As you know, we are continuing today in our ongoing study of Philippians.  I have titled my message today, “The unity of the church.”  I want to show today what the Bible says about the kind of unity that marks a church that is committed to the gospel of  salvation.  As I’ve said before recently, the gospel of salvation is a two part message.  Unfortunately, a lot of us want to stop at the first half.  The first half is the grace of God that leads to salvation, and then the second part is the response of the believer in

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Jesus said in Mat 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”  The church is supposed to be the salt, the preservative, against the corruption that is in the world.  But instead, the modern church has become so much like the culture, we have accepted so much of the world’s corruption into the church, that we are no longer salty.  We are just part of the corruption.  It

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I spoke to the men at breakfast yesterday about the disciples on the night Jesus was arrested. And though they all had professed to follow Jesus to the death, if necessary, though they all professed to believe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, though they had all witnessed Jesus raise people from the dead, by the end of that night, when Jesus was arrested, they all fell away. Mark tells us that they all fled into the darkness.  Turns out they were afraid of death after all. But it would seem that after the resurrection, after they

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Whether you like it or not, whether you believe we should be involved in it or not,  our nation is involved in a war.  It’s a war that I hope will end quickly, without a lot of loss of American lives. And in my personal opinion, if we are in it, we should be in it to win it. I don’t think we should stop halfway without finishing the job. But there is another war that I would like to talk about today.  One that is just as dangerous, just as deadly, and one that we need to be committed

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The title of my message today is the progress of the gospel. We started off in Philippians looking at our partnership in the gospel, then the next week it was our participation in the gospel, and now today we’re looking at the progress of the gospel.  Some people have said that joy is the theme of Philippians.  But I would suggest that the gospel is the theme of the book.  In fact, the theme of every book in the Bible is the gospel.  So before we go too far into this passage, let’s define the word gospel.  It’s a very

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As we continue in our study of Philippians, you may remember that last week we looked at the first 6 verses of chapter one and the subject of our message was partnership in ministry.  And this subject of partnership was presented in verse 3, which says, “in view of your participation in the gospel.”  Today we are going to build on that idea as we look at growing in participation.  Participation in ministry is the means of growth, it’s the means to our maturity in Christ, to become all that God intends us to be in Christ. I think that’s what

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Well, after some deliberation I have decided to study this small book of Philippians on Sunday morning and I anticipate completing this book by the beginning of our summer season. One interesting thing about the book of Philippians is that it was most likely written when Paul was in prison in Rome.  At the end of the book of Romans, Paul was telling the Christians there that he was looking forward to coming to see them.  And yet I doubt that he had anticipated that God would bring him to Rome in chains.  Yet while he was in prison there,

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Today we are going to finish our study of Jude.  This short letter was written by Jude who says he was the brother of James.  What he does not mention is that he is also the half brother of Jesus Christ.  They had the same mother -Mary, but different fathers, Joseph being the father of James and Jude, and the Holy Spirit being the father of Jesus. But what Jude does say about his relationship to Jesus is that he is a bond servant to his Master and Lord, Jesus the Messiah. Jude wrote this letter to the churches of

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We begin this section of scripture with Jude uttering the phrase, “Woe to them!”  It is a phrase that cannot be understood without the context of what came before it.  And so if we have not been here in the last couple of weeks, we must find out who is “them”.  Who is Jude talking about.  We find the  answer to that question back in vs 4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master

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Reminders from history, Jude 5-10                                                             Psalm 119: 49-56 There are primarily two basic themes prevalent in theology in Christendom today.  But only one is correct theology, and the other one is incorrect, even though it is the most popular.  The most common theology, the most popular theology,  has as it’s premise that God exists to serve man.  They may not say it so crassly, but nevertheless, that is the basics

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