Hold Up The Book

Chapters 12 and 13 of Romans present guidelines for living as people who have been completely transformed by Christ. It breaks down into four main instructions:

• Think like Christians
• Love like brothers
• Submit like citizens
• Walk like saints

This sermon, preached that Temple Terrace Church of Christ a few years ago, is part of a series called "I know I should be more..." In this message, we explore the Christian imperative of offering forgiveness to others.

We had a guest speaker at my current congregation this weekend, so that's why I'm sharing a throwback message.

An egregious mistake makes all who witness it feel intense awkwardness. But an egregious sin makes all righteous people who witness it feel a painful kind of pity for those who've committed it. In this message, we look at the story of The Golden Calf—when the people of Israel forsook YHWH put another god before him, worshiped a graven image, and took His name in vain. We learn how bad the sin really was, and we learn some lessons to make sure that we do better than they did.

This message does a summary of Romans 9 thru 11, showing how they are one long argument making one main point: that God planned all the way through history to save ALL people (not just the nation of Israel), and since Israel generally rejected him, he rejected them and opened the door for anyone who has faith in him to be made righteous and saved.

The PowerPoint slides may be helpful for understanding the flow of thought through this message. You can click here to download them from the sermon post on Northside's church website.

Romans 8 enumerates many of God's promises to those who choose to follow him. The apostle speaks to "those who" must choose to serve God or not, then to "you who" have already made the choice, then about "we who" are in the Spirit, and finally about "He who" is for us and has made all these great promises to us. This sermon tries to cram so much of the New Testament's best and most multi-faceted teaching into one relatively short message.

I believe that the best, most Biblical way to praise God in church assemblies is strictly with a cappella singing—no instrumental music. In this part of a class that I taught, I talk to other believers who share that conviction, noting that: 1) In the broader scope of Christian history, a cappella church singing isn't unusual at all, 2) sometimes those who hold this conviction have articulated it poorly and should do better, and 3) there is more to righteous praise than just getting the method of music correct.

I hope this proves helpful to you!

When Jesus was eating the Passover meal with the apostles, he told Judas to get up from the table and do what he was thinking about doing. The emphasis was simple: make up your mind—stop waffling between good and bad, just make up your mind to do one or the other.

In most of the Churches of Christ, you will find only a cappella music in the church assemblies. Many wonder why we do this, and the answer to that is based on a Biblical rationale. This is a class recording from a few weeks back in which we talked about that rationale and its basis in New Testament teaching.

Next week, we'll post part 2 of this class, in which we give several warnings for believers who are committed to a cappella assemblies but who have sometimes spoken hypocritically or with intellectual dishonesty in defense of it.

The dissonant harmonies of some musical pieces help us appreciate the consonance of other passages in the same piece. Romans 7 is arguably the most dissonant passage in the grand symphony that is The Letter to the Romans, but there's a resolution for all the tension. This message attempts to smooth it out and help us understand Paul's expression of the good news.

What is it that motivates a man to want to minister to a church of God's people? There may be lots of motivations, and each man may articulate his personal sense of drive differently, but they should ultimately come down to a handful of basic things: a love for people, a conviction about the truth of God's word, and a willingness to serve. This episode explores some of those ideas and hopefully encourages all men who lead in a ministry role to continue doing it for godly reasons.