate chapter this evening. Micah really has been alternating back and forth between an oracle of judgment and rebuke on the people of Israel, the northern kingdom, the people of Judah, the southern kingdom, alternating back and forth between that an a promise of coming blessing in the age of Messiah - the age in which we now live, the age of the Lord Jesus Christ. And today in Micah chapter 6, he alt...