Tag: Sermons

Built on Christ

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Today we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. For the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about the church. More specifically, we are going to be talking about just what exactly it is that makes an authentic church. How do we know when a church is really the body of Christ instead of something more like a social club that does some religious activities on the side? While there’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule to help us here, there are some things the Scriptures point to that are pretty good indicators in the right direction. The first one that we’ll talk about today is just exactly what the church’s foundation is.

Built on Christ

Have you ever crossed a picket line? That’s an interesting experience. I’ve done it twice. The first time was when I was pretty little. A new grocery store chain came to town that was not unionized and the union-backed employees of the major chain that had pretty much had a monopoly on the town before the new guys moved in picketed out front of their location around the corner from my house for what seemed like weeks. I’m not sure they ever really accomplished anything. The truth was, most people didn’t care. We certainly didn’t. They were closer and cheaper than the other grocery store, so off we went. I did feel a little bad for the picketers when it started getting cold outside as we drove right past them to get our groceries. Otherwise, though, I mostly just ignored it. 

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Contagious Holiness

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So, Jesus rose from the dead. What does this mean for us? Let’s reflect on that today with a story about Jesus’ calling the last part anyone ever imagined He would to be His disciple, and the party that happened afterward. Along the way, we’ll get a good reminder about just what our job is now that Jesus is alive.

Contagious Holiness

A story for you this morning. We typically define our world by what we can see. It may not always seem that way today because we spend so much time as a culture thinking about things we can’t see, but for most people in most situations, what we can see has a great deal to do with how we think about and interact with the world around us. Before the invention of the microscope, this was most definitely the case. In the 1860s, most people generally couldn’t imagine a world smaller than what their eyes could perceive. Then a French chemist and microbiologist named Louis Pasteur did some experiments that proved the existence of these tiny creatures called microorganisms that were apparently everywhere. Not only did some of these organisms do helpful things like allowing for the production of bread or cheese, but they were also responsible for less helpful things like spoiling food and making us sick. What scientists soon figured out was that passing these tiny organisms from person to person may be responsible for one person’s illness getting passed to another person. 

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Good News

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Happy Easter Monday! Everything has been leading to this. Jesus’ last week before His death on a Roman cross was action-packed to say the least. Just the things He said and did then have changed the world many times over. But as He always knew, the cross was coming, and come it did. What seemed like a total defeat for Jesus’ fledgling movement turned out to be the catalyst for its total success. On the third day, much to everyone’s surprise, Jesus was alive again. As we finish up our series, A Journey to the Cross with Mark, let’s talk about why this surprising news was just so good.

P.S. This will be the only post for this week. We are taking a few days off as a family. I’ll look forward to being back with you next week!

Good News

Have you ever had something good happen that you didn’t expect? That’s always fun. You’re just humming along, minding your own business, and then, BAM! Something happens to totally make your day. Everybody needs a day like that at least once in a while. What’s even more fun, though, is watching somebody else react to some unexpected good news. If you can catch it right, you can see the dawn of realization come on their face. You can watch as the clouds of confusion gradually lift and they experience the sheer joy of the moment. Videos of little kids reacting to a military parent surprising them with an unexpected homecoming come to mind here. Those things make me tear up every single time I see one. What may be the most fun of all, though, is seeing someone react to something good that they don’t even have a category for until they experience it. In those moments, you can almost watch their brains short-circuit. If they were a computer, their screen would just be flashing a “does not compute” message over and over again as their synapses were trying to figure out how to process the news in ways that will make any kind of sense out of what they are experiencing. And then the joy on the other side of the wall is often the purest, most intense joy you will find. Well, this morning, I want to talk with you for a few minutes about some people who had just this kind of an experience. 

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You Are Not Alone

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Jesus’ journey to the cross in Mark’s Gospel is almost complete. This week we are walking through the rest of Mark 14 from where we stopped last time. We left Jesus having announced the arrival of His betrayer to His sleepy disciples. As we pick up this week, Jesus does indeed get betrayed and abandoned. He is subjected to all kinds of abuse and injustice. And in the end, He is left alone to face it. It’s a pretty dark chapter, but it’s one that reminds us that Jesus has been through it. When we are going through it ourselves, we’ve got a friend in Him. Let’s explore all of this in more detail as we take the next step on our journey to the cross with Mark.

You Are Not Alone

Misery loves company. Have you experienced that? When we are miserable, we want to know that we are not alone in our misery. This desire manifests itself primarily in a couple of different forms, one of which is more helpful than the other. The less helpful way that misery seeks company is for us to try to drag down the people around us so they are as miserable as we are. Have you ever been around somebody like that? They’re like a gloomy Eeyore all the time because they secretly hope that can make the people around them as morose about life as they are so there’s at least one other person as miserable as they are. 

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Faithfulness in the Face of Unfairness

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This week we take another step forward in our journey to the cross with Mark. In this next part of the story, things begin really heating up. The plot to arrest Jesus and put Him to death is beginning to take shape. Yet in the midst of all of these things, Jesus is patiently, steadily moving forward to bring God’s plans to completion. There’s a lesson there for us. Let’s dig in together and see what it is.

Faithfulness in the Face of Unfairness

I want you to think about a time when something happened to you that you knew in your bones wasn’t right. Whatever this was completely justified every thought you’ve ever had that the world really is out to get you. You were just minding your own business, not bothering anybody, and from out of nowhere, your whole world blew up. What did you say in that moment? My guess is that it was some version of, “That’s not fair!” 

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