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The Corner Pulpit
Hosted by Yates Baptist Church · EN
We're a congregation in Durham, North Carolina, trying to live faithfully in ordinary life. Each Sunday, Pastor Christopher Ingram — and occasional guests from near and far — opens Scripture and preaches with honesty and care. Pull up a chair.
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Walk This Way
1w ago00:42:15Tap to summarizeThe Jordan was at flood stage when the priests waded in — before the water moved. Obedience came first. Click here to read the sermon “Walk This Way” Joshua 3:1–4; 3:14–16; 4:18–24 It's such a treat to be back with you. My name is Rob Stone. If we haven't met yet, it's so good to be with you. This is my second of what will be three weeks preaching for you here at Yates Baptist Church. And we are in a series we started last week called Onward: Moving Toward the Uncharted. Onward, moving toward the uncharted. And of course we're walking through the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is one of my favorite books of the Bible, because Joshua finds a people in the middle of a dramatic change, a dramatic shift. The people of Israel, if you follow from the book of Exodus, have been set free from their captivity, from their slavery in Egypt, but they have spent the better part of the last forty years wandering in the wilderness. They essentially lose a generation in the wilderness. But God is raising up a generation that's going to lead them into the promised land. So after the death of Moses, Joshua finds himself tasked with leading the people of Israel into the promised land. They're going to cross the Jordan River and make their way into Israel. I'm very excited about where we are today, because last week we discovered the what. Last week, we discovered the what: that God has called Joshua to lead the people into the promised land, and He made a lot of promises. We saw that Joshua will only inherit what he inhabits — Joshua will only inherit what he inhabits, which is another way of saying God's promise to Joshua is that every place the sole of his foot treads, God has given to him (cf. Josh 1:3, HCSB) [see "A New Dawn, A New Day," July 12, 2026]. And we talked about last week how that can be a promise, but it's not just a promise — it's a principle. And a principle is a promise that is user dependent. It's a promise that depends on whether or not you live it out, because God's promise to Joshua is a promise that depends on Joshua's action. Joshua has to take steps of obedience in order to receive the blessing that comes with God's promise. But if Joshua keeps his feet planted exactly as they are, if Joshua is not willing to be obedient, then the promise becomes a curse for him. Joshua has to take action. Joshua has to take steps of obedience. And I believe that is what God has called us to as well, because as we talked about last week, I believe God has not brought us this far just to bring us this far. There is more to go. There is further to go. And I believe, by God's power, that the best is yet to come. So before we jump into the second week of the series — looking not just at the what, but the how — because the what is great, but a what without a how leaves us all feeling a little confused. It leaves us lacking clarity, especially if we don't know how to get where we're going. Now, we live in 2026, and I have my phone right here — it has some points of the sermon that I'm going to cover. How many of you have your phones with you? Raise your hand if you have your phone, lift it up high. There we go. We are a smartphone people. Okay, let's try it this way — just for my own interest: if you're an iPhone user, raise your hand. Okay. If you use anything else, raise your hand. [Laughter.] Look at you. Come on now — a bunch of green dots showing up in the group texts. "So-and-so reacted to a photo." We can see it now, all you green-dot people, you non-iPhone users in the room. But here's why I mention it: a smartphone is beautiful, especially if you are lost. And really, with a smartphone, how could you ever truly be lost? But I want you to journey with me back to 2001 — December of 2001. I'm a college student at the University of Central Florida. I'm from Florida, by the way — I don't know if there are any other Floridians in the room. Come on, Sunshine State, look how far we've made it. I was a junior at the University of Central Florida, working with a campus ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ that now goes by Cru. Cru has Christmas Conference every year — our big regional conference. Because I was a student in the Southeast, Christmas Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia. And there are lots of things to love about Atlanta, Georgia — Waffle House, Chick-fil-A, it's all wonderful, I appreciate it. But here's the thing I can't stand about Atlanta: driving in Atlanta is awful. Amen? Around the city of Atlanta is a circle, the perimeter, if you will, and it is a ten-lane highway that just forms a circle all around the city. And depending on where you get on this circle, the directions you're following make no sense, because there's an inner circle and an outer circle. Here I am in Atlanta before the invention of the iPhone. I want you to remember back in the days of a road atlas — you're pulling it out, maybe you've got it hidden in a map somewhere, and you pull that map out and try to figure out, as you're driving, where you're going. None of it is safe. We're going to our service project — how many of our youth went to Passport, by the way? Raise your hand if you were at Passport last week. Come on, vámonos, I love it, great job. So here's the thing: we're doing our service project as part of this conference, and we're headed into a place in Atlanta, and my friend who lives in Atlanta is like, "I know exactly how to get there." And then he proceeded to tell me — and if you don't live in a city, someone telling you the roads and the various points along the way isn't really helpful. So I do what dumb young men do: I go, "Got it. Gotcha. Totally see you there." And I take off, and I'm getting on I-285, this giant thing that goes around the city. I hop on I-285, and I know I need to go two exits west of where we are on the northern part of this highway. So I follow the sign that says west. But the west sign takes me in the opposite direction, because it's telling me where I'm ultimately trying to end up — not where I'm immediately going. Again, a highway that makes no sense. The fine folks of Atlanta, Georgia need to get their stuff figured out. But I turn the wrong way, and now I spend the next hour just looping around the city, seeing all the sights all the way around Atlanta. Finally, someone in my car has a cell phone — I don't own a cell phone yet, this is 2001, this is pre–cell phone days for me. Someone in the car has a cell phone: "Where are you all at?" "We're still on 285, looking for the exit." We eventually make our way there. This time, as we're going back to the hotel from the service project, I didn't just listen to what my friend told me when he told me how to get back. I said, "You go first, and I will follow you." We got back to the hotel in about five minutes. Now, there are wives in the room being very sweet about not elbowing your husbands right now — I appreciate that, I'm grateful for that — because if I had been married at that point, my wife would have said, "Hey, you don't know where you're going. How about you follow someone who does?" You don't know how to get there — why don't you follow someone who knows how to get there? I knew the what. I knew what we were going to do. I just didn't know how to get there, and I thought I could just figure it out. And of course I didn't, because you can't just figure out everything. Sometimes the only way to learn is to watch someone who knows what they're doing, who knows how to do it. And so here we are in week two of the sermon series Onward, with a message I have titled "Walk This Way." Because just like Joshua and the people of Israel, and just like us today, we need to know not just where we're going — we need to know how to get there. And so this is what we find as we open up Joshua chapter three and Joshua chapter four. We're not going to read the entirety of the two chapters — we're going to read some selections of Scripture from these two chapters. But beginning in Joshua chapter three, verse one — this is Joshua 3:1–4: Joshua started early the next morning and left the Acacia Grove with all the Israelites. They went as far as the Jordan and stayed there before crossing. After three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, "When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God carried by the Levitical priests, you must break camp and follow it. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between yourselves and the ark. Don't go near it, so that you can see the way to go, for you haven't traveled this way before." (Josh 3:1–4, HCSB) I love how practical this section of Scripture is. It's this beautiful thing — it's Joshua saying, "Hey, we're going to follow the ark. We're going to follow God. We're going to follow God where He is leading us, but we're going to let God lead the way. We're not going to jump ahead of God," because sometimes in our lives we try to jump ahead of God's will, and we find ourselves not in the place we wanted to be. Amen? Sometimes we go, "I know what God wants for me," and we find ourselves in a place we never thought we would be — in a circumstance we never imagined we would be in. And here's Joshua, and he's saying, "Come on, we're all going to be ready. You're going to get ready to follow." And the reason you're going to follow is because you don't know where we're going — you've never been there before. There's a French philosopher who said these beautiful words: "If we want to reach new lands, we must be willing to lose sight of the shore.”1 I don't know how many of you have maybe been out on a cruise ship — have you been out on the water? There's something terrifying that happens when you get out in the ocean, and suddenly you look around, three hundred sixty degrees, everywhere you look all you see is horizo...
Transcribe →A New Dawn, A New Day
2w ago00:35:56Tap to summarizeGod already gave you the land. The catch? You still have to walk on it. Joshua 1 on comfort, courage, and the cost of staying put. Click here to read the sermon A New Dawn, A New Day Joshua 1:1–9 Heavenly Father, Jesus, we come before you this Sunday morning, and we lift up your holy name. Jesus, we invite your presence, your Holy Spirit power, into this moment and into this place and into our lives and our hearts and our minds. Jesus, we pray prayers of gratitude for our children who came back from camp this week. We pray prayers of protection and grace over our youth who are headed off this week. We pray a prayer of clarity for Yates Baptist Church. Jesus, we ask in your holy name that you would give us clarity over confusion, that you would cast vision for the future of your church, and that that vision would lead us where division stirs. And finally, Jesus, we declare boldly this morning that whatever you may have in store for the future of Yates Baptist Church, we know that the very best days of the kingdom of Jesus Christ are still to come. The best is yet to come. And so, Jesus, we come before you this morning, and we give you the honor and the glory and the praise that is rightly due to your name. Jesus, we pray. Amen. Well, it is such a treat to be with you today, Yates Baptist Church. I want you to know the last time I was in this building was a few years ago, when I had the opportunity, as the head of the communications team for the Tri-West Baptist Network, to come in here. You hosted our annual meeting, and I got to give a report. So it is a very different experience being here preaching rather than giving a business meeting report. This is far more enjoyable, and I'm so glad to be with you today. Knowing that I'm going to be with you for the next three weeks helps me, because it allows me to preach a sermon series rather than try to squeeze everything together into one message. So we're going to get you to that meeting and that lunch earlier than you had hoped. That's the plan. So we're starting a series today called Onward. Onward. This series is going to be all about — and you can go ahead and throw that up on the screen, there we go — moving toward the uncharted. Moving toward the uncharted. We're going to be looking at the book of Joshua, and Joshua felt like an important book for where you are right now in the life of Yates Baptist Church. So before we jump into the first chapter of Joshua today, I wanted to start by looking back at the end of the Mosaic books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy — those are the five books we call the Law, or the Pentateuch. These are the first five books of the Bible, and they are written by Moses. When we get to the end of Deuteronomy, Moses, after forty years leading the people through the wilderness, has died — before he was ever able to cross the Jordan River into the promised land. There's something powerful about that, because Moses was a good and faithful leader for the people of Israel, but Moses was not able to experience where the people of Israel were headed. Moses died before the people had stepped into all that God had for them. One of the things that is true in the life of every church is that there are changes, there are shifts that happen in churches. Any church older than seven years has probably had more than one pastor — it's just the nature of how that works. A church has a vision that is bigger than any one person. The church has a vision that is bigger than any one generation, because the church of Jesus Christ is multigenerational. It continues, and you and I are standing on the shoulders of the giants who have come before us, generations and generations and generations, and we get the opportunity to be the people the next generation stands on the shoulders of, to go even further. I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful that the kingdom of God never stops with a person or with a generation. For the people of Israel, they had been in the wilderness for forty years, and Moses had been leading them faithfully. When Moses dies, there is a moment of utter chaos and confusion for the people of Israel. Suddenly they find themselves in a spot where they don't know what to do, they don't know what's next, they don't know who to listen to, they don't know who to follow. And that's where we find ourselves at the beginning of Joshua chapter one. Today we're going to read Joshua chapter one, verses one through nine. If you have your Bibles with you, I want to encourage you to pull them out. If someone wants to give one to Keith, I know he didn't have his up here, but I want to make sure everyone has their Bible. I do want to say what a treat it is to be here with Keith. When I first moved to Durham, I moved here to pastor Durham Memorial Baptist Church on the east side of town, and for the three years I was there, I had the wonderful privilege of spending every Sunday with Keith's lovely wife, Kathy. That was an incredible joy to me, and I love, Keith, that you're still here — it's so, so meaningful to me. So let's go ahead and open up your Bibles. Joshua chapter one, verses one through nine — I'm going to be reading out of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, but whatever translation you're reading out of is just fine. After the death of Moses the Lord's servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, who had served Moses: "Moses My servant is dead. Now you and all the people prepare to cross over the Jordan to the land I am giving the Israelites. I have given you every place where the sole of your foot treads, just as I promised Moses. Your territory will be from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great Euphrates River — all the land of the Hittites — and west to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. I will be with you, just as I was with Moses. I will not leave you or forsake you. "Be strong and courageous, for you will distribute the land I swore to their fathers to give them as an inheritance. Above all, be strong and very courageous to carefully observe the whole instruction My servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or the left, so that you will have success wherever you go. This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to recite it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do. Haven't I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Josh 1:1–9, HCSB) That's nine verses to start off the book of Joshua, and three times in nine verses we get the instruction from the Lord to be strong and courageous. [Addressing the person running the slides.] We're not ready for that yet, but you can come on back — thank you. Be strong and courageous. Hey, I do want to take a second — can we give it up for the AV volunteers in the back, for how they've had to handle everything today? Thank you so much. Yeah, we're not ready for that slide yet, but I appreciate it. So, Joshua chapter one, we get this important message: be strong, be courageous. Be strong, be courageous. Be strong, be courageous. And I'm wondering why it is that God would have to tell Joshua, this leader who's about to take over for Moses — why he would have to be told to be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous. And I want to just say, I think it is because to lead is hard. To lead into uncharted territory is impossible without God. And I wonder today — I wonder today, as you are preparing for an important meeting today and an important business meeting next week, as you prepare for today — are we a people who are afraid? Are we fearful? Are we full of doubt about what could be, about what might happen? Or are we a people who are strong and courageous? Are we a people who are ready to say there is more to do, there is more to come? The battle is not over yet, and it is time to be strong and courageous, because as long as the Lord has given breath in your lungs, you and I have work to do. The story's not over, and it's going to require that we are strong and courageous. Now, that is what I have always taken out of Joshua 1:1–9. If you've ever been involved in a church youth group, or you've ever been to a Bible study, or — strangely enough — if you've ever been a member of a sports team, Joshua 1:1–9 is not an unfamiliar passage of Scripture. And one of the things that can happen as we spend time with Scripture we're familiar with is that our familiarity can sometimes lead us to miss something that's right there on the page. Maybe this has been your experience — you've read over a passage of Scripture time and time again in your life, and something happens, whether you were at the right moment or it spoke into the right instance in your life, but something happens. You go back to that Scripture you maybe even know by heart, and suddenly something jumps out at you that never has before. And so, in this sermon that I have titled "A New Dawn, A New Day," I want to talk about what we see by looking at a principle and a promise. What we see by looking at a principle and a promise. Now see, there is a promise from God in Joshua chapter 1. In fact, there are a few promises. God is reasserting the promises he made to Moses, and he is letting Joshua know: the promises I made to Moses, those promises are true for you too, Joshua. These promises are not just for Moses. These promises are for you. But they're not just a promise — there's also a principle at play, and a principle is a foundational truth. A principle is a foundational truth. Maybe to put it a different way: a principle is a promise that is dependent on the user. A principle is a...
Transcribe →Empowered for Good
3w ago00:21:59Tap to summarizeSome think God only works up front. But every gift—teaching, mercy, encouragement—is priesthood, given for the good of the whole body. Click here to read the sermon Empowered for Good 1 Corinthians 12:12–31 Well, if you can’t tell, things are a little different this morning. Last week was Courtney’s last week serving as the church pianist, so Gail has stepped forward this morning to offer some background music, and we’ll hear from her in a moment. Amanda has kindly stepped forward with her family as well — let’s give them another round of applause. All that to say, I am thankful for you folks who have stepped forward as we figure things out. Thank you all very much. As we have been doing for the past several weeks, we’re going to continue a conversation. We started off talking about the idea of sainthood — that was about six weeks ago now. If you don’t remember, that’s fine, but let me catch you back up. We said that to be a saint is not a special category reserved for really, really good Christians. Instead, it is a status bestowed by God upon us — it means we have been claimed by God for God’s purposes. It’s a status, and it’s also a calling we live into. From there we moved to the personal aspects of sainthood, and then to the corporate aspects — this idea that we are saints together. That brought us to the priesthood. Scripture tells us that we are a holy priesthood who inhabit God’s house and who offer spiritual sacrifices to God (cf. 1 Pet 2:5). We noted that this priesthood can face two directions. Last week we looked at the priesthood facing God, in the offerings we bring in worship, and we saw from the apostle Paul that we are not only the priests who offer the offerings in God’s house — we become the offerings ourselves. What does it mean to offer spiritual sacrifices to God? It means we offer all that we are to God as we are transformed into the kind of people who can pursue God’s will. Today I want to focus on the other side of that priesthood piece. It can face God, but it can also face one another — not because we need anyone but Jesus to stand between us and God, but because God sometimes chooses to work through people. How many of you have ever had someone say the word you needed to hear at just the right time, so that it was as if God was the one speaking through that person? Sometimes God chooses to use us as priests to one another. That’s where I want to camp out this morning. To do that, I want to take you to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Today we’re going to do things a little differently — I’d like to invite you to open your Bibles with me. It’s toward the end of your Bible. I’m going to read the entire passage; it’s a little long today, but then we’ll jump back into it and see what the apostle Paul is saying. First Corinthians chapter 12, beginning in verse 12: Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit, so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so, the body is not made up of one part, but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Now eagerly desire the greater gifts. (1 Cor 12:12–31, NIV) The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. One thing the New Testament teaches you pretty quickly is that there is no such thing as a perfect church. Sometimes we like to idealize the past — if I could just get back to those New Testament times, that’s when people really understood it. But once you start reading the New Testament, you realize that quite a bit of our scripture is actually addressed to churches dealing with difficulties. Sometimes a church has a conundrum: what do we do in this situation? Sometimes churches are at each other’s throats. Sometimes there are just sick dynamics at play, and you get a letter to that congregation because that thing needed to be addressed. There is no such thing as a perfect church, and Paul is writing into one of these situations when he writes to the Corinthians. The Corinthians are a church where some of those sick dynamics have begun to take hold. From what we can tell by reading this passage, it seems some people think they are the best thing since sliced bread — which doesn’t quite work, since there wasn’t sliced bread back then, but you understand what I’m saying. These are people very confident in their spirituality, very confident in their standing in the community. They are proud, and they posture against everyone else. On the other side, you have another group who have bought into that posturing and have begun to shrink. So you have some people with an elevated view of themselves, and some with a deflated view of themselves. When you have that kind of thing happening within the body that is the church, you have some sick dynamics at play. So how does Paul speak into this situation — some posturing and proud, some shrinking and thinking too little of themselves? He draws on imagery very native to his time and place, but one that also speaks well to ours: he compares the church to a body. Paul takes this body imagery and uses it both to name the problem this church is facing and to point to the solution. It’s an imaginative exercise — in naming the problem, Paul anthropomorphizes different parts of the body. They begin to speak to themselves, and they begin to speak to one another. Let me show you how this works. The foot says, “Because I’m not a hand, I’m not a part of the body.” The ear says, “Because I’m not an eye, I do not belong to the body” (v. 15–16). Now, I’ve told you there are some people in this congregation who are posturing and proud, and some who are shrinking and think too little of themselves — which one is this? This is the shrinking crew. They’re the ones who say, “Well, yeah, I’m a foot, but really the hand is where God works — God really uses that kind of person. Maybe I’m not quite a part of the community, or maybe I’m a lesser part of it.” There’s a self-talk going on that says, I am less than the people God really, really uses. Then there are the other parts of the body — the eye and the head. They don’t have self-talk; they talk to others. The eye says to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head says to the feet, “I don’t need you” (v. 21). So we’ve got posturing, proud people, and we’ve got shrinking people who think too little of themselves — which ones are these? These are the proud people, the ones who say, “You know what? I’m pretty great, and because I’m pretty great, I don’t really need the rest of you.” What Paul says is: let’s talk about the church not as just a bunch of individuals — let’s talk about the church as a body. When you do that, you can name these dynamics, one where people are shrinking, the other where people are overly proud. And when you talk about the church as a body, you see how absurd that is. Because the foot saying “I’m not a part of the body” doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of the body. Because the eye saying “I don’t need you” to the hand doesn’t mean the hand is any less important. All the parts of the body are necessary. If you want the body to be functioning, you need all the parts taking their place, fulfilling their function, and working in harmony. The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The foot can’t say, “Because I’m not this other part of the body, I am not needed.” Everyone is needed. Every part is necessary, and we need to function together — which is how Paul started all this off. In verses 12 through 14 he says: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ… For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink; even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many” (1 Cor 12:12–14, NIV). That is the point of this body imagery. It’s not okay for some people to assume they don’t need others. It’s also not okay for some people to think they are less-than and not needed. The body needs everyone to take heart. But in this imaginative exercise, Paul also points us to a realit...
Transcribe →True and Proper Worship
4w ago00:18:25Tap to summarizeWorship isn't a checklist. Romans 12 tells why a renewed mind, not a list of rules, is what it means to offer yourself to God. Click here to read the sermon True and Proper Worship Romans 12:1–2 Well, I'm back. So good to see you again today. I was joking a few weeks ago that I'm kind of like a bad penny — I'll just keep turning up again and again. Bryce was kind enough to let me know that they've discontinued pennies, so I need to be very careful about that joke. So thank you, Bryce. So yes, here we are. We're back. What I'd like to do with you today is continue the conversation we've been having for the past few weeks that I've been here. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we were in 1 Peter, and we hit on this idea that we are priests in God's house [See "A Spiritual House," June 14, 2026]. We said that priesthood can face two directions. Number one, it can face toward God — in that sense, we are the priests in God's house who offer spiritual sacrifices to God. But we also said that priesthood can face one another — not because we need any priest but Jesus to stand between us and God, but because sometimes God chooses to minister to people through other people. So sometimes we have the privilege of speaking for God to one another, of acting on behalf of God among one another. That priesthood can face God; it can also face one another. For the next couple of weeks — I'll be here this week and next week — I'd like to focus on both sides of that coin. Today we're going to focus on what it means to be priests before God. What does it mean to face God? Next week we'll talk about what it means to be priests among one another, to be empowered by the Spirit for mutual ministry. But today, what we're going to talk about is this: what is it to be a priest before God? To do that, I'd like to take you to Romans chapter twelve, verses one and two. It's a well-known passage of Scripture from the apostle Paul to a group of Christians in the city of Rome. Let's go ahead and put that up there. Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — His good, pleasing, and perfect will. (Rom 12:1–2, NIV) Now, as we come to this passage of Scripture, we can see that the apostle Paul is doing something similar to what Peter was doing a couple of weeks ago. Peter was playing on this imagery of temples and priests and sacrifices (cf. 1 Pet 2:5, 9), and Paul is doing the same thing here. When Paul says that we should offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, he's playing on the same kind of imagery — but he takes it a step further than Peter did. For Peter, we ourselves are the temple of God; we ourselves are the priests in God's house; we ourselves are offering spiritual sacrifices to God. That's all true for Paul too, but Paul takes it a step further and says that not only are we the ones who offer sacrifices — we ourselves become the sacrifices. So for Peter, we offer spiritual sacrifices to God. For Paul, we offer our own bodies as sacrifices. As he talks about this, he's talking about a very specific practice that took place in the ancient world: animal sacrifice.1 That's something very foreign to us — we talk about it when we're reading the Bible or talking about ancient history. But for Paul's audience, for the people in Rome, this would have been something that was just part of life. So let's look at this next slide. I don't know if you can see it very well, but this is a relief from the first century of a sacrificial procession moving toward an altar — basically we have a pig, a sheep, and a bull. The idea is that these animals will be led to the altar to be offered to the god Mars. So Paul starts talking about animal sacrifice and worship, and the people at Rome know exactly what that means. They see things like this taking place. You could also go back to the Old Testament, where in God's relationship with God's people Israel, there is a space for animal sacrifice. We're not going to go into all the reasons for that right now, but suffice it to say that animal sacrifice was something people in the ancient world understood. So Paul draws on this imagery. He says — you know about this practice of animal sacrifice. Well, for Christians, you were a priest, you were offering sacrifices, but then he stretches that image a little bit. He says, but you're not going to offer a dead animal on the altar. Instead, you are going to offer yourselves on the altar. You will not be a dead sacrifice that lasts for a moment. You will be a living sacrifice — one that is offered continually before God. You guys kind of see how that's working this morning? He takes this imagery of sacrifice and shifts it a little. We are the priests who offer; we are also the sacrifice ourselves. Which is great, but then you have this question: what does that mean? You think about the sacrifice that takes place on the altar — that happens in a specific way. When you move into this metaphorical, spiritual kind of space, what does it actually mean for us to offer our bodies, our very selves, as a sacrifice to God? I think that's what Paul gets at next. He says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2, NIV). So what does it mean to offer our very selves as sacrifices to God? Well, number one, it's a negative — we need to stop doing something. Number two, there's a positive — we need to begin, we need to become something. So what do we need to stop doing? Paul basically says the world has this way of trying to press us into a specific kind of mold. Now we need to be careful here. The world is not all bad. Genesis tells us that when God created, God said that creation was very good (cf. Gen 1:31). That creation has not been completely eclipsed, but there are patterns in this world, there are forces in this world that slant away from God — that sometimes go directly against God. What Paul says is we need to stop being conformed by those kinds of forces. Those things in this world that turn us away from God. Those things in this world that compete with God. We need to stop being formed by those things. Why? Because they're not pleasing to God. If you're going to offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, you've got to put away the things that are not pleasing to God. You've got to stop being pressed into the world's mold. So what might that mean a little more practically this morning? Maybe we need to stop being conformed to the toxic political rhetoric that is rampant in our culture these days. Maybe we need to stop being formed by a mindset that says we only look out for number one. Maybe we need to stop being formed by a culture that is obsessed with competition and one-upping one another. Maybe we need to stop being formed by those voices that say, you know, Jesus — he's pretty cool, he's all right, but really his teachings, they're not practical. We leave those behind when we go into the real world, because there we've got to win. Maybe we need to stop being conformed to these ways of the world that are slanting us away from God. Because if we can put those things away, we can become something new — which is what Paul gets to next. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2, NIV). And so with this — stop being conformed to these ways of the world that are against God. Instead, I want you to be transformed, which has to do with your mind, with the way that you think. And then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will (Rom 12:2, NIV). So notice this. As long as we are being conformed to the ways of this world that slant away from God, we can't offer ourselves as sacrifices pleasing to God. But once we stop doing that, we can begin this process of transformation in which our minds are renewed in such a way that we are able to test and approve what God's will is. We've hit on this a few times in the past few weeks, but we need to say it again: Christianity is not about to-do lists. Yes, there are things that we want to respect — there are things we know about how God wants us to live our lives. But it's not just — you remember, back in the day, I worked at a church once, and I found their old offering envelopes. On the offering envelopes, there was a check system. If you attended the sermon, you got ten percent. If you tithed, you got maybe twenty percent. If you went to Sunday school, you got — I was always confused why the sermon was only ten percent, right? But with that, it was kind of this idea that if you can just check off all these things, you're being a good Christian. Now those are all good things, but being a Christian goes beyond those things, beyond those practices, beyond those rules. Instead, we're being made into a specific kind of people who can discern what God's will is. Because we know that we're supposed to be loving people, but how many of you ever come to a place where you're just not quite sure what the loving thing to do is? We need to discern God's will in these moments. It's not enough to just have the rules — we have to have a particular kind of mind. We need to be a particular kind of people. So Paul says, I want you to be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can test and approve what God's will is, God's pleasing and perfect will (cf. Rom 12:2, NIV). And here's the thing — if you can discern what that is, you can pursue it. And if you can pursue it, you can offer yourself as a living sacrifice, day in and day out, as you become the kind of person who knows wha...
Transcribe →I Believe — Help My Unbelief!
Jun 2100:43:35Tap to summarize“I believe,” the father cried — before the doubt. A sermon on Scripture’s most poignant confession and its meaning for today’s doubters. Click here to read the sermon I Believe — Help My Unbelief! Mark 9:14–29 It is great to be with you here today. I want to give all these musicians a hand — thank you, Keith, and thank you to everyone up here. I love all the instruments, and even Michael Jessup is making a joyful noise over there. God bless you guys. I want you to know first and foremost that I am praying for Pastor Christopher, for his family, and for Yates Baptist Church during this time of transition. I also want some of you to know — I'm sure some of you are thinking, who is Marty Childers, and what is Tri-West? It used to be called Yates Baptist Association. We had to change our name because things kept getting confused. People would come to our building looking for you, and people would come here looking for us, and checks got crossed, and a lot of things happened. So that is one of the reasons we changed the name. We are Triangle West, the western part of the Triangle Baptist Network. We say Tri-West. But more than that, I want to give you a real quick infomercial, because I want you to know who we are as Tri-West. I have had the privilege for the last almost ten years — Mike, in October it will be ten years — to work with this association. I have had the privilege of working with many people from this church, and I just want you to know that we are all about strengthening, planting, and resourcing the local church to fulfill the Great Commission. Strengthening, planting, and resourcing the local church. When I first got here, if I'm really honest, a lot of associations in North Carolina had their own plans, and they did a lot of things, and they asked the churches to come along and help them execute those plans. But we said no — we want to flip the script, because God's Plan A is the local church. So the association wants to do everything we can to help the local church fulfill the Great Commission. As a part of that, we are helping revitalize churches, and we are helping to plant new churches. In fact, just in the last year and five months, we have seen four new church plants start in our area — in Durham, in Chapel Hill, in Hillsborough, where I live. And your participation in our association actually helped fund some of those things. Just recently we voted to send five thousand dollars to a youth camp in Haiti that Yates Baptist Church has been supporting for many, many years. As you are a part of this network, you are also helping church planters in Oaxaca, Mexico — two weeks from today I will be in Oaxaca with about thirty-five students, and I am looking forward to that. Your participation also helps us with a Farsi-speaking church in Armenia, which is a story I would love to come back and tell you more about. As we participate together as a network of about sixty-five churches in the greater Durham area, we can do more together. We are trying to help churches not to be silos, not to be isolated, but to look around and say, hey, you are doing that too — let us see how we can collaborate. I want you to open your Bibles, or your apparatus, to the Gospel of Mark, chapter nine. We are going to be looking at verses fourteen through twenty-nine. I am going to read through verse twenty-four first, and then I want you to keep your Bibles or your phones open there, because we will come back to the rest of the passage a little later. Mark, chapter nine, beginning at verse fourteen: And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. And immediately all the crowd, when they saw him, were greatly amazed and ran to him and greeted him. And he asked them, "What are you arguing about with them?" And someone from the crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able." And he answered them, "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me." And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked his father, "How long has this been happening to him?" And he said, "From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." And Jesus said to him, "'If you can'! All things are possible for one who believes." And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief." (Mark 9:14–24, ESV) [Prayer] Father, we thank you for this time to worship you. We thank you that we have had this moment to lift songs to you. We are here to praise your name, but we are also here to be taught, and to be encouraged, and to be challenged to live the life that you have called us to live. So Father, I pray that you would use this passage, that you would use this Scripture, and that you would teach us the things we need to learn today. Father, I pray that we would listen as your Spirit teaches us. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Do you believe? Charles Blondin was a famous French acrobat who made international history as the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope, on June 30, 1859. He successfully traveled along a more than thousand-foot-long, two-inch-thick cable suspended 160 feet above the raging waters. Over the next few years, Blondin crossed Niagara Gorge more than 300 times, consistently raising the stakes each time with a new dangerous theatrical variation of his walk. He walked across on stilts. He put himself in a body sack and went across. Once, in the middle of the gorge, he set up a small stove and made an omelet, then lowered it down to someone waiting in a boat on the water below. One day after crossing, he brought out a wheelbarrow. He asked the crowd: how many of you think I can push that wheelbarrow across? Hands went up. How many of you think I can take a person across in it? Hands went up again. Who wants to volunteer? Silence. Do you believe? You will notice that we started in verse fourteen, right in the middle of the chapter. It opens by saying "they came to the disciples" — but who is "they"? That is Jesus, Peter, James, and John. They had just come down from what we call the Mount of Transfiguration. We do not know exactly which mountain it was, but it was a mountain, and they were descending from a moment in which Peter, James, and John had seen a glimpse of God's glory. For just a moment — the text does not give us the mechanics of how it happened — Jesus' humanness seemed to be peeled back, and they saw him in white, blinding in its intensity. Peter had wanted to stay there. But as they came down the mountain, they walked straight into chaos. How many of you have had a mountaintop experience and then come back to find that life hits you? It seems like almost every time I go on a mission trip, I come back so full, and then I hit the muck of life — the junk, the everyday things that have to happen. That is exactly what is happening here. They descend from the mountain and walk into confusion. At the bottom, Jesus finds a desperate father — and Happy Father's Day, we will come back to that in a moment. He finds a tormented child. He finds nine frustrated disciples. He finds a crowd who may be looking for a spectacle, just waiting to see what is going to happen. He finds religious leaders ready to argue. This is the context into which Jesus steps. Do you believe? These are the final months of Jesus' earthly ministry. He had been with his disciples for three years. He had fed the five thousand, he had fed the four thousand, he had done many miraculous things. And now he comes down from the mountain and walks directly into a crisis. I believe that a crisis is an opportunity for God to show up. I believe a crisis is where God does some of his best teaching. Some of you are thinking back to situations in your own life — maybe this past year, maybe a decade ago, maybe a long time ago — when you were in a situation you did not understand at all, and now, looking back, you can see it clearly: oh, that is what God was doing. A crisis is where God shows up. The first thing I want to share with you today — and for those of you who take notes, feel free — is that this is a story about faith. The boy's father had come looking for Jesus, but Jesus was not there. Still, he was encouraged, because some of Jesus' disciples were right there — maybe they could help his son. He would have been glad had they succeeded. For whatever reason, their efforts were lacking. And by the time Jesus and the three disciples arrived, an argument was already going on. The first question Jesus asks is, "What are you arguing about?" I can imagine the disciples going up against the scribes, and then — as these things tend to escalate — the disciples maybe turning on each other. Well, we were not able to cast it out because you said the wrong words. You lifted your hand wrong. You did not do it the way we did last time. You know how that goes. Our enemy is always looking to divide us. And then Jesus responds. His response is pretty heavy. "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" He asked a version of that question several times throughout the Gospels. The one that always comes to my mind is when they were crossing the Sea of Galilee and a great storm came up. Jesus was asleep in the back of the boat. The disciples came and woke him: "Master, Master, don't you care? We're going to die!" Jes...
Transcribe →A Spiritual House
Jun 1400:27:36Tap to summarizeThe stone builders reject becomes the cornerstone. God is building a temple — and you're not just a wall. You're a priest in it. Click here to read the sermon “A Spiritual House” 1 Peter 2:4–10 As we begin this morning, I want to thank you for hanging out with me for the past few Sundays. It has been a great time here at Yates. It is always a blessing to be with this corner of God's kingdom. A little heads-up on where we are headed in the next few weeks: I will not be here next week — Marty Childers from the Tri-West Association will be preaching that day — and then I will be back for two Sundays after that. I am excited to come back and spend a couple more weeks with you. Some of you already know — I am kind of like a bad penny. I keep coming back. So as we come to this morning, I want to continue a conversation that I have been having with you for the past few weeks. A couple of weeks ago, the point of the sermon was this: if you are a Christian, you are a saint. Sainthood is not a category reserved for an extraordinary group of Christians. Instead, it is a status bestowed by grace, and it is a calling that we pursue. To be a saint is to be a holy one of God. It means that you have been claimed by God and set aside by God for his purposes. So: you are a saint. Last week we continued that conversation to say this — and that is a good thing. Sainthood is not about being a goody two-shoes who never has fun. It is not about hypocrisy. It is not about being holier-than-thou. No — sainthood is about following Jesus into a vision of humanity. It is following Jesus into the people that God intends and calls us to be. You are a saint, and that is a good thing. Today we are going to move to this: we are saints together. If you are called to be a saint, that is not a lone wolf calling. Instead, you were called into a people. You were called into a community. And that communal piece is central to who we are. To talk about this communal dimension of sainthood this morning, I want to open the Bible with you to 1 Peter chapter two, verses four through ten. Let me give you a little backstory on what is going on in 1 Peter. Peter is writing to groups of people in places called Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These are groups of Christians who are falling on hard times because of their devotion to Jesus. The surrounding communities are not being kind to them; they are suffering for the name of Jesus. Peter writes into this setting. Through much of chapter one, he reminds them who they are and what they are called to. He uses different language, but he hits some of the same beats we have been hitting in the past couple of Sundays. In chapter one, verse fifteen, he says: "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy'" (1 Pet 1:15, NIV). Peter is reminding these people that they have been called to holiness. They are to follow God into that calling — to reflect God to the communities around them. Then you come to chapter two. Peter gives them a few ways this is supposed to happen. In verse one he writes: "Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind" (1 Pet 2:1, NIV). If you are going to be holy, there are certain ways of being that you need to put away — ways of living that do not match the kind of life God is calling you to. And notice: Peter is already intimating the communal character. He says rid yourselves of malice, of deceit, of hypocrisy, of envy, of slander. These are all ways of being that destroy community. Put them away. And instead, Peter writes: "like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good" (1 Pet 2:2–3, NIV). Put away the ways of life that are not what God intends for you, and realize that your life of faith is not static. You are meant to grow up in your salvation. You are meant to be nourished by Christ. Which brings us to chapter two, verse four: As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him — you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," and, "A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message — which is also what they were destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Pet 2:4–10, NIV) It is a well-known and beautiful passage of Scripture. This morning I want to approach it not in order, but by taking up the middle first and then jumping back to the beginning to see how these pieces fit together. The middle — verses six through eight — is all about who Jesus is. To understand what is going on here, you need to understand that Christianity emerged in those first decades as an incredible surprise. Jesus came and fulfilled the role of Messiah, but he did it in a way that was unexpected. Come Good Friday, when Jesus dies on the cross, his followers believe the game is up. We had placed our hope in him, and yet he has died at the hands of the authorities. We must have misplaced our hope — until Resurrection Sunday, when we learn that even the grave could not keep Jesus down. He begins to appear to his followers. It turns out that Jesus really was the Messiah. The resurrection proves that. But he fulfilled that role in an unexpected way, which means we have to go back and reconsider everything that came before. It is kind of like one of those movies where a key piece of information is withheld until the very end. And then once that revelation is finally made, the light bulb goes off. You realize that everything has been leading to that point, and you have to go back and reconsider what came before. It is often such a gut punch that you have to watch the movie again, and as you watch it, you begin seeing clues all the way through. You wonder how you did not see it before. Imagine the disciples. Jesus has been raised from the dead. He really is the Messiah. But that means we have to go back and reconsider all of our preconceptions. As they return to the Scriptures, they start seeing those clues. They start saying: we can read this in light of Christ — in light of who he was, in light of who he is. In fact, Jesus himself had applied the Psalm that mentions a cornerstone to himself (cf. Matt 21:42, NIV). And so the disciples say: Jesus applied that to himself. There are other passages that have stones in them. Those seem to apply to Jesus too. What Peter does in this passage is stack all of these passages about stones and apply them to Christ. It goes like this. In verse six: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame" (cf. Isa 28:16, NIV). Then in verse seven: "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" (cf. Ps 118:22, NIV). And: "A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall" (cf. Isa 8:14, NIV). You can see how these come to be applied to Jesus. Here we have the Messiah who was rejected by the authorities, rejected by the world — and yet it turns out that he was indeed the chosen one of God. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Notice the imagery Peter is drawing on. You have people building a building. They find a cut stone and say: that stone is not appropriate for our building; we will discard it. But it turns out that God has chosen that very stone to be not just any stone in the building, not just an appropriate stone, but the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone that is laid in a building. It has to be cut perfectly, because it determines which way the building faces. It determines the angle of the walls. It is the first stone that gives shape to everything else. The stone the builders rejected has become the most important stone in the building. That certainly sounds like Christ. And there is also the promise that the one who trusts in this cornerstone God has laid will never be put to shame. That is us. We put our faith in this cornerstone. We will not be put to shame. But then there is also a stone that causes people to stumble — and we keep seeing people in our communities tripping over this message about Jesus. It is a message about rejection that is actually a message about acceptance and chosenness. The world may be rejecting Christ, but in God's eyes, Christ is the cornerstone: rejected, but actually precious and chosen by God. Remember, these are people experiencing rejection as they are true to Christ in the world. The same thing is true of them. Peter will go on to say: you are a chosen nation. This passage is in part about those who feel rejected actually being those who were chosen. Here is what I want you to see this morning. Peter goes a step further. He really plays on this idea of Christ as the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the first stone in the building. And when you zoom out, you start to see that the cornerstone is part of a larger structure. Go back to verse four: "As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by humans but ...
Transcribe →Image of the Invisible God
Jun 700:23:32Tap to summarizeHoliness isn't saintly perfection—it's the human vocation. Colossians 1 reveals a Jesus who shows us both who God is and who we were made to be.
Transcribe →Saints in Christ Jesus
May 3100:20:38Tap to summarizeYou are already a saint. Not because of what you've done—because of what God has done. What does that mean for how you live today?
Transcribe →One Spirit, Many Voices, One Body
May 2400:23:39Tap to summarizeAt the Tomb of the Unknown, guards remove their rank to honor soldiers without names. On Pentecost, Paul says this is exactly how the Spirit works.
Transcribe →Know Prayer, Know Unity
May 1700:26:33Tap to summarizeJesus prayed for this congregation before he died — and he hasn't stopped. A sermon on the High Priestly Prayer, the Sonshine Community, and the ground beneath everything the church does.
Transcribe →