Providence Church

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.

Sometimes the way we talk about singleness frames marriage as the aim of life. For Paul, our aim in life is to be fully devoted to God, and he thinks singles have an advantage on that front. He wants us to rethink our view of marriage and singleness in light of the gospel and the kingdom work at hand.

We can all probably remember a time when we felt a sense of newness and excitement in our faith. But inevitably, life has a way of catching up with us. And when it does, we can lose our sense of joy and commitment in our walk with God. What do we do when life catches up to us?

After 6 chapters of building a theological foundation, now Paul begins to address specific questions and concerns in the Corinthian church. In the first part of chapter 7 he gives practical instruction related to sex, marriage, and divorce. All of these things are grounded in the theological foundation. As we approach this chapter, we are not looking for quick answers or rules. We are looking for how these instructions reflect the beauty and wisdom of God and lead us to deeper faith in Jesus.

What we have in these verses is a theology of the body. Paul is telling us (in no uncertain terms) that our bodies matter.God gives more dignity and significance to our bodies than we could ever imagine. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all involved in dignifiying our bodies. If we really believed what God says about our bodies, sexual sin would be unthinkable to us!

When Christians act like the world acts — in this case, taking each other to court — we dishonor one another and we fail to show the world the wisdom of God and the power of the gospel.

1 Corinthians 5 is one of the key passages in the Bible about church discipline. And it’s also one of the most-ignored, least-applied passages in the Bible. We have much to learn from this chapter about what it means to be the church and love one another well.

So far in the letter, Paul has been contrasting worldly wisdom with the wisdom of the cross. Worldly wisdom leads to arrogance and pride and divisions in the church. But the wisdom of the cross results in humility and leads to genuine spiritual maturity. That’s what Paul has been teaching. But he doesn’t just teach the way of the cross with his words, he demonstrates it in how he lives. He points to himself and the other apostles as models to emulate. Because Paul knows we learn by imitation, by following an example. That’s how disciples are made!

The church belongs to God. He prepares work for us to do, he enables us to do it, and he causes the growth. That reality shapes how we view spiritual leaders, how we participate in the life of the church, and what we think the church is.

Popular thought is that wisdom is self-gained. If you work hard enough, if you get enough knowledge and experience, if you develop enough skill, you will become a wise person. But in 1 Corinthians 2, the apostle Paul flips this notion on its head. He challenges our definition of wisdom and points us to this truth: true wisdom is something you have to receive.

One of the main problems in the Corinthian church is that they were living according to worldly wisdom. They were seeing the world just like the world sees the world. So, Paul reminds them of the wisdom of God found in the gospel. The foolish wisdom of the gospel turns our view of the world upside down.

Unity in the church does not mean everyone agrees about everything, nor does it mean that everyone is right about everything. Rather, Christian unity is centered on humbly pursuing Jesus together as we bring our lives under the authority of his word.

The Corinthian church was a mess, and Paul was writing to address their host of problems. But he doesn’t begin his letter with a rebuke. He begins with a reminder. He doesn’t start by reacting to all their issues. He starts by refocusing them on their Lord and who they are in him.

A sermon from Psalm 25 in our Psalms Series given by Will Walker.

A sermon from Psalm 23 in our Psalms Series given by Josh Guerrero.

A sermon from Psalm 67 in our Psalms Series given by Todd Stewman.

A sermon from Psalm 37 in our Psalms Series given by Will Walker.

A sermon from Psalm 2 in our Psalms Series given by Todd Stewman.

A sermon from Psalm 27 in our Psalms Series given by Jordan Hurst.

A sermon from Psalm 38 in our Psalms Series given by Will Walker.

A sermon from Psalm 63 in our Psalms Series given by Joe Guenther.

A sermon from Psalm 103 in our Psalms Series given by Todd Stewman.

A sermon from Psalm 3 in our Psalms Series given by Will Walker.