First Presbyterian Church Of Baton Rouge

The purpose of exposing sin is not to send us deeper into ourselves, saying, “Next time I’ll have to hide it better.” The purpose of conviction is to send us flying to the arms of mercy. We realize we cannot solve what we have done and who we are in the core by ourselves. We need a savior. And he stands ready to give grace to help in time of need. Today, if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts. Today, if you hear his voice, run to him.

More life. More light. More love awaits. Get in the house!

When we gather for worship in Jesus’ name, we are not the main actors. Jesus is speaking to his Father about us. And Jesus is speaking to us about his Father. Like a good big brother, he puts us on his shoulders and carries us before his Father. “Here’s my little sister. She’s all right.” Every worship gathering, when two or more invoke the name of Jesus, they participate in this divine love story. Does that not change how we feel about whether or not to come to worship? I want to show up, because I want Jesus to show me off to his Father. I want to sing, because Jesus is already singing. I want to hear what he is telling me of his Father, because in Christ it is all good.

Does Moralistic Therapeutic Deism work? Is it true? When we get trapped in making up a god who exists mainly to assist us in living our dreams and being nice to people, we can reach a point of desperation. Like we want to blow up our routines. Shatter the shiny, shallow surface of the good lives we lead. We want to set it all on our fire and we don’t even know why. When we enter a relationship with the God who has spoken to us through his Son, though, he sets our lives on fire. His fire, however, doesn’t destroy us. Rather, he burns up our fantasies of self-determination. He incinerates the idols of ourselves. And then places the flame of his love inside our hearts. He lights us with a purpose bigger than ourselves. He shines through us.

The Lord can turn ugliness into beauty. Death into life. This is the kind of God we worship today. A God who has taken our sin and has given back something beautiful—his grace.

Jesus tells us to seek him and his kingdom and not to worry about the other stuff. Why? Why can we not be anxious? Because our Father loves us. He is in sovereign control of all things and he loves and takes care of us. So we can trust him. We can put all our fears and all our anxiety and all our insecurity on him. He is the God who can bear it.

Our Savior, renews both the victims and the victimizers. What we need as a church, and what we need individually, is a gospel that both heals the deep wounds of sin done against us and challenges the deep sin we have inflicted on others. We need a King who judges justly and who vindicates the victim. We need a savior who calls us to repentance and offers forgiveness for sin. We need someone who can renew us, change us, heal us. We have that person in Jesus Christ.

God called Joseph to honor him; not the Egyptian culture. As Christians in this world, we too, are foreigners in a foreign land. How do you function in a foreign land?