FBC Benbrook Sermons

Ephesians 1:13–14 teaches that the Holy Spirit seals believers as God’s own possession, providing security, authority, and assurance of their future redemption. As the Spirit is also a pledge of God’s promise, believers can rest confidently in God’s faithfulness and live in a personal, relational walk with Him.

Ephesians 1:3–14 may be the most fought-over paragraph in the New Testament, and the fight has cost us the song.
In the Greek it's a single 202-word sentence built on one verb: He chose. Paul, a Pharisee who had prayed the Psalms his whole life, reaches for the berakah, the extended blessing that closes each book of the Psalter, and pours into it Deuteronomy 7, the finished work of Christ, and the mystery that Gentiles are now brought into the people of God. Three verses, one repeated chorus: to the praise of His glory.
Here's the good news: everything Israel could sing, you can now sing in Christ. God chose you before the foundation of the world in Christ. He adopted you as a full legal heir through Christ. He planned that you would stand before him holy and blameless, not on the strength of your obedience, but in Christ.
Don't squeeze the mystery out of it. Learn to sing it.
Scripture: Ephesians 1:3–6Date: August 9, 2026Preacher: Todd Pylant

You've probably been told the gospel boils down to being good and being religious, and that's the exact same half-truth the church in Ephesus was living on. Paul planted that church, watched it wrestle with doubt, occult obsession, wealth, and false teachers rising from within, and then wrote them a letter from a Roman prison that never once dumbs the gospel down to meet them where they were; it lifts them up instead.
As we begin this slow walk through Ephesians, you'll see that the culture of ancient Ephesus is the culture we live in now: incomplete faith, intellectual doubt, spiritual forces we can't out-muscle on our own, and a hunger for wealth that money can't satisfy. Over the coming weeks, we'll open up what Paul calls "the unsearchable riches of Christ," riches so deep it'll take an eternity in heaven just to start understanding them.
Scripture: Ephesians 1:1–2
Date: August 2, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant

Maybe you've been told you can't carry a tune, so you've spent years mouthing the words instead of lifting your voice. Or maybe you've watched churches fight over music styles for so long that you've quietly concluded worship is really about the songs we choose. Neither is true, and Scripture has been correcting both mistakes for a very long time.
In Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:18-19, the Apostle Paul commands believers to address one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, not as a suggestion for the musically gifted, but as ordinary obedience for every believer filled with the Spirit and the word of Christ. Long before Paul, Scripture already showed us a singing God: Adam sang the first love song, Miriam sang at the Red Sea, and Zephaniah tells us the Lord himself rejoices over his people with loud singing. Jesus sang with his disciples the night before the cross, and Hebrews 2 calls him the true singing worship leader still leading his church today.
That's the turn worth sitting with: singing was never primarily about talent or style. It's a response to a God who sings first, and a weapon he's given his people, the kind Jehoshaphat's army carried into battle, and the kind Paul and Silas used in a Philippian jail at midnight.
In this message, Dr. Joe Crider walks through four lenses (interpretive, purpose, cautionary, and application) to recover what Paul actually meant, why it matters far beyond music preference, and how your voice, however untrained, has a place in it. If you've ever wondered whether your singing counts, this one is worth your time.
Scripture: Colossians 3:16 (Ephesians 5:18-19)
Date: July 26, 2026
Preacher: Dr. Joe Crider, Worship Pastor

What do you do with a gift you never wanted? Scripture doesn't dodge that question — it walks straight into it. There's a scene of worship breaking out not over blessing, but over judgment — voices crying out in gratitude not because everything is good, but because God is sovereign over everything, the good and the unbearable alike. Scripture calls that thanksgiving too, and maybe the truest form of it.
Most of us know the easy kind. Someone hands you something good, you say thank you, they say you're welcome. Scripture treats that as a starting line, not a finish line. It traces a much longer road — from being thankful for a gift, to being thankful for the giver, to being thankful for a relationship strong enough to hold you when the gift disappears, to being thankful for who God is even when you don't understand what's happening to you at all. And further still, to a kind of thanksgiving that shows up when what you've been handed looks nothing like a gift — when it looks, honestly, like a cup of mud.
Scripture doesn't explain away suffering, and it doesn't promise you'll understand it. What it offers instead is a way to be thankful in the middle of it, because the One holding it all is trustworthy even when the picture doesn't make sense yet.
Scripture lays out that road in stages, each one deeper than the last, and each one asking more of your faith than the one before it. Most people live somewhere in the middle without realizing it.
This week's message unpacks all five levels of that journey.
Sermon Text: Colossians 3.17
Date: July 19, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant

Why does the very thing meant to unite the church so often end up dividing it? In week 17 of our walk through Colossians 3, Paul paints a picture of a healthy church: united in love, ruled by peace, and centered on the word of Christ. And the means he gives us for that word to dwell richly among us? Teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sounds beautiful — until you realize that's exactly where so many churches come apart. We dig into what each of those three words meant to the early church, why medieval Jewish scholars were literally marking up the Psalms to preserve how they were once chanted, and why defending one musical "lane" as the only right way misses what Paul was actually after. Along the way: a confession from Augustine about being moved to tears by singing, a brand-new hymn written by one of our own, and my admission that I never grew out of 80s country music. This isn't really a sermon about music. It's about what happens when we mistake a preference for a principle, and what it looks like when a church actually lets the word of Christ, not a style of song, be what holds it together. Join us as we work through Colossians 3:14-17.
Sermon Text: Colossians 3.16
Date: July 12, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant

Most of us keep Jesus in the hallway — a nice portrait for guests to see — while quietly keeping Him out of the dining room, the study, and the bedroom. When Paul told the Colossians to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly, he was describing what the early church actually did when they gathered before dawn: they sang hymns to Christ as to God and taught one another the whole, unsearchable riches of who He is. The gospel is not that Jesus is a shepherd boy we admire from the hall, but that the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all things hold together, has come to take up residence in every room.
Learn what "the word of Christ" truly means, where it's meant to live, and how a church lets Him move in richly rather than dwell poorly.
Scripture: Colossians 3:16Date: July 6, 2026Preacher: Todd Pylant

What does it actually mean to call Jesus "the light of the world"?
After a week of Vacation Bible School built entirely on John 8:12, Pastor Todd unpacks three kinds of light — and each reveals something different about Christ.
First, the black light: that ultraviolet glow that makes hidden writing suddenly shine. That’s the convicting light of Jesus, exposing the sin we try to hide even from ourselves, and turning a private mistake into something we must settle with our Creator.
Second, sunlight — nature’s disinfectant. Scientists discovered the sun’s rays actually kill microbes the shade can’t touch; the World Health Organization still uses sunlight to purify drinking water in the developing world. That’s the cleansing light of Jesus, and salvation proves far richer than mere forgiveness: liberation, peace with God, new birth, being made a new creation.
Third, the lighthouse — the ancient invention that warned ships off the rocks and toward safe harbor. That’s the guiding light of Jesus: "whoever follows me will have the light of life."
Convict, cleanse, guide.
This message takes a truth simple enough for a five-year-old and lifts it to its full adult weight — showing why the light that exposes us is the very same light that heals us and leads us home. If you’ve ever wondered whether following Jesus is restriction or rescue, this sermon is for you.
Sermon text: John 8.12-14
Date: June 21, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant

What does it really mean to love? We've over-romanticized the word, and we've also cheapened it—so Paul's command to "put on love" deserves a closer look. In this message on Colossians 3:14, Pastor Todd Pylant unpacks the one word Scripture says binds everything together. Why does Paul choose agape over friendship-level love? How can love be both a feeling and a concrete action? And what does it mean that, without love, even the most generous and religious person is—in Paul's words—"no thing"? An invitation to discover the love that finally makes us complete.
Scripture: Colossians 3.14
Date: June 14, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant

Forgiveness is one of those words everyone uses and almost no one can define. So in this message from our ongoing series in Colossians 3, we slow down and work through it together — not preaching down to you but wrestling right alongside you with truths that are clearly taught even when they're hard to embrace.
We build the message around four questions. First, what is forgiveness? The word simply means "to give" — a gift with no view of repayment — yet it reaches all the way down into the heart, where memories and resentment live, which is why Jesus tells us to forgive "from the heart." Second, how has God in Christ forgiven us? He loved us as sinners, sacrificed His Son, cancelled our debt, and reconciled us to Himself. Third, should we forgive those who confess and repent? In Luke 17, Jesus' answer is so demanding the disciples immediately cry, "Increase our faith." And fourth, the question we all secretly skip to: what about those who never repent? Romans 12 calls us to forswear revenge, pursue active kindness, and live at peace as far as it depends on us.
Anchored in the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6) and Colossians 3:12–14, this is an honest, unhurried look at the gift we've received and the gift we're called to give. Wherever you are on that road, this message will help you take one step forward.
Sermon Text: Colossians 3.12-14
Date: June 7, 2026
Preacher: Todd Pylant