Category: Sermons

Where It All Begins

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Yesterday was Easter, the day for celebrating the resurrection of the Son of God. History turns on this event. The world looks the way it does today because of this event more than just about any other. It’s a remarkable story. Today, let’s spend some time reflecting on just what it means for us that Jesus rose from the dead.

Where It All Begins

Jesus was dead…and then He wasn’t. 

If you were to take that statement, get rid of Christianity entirely, and drop it into any other context, it wouldn’t make any sense. At all. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Across the centuries of human history, various different religious movements offered up theories and ideas about what might lie on the other side of the grave. But none of them had anything like the resurrection of Jesus as a part of their frame of reference. Now, some of them developed something like it after Jesus’ resurrection, but not before. This is because we didn’t have a category for something like that. Instead, when Jesus was buried late in the afternoon on the Friday when He died, everyone expected Him to stay put. 

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Good Friday 2023

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A little something different today as we celebrate Good Friday. Here’s some of what I’ll be sharing with my congregation this evening as we reflect on the power and importance of the cross. Thanks for listening and sharing.

The crucifixion of Jesus was the greatest injustice ever perpetrated on the earth. Jesus died a totally innocent man because of our sin. Listen to how it all unfolded. 

“Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers also twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and clothed him in a purple robe. And they kept coming up to him and saying, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ and were slapping his face. Pilate went outside again and said to them, ‘Look, I’m bringing him out to you to let you know I find no grounds for charging him.’ Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’

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Essential Tools

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In our journey of understanding better what followers of Jesus should believe about Him and the Christian worldview, we have so far talked about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and people. This week we are turning our attention to another essential doctrine that involves getting people together in groups to advance God’s kingdom. This week we are talking about the church. Why does the church matter so much? Read on to find out more. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Essential Tools

I love fresh pineapple. I love fruit in general, but truly fresh pineapple may be one of my favorites. Pineapples, however, are not the easiest fruits to enjoy. It’s not like an apple that you can pick off the tree and go to town on. It’s not even like an orange that, though not something you can just pick up and eat, is usually ready to go after a few seconds of peeling. If you want pineapple, you’re going to need a knife. The treasure is hidden under a thick, spiky shell that is going to require a bit of work to get through to enjoy the literal fruits of your labor. 

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Broken from Birth

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As we continue our journey through some of the more unsettling results from the Lifeway and Ligonier Ministry The State of Theology survey, this week we are moving on from the doctrine of God to the doctrines of people and sin. One of the more common ideas about our status before God when we start out in life is that we are all born innocent in God’s eyes. Yet as we engage with the Scriptures carefully, we are greeted with the rather disturbing news that this isn’t the case at all. In this next part of our journey we are talking about why that is and why the truth is so much better. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Broken from Birth

I don’t watch as many of them as I used to, but I used to watch a lot of food competition shows. I’ll still occasionally tune in today just to see the sheer artistic splendor of the things the various food artists create. The level of detail and intricacy to some of their creations is simply jaw dropping. There’s a new series on Netflix called, “Is It Cake?” where judges have to guess which of the items on a display in front of them are cake and which aren’t. They get fooled a lot. The fact that someone can make a cake look so convincingly like something else like a shoe or a purse or even a burger and fries that you actually can’t tell which is which is amazing to me.  

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More Than We Imagine

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This week brings us to the third part of our series, What We Believe. With the Lifeway and Ligonier Ministry State of Theology survey as our jumping off point, we have been working to clarify some pretty core questions of Christian theology on which professed followers of Jesus in our culture recently reflected some pretty profound confusion. We have so far looked at the doctrines of God and the Holy Spirit. This week we are talking about Jesus. No other person in human history has attracted amount of interesting into the question of who exactly they are as Jesus has. Let’s take a look at the Scriptures together to see what He had to say about Himself and what that means for us.

More Than We Imagine

We’re talking about a survey in this new teaching series, so I thought we’d do a little survey of our own this morning. By a show of hands, who currently has an appliance at home that is still working and which is more than ten years old? How about twenty years? Thirty years? Who has an appliance that is still working that is more than thirty years old? They don’t make them like that anymore, do they? 

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