Tag: Sermons

A Timely Invitation

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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. 

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Grace Upon Grace

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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? 

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He Gets It

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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. 

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Is Hell Real?

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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. 

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Isn’t Heaven for Everybody?

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As we continue in our series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions, today we are tackling a doozy. Most people believe in Heaven. Most people also believe that most people are going to wind up there in one way or another. But is that really the case? To suggest otherwise isn’t very popular, but what did Jesus have to say on the matter, and is that really a good thing? Let’s explore these questions and more together.

Isn’t Heaven for Everybody?

Have you ever felt snubbed? There could have been a number of different things that left you feeling that way. Maybe you joined a club of some sort because it sounded really fun, but then you discovered that the really fun stuff you heard about was only available for the premium members, and you were just a regular member. Perhaps you flew on an airplane with a dedicated first class section and sat close enough that you could see what a great—not to mention comfortable—time they were all having up there. You know…when the curtain accidentally got left open. They don’t want all their secrets from up there getting out. Or it could be that you didn’t get invited to some big party that everyone was talking about afterwards. Right in front of you. Now, your defense mechanism might be to pretend that you didn’t really want to go in the first place and that you had plenty of fun sitting at home by yourself watching reruns and eating cold pizza in your underwear. But you know that’s not true. So does everyone else. Really, you’re hurt that you weren’t invited, and now you don’t want to hang out with those people anymore. You’re going to go find some friends to hang out with who aren’t so exclusive as those jerks are. Of course, once you feel like you’re part of the “in group,” you’re just fine with exclusivity—in fact, you prefer it so the riff raff doesn’t come in and mess up your group dynamic—but we’ll ignore that inconvenient little truth for the moment. 

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