Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

We often talk about “God the Father” or being “a child of God,” but what does that actually mean? This week, Pastor Connor digs into Galatians to answer that question. He also talks about what it takes to become a child of God, as well as how it changes us to be part of God’s family.

If the Law of Moses can’t make us right with God, then what good is it? That’s the question in this week’s passage from Galatians. Pastor Connor discusses how the Law was designed to make God’s people aware of their many sins, prepare them for the Messiah, and put everyone on equal footing before God. Then, he digs into how the promise made to Abraham beats the Law in every way. And most surprising of all, he talks about how the same Law that multiplied sin made grace multiply even more!

What can make us right with God? This week, Pastor Connor leads us through Paul’s scandalous answer to that question. Like most people today, the false teachers in Galatia said that righteousness comes from doing right things and avoiding wrong things. But in this week’s passage, Paul uses Old Testament scripture to show that only faith in Christ can justify us. When we trust in Jesus, we escape the Law’s curse and become children of Abraham’s promise.

Connor addresses the challenge of maintaining a strong and genuine faith and how we can unknowingly drift from our initial fervor, working for blessings already freely given through Christ. We must recognize God's role in sanctification and make sure our faith sprouts from conviction rather than convenience. Through self-reflection and a deepening relationship with Christ, we can avoid spiritual complacency and recapture the transformative power of the gospel.

How can we get right with God? The world would tell us our best hope lies in doing better than average: Avoiding bad things, doing good things, and generally trying really hard. That path is full of complexity and pain, and even worse, it doesn't work! This week, Pastor Jim tells us about the simpler way God offers: Faith in Jesus Christ. God the Son is the answer to being made right with God, and also to living the way God wants us to once we belong to Him. Join us as we dig into Galatians 2 to find out how faith in Christ allows us to share His death and His life.

Unity is one of the most important pursuits of the church. But sometimes, conflict is necessary in order to preserve the truth of the gospel. This week, Pastor Connor discusses Paul’s conflict with Peter at Antioch. To defend Christ’s church and its mission, Paul stood up to Peter, even when the cost was great. Join us as we consider when and how to engage in conflicts about truth.

Humans love to label and categorize things. It helps us to understand the world we live in. But sometimes those labels become a way to divide us from one another, even when we ought to be unified. This week, Pastor Connor walks us through how the labels “circumcised” and “uncircumcised” threatened to drive a wedge in the early church. He also discusses how the gospel of Christ should unify us, never divide us.

What turning point in your life can only be explained by “It’s a God thing”? That’s the question Pastor Jim asks us to consider in this week’s message on Galatians. In that letter, Paul responds to his critics by saying that his gospel came from Jesus Christ, not from himself. Join us as we dig into what that meant for the Galatians, as well as for us today.

Sometimes we're astonished by how wonderful something is. Other times, we're astonished by how bad things have gotten. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he tells them they've filled him with astonishment by how far they've drifted from the truth of Christ. In this week's message, Pastor Connor talks about how false teachers came in, obscuring and twisting the truth that reconciliation with God is by faith in Christ's work alone. He discusses why their teaching was so dangerous, as well as how we can guard the truth in our own understanding of the gospel.