Category: Sermons

A Timely Invitation

Leave a comment

Happy New Year! As we get started on this brand-new adventure, we are going to spend a couple of weeks taking a look at what God has been doing in our midst and how we can experience more of that together. Part of experiencing more of that means honestly addressing the cultural situation we are facing. If we are going to grow God’s work in this culture, there is something specific we will need to commit ourselves to doing. Let’s talk about that today.

A Timely Invitation

The culture around us is changing. That’s a pretty bland start for a sermon, so let me explain what I mean. I mean, the culture around us is changing. Clearer now? In a sense, that’s always true no matter when or where we live. Culture is not a static thing. It is constantly moving and morphing and mutating from one thing to another. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Because of this, if you look at it in just the right light, it always appears we are on the precipice of a great shift even if in reality, we are sitting squarely in the middle of a movement. Of course, you can’t see that until long after the fact, so that’s not a terribly helpful observation in a given moment. 

Read the rest…

Grace Upon Grace

Leave a comment

Merry Christmas to you! Blessings to you and your family as you celebrate this special day together. We’ve been talking all this season about Jesus’ coming and the difference it makes in our lives and in our world. There’s one last wonder to marvel over together today: God sent Jesus to save us when we were still in our sins. We weren’t worthy of it. We didn’t deserve it. We hadn’t earned it. But He did it anyway as an act of pure grace. Let’s bask in the glory of that grace as we reflect together this morning on just how good this greatest of all gifts is. As one last note, this will be the only post this week. We’ll get back on our journey through Exodus starting in the new year. I’ll see you then!

Grace Upon Grace

This is a fun day, isn’t it? I mean, it’s Christmas Eve. Who wouldn’t be happy on a day like this? So, on this happy and joyous occasion, I thought we would take a little mental field trip. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Where are we going on this great and special day? Close your eyes for a moment, climb in the mental church van with me (the fun thing about mental field trips is that we can all fit in the same van together without anyone having to worry about being squished in the back), and let’s take a little drive over to one of yours and my favorite places to visit: the DMV. 

Anybody’s eyes pop back open in shock there? 

Read the rest…

He Gets It

Leave a comment

Jesus came to fix what’s broken. He came to fix it in our world and in our lives. Yet how do we really know that He can do this? What kind of experience does He have with brokenness that would empower Him to know how to meet us in our need? As it turns out, He has a whole lot more experience than you might expect. Let’s talk about what this is and why it matters in the next part of our Advent series, Broken to Mended.

He Gets It

You’ve perhaps heard the old adage that someone doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The idea, of course, is that until you have established some sort of a relational credibility with another person, trying to teach them anything of much significance probably isn’t going to work very well. I think there’s even more to this old adage than that, though. You see, given where our culture is today, people generally don’t merely want you to care about them. They want to know that you are authentic in your caring. They want to know that you can in some way empathize with their situation. Otherwise, you are just coming in as a white knight whom they aren’t going to trust. No, if you want to really be able to help someone today in a way that is impactful and sustainable, they’ve got to know you understand their situation in a meaningful way. Until you have that, they might deign to use you, but you won’t be doing anything of lasting significance for them. Once you can demonstrate your authenticity, though, you’re in. 

Read the rest…

Why He Came

Leave a comment

We are now officially into the season of Advent. For the next few weeks, we are going to be working through a new teaching series looking at just why Jesus came to Earth and what that means for us. In this first part, we’ll answer the question and reflect together on the glorious nature of this powerful truth. Here’s a sneak preview: the reason Jesus came is you. Let’s talk about it.

Why He Came

I want you to think for a second about a time when you heard a dramatic conversion story. Those can be really powerful. I once knew a chainsaw artist who specialized in making eagle’s nests. He carved some pieces for a prayer garden one of the Boy Scouts at our former church made as his Eagle Scout project. They were pretty amazing. In talking to him a few times, I learned that he had never done any art of any kind, let alone chainsaw art, before he became a follower of Jesus. He was mostly just interested in doing drugs. Almost as soon as he accepted Jesus, though, he felt a calling to art, and had been making it ever since. Maybe you’ve seen the movie, The Jesus Revolution. It tells the story of the rise of Chuck Smith who would go on to pastor the Crystal Cathedral church in Orange County, CA. The movie also features the conversion story of Greg Laurie, the pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, and a prominent speaker and author. Like my chainsaw artist friend, Greg was into all kinds of drugs before becoming a follower of Jesus. The experience that pushed him over the edge in the direction of the Gospel was when he was driving down the road with some buddies who were all high on LSD, and they saw a glowing vision of heaven in the distance on the side of the road. It wound up being a sign for a funeral home. The experience literally scared him back to the straight and narrow path from the broad path leading to destruction he had been sliding down. Do you know who else had a pretty dramatic conversion? The apostle Paul. And his story is one that I’d like to give a bit of our attention this morning. 

Read the rest…

Is Hell Real?

Leave a comment

That’s a very good question, and one we are going to wrestle with together today as we wrap up our teaching series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. A significant percentage of the country believes in Heaven. A significant percentage of the country, on the other hand, don’t believe in Hell. They can’t imagine that they’ve done anything sufficiently wrong to warrant their being set on fire and burned for all eternity. Yet while the imagery of Hell we find in the Scriptures is certainly uncomfortable, uncomfortable language doesn’t make the doctrine itself false. Let’s struggle through this question and see how the existence of Hell, far from making God a tyrant, actually elevates His love and justice even further.

Is Hell Real?

Almost 20 years ago, former Vice President Al Gore released a documentary movie about climate change whose title introduced a phrase into the public lexicon that has never left since. The film was called, An Inconvenient Truth. The idea was that Gore was presenting the public with a whole bunch of information about the state of the climate that was true even if we didn’t want it to be. Whether you happen to agree with anything he said or not, the movie undeniably made a huge impact on western culture. (It also made Gore exceedingly wealthy.) Also, whether you happen to agree with his position on that particular issue or not, it is nonetheless the case that there are some things that are true whether or not we want them to be true. 

Read the rest…