Fellowship Bible Church Sermons | Palmyra, WI

What qualifies a person for use in God’s Kingdom? What does God want in His servants?

God delights in brokenness. He uses people who’ve experienced His grace in their brokenness.

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Whoa! King David prays a lot in Psalm 51:7-12. And his prayers are kind of different. What’s this about? Why does David pray this way?

What does David know that we need to know?

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Psalm 51:3-6 explains the basis for David’s prayer. It’s two truths David sees that become two deeper truths David comes to understand.

What David sees about his sin becomes a lesson he learns about himself as a sinner. And what David sees about God’s holiness becomes a lesson he learns about God’s heart.

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It’s really important that we discover whether there’s hope for someone like King David after what he did. Because all of us end up in a similar place. We all of us need “still more” mercy. Either we already need it, or we will.

Thank God for Christ, and Christmas.

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Here is a brief devotional from 1Corinthians 1, delivered at the Palmyra Ministerium Thanksgiving Eve service.

What do we have to be thankful for? We should consider Paul’s example: he gives thanks despite what he sees is happening, because of what he knows to be true.

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Everyone wants to be justified, we all want to feel like we’re in the right, on the right path, with the right people, in the right people’s opinion. And so we work, we work to acheive their standards.

But none of us worked as hard as Paul, or at standards that were so holy and good.

But even for Paul, it didn’t work. He worked it; it didn’t work: “By works of the law no person can be justified.”

We all want to think of ourselves as Good. But until we tear that self-image down, we’ll never know the freedom of the truth, the freedom Jesus invites us into through His cross.

Series: Paul's Letter to the Galatians: The Only Thing That Counts

Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

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The problem that Paul first encounters at Galatia is a problem that plagues him and his churches throughout his ministry life. And that problem is not “sin” or “the world” or even “the devil,” but sinful people used by the devil, with the lying savvy of the world, to ruin the beautiful New Creation communities Paul serves. That is, it’s people, “Conflict Entrepreneurs,” who stir up trouble for their own advantage.

Series: Paul's Letter to the Galatians: The Only Thing That Counts

Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

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Who does the Gospel work for? What is the Gospel applicable for?

Does the Gospel work?

These are the questions facing Paul and the Jerusalem apostles. Big questions.

And the answers reveal wonderful truths about the Gospel. For then, for now, for us.

Series: Paul's Letter to the Galatians: The Only Thing That Counts

Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

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“Where’d you get that?”

That’s the question Paul addresses first in Galatians. And because so much depends on the Gospel, the question of where it’s from is hugely significant.

Here Paul explains where the Gospel he preaches came from, and how we can know that his claim is true.

Series: Paul's Letter to the Galatians: The Only Thing That Counts

Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

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Paul—and the Lord God through Paul—wants the Galatians (and us) to understand God’s grace so that we may be at peace.

There are others out there troubling us, attempting to pull us away from Christ’s beautiful New Creation, by selling us a Jesus-and “gospel” instead of the one-and-only Jesus-only Gospel.

We all need peace. We want peace. But that will only grow within us, or emerge among us, as we understand and appreciate God’s grace. Which is what Galatians is about.

Series: Paul's Letter to the Galatians: The Only Thing That Counts

Photo by Beth Jnr on Unsplash

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