First Baptist Church of Fairbury Sermons

Genesis 3:16-19 is where God pronounces the curse, and it reads like the worst news in Scripture: pain in childbearing, a power struggle in marriage, thorns and thistles, and a return to dust. Pastor Daryl Evans preaches that hope does not come instead of the curse, or despite it. Hope comes through it.

Working through the Genesis series, Daryl uses the Japanese art of kintsugi, where a broken pot is repaired with gold that runs through the cracks, to picture what God does with a fallen world. He walks the curse of the woman and the curse of the man, ties the word "desire" in verse 16 to sin crouching at the door in Genesis 4:7, and refuses to soften what the curse still costs us. He closes on the ground itself: the same cursed earth is where Christ walked to the cross at Golgotha, so the new creation overcomes the old. If the effects of the curse have worn you down, this one names the pain honestly and points past it.

Genesis 3:14-15 delivers the worst news humanity ever received, and God opens it with a promise. Pastor Daryl Evans works through the curse on the serpent and finds the first glimpse of the gospel buried in the judgment. Why does the world break the way it does, and where does hope enter it? The answer starts here.

Daryl reads the serpent forced onto its belly as a picture of Satan's defeat, then traces the enmity of verse 15 to the one who crushes the serpent's head at the cross. He connects the passage to Revelation 12:9, Luke 10:18, and Romans 5:12, where Paul explains how Adam's sin reaches every one of us. The claim lands plainly: we are enemies of God by our sin, and God still moves to make enemies into friends, even children. If you have read this chapter as an old story about a snake, Daryl shows why it is the story of you.

Ephesians 6:4 holds a single charge for fathers: do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Pastor Daryl Evans calls this sermon "Imperfect Fathers," and his claim is plain. None of us parent perfectly, but imperfect fathers are not disqualified. We receive the same grace from our Heavenly Father that we are called to extend to our kids.

Daryl walks through the fatherly pitfalls Paul warns against, selfishness, inconsistency, favoritism, hypocrisy, broken promises, drawing on John MacArthur, JD Greer, and Kent Hughes, whose image of parenting as holding a wet bar of soap lands the point. He turns to the gospel, where Christ traded his righteousness for our sin, and then to the call to bring our children up, to nourish them tenderly over a lifetime. He closes with three thoughts: imperfect fathers are not disqualified, the goal is children who trust God completely, and every father can rejoice in a perfect Heavenly Father.

Psalm 103 opens with a charge: forget not all his benefits. Pastor Brian takes that line seriously, asking what God actually promises the people who follow him, and what they must do to receive it. The thread runs through 1 John 1 and the real cost of following Jesus.

Working backward into 1 John 1:5-10, Pastor Brian stacks up benefit after benefit: the Holy Spirit living inside us, complete forgiveness, peace in an anxious world, clear guidance for the decisions we face, and authority over the enemy through the full armor of God in Ephesians 6. The benefits come with conditions. Faith is a knowing, not a hoping, like Abraham climbing the mountain sure that God would provide. Pastor Brian closes on three plain charges: walk in the light of truth instead of chasing perfection, treat confession as the path back to fellowship, and reject the lie that hiding sin costs nothing. The people God draws closer are the honest ones.

Genesis 3:1-7 is the hinge of all Scripture. Pastor Daryl Evans works through the first seven verses of the fall and argues that the same deception that took Adam and Eve is still working on us today. The serpent does not open with a lie. He opens with a question: did God actually say?

In the Genesis series, Daryl traces a four-stage strategy the serpent uses: question God's Word, discuss it instead of obeying it, contradict it outright, then promise something better. He leans on JD Greear, who says Satan's great lie is not that God doesn't exist but that He doesn't have your best interest at heart, and Matt Chandler on how temptation takes a genuine, good desire and redirects it toward what God forbade. He closes with three plain charges: the enemy is real, the fall came from unbelief rather than ignorance, and there is reason to rejoice, because the last Adam, Jesus Christ, answered every temptation with Scripture and reverses the curse.

Series: Genesis

Genesis 2:4-16 draws a line between creation as event and creation as relationship. Pastor Daryl Evans works through Moses's shift from Elohim to Yahweh Elohim, arguing that the name change is not a detail but a declaration: the God who spoke galaxies into existence is the same God who got down and breathed into a man's nostrils.

In this Genesis series, Daryl builds the case that Genesis 2 is not a second creation account but a zoom in on the first, moving from the broad sweep of chapter 1 to the intimate act of verse 7. He draws on creationist scholar Andy McIntosh's warning that every major Christian doctrine rises or falls on the Genesis account, and he traces Thomas Huxley's 19th-century strategy of discrediting creation as a way to discredit Scripture entire. The sermon lands on three applications: you were designed with purpose, not assembled by chance; your daily work is worship, not a secular detour from it; and the breath God put in Adam was not a one-time event. It is what you carry.

Genesis 2:1-3 puts the climax of creation on day seven. The whole week builds toward the day God rests. Pastor Daryl Evans asks a question most of us avoid: when did you last truly rest? He's after the kind of quiet stopping that happens because the work is finished and God can be trusted with what's left.

Continuing the Genesis series, Daryl works three Hebrew verbs from the text: kala (finished), Shabbat (rested), and Barack (blessed). He connects God's "it is finished" in creation to Jesus's "it is finished" from the cross in John 19:30, and leans on Kent Hughes to show why the seventh day in Genesis has no evening and no morning. The first thing God ever called holy was a day, not a place, an altar, or a person. If rest feels optional or even guilty to you, this one reframes it as a statement of trust and an invitation Jesus extends in Matthew 11.

Series: Genesis

Genesis 1:26-27 lands a verdict on every human life: you bear the image of God. Pastor Daryl Evans starts with a story from his Apple Store days, when Treasury agents trained on real currency to spot counterfeits, and turns it back on us. The world floods us with counterfeit answers about identity, worth, and purpose. Knowing the real thing makes the fakes obvious.

Continuing through Genesis, Daryl works the Hebrew word tselem, the king's statue marking his territory, and what it means that God placed his image bearers in every quarter of creation. He draws on Viktor Frankl on meaning in the camps, John MacArthur on the moral, rational, relational, and creative shape of imago Dei, JC Ryle on the dignity of every soul, and John Calvin on the seed of faith planted in every person. He closes on three plain charges: life is sacred, you bear the image of God, and that's reason to rejoice.

Series: Genesis

Genesis 1:26-31 closes the creation account with a verdict reserved for one day only: very good. On Mother's Day, Pastor Daryl Evans asks why God paused for the first time in six days before forming humanity, and why that pause changes how you read your own life.

Continuing the Genesis series, Daryl works through the divine deliberation of verse 26, four characteristics that set humans apart from every other creature (erect posture, upward gaze, facial expression, articulate speech), and the creation mandate to cultivate and have dominion. He draws on John MacArthur on divine deliberation, John Piper on covenantal delight, Henry Morris on the image of God, and Michelangelo's chisel as a picture of how God still shapes the people he calls very good. You are not an afterthought, you are a forethought, and the God who called creation very good is not done with you yet.

In part one of "The Crown of Creation," Pastor Daryl walks through days four and five of the Genesis 1 creation account, exploring how God filled the heavens with His glory and how His creativity knows no limits. From the deliberate way Moses strips the sun and moon of any divine status by leaving them unnamed, to the almost throwaway phrase "and the stars" that encompasses the trillions of galaxies modern telescopes have revealed, this message invites us to see creation with fresh eyes. God didn't struggle to make the universe—He spoke, and it obeyed.

But this isn't just theology. The same God who flung galaxies into existence and filled the seas and skies with extravagant variety also knows your name and has a purpose for your life. Drawing from the story of Job, this sermon reminds us that even when life doesn't make sense, we worship a God of abundance, not scarcity—a God whose ways are higher than ours. Look up, slow down, and let creation point you back to the Creator who made it all.