Forest Park Church Sermons

If God created us male and female in His image to glorify Him, how do we glorify God? Do we simply obey God and do whatever He tells us so He will be happy with us and accept us? No, for that glorifies self, not God. This Sunday we will learn that we glorify God by loving Him and obeying His commands and law. Love and obedience must go together, and love must come first.  

Often, we believe the gospel is the means by which we are saved, but then we move on, digging deeper into applying biblical principles, and through our works, we mature as followers of Christ. Yet in our text, Paul shows us that the gospel not only saves us but also matures us. 

In our text, Paul shifts from standing with Peter to uphold the truth of the gospel to opposing Peter for failing to live in line with that truth. If Peter can quickly forget the gospel's implications and veer off, how much more should we be reminded of the gospel's truth and its implications for our lives?

In A Meeting and a Mandate (Galatians 2:1-10), we explore Paul's defense of the gospel and the unity of the early church around one unchanging truth: salvation comes through faith alone in Christ alone, not by works. Discover how the gospel frees us from striving for acceptance with God and produces a life of joyful obedience through the finished work of Jesus.

Did God create everything? The Bible clearly says God created all things, and all of His creation was very good. God’s creation reveals His goodness, power, wisdom, and glory; shows that He continues to sustain and care for what He made; and indicates that although sin has corrupted creation, Christ will ultimately restore it. Therefore, Christians should trust in God’s care, faithfully steward His creation, and respond with wonder and praise. 

In the main body of Paul’s letter, he addresses a question:How do we know that the gospel Paul preaches is the true gospel? Paul answers by describing his personal experience of God’s grace, his reception of the gospel from God rather than from man, and the apostles in Jerusalem affirmingthe gospel he received from God. By looking at Paul’s story, we will see his defenses against the troublemakers’ attacks and how he illustrates the gospel of grace through his own life.

In love, Paul uses the strongest possible language to convince the churches in Galatia that when a gospel of Jesus plus anything else is preached, it is not the gospel at all. Any revision of the gospel leads to its reversal. If the true gospel is so crucial and each generation has been tempted to veer off and add things to it, how can we ensure that the gospel we believe is actually true? Why does it matter for us to be uncompromising about the gospel?  

The book of Galatians is all about the gospel. When we are tempted to say that the gospel is Jesus plus anything else we want to add for salvation, we turn to another gospel, which is no gospel at all. In Paul’s greeting and introduction, he gives us a brief yet comprehensive outline of the gospel message. We will discover who we are, what Jesus did, what the Father did, why He did it, and why God must get all the glory forever and ever. 

This Sunday, we continued our New City Catechism series with Question 4, exploring how and why God created us. In a world where many struggle to find purpose and identity, we'll discover what it means to be made in God's image and how our lives find their true meaning in knowing, loving, and glorifying Him through Jesus Christ.

In this psalm, David faces his fear of King Achish of Gath. He turns to the Lord for help, laments the circumstances that cause his fear, and, through this prayer, moves from fear to trust and thanksgiving for the Lord’s faithful love. Through this psalm, we learn how to deal with our fear; it takes our fear and begins to shape it over time, helping us learn to trust the Lord.