Sermons on 1 John
Loving the World
“Don’t love the world,” John writes in the passage above, but in another place he tells us that “God so loved the world . . .” So God loves the world, but we’re not supposed to? You already know the solution to this “contradiction” . . . the words “world” and “love” are used in different senses, and we’ve got to be careful that we understand their nuances. Tomorrow we’ll explore them a bit, focusing more on the “loving the world” part…
Atonement: Covered by the Cross
Brief summary (what’s the point of this text/sermon?): This was the last sermon in a four-part series on biblical words/themes that help us understand the overall Story of Scripture. The first three were Glory, Holiness, and Covenant, and Sunday’s sermon was on Atonement. “Atonement” is based on a Hebrew word group that has “cover” as one of its root meanings — you can see how this might be related to sin with the idea that God “covers” (atones for) our…
Love God. Love People. But How?
As you know, our theme for 2018 is Love God. Love People. Change the World. That’s easy enough to say, and it’s so obviously taught in Scripture that none of us would argue against its importance. But still, this question remains: we want to do it, but where do we find the motivation? We want to love God, but how do we? We want to love people, but sometimes that’s really hard, so how can we? In other words, how…
