The Sabbath is a glorious thing that has been graciously given to us from the Lord! But legalism will destroy the Sabbath. We see three ways that legalism destroys our enjoyment of the Sabbath in our passage this morning.

First, legalism will destroy your rest (vv. 9b-10). Second, legalism will destroy your joy (vv. 11-15). And third, legalism will destroy your need for the gospel (vv. 16-18).

August 14th marked one year since the church plant was officially approved by the Blue Ridge Presbytery, I was called to be the church planter, and the support raising process began.

Over these past 12 months:

• Our family moved back to the area.

• I began meeting with people who were interested in the church.

• Westminster Presbyterian Church allowed me to preach at their evening worship services.

• We hosted Vision Gatherings.

• The Lord provided a location.

• We launched our first worship service.

And most recently…

In case you’re wondering, this portion of the book of John is often referred to as “the book of signs.” And you can probably tell why. This portion of the gospel of John documents miracle after miracle after miracle.

These verses deal with another one of Jesus’ miracles and there will be more!

But it’s important to always remember that Jesus never healed for the sake of healing. It served two purposes: first it demonstrated that he was the Son of God and had divine authority over the natural realm. And second, it points to the fact that we’re all sick with sin and are in desperate need of spiritual healing.

Oftentimes, we don’t know what’s best for ourselves, but God does. The Lord knows what we need better than we do. And this is exactly what we see in our passage.

The church’s relationship with sin has gotten progressively more confused.

Do we discuss our sin in order to make us more relatable to the outside world? Or do we only reference sin in order to make Christianity more palatable to non-christians?

How should we talk about sin?

This past Sunday while Pastor Jake was away, we had the privilege of hearing Rev. Doug Hart preach on Psalm 77.

Is there any doubt that we live in a performance driven society? Your success or lack of success is the direct result of your performance. We’re always analyzing data in order to better inform our decisions.

Analytics are big in everything from business to sports. College and professional football teams now hire analysts. Information and data analysis is a part of the world we live in.

And the church isn’t immune to our performance driven society. It’s standard practice within the church to collect and analyze data. How many people are in attendance? How many baptisms were there? Which service is more popular: the contemporary or traditional?

This week, we’re continuing to look at Jesus's interaction with the woman of Samaria, or as it’s commonly called, “the woman at the well.” Last week we looked at verses 1-15 and a lot of the issues we discussed last week will be relevant once again this week.

Today we’re beginning a four part series looking at Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman or what is often referred to as the woman at the well. When you read this passage, there’s really no good way to break it up because it hangs together so beautifully as a cohesive unit.

There’s a real temptation among pastors that every time they preach they need to say something innovative or unique. To present an angle on a text that you maybe haven’t ever considered before.

I was recently talking about this with a pastor friend of mine and we were talking about how there are some texts that simply don’t allow that. And I think this is one of them.

There isn’t anything unique or special about John’s words. He presents the basic gospel to his disciples. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”

Humility is a difficult topic because you can’t claim to be a humility expert and still be humble. Isn’t it prideful to think of yourself as a very humble person? In a similar vein, the desire to appear humble is in fact a demonstration of pride.

We’re at the end of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. And by way of reminder, Jesus explained what it means to be “born again” in verses 1-15, described the depth of God’s love in verse 16, and is now moving into why people don’t put their trust in Him.

It’s still a relevant question, isn’t it? Why don’t more people come to Christ? What exactly is the barrier that prevents people from putting their trust in Him?

As a reminder, we’re still in the middle of the nighttime meeting between the Pharisee Nicodemus and Jesus and their discussion continues through verse 21. John 3:16 is what comes after Jesus explains to Nicodemus the work of the Holy Spirit.

Next week, I’ll preach John 3:16-21. But it certainly seems appropriate to stop and reflect on this one verse, because it’s the most well known verse in the entire Bible. Whether you’ve grown up in church or not, you’ve probably heard someone quote John 3:16 at some point or another.

The bulk of our passage deals with the work of the Holy Spirit. Honestly, when was the last time you heard a sermon on the Holy Spirit?

There’s a lot of confusion over what exactly the Holy Spirit does. If someone asked you what the Holy Spirit does, what would you say?

Typically you don’t think of John 3 as a class on the Holy Spirit, but that’s really what it is.

In order to put faith in Christ, you must first be born again.

“Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.” Psalm 126:2-3

Reflecting on the past several weeks since launching public worship on Easter Sunday, I can’t help but echo the psalmist. The Lord has done great things!

It’s really no secret that the American church is in decline. Only 47% of Americans claim to belong to a religious house of worship. We’re not even talking about regularly attending, we’re talking about people identifying themselves with a particular house of worship. Not even Christian for that matter; that includes the other major world religions as well. So really, it’s less than that.

As if that isn’t bad enough, even those who attend church don’t even have a biblical worldview. In fact, a large minority of those who participated in Ligonier’s State of Theology held heretical, unchristian, unbiblical views.

30% of American Christian evangelicals believe that, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.”

Jesus turned water into wine, which unequivocally proves that it’s permissible for Christians to consume the occasional alcoholic beverage. Should I just close up the Bible and say ‘amen’ so we can all leave now?

Obviously, I’m kidding, but isn’t that typically why this portion of Scripture comes up in conversation? Maybe it’s just my conversations. Nevertheless, in my mind at least, the wedding at Cana is so frequently used as a proof text in the Christian alcohol debate we don’t even know the real point of this passage anymore. Why exactly did Jesus turn water into wine?

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Birmingham, Alabama for the Gospel Reformation Network’s (GRN) National Conference.

The GRN is a conservative/confessional network within our denomination – the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – whose purpose is to cultivate healthy Reformed churches. They emphasize biblical fidelity, confessional integrity, the ordinary means of grace, intentional evangelism, and personal discipleship, among many other things. Being a part of this network has been a blessing to me, especially in the midst of starting a new church in the Roanoke Valley.

There are a lot of similarities between last week’s passage and this week’s passage. In last week’s passage, Jesus called disciples. In this week’s passage, Jesus called disciples.

The similarities are even closer when you consider the fact that both passages have one disciple tell another about Jesus. Andrew told Peter about Jesus. Here we read that Philip tells Nathanael about Jesus.

This past Sunday while Pastor Jake was away, we had the privilege of hearing Rev. Doug Hart preach on John 1:35-42.