Providence Church

Romans 8 tells us that the Christian life is life in the Spirit. And in verses 12-17, the Apostle Paul points to two aspects of life in the Spirit. Those who are in Christ have been given both a new obligation and a new identity.

The Christian life is life in the Spirit. He sets us free from sin and gives us power to live for God. It is supernatural, but it is also normal for everyone who is in Christ.

Romans 7:12 says the law is holy, righteous, and good. But the law has no power to make me holy, righteous, and good because I have no ability to keep the law and no power over my own sin. The end of Romans 7 is the apostle Paul throwing up his hands and saying, “Why is it so hard to obey God?! If I’ve been made new in Christ, then why does it feel like I can never change?”

If we are "not under law but under grace" (6:14), then what is the purpose of the law? That is the question behind Romans 7. The law leads us to Jesus by showing us the depth of our sin and weakness. Jesus releases us from the law and brings us under grace so that we can truly walk in Gods ways by the power of His Spirit.

Are we free to sin now that we're no longer under law but under grace? Paul’s answer is, “No way! Because we are freed to serve a better master."

If grace abounds when sin abounds, then shouldn’t we just keep on sinning so we can get more grace? Paul’s answer is, “No way! Because that not who you are anymore."

We live in a world where everyone is trying to find or create an identity. Romans 5 says there are two fundamental identities: in Adam and in Christ. That is breaking news in a culture like ours. The bad news is, by nature, everyone is in Adam. The good news is, by faith, anyone can be in Christ.

How confident are you in your standing with God? And what is your confidence (or lack of confidence) based on? We can have total confidence in where we stand with God, but the basis of that confidence is not what you might think.

We don’t move on from the gospel. We go deeper into it. Romans 1-4 is about the doctrine of justification by faith. In Romans 5, Paul takes us deeper into what it means for us now. We have peace with God. We stand in grace. We rejoice in hope. We know all of this is real because God has poured out his love into our hearts.

We live in a noisy, anxious, restless world. In spite of that, this psalm tells us that we can be quiet on the inside. But how? David shares the secret.

We have a way of seeing things, a story we are living in, but that story is largely shaped by cultural narratives. Genesis 1-11 introduces us to the true story of the world and invites us to see God, ourselves, and the world in new ways.

Babel is the prototypical city of man: rebellious, prideful, exalting itself against God, and pursuing autonomy and self-sufficiency apart from him. Instead of filling the earth as God commanded, the Babelites settle in one place and try to make a name for themselves. We have capacity to do the exact same thing.

Noah was an incredible man of faith, a true hero. If ever there was hope for things to go differently after the flood, it would be with Noah. This story in Genesis 9 shows us what happens when humanity gets a fresh start.

After the flood, God's purpose for humanity had not changed— He remained relentlessly committed to establishing His kingdom on earth through human beings made in His own image. God commissioned Noah to fill the earth and through Noah, established a covenant of grace with the new world and new humanity to come. Of course, this covenant points us to the greater covenant we have in Jesus.

The story of the flood is a hard story. We want to look away from it. Because it confronts us with the darkness of sin and the awfulness of God’s judgment against sin. But we have to look at this difficult story to help us see God as he really is. And surprisingly, when we look into the flood of God’s judgment, we discover his mercy and grace there too.

The conflict at the heart of the biblical plot is enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The line of Cain represents the seed of the serpent: escalating sin and evil. The line of Seth represents the seed of the woman: hope in God’s promise of redemption. And we have the same choice that every generation has had: will we go the way of the serpent or the way of faith?

This story of Cain & Abel invites us to think about how anger and sin works at a personal level, especially in our relationships. However we interpret the events in our lives determines how we will respond, and what the consequences will be. Will we listen to God, or will we go the way of Cain?

Genesis 3 tells us why the world is so broken. It's broken because sin corrupts everything and ultimately leads to death. Genesis 3 is a bleak chapter. And it leaves us wondering if there’s any hope for redemption. Is there any good news in the midst of the brokenness? Are there any signs of grace amongst the devastation of the fall? And the answer is, “Yes!" We see glimmers of God’s redeeming grace all over this chapter.

If God made everything good, why are things so bad? The answer is sin. Sin upends God’s good design and corrupts everything in the world, especially us.

The account of the fall not only tells us what happened — they took of the fruit and ate — but also how it happened. It is written for our benefit, so we can understand the components of temptation and sin in our own lives: deception, doubt, desire, and disillusionment.

What is marriage? How we answer that question matters, because there are many different views of marriage in our culture. Genesis tells us, like everything else in creation, marriage is from God. Marriage is created by God, marriage is defined by God, and marriage is a reflection of God. A God-centered view of marriage reveals its beauty and goodness, but also reminds us that it is not ultimate.

Relationship is essential to who we are because it is essential to who God is. But our idea of community often misses the mark. That is why we need to come back to Genesis. These are foundational principles for Christian community.

We live in a restless culture, where it’s hard to sit still, hard to turn it off, and hard to stop striving. It’s exhausting. Thankfully, God shows us that rest is part of being created in his image. He even sets apart a day of rest for us. But, we still struggle to rest. How can we practice rest and experience true rest of the soul?

We spend more time working than we do on anything else. And yet, most of us are in sort of a fog about the meaning and significance of our work. We need a robust vision for work if we are going to thrive in our postmodern world. And a deeper study of Genesis 1-2 gives us just that.

What does it mean to be a human being created in the image of God? It couldn’t be a more relevant question. Because there are a lot of competing narratives out there about what it means to be human…who we are, what we’re here for, and what makes us valuable. Genesis tells us that humanity is the crown of God’s creation.

Genesis 1 introduces us to the one true God who created everything by His Word. He knows what is good for humans and he provides by speaking it into the world. Creation and humanity flourish in conformity to God’s Word.

Genesis 1:1 is only seven words in Hebrew, and yet it is the foundation for everything to come in the Bible. Not surprisingly, the subject of this verse is our glorious God.

Whether you are new to following Jesus or you have been a believer for a long time, it’s worth returning from time to time to some of the most foundational questions of our faith. In Matthew 4, Jesus gives us some key insight into one such question: What does it mean to be a Christian?

Jesus uses water to talk about our deeper thirst for God, and how he alone can quench it. We drink from the wells of money and success and relationships and approval, but they are all broken cisterns that leave us empty, and thirstier than before. Jesus came to give us living water.

After reading the extraordinary chapter 15 about the resurrection of Jesus and all its implications, chapter 16 seems so ordinary. And yet the ordinary life and ministry of the church is where the promises of the resurrection get lived out now.

The message of Easter is that Jesus died and came back new. The hope of Easter is that what happened to Jesus will happen to us. We will be raised up to new life in new bodies on a new earth.

Some in the Corinthian church were claiming there was no resurrection of the dead. They saw it as a sort of foolish superstition—a belief for unsophisticated Christians. But in our passage, Paul wants us to see that the resurrection is central to everything we believe as Christians.

The gospel is not something we believe once and then move on from. It is something we hold fast to, daily. This passage gives us three handles to hold onto: the gospel is historical, theological, and personal.

Paul concludes this section of the letter about the worship life of the church (ch. 11-14) by focusing on the need for order in the worship gathering. Even though our worship gatherings today differ from the Corinthian gatherings, there is much for us to learn here about how to glorify God and edify one another in worship.

The Corinthian’s zeal to experience God took the form of elevating certain spiritual gifts and seeking heightened spiritual experiences. Paul does not dismiss these things, but in the context of gathered worship, he calls us to focus our desire on that which builds up the church. The main work of the Spirit is to exalt Jesus and build up his body.

The truest mark of God’s work in a community is not spiritual gifts. The truest mark of God’s work in a community is love. Because, unlike the gifts, love never ends.

A church can be gifted and growing, but without love, it has nothing. Love is the mark of spiritual vitality, and love is how people will know we follow Jesus. It is important to cut through the vague ideals of love in our day and get some clarity on what this kind of love looks like in everyday life.

One of the main problems in the Corinthian church was division. They were even dividing over spiritual gifts. So, Paul introduces this metaphor of the human body to illustrate what the church should be like and to show the beauty of membership in the body.

Some in the Corinthian church were claiming to have extraordinary spiritual gifts. They were positioning themselves as the “spiritual ones,” and everyone else was a second-class Christian. Paul corrects this thinking with the Corinthians and shows them (and us) the nature of true spirituality.

The Lord’s Supper is meant to be a sign and seal of the church’s unity in Christ. But for the Corinthians, it had become an occasion for division. They were coming together for worship, but they were coming together apart.

We do not live unto ourselves. We live in divinely ordered relationships, and that should be reflected and honored in our worship.

As Paul comes to the end of his long answer to the question of food offered to idols, he addresses some less-clear scenarios the Corinthians might have found themselves in. How should they navigate the gray areas of the Christian life? And how should we?

We are often unaware of the spiritual forces at work in our world and how we might be entangled in them. This text warns us about the reality and the power of idolatry, and how we can escape it.

Paul (of all people) is free in Christ. But he doesn’t use his freedom to serve himself. He uses his freedom to advance the gospel. He wants the gospel to win more and more people, so he adapts his life accordingly. In this passage, he gives a method and a mindset to help us live out this high calling.

God is often in the background of our lives and plans. We believe in him, but we live as though we don’t really need him. This feels normal to us, but it is laced with pride. James calls out the subtle pride and foolishness of presumption, and invites us to a life of humility and grace.

His glory is full of grace. Get up close to his grace, and you will see his glory: “The Lord, The Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

John tells us that the setting of the Christmas story is the world. And he wants us to see something very particular about the world: its darkness. When we think about the Christmas story, we like to think of brightness and light. But the story loses its meaning if we don’t consider the darkness.

John 1:1-18 has been called “a theology of Christmas.” These verses give some theological categories to help us think about the ancient story of Christmas. It’s a story that forever changes our story. In this sermon, we’re just looking at the subject of the Christmas story, this mysterious person called “The Word."

Rights are central to how we think about life as Americans. But the question Paul wants us to wrestle with here in ch. 9 is: how are we as Christians supposed to think about rights?

As Paul begins to answer the Corinthians’ questions about whether or not they should eat food sacrificed to idols, he doesn’t give them a rule or a law. Instead he encourages them to think more deeply about what it means to live out the gospel as God’s people.