Looking BACk to Advent is only part of the meaning of Christmas. Looking FORWARD to Jesus' second coming was his main fixation. (Special thanks to Rev. Elliot Cherry of Midtown Fellowship Church- 12 South Site- in Nashville, TN for the insights provided here. Check Elliot's pulpit ministry out here.)

God is now ready to mark Abram out as a unique family of God, his agents of transformation in a broken world. But the manner and means that he does that will strike many as bizarre, but when you understand the meaning of circumcision, the purpose of the church emerges.

As God makes big promises to Abram, the patriarch asks a perfectly natural question, "How can I know this is all going to work out." God's response to that simple question results in one of the most astounding passages in all of Scripture, and the key to what we mean by "grace."

Genesis 12 is the break-through point in the "story thus far." Suddenly, God calls a childless pagan to be the head of a new family that'll carry the mission of God through to completion. It's a commission that God's people still have even in our day, to remake the world for his glory.

We live in a world that totters on the brink of collapse, it seems, from a lack of certainty about the world. But God's covenant (contract) with Noah shows that God's people can have a radical foundation for our relationship with the world, with justice, and in our own hearts.

There is a very strange tidbit of a story in Genesis 6:1ff that is so odd that many are tempted to consign the Bible over to an absurd document of superstition. But if you dig into its meaning, you might find it opens us up to an unseen realm where God orders the world.

How do you embrace the effects of evil in life and the dire consequences of sin but look to forgiveness as God's only remedy. This is something in our culture that we don't do very well, but if we don't figure out how to love forgiveness, we'll splinter into oblivion.

There are few things like human sexuality to polarize our secular culture's opinions of Christians. But rooted in Genesis 2 is a profound confession by Adam as he looks at Eve about God, and how he's going to save the world that will likely shock you.

We live in a day when sex and gender have been torn apart in the culture's imagination, only to suggest that our sexual differences are merely skin deep. Genesis 2 says otherwise. Quite the contrary, our sexual differences are a window into the very love of God for his people.

For most adults, the singular formational activity in which we are engaged is our jobs. Which is probably why our work is so fraught with opportunities for difficulty in life. But Genesis 2 lays out a framework for how God intended for his image bearers to think about their work.

The opening book of the Bible reveals a God who speaks things into being with a majestic artistry that forms the foundation of humanity's search for what is good, true and beautiful.

Genesis 1:1 cuts across our present Western context with a clear and radical proposition: there is a God and he is the creator of all things. From that one premise comes the foundation of a Christian view of the world.

The average "person on the street" doesn't have a fair knowledge of the vast amount of scholarship that has been spent on establishing an undeniable fact: the Bible is the most reliable document of antiquity existing today. "Why," is our topic in this sermon.

Perhaps the reason why we are disinterested in the Bible is because we don't fully apprehend what the Bible claims to be. The truth is: if you are committed to the status quo in your life, then by all means don't dive into the transforming power that is the Scripture.

More times than not, we want to read the Bible like an answer book, looking for a technique that always produces a good result. But the Bible is wisdom literature. It teaches us to be wise, only as we immerse ourselves in its story and truth.

So is the Bible a book created by God or by the hands of sinful men? While we often say the correct answer, "Both!" oftentimes we fail to realize how differently that conviction leads us to look at the world around us and how we picture a Christian's mission in the world.

The vast majority of the objections our secular world has with accepting the Bible for what its come from the failure to understand the kind of tool the Bible is. Getting clear on the nature of Scripture is essential to growing in the wisdom it wants to impart.

Paul says that there is a life altering metamorphosis that changes every Christian into a servant of Christ. But HOW that transformation happens very succinctly gathers together all the grace Paul has unpacked throughout the book and shows us that it all happens, "by the mercies."

Paul says that there is a life altering metamorphosis that changes every Christian into a servant of Christ. But HOW that transformation happens very succinctly gathers together all the grace Paul has unpacked throughout the book and shows us that it all happens, "by the mercies."

Paul cares so deeply for his fellow Jewish countrymen that he writes an extended explanation of exactly HOW they are to come to faith, if they do. In so doing, he provides modern believing people with a new way of thinking about the challenging topic of evangelism.