Tag: Sermons

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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Is Jesus Really the Only Way?

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Over the last three weeks we’ve tackled some big, tough questions. These questions have brought us face to face with the nature of reality, the identity of Jesus, and the gut-wrenching pain of suffering in this life. This week, we are wrestling with one that lies right at the heart of the journey all people have been on for the entirety of human history: How do we get into a relationship with God? The answer we find affirmed and even insisted upon in the Scriptures is Jesus. That answer has never really rung reasonable in the hearts and minds of a sinful world. So then, is it really true? Let’s talk about it.

Is Jesus Really the Only Way?

I used to love choose-your-own-adventure books. Do you remember those? You read to a certain point and then were given a choice between two different options. If you went with option A, you turned to page 47, but if you wanted option B, you turned to page 63. Then, when you got through that next part of the story, you were able to choose again. How the story went in any given read through was entirely up to you. Now, because I’m a little bit OCD, I would always make sure I read the book enough times that I experienced every possible option for how the story could have gone, but the point was that it was my choice. I had the power. 

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Why Do We Suffer?

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This week we are in the third part of our teaching series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. This will be the most emotionally challenging stop on our journey. This week we are going to tackle the question of why there is suffering in the world created by a supposedly good God. This is a deeply emotional question with intensely personal elements to it. You have perhaps asked this question yourself. You certainly know people who have even if you didn’t know that about them. The answers to this question won’t be easy, but they are good. Let’s dive in together to see what the Scriptures have to say about it.

Why Do We Suffer?

There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding right now in Gaza. There’s an ongoing one in Ukraine. China is still keeping millions of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in the Xinjiang Province even though that has dropped out of the news. That is in addition to that nation’s ongoing and vigorous persecution of Christians…who make up a larger percentage of the population than Chinese Communist Party members. Azerbaijan has launched a genocidal effort to exterminate or otherwise forcibly relocate all of the Armenian Christians in a disputed border region between the nations, leading to massive suffering on the part of tens of thousands. Muslims in Pakistan are becoming more and more aggressive in their persecution of Christians in the nation. So are Hindus in India. The two nations don’t like each other, but they both agree that they hate Christians more. A category five Hurricane hit the Pacific coast of Mexico last week from which the recovery efforts have only just begun. A shooter in Maine just last week murdered 18 and injured another 13, some critically. Several people in our own community have had their lives disrupted just recently by unexpected, unwelcome, and scary news that bodes for a very difficult road stretching out in their near future. 

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