First Baptist New Orleans Sermons by Month
History's Cry: He is Risen!
Series: Year Of The Message
You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3). “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—“ (Jude 1:24). Here God keeps them from knowing Jesus.
History's Call: Jesus is Lord
Series: Year Of The Message
Palm Sunday has always been one of my favorite days of worship. When I was a child we celebrated by waving the palm branches and re-enacted the entrance into Jerusalem. It helped me make sense of the message of the bible both old and new. Concerning the two great testaments, The Old Testament and the New Testament, someone said, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is by the New Revealed.” The New Testament is in the Old Testament if you know where to look. In fact, the term “new testament” is an Old Testament term from the prophet Jeremiah 31:31 that Jesus picks uses at the Last Supper to describe the covenant which is instituted in his blood. This day is about Jesus, his role and his royalty. This is a message, therefore, about Jesus—who he is and what his coming means for us. This historical event may help you, more than any other event, to get a sense of the continuity the New Testament has with the Old. That continuity is in the person of Christ. A big question mark hangs over Jerusalem on this day. The city is in an uproar. A crowd has gathered in the very heart of the city to welcome the prophet from Galilee. People are calling him the Son of David, giving him messianic titles. What is going on here, and who is this fellow on the donkey?
History's Lost & Found: The Kinsman-Redeemer
Series: Year Of The Message
Ruth is the only OT book named after a non-Jew. It is set in dark times with famine and death as its context, but it really has no bad characters in it—unless God is the culprit. We have a lost and found table in our lobby periodically. It always becomes a mess. A passerby would say that it looked like a pile of junk—umbrellas, articles of clothing, toys, tattered books, and miscellaneous keys, eyeglasses, watches and other items pile up on the table. God must have a lost and found department. A woman named Naomi ends up on the table. She doesn’t seem to fit anywhere, and no one will claim her. Equally lost, misplaced, and distressed is her widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth, a Moab woman who chooses to move to Bethlehem deep in Hebrew territory. Who will rescue these women so lost and misplaced? They will ultimately be rescued by God the Father through a kinsman, a relative, who will become to them a Redeemer. He will purchase from them their family land, take Ruth to be his wife, and raise up children for Naomi and her departed husband. Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer. He became our brother, taking on flesh and bHe redeemed us by paying the ultimate price for our deliverance—his own life.
History's Mysteries: Cycle of God's Deliverance
Series: Year Of The Message
Janet and I have been reading through the OT books at night. We will soon be reading again the book of Judges, a rather bloody book about wars and heroes. Gideonis one of those heroes.My father’s conversion is chronicled in some of my previous writings. My grandfather, my mother’s father, asked my father a pointed question when he was a boy: “Russ, are you saved?” That question actually made my Dad run from the job site where he was helping Mr. Reithmiller build his home. Dad was under great conviction, and that question from his future father-in-law really crystallized things spiritually for him. Think of that moment in time. My grandfather is repairing a wall with plaster. He has hired a neighbor boy to help. Grandpa pauses in the middle of his work to ask only one question. And my father’s future is forever changed. He is driven by that question to seek the Lord. Think of the ripple effect of that question. My father is saved. He leads each of his many children to faith in Christ. Fifty years later, we are now in a dozen different churches teaching and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do NOT underestimate the power of your influence. You never know what God is going to do through you.