First Baptist Church of Crawfordville Florida - Sermons Teaching Preaching Inspiration Help and Hope episodes:

• August 21, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 19 - Saving Faith

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:16-22.

  Saving faith is rooted in God's grace, it rests on God's promise, it revels in God's glory, and it relies on God's power

  Saving faith is rooted in God's grace,not in human performance

  If salvation comes to us as a wage that we deserve because of our good works, then it is not by grace, which is undeserved favor

  Faith (as opposed to Law or human performance) guarantees the promise of becoming an heir of righteousness by faith

  Saving faith rests in God's promise, no matter how unlikely it may seem

  Abraham was 99 and Sarah was about 90 and had been barren her whole life - they were past the age of conceiving a child

  God changed Abram's name from Abram(exalted father) to Abraham (the father of a multitude)

  Paul calls God the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist

  God's promise of salvation is learned about only in God's word

  Saving faith revels in God's glory, not in human effort or willpower

  Abraham grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God

  Abraham's faith was solidly God-centered

  We grow in faith as we grow in our knowledge of the object of our faith

  Study God's attributes and ways as revealed in His word

  Act in faith and see God’s word and then your faith is strengthened

  Saving faith relies on God's power to keep His promise, in spite of human inability

  Abraham faced the reality of his and Sarah's complete inability to conceive the promised son

  Circumstances often dash our hope, but we fight back with hope

  God renewed Abraham's and Sarah's "dead" bodies to produce Isaac, the son of promise

  We are justified or declared righteous by faith alone in God's promise, not by any works or merit added to it

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• August 14, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 18 - Religion, Law, or Faith

  Righteousness is credited by faith alone: Romans 3:22, 26, 28, 4:3, 5, 6, 8

  Embedded in the fallen human heart is the idea that we can do something to commend ourselves to God

  Salvation doesn't come through religious

  rituals or the Law, but through God crediting righteousness through faith alone

  The blessing of salvation doesn't come through keeping religious rituals, but through God crediting righteousness to us through faith alone (4:9-12)

  God credits righteousness to the ungodly sinner who believes in Jesus Christ

  Abraham was circumcised 14 years after he believed God in Gen 15:6

  The Jews must enter through the gate of Gentile faith apart from circumcision

  Religious rituals serve as signs and seals of the reality that comes through faith in Christ

  A sign is not the real thing, but it points to the reality

  Circumcision, baptism, and the Lord's Supper are all signs

  A seal authenticates or attests to the reality of something

  Circumcision, baptism, and the Lord's Supper are all seals

  Salvation doesn't come through keeping the Law, but through God crediting righteousness to us through faith alone (4:13-15)

  If you seek to be justified by keeping the law, you make faith void and you nullify God's promises

  If you mix human works with God's grace, then grace is no longer grace

  If you seek to be justified by keeping the law, rather than gaining the blessing of salvation, you actually incur God's wrath

  There are two and only two possible eternal futures for every person:

  Either you are an heir of the world as a true descendant of Abraham (v. 13)

  Or you are an heir of wrath as one who sought to be right with God by keeping the Law (v. 15)

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• August 07, 2022Special Speaker Craig Stewart

  IMB Missionary Craig Stewart

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• July 24, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 17 - Forgiveness

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:6-8.

  The supreme blessing of God forgiving all your sins comes through faith apart from any works

  The greatest blessing of all is to have God forgive all your sins

  We must feel the heavy burden of our guilt

  A guilty conscience is a good thing - it alerts us to a problem

  J.C. Ryle: Never does a soul value the gospel medicine until he feels the disease

  Forgiveness is the greatest of all blessings

  Blessed means happy, especially in the sense of receiving God's favor

  Forgiveness doesn't mean the removal of all temporal consequences for our sins

  The Bible doesn't talk about forgiving yourself; you need to receive God's forgiveness

  Justification means that God credits Christ's righteousness to the guilty sinner and forgives all his sins apart from any good works

  Justification means that God credits righteousness to the guilty sinner

  To justify is to declare the sinner righteous - it's a judicial act of God

  Justification means that God forgives all of the guilty sinner's sins

  Positively, God credits the righteousness of Christ to our account

  Negatively, God does not credit our sin to our account

  Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven (4:7a)

  To forgive means to "send away," like the scapegoat in the wilderness

  Forgiveness means that God has sent away all of our sins

  Blessed are those "whose sins have been covered" (4:7b)

  Metaphorically, our sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus

  "Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account." (4:8)

  God takes our debt of sin off the books

  God disciplines us for sins, but we do not need to fear His condemnation

  Justification means that God credits Christ's righteousness to the guilty sinner and forgives all his sins apart from any good works

  Faith lays hold of what Christ did for us on the cross

  To obtain this blessing, we must cease from our own works and believe in God's provision in Christ

  The only one God justifies is "the one who does not work"

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• July 17, 2022The Call of Abraham by Student Pastor Tyler Pearce

  Genesis 12:1-9

  God chose Abram because God chose Abram

  God shows his glory by choosing the most unlikely, as no one else could possibly do it apart from a miracle of God.

  Abram is called (1-3)

  God is calling Abram to leave everything he ever knew

  God had already been preparing Abram's path to leave to his father's house, his family, and the land that was his

  Abram's obedience was part of God's plan for salvation for humanity

  Abram obeys (4-9)

  This is a public display of Yahweh worship in a land that it was almost foreign

  Moses gives the name of cities to show that this isn't a myth, but rather historical events that took place

  Application

  We do not deserve salvation

  God might call us to do the unfathomable

  If God calls us, God is faithful in fulfilling His side of the calling

  We MUST be obedient to the calling of God.

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• July 10, 2022What Does Righteous Obedience Look Like? by Student Pastor Tyler Pearce

  Let's open our Bibles to Genesis 22:1-19

  Many times we may come to church not out of righteous obedience, but as an obligation to receive a blessing.

  I. Abraham is called and obeys (vs. 1-9)

  Abraham's obedience is marked by immediacy

  Abraham knows what to do because he had done it hundreds of times previously

  Abraham expects God to be faithful to His Word (Genesis 12, 15)

  Abraham's faithfulness was an example for his son Isaac

  II. Abraham was, and will be, provided by God. (vs. 10-19)

  God provides a ram

  The Lord WILL Provide

  Obedience begins today

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• July 03, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 16 - Justifying the Ungodly

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:1-5.

  God justified Abraham by faith alone, not by his works.

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• June 26, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 15 - Faith or Pride

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:27-34.

  Justification by faith alone takes away all grounds for boasting and is the only doctrine that truly establishes God's Law.

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• June 19, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 14 - The Just and the Justifier

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:25-26.

  1. Jesus' sacrificial death satisfied God's wrath against us.

  2. Because God takes sin so seriously, so should we.

  3. If Christ offered Himself as the satisfaction of God's wrath against sinners, then any sinner can come to Him and find mercy.

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• June 12, 2022The Book of Romans - Part 13 - The Gift of Grace

  Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:21-24.

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