Sunday Sermons / The Church

How to Judge a Pastor

Today is a little awkward as I will be talking about myself and my role as pastor.  Sometime in the future, however, First Baptist of Elimsport will need to find a new pastor.  Whether it’s because I retire, move, die, or get the boot, I’ll need to be replaced someday. You may not be part of FBC of Elimsport, but if you attend church anywhere, someday you will likely be facing such a situation.  Or maybe you are looking for a church and the quality of the pastor is a huge factor in making that choice.  What should you look …

Sunday Sermons / The Church

Why Does the Church Meet on Sunday?

I can remember in 1989, when I started working at a local grocery store, we were closed on Sundays.  In fact, apart from the mall, gas stations, and restaurants, most other businesses were closed on Sunday.  My manager at that time told me that when he was a kid, you couldn’t even find gas stations open on Sunday.  Even today, most professions outside of retail stores, have the weekend off.  Why?  While few talk about it, it is the result of Christianity.  When Christ entered the world at the beginning of what we call the Common Era, Sunday was just …

From the Pastor's Desk / Sunday Sermons

The Mission of the Church

This third installment of our series on the local church focuses on one of the most important questions we should be asking:  “What is the Mission of the Church?” We have talked about the origin of the church, the formation and activity of the early church, now we need to find out, what is the church all about?  What did God have in mind when He designed it?  What should we be doing? I hope you will take the time to listen in on this message.  It is one of the most critical, because if we get this right, it …

Sunday Sermons / The Church

Learning From the Early Church

In our first message in this series on the local church, we looked at the fact that the church was God’s idea, it is not manmade.  While man has produced many forms of church that may be very different than what God intended, make no mistake, God is the one who created and established the church.  Because of that, we want to make sure we have a good grasp of what the church should look like and what the church should be doing. To that end, we are going to dig into Acts 2 this morning.  We want to look …

Sunday Sermons / The Church

The Origin of the Local Church

How important is the church? I have been a pastor for over 25 years and I have been a follower of Jesus for 45.  If I have not learned anything else in all my experience, I have learned that the most important elements of the Christian life are time with God in prayer, time with God in His Word, and time with God’s people, specifically through local church involvement.  I have also learned that those are the things Satan most wants to keep us from. Now I think we all know those first two items are important.  I’ve never heard …

Christmas / Sunday Sermons

The Hope of All People

It says in Proverbs 13:12 that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick”.  Have you ever experienced that, where you had high hopes, only to have the dashed at the last minute?   Maybe you have had this happen just this Christmas season. It really does drain our souls and make us feel empty, like when we have been physically sick. Living in a fallen world with fallen people all around us, disappointments are a reality.  Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small.  Too many of them can really get us down and give us a pessimistic view of life; they …

Christmas / Sunday Sermons

To Save Us From Our Sins

Can you believe this is the week before Christmas?  We have been celebrating it here at First Baptist for the past couple of weeks and we continue this celebration in today’s service.  Join us as we enjoy a bell choir composed of 20 of our church kids, and then a Christmas program put on by kids both young and old.  We will finish by looking at Matthew 1:18-25 and be reminded of why we even celebrate Christmas.  All this along with singing together and fellowshipping together.   I hope you will come out and join us in person if at all …

From the Pastor's Desk / Sunday Sermons

Jesus, the Ultimate Fulfillment or “What Can We Learn from a Genealogy?”

In our Boys Only Club we have been looking at the reliability of God’s Word and the fact that every word in the Bible was put there on purpose by God. Sometimes, however, we treat parts of the Bible as less important than others, such as genealogies. Who wants to read a long list of hard to pronounce names? What meaning do they have for us? Well today, as we look at Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment, we will see that genealogies can be very important, and God knew what He was doing when He started the book of Matthew …

From the Pastor's Desk / Sunday Sermons

Ministry Trip Presentation

Today we have one of the young men who grew up in our church sharing about a ministry trip he was on.  He has had the desire for a long time to go on such a trip and God worked out the perfect timing so that desire could be fulfilled last month. Curtis has come back excited about what he has seen God doing in Asia and he is eager to share it with us this morning.  I am eager to hear all about it and invite you to join in as well!

From the Pastor's Desk / Sunday Sermons

Becoming Humbly Grateful

Pride and thankfulness don’t mix.  Thankfulness acknowledges that you have been given something, something that someone chose to give you.  Thankfulness acknowledges some form of exchange that you came out ahead on.  On the other hand, pride tends toward the attitude that someone owes you something.  Pride is demanding, it says people owe me. The other side of this coin is the fact that humility fosters thankfulness and thankfulness fosters humility.  They tend to build on each other.  The more we focus on what we have been given from God, the more humbled we become by His generosity.  This is …