Sermon Archive
April 2023
Newness of Life
In the Bible baptism is presented as the decisive, public moment when Christians proclaim that they are followers of Jesus. The act of being baptized is meant to visually depict the basis of a Christian’s hope in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. As a person goes down into the water it is a picture of being buried with Christ, and then they are raised up out of the water to walk in newness of life. Baptism does not save a person; only one’s faith in Christ does that. H…
Boasting In The Cross
In his letter to the Galatian church, the Apostle Paul wrote, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)
The cross is so ubiquitous and such a familiar symbol of Christianity that it has lost much of its ability to shock us. However, the adoption of such a symbol by the early church was intentionally provocative. In the first century Roman world into which Christianity first emerged the cross was as ugly as an electric chair and as shocking as a noose, and so Paul’s statement that he boasted in the cross would have been an attention-grabbing claim.
March 2023
Hosanna
On the Sunday before being crucified Jesus entered Jerusalem a hero, the great hope of the people, and on Friday he would leave the city condemned, rejected and despised. He had entered Jerusalem being carried on the back of a young donkey, but he would exit the city just a few days later as a beast of burden himself, carrying a cross on His back. On Sunday they cheered for the fact that Jesus had called Lazarus alive out of a tomb and on Friday they cheered as He was killed and placed into…
Rivers Into Wastelands
In this message we conclude our study through Psalm 107 by taking up verses 33-43. Try to carve out some time before you listen to give these verses a read. It is, in some ways, a challenging and difficult portion of scripture to understand and apply to our lives, but there is real value in wrestling with difficult verses like these.
The Love That Brings Us Peace
Do you remember the scene from the Bible when Jesus and His disciples were out in a boat in the middle of a storm? (Mark 4:35-41) Mysteriously, Jesus was sound asleep in the stern even though the wind was howling, the waves were breaking over the sides, and the boat was filling with water. His disciples, who were justifiably terrified, woke Jesus up and asked him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Maybe an English teacher would classify that last sentence as a question, …
The Love That Makes Us Whole
An Open Letter to My Children…
“Dear Tate Kids,
I need to apologize to you for something. It’s not my fault exactly, but I will apologize anyway because unfortunately I’m not entirely blameless in the matter either. Your Mom and I have passed on to you a fatal genetic condition which runs in our family. We went ahead with our plans to conceive you even though we knew there was a 100% chance that you would also be born with this fatal condition. I know how you must feel. I’m sorr…
February 2023
The Love That Makes Us Free
Christians talk a lot about being free in Christ, but to many non-believers they see life in Christ as the very opposite of freedom. From their perspective, Christians have a “Lord,” and a pretty demanding one at that. They think, “how would I be free if I became a Christian? If you become a Christian then you must submit to the will of your Lord, right? Isn’t it true also that the Bible has a bunch of rules in it, and Christians have to follow those rules?”
“I’m sorry,” they thi…
Hungry and Thirsty
We will be continuing our study of Psalm 107 by unpacking verses 4-9 together. The first three verses of the Psalm introduced the main theme that God is good and that His steadfast love endures forever. Then the next four stanzas go on to provide four showpiece demonstrations of God’s goodness and love toward us. In the coming weeks we will be celebrating each in turn. In verses 4-9, which we will be studying in this message, we are told about the love that brings us home.
4 Some wan…
Psalm 107
In our study of 2 Timothy 4 from last week, we read Paul’s words at the end of his life, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” I’m willing to bet that many Christians who read those words come away feeling some measure of sadness because they could not say the same if the end of their own life came into view today. Their track record has been more checkered than the Apostle Paul’s apparently was. Rather than fighting the good fight some o…
January 2023
Proclaim The Gospel
Over the course of his time as an Apostle, Paul was responsible for speaking a great many words. His writings alone fill a large portion of our New Testaments, and everywhere Paul goes he is described as proclaiming, teaching, preaching, exhorting and defending the Gospel with words. Interestingly, the very first reference in the Bible to this man of words making an utterance was in Acts 9:1 when we are told that he was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” F…
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