As we embrace the theme of Intentional in 2025, I am committing to greater intentionality in my preaching. This includes ensuring every sermon is rooted in Scripture, centered on the gospel, clear in communication, focused on transformation, practical in application, relationally connected, Spirit-led, and guided by an eternal perspective. I invite you to join me in prayer and accountability as we strive together to glorify God and fulfill His Great Commission.
Moving at the speed of obedience isn't about striving or struggling. It's about surrendering to God's timing and purposes. It's about being so in tune with His heart that when He says "go," we go; when He says "speak," we speak; and when He says "wait," we wait.
Christ is making the difference in our hearts at First Baptist Starkville. The Spirit is stirring our affections, leaving us with a desire for more and more of him. Let's continue to plead for his presence. We have yet to see how far he wants to take us or how deep he wants us to go.
March 22, 2024, marks 15 years since my ordination at First Baptist Atlanta. This special occasion marks my first ordination without having my ordaining pastor, the late Charles Stanley, who died in April of 2023. As far as I know, I stand last in a long line of men ordained into the gospel ministry under Dr. Charles Stanley's time at First Baptist.
As strange as it sounds to speak,
Christians say there is an eighth day of the week.
Of course we know our calendar has seven,
But Christians say eight to suggest there is a heaven.
The first day of the week refers to the beginning of something new
But when Christians say eighth we are looking ahead to all that God will do.
The wise man is dedicated to continual progression in wisdom. If wisdom is a roadway, the wise man desires to continually travel down it. The wise person is not content camping on wisdom’s way. The posture of the heart of the wise is a posture of continual consideration for working wisdom in their life. Interestingly, the way the wise learn is through correction. Wisdom requires humility.
We are continuing the warning against sexual immorality through considering this Proverb. Our age is considered rampant with immorality, but the Proverbs demonstrates that the clarion call to flee sexual temptation is applicable at any age. The admonition is to store up the sayings of the wise father and live. The wise sayings of the father are to be closely guarded like a treasure.
Mom joins Dad in the instruction to their child. Mom and Dad together show the biblical paradigm and the importance of heterosexual, monogamous, marital, fidelity. Mom and Dad, as husband and wife, are together parenting. Their togetherness is an example of what the child should want and to not pursue the destructive immorality of adultery
After such considerable words are expressed towards the intoxicating love of a man and woman, the Proverbs put a question before us, Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (v.20) The question makes the most sense after considering the woes engaging with a forbidden woman brings and the joys of your own wife.
The ground of Wisdom’s Way is paved with the fear of the Lord. Verse 12, when you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run you will not stumble. Pursuing wisdom is a matter of life and death. I wonder if we approach the pursuit of wisdom that seriously? Verse 13, Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her for she is your life. In contrast with the way of the fool, verses 18-19, But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.
The heart of a worshipper is developed as they learn to trust in the Lord. Trusting the Lord is the only way to walk the pathway of wisdom laid out in the Proverbs. Leaning not unto our own understandings means listening to what God says and placing value in what he says even more than what we think or see.
The path of wisdom is a straight and narrow path. Few find this path, but those who do enjoy the pleasure of eternal life with God. The one who calls us to walk this path has come and walked the path for us. Jesus calls us to follow him. As we follow him we are assured of where he leads. Jesus leads us safely to enter the courts of the eternal city of God. In that city, no evil thing will ever enter in.
To consider God’s desire for you, to contemplate God’s love for you, is enough to blow the brightest and most contemplative thinker. God loves you! God desires you and will stop at nothing until he makes you his very own. The truth of God’s love for you makes everything else you could consider fall into place. Even though the depths of God’s love is incomprehensible, the fact that we know eternal, almighty God loves is enough for me.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the most revolutionary message the world can hear today. The gospel brings hope and healing. Anything else attempts to bring hope and healing but is forever failing. Christ came to turn the world upside down; to repair what was broken by means of redemption; to make all things new. His chief weapon – love. His main objective - to form a new humanity who worships and obeys – who delights in the Lord and walks with him.
Jesus took we who were bound and broke us free enabling obedience from disobedience ones. Jesus took blinded eyes and caused them to see; deaf ears began to hear, and dead ones started living. This came about as the Beloved Son subjected himself to slavery, perfect took on imperfection, the righteous one became unrighteous so that we who were unclean could be clean. Sinners can now be saints. Slaves can now be sons. All because of God’s beloved Son.
The following is Part II of the teaching series, What Good is the Church? A complete audio file of the below selection can be found here.
A hallmark Christian confession is this: God is Trinity. Apart from the Trinity, there is no Christianity. Apart from the Trinity, there is no salvation. Apart from the Trinity, there is no church.
Father, Son, and Spirit all demonstrating that our salvation is a gift of God. When we say God, we understand we mean the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What difference will it make in our understanding of the church if we begin with God as Trinity? Remember, God is essential to the church. Take God away, and there is no church. The Trinity tells us that God has eternally existed as three persons – Father, Son, and Spirit. There are not three Gods but three persons in one God. Whatever it means to be God, the Father, Son and Spirit possess equally. There has been and always will be an eternal fellowship between Father, Son, and Spirit. The three persons dwell in unity, hence Trinity, literally, tri-unity. Within the Trinity, there is unity and diversity. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is not the Father or the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son. Father, Spirit, and Son are God. Each member of the Trinity dwelling together in love.
God desires to share himself with us and to have us share in his fellowship. The Father sends the Son to accomplish salvation – that act whereby God turns towards us – and then the Spirit is sent to seal the salvation the Father sent the Son to accomplish. More specifically, according to Ephesians 1, the Father elects, he chooses us, in the Beloved Son by the Holy Spirit. Election says the God who created a trillion stars and endless galaxies knows you by name.
Ephesians 1:1-14 is filled with plural language -, we and us. From this, we learn, the church is both communal and relational. God made us for God. The substance of our relationship is love. 1 John 4:8 tells us, God is love. Because God loves, he gave. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Jn. 3:16)
The Trinity is the right place for us to begin as we set our minds to understand the church. Because we come to church, or we think of the church in so many different ways due to our experience, we often begin with what we do instead of who we are. Unless we start with who we are, we will never appreciate all we have been called to do.
When we understand God in love has called us to enjoy him and glorify Him forever, our missions is fueled not by our efforts but by his powerful steadfast, ever reaching, all-encompassing love. You and I are created to have fellowship with God. Communion with God shapes everything.
The key phrase there is fellowship. We take this to heart. As John says, If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20–21)
We should continue by saying if we are not good at loving our brothers and sisters who we can see, how can we love those whom we can’t see? Remember election, God knows who are his. God has a harvest. God intends to save lost ones. As God loves, so we as his people share in God’s love through the power of the Spirit. We share that power in the way we love one another and the way we love the other. As God desires to bring exiles and strangers home to make them sons and daughters, as he seeks and saves lost ones, we too must love one another and desire to express love towards others.
Do you love God? Do you find yourself loving? A lover of God will be loving.
The church produces this humble thought pattern. As we look around us to see the brokenness of our culture coming to bear, we see two extremes of people – sinners who think they are saints and saints who know they are sinners. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the trouble of these days further proves the evaluations of a man trapped in his own time matters the least. What we need is transcendent truth, revealing where we are broken and offering to heal. Jesus has come to us as life and light as we turn to him; we both see and live.
What good is the church? The church is the good that God has prepared for the world.
How do you view the world? Is your view of the world informed by reality? What makes life worth living is finding out what life is all about. There has been much heartache during our current pandemic. Many lives have been lost as both a direct and indirect result of the coronavirus. One good that has come in my experience is to slow the pace, take a breath, and enjoy every moment.
© Timothy Andrew Brown, 2025.
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