I’ve decided to do a little more to bridge the gap between my writing ministry and my ministry here at First Baptist Jasper. To this end I’ll occasionally post sermons that I’ve preached in the past that I believe may be helpful to others.
A few months ago we were closing out our series on 1 Thessalonians and I was given the task of tying together 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28. It seems like a bunch of random exhortations. But as I started mapping out the text I realized that what we have here are community rules. So, the sermon began to take shape and it centered around the work of God in building a beautiful community.
We started with one of my favorite songs from The Rend Collective:
Then we looked at these three community rules:
- Because leadership matters, we must love and respect those who work hard among us.
- Because people matter, we must patiently seek to do good to everyone
- Because our relationship with God is central, we must respond to God’s work appropriately
If you’d like to listen to the entire sermon you can do so here:
