Baptists Preaching is a column from the Baptist Standard. It is not an effort to advance any one theology or style but to present what a collection of Baptists considers a word from God. Likewise, Baptists Preaching offers a repository of Baptist preaching for future study and research. To recommend a sermon to be featured in Baptists Preaching, please contact [email protected].
Maddie Rarick: What Shall We Do? (Colossians 1:15-20)
Maddie Rarick, pastor of Meadow Oaks Baptist Church in Temple, likened Scripture to letters she has kept, both for their encouragement and to remember formative moments in her life. Paul’s letters, such as Colossians, are formative and encouragement.
When Rarick approaches Scripture, she asks, “What does this text say about God?” In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he describes Christ as “the image of the invisible God.” Additionally, Christ is Creator of all things and supreme over everything.
Further still, Christ is the reconciler and redeemer of all things. This did not “come from an ascent to power, rather it came from the one who had all power giving it up … from sacrifice, from self-giving,” Rarick asserted. In this way, Christ made us alive.
Being people made alive in Christ, “what shall we do?” Rarick asked. By God’s grace and in God’s Spirit, we are to let some things and ways in us die, and we are to put on God’s ways—such as compassion, kindness, bearing with each other, and love.
This sermon was delivered June 28, 2020, for the morning worship service at First Baptist Church in Waco, where Rarick was ministry associate for benevolence and administration.
A sermon manuscript is available here.
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