"Featured" Tagged Sermons (Page 4)
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By This All People Will Know
Have you noticed rising levels of fear and anxiety in recent times? The stock market is way down (a bear market?), inflation is way up (an impending recession?), and the price of gas is ridiculous. Political polarization feels worse than in the past, so many people–especially teens and young adults–are struggling with mental and emotional health, the war in Ukraine shows no signs of abating, and our culture seems to have lost its mind (one of many examples: gender and…
The Cities We Build
In our text the people decided to build a city and a tower, but that wasn’t the problem. There’s nothing wrong with building, per se . . . the problems come from the reasons we build. The end of chapter 10 tells us that the “nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood,” but then immediately we’re told that the people decided to settle down in one place. It seems they wanted to maintain linguistic, cultural, and ethnic homogeneity…
God’s Bow in the Clouds
What kind of deity is Yahweh? In so many ways, that’s the question of the early chapters of Genesis. Is he angry? Is he harsh? Is he implacable? Does he care about his creation? It comes to a head in the Flood story of Genesis 6-9, and it’s interesting to compare the biblical account to other ancient near Eastern flood narratives. One of the most interesting is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic Mesopotamian poem that predates the…
The Beast That Crouches at the Door
What happens when we try to redefine good and evil on our own . . . when we live our lives “east of Eden”? After observing the Fall of humanity in Genesis 3, we don’t have to wait long to see the effects on the human race. Cain–motivated by anger, jealousy, and fear–murders his brother Abel, and a disheartening trajectory is established. When you read the story carefully, you’ll notice quite a few parallels with the Fall narrative (God’s questioning,…
The Lion Who is a Lamb
Most of us appreciate power . . . geopolitically, we want our country to be strong; in our work life, we want our opinions and decisions to matter; even in something as trivial as sports, we want our team to dominate others–usually through some combination of strength, speed, and agility. In other words, we like power, because power gets things done. Israel, as you know, was looking for a powerful Messiah, a Davidic King who would follow in the footsteps…
Spiritual Growth: Your Life in Christ
I think most of the people who will worship with us want to grow closer to Christ, but this growth seems so elusive for most of us, doesn’t it? There’s no magic pill, no magic formula, no five-step list to somehow force this to happen, but there are things we can emphasize in our lives to create an environment that’s conducive to spiritual growth. Last week we talked about repentance, and tomorrow we’ll emphasize faith–these are, as one writer puts…
Where Spiritual Growth Begins
This is a second message in a short series on spiritual growth, and what I’d like to communicate in this sermon is the importance of recognizing what sin does to us. Notice the evocative images Paul uses in the text above: “you have died,” “put to death,” “the wrath of God is coming,” “put them all away,” etc. In other words, don’t play around with this stuff. One reason we don’t grow as we should is that we let sin…
What a Messed-Up Marriage Teaches Us About God’s Love for Us
You may know the story of Hosea and Gomer, but if not, it’s ugly. So ugly. God commands his prophet Hosea to marry Gomer, a woman who’s going to break his heart. And she starts cheating not long after the wedding. It was so bad that Hosea named their third child, “Not Mine.” But tomorrow we’ll focus on the beautiful part of the story . . . sacrifice and reconciliation. Gomer had chased after various lovers, and for some reason…
I AM
After finishing a practical series last week on how to cultivate discipleship in our day-to-day life, I plan to change the emphasis for tomorrow’s message. At the root of Christianity is the identity of Jesus. If we get that right, it changes everything. If we get it wrong, nothing else matters. Though C.S. Lewis didn’t invent the following argument, he perhaps presented it in its most memorable form. Here’s the famous paragraph from Mere Christianity, part of which I plan…
Rest
A few weeks ago we started a short series on what it looks like to follow Jesus in the midst of busy lives, lives where we feel pressured by so many expectations and distractions. What does following Jesus look like day-to-day? How do we do what life demands while also finding time to cultivate a real-life relationship with Jesus? The answer is in actually following Jesus, not just in the abstract I’m-a-Christian-because-I’ve-been-baptized sense, but actually walking in his footsteps, doing what…
A Simple Life
Three weeks ago we started a short series on what it looks like to follow Jesus in the midst of busy lives, lives where we feel pressured by so many expectations and distractions. What does following Jesus look like day-to-day? How do we do what life demands while also finding time to cultivate a real-life relationship with Jesus? The answer is in actually following Jesus, not just in the abstract I’m-a-Christian-because-I’ve-been-baptized sense, but actually walking in his footsteps, doing what he…
