1 Thessalonians 1:1-5 As we turn our attention to God’s word this morning, I’d like you to open your Bibles to Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church, 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your…
Luke 3:23-38 One of the joys of expository preaching is that you get to be exposed to all different portions of Scripture. Not many preachers would on their own choose to preach through genealogies, but expository preaching is a method of preaching that requires you to move verse by verse, passage by passage through the Scripture. So, I’m forced to do this, but gratefully so. I am very much encouraged by this passage and I hope you are as…
Luke 3:21-22 Jesus’ baptism was the context of his anointing by God for the unique role and the special ministry as Israel’s Messiah. I just want to start by reading these two verses. You know we talked about this last week, and we’re going to finish it up here today. We’re going to start by reading those verses, and then I’ll make a few comments just by way of review. It says in Luke 3:21: Now when all the…
Luke 3:21-22 These are monumentally important verses. These two verses here really represent a high point in redemptive history. This is a zenith that marks the division between the two covenants of the Bible. It is a very, very important text. This is what you might call a watershed text. I’m calling these two verses, Luke 3:21 to 22, the “Covenantal Divide.” This week, we’re going to consider the role of Jesus’ baptism in that divide, and next week we’re…
Luke 3:15-20 Women are learners, they’re students of Scripture, and Luke acknowledges that all the way through the Gospel. Christ acknowledges that in his ministry to women directly. But our passage today has nothing to do with women. It’s got to do with people. So if you are “a people,” it has to do with you. We’re going to go back to our study of Luke’s Gospel. I’m actually going to start in John chapter 10. If you turn to…
Luke 3:10-14 This is really the fifth message in a, in this series. So we’ll start back where we started a few weeks back in Chapter 3, verse 1. Follow along as I read Luke 3:1 and following. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias, the tetrarch of Abilene, during the…
Luke 3:10-14 As we pointed out last week, the call to repentance is considered by many today to be something that is an addition to the Gospel, rather than the essence of the Gospel itself. For anyone to insist that there must be fruits of repentance, like John commands here, or that there must be works accompanying genuine faith that is considered by many evangelicals today to be the very essence, not of the Gospel, but of legalism. To many…
Luke 3:7-9 We have come to see how all true Gospel proclamation involves this message of repentance. Jesus preached repentance. The Apostles preached repentance. The students of the Apostles preached repentance. And all true preachers of the Gospel ever since have continued preaching a message of repentance. Without repentance, you no longer have the Gospel. You’ve actually replaced the Gospel with a false substitute, a damning substitute. So we need to be very careful as we learn this morning, as…