Sermons: Recent Episodes
Christ Community Church: Daytona Beach, FL
It’s important to accept deeply that faith will be tested in this pilgrimage. When it is God wants us to trust him.
Nothing can make us happy except the God who made us for himself; nothing can satisfy our thirst for happiness except the Christ who made satisfaction for our sins that we might belong to him.
Genesis 21 is the story of a promise fulfilled. It shows us that God keeps His promises with unfailing consistency.
In this story we see that when we stumble into the same stubborn sins, we must remind ourselves of both the severity of our sin and the sovereignty of God’s grace.
In a culture without the fear of God, to live as God's pilgrim children must be our firm resolve.
God does what is right because that’s who he is. Because God does what is right, the way he rules is right. Because God does what is right, his words are right.
We’re going to look at Genesis 18 through the lens of where the story ends up in Genesis 21 and see this idea of the better laughter as a theme for what faith can look like in our lives.
The God who looks after us will do what he has told us he will do. Therefore, we can and should trust him to care for us his way.
One thing that makes the Bible so relevant to us all is that it speaks, what are sometimes surprising truths, to issues that are very much still at play today. How do you get right with God? What can most powerfully motivate you to live for God?
God's strengthens fearful believers with covenant promises. We can take our fears to him and trust in him.
In our text today, James corrects our view and understanding of God, who he is and what he does.
Our pilgrimage is perilous but the Lord is powerful. We must be willing to fight knowing that the Lord is the one who brings victory.
The that we're called to live as children of God requires two things: our faith and God the father's faithfulness.
Hebrews 11:13 tells us that Abraham lived, by faith, as a pilgrim on the earth. God uses his story to teach us how we grow beyond a faith that's theoretical to a faith that is trusting. The better we understand that the more equipped we are to experience life in a relationship with God, get through its difficulties, glorify God, and grow stronger spiritually.
God in Christ readily gives what he has promised. Therefore, we must know Jesus Christ in order to receive God's promises.
Christians have not always loved one another with a beauty that turns heads. We love safely and comfortably, but not always authentically. We love our doctrine, our traditions, and our preferences. But when it comes to loving one another, we struggle. Because it’s possible to be doctrinally right while relationally wrong, the Apostle Paul gives us some help in Romans 12.
In Christ you are called to freedom from the "curse of the law," the crushing constraints of legalistic religion, and to live in love.
...who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. That's the heart of the gospel for Easter and every day! Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
No matter how bleak our present circumstances, God’s holy name is the guarantee of all God’s promises. When all is said and done, God’s holy name will be our eternal reason for praise.
The more fully you receive the grace of the cross, the more thoroughly you find the power of hope.
Through the cross Jesus passed the test that Adam and every human fails, and bore the condemnation of our failures to bring us back into covenant with God.
This morning we’re looking at how a deeper communion with Christ leads to deeper commitment to each other.
This morning we’re looking at how a deeper communion with Christ is deeply connected to a deeper obedience to Christ.
The deeper strength you need in life comes from being deeply rooted in the love of Christ.
But again and again, we come up against the gravitational pull of our former selves or our current selves. We look into our hearts, and we realize - that thing I was struggling with when I was young, that thing I’ve been praying about for years, I’m still struggling with it now. So, is there any hope of deep and lasting transformation in the Christian life?
: You must walk with integrity because the Lord is coming to destroy evil and bring you home.
The miracles of Christmas bear witness to the unparalleled uniqueness of the gift of Jesus. The proper response to these miracles for us - is to be filled with humble, grateful wonder.
This is a passage about Kings, and how they react to the coming of the greatest King of all.
The Christmas story when believed changes the whole way you look at the world - the entire course of the life you live - can change not only your here and now but your hereafter and your eternal destiny and because of all that -- it can change any mood when deeply believed.
If someone like Jesus makes the extraordinary claim that He is the Son of God, you’re going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to back up a claim like that. Very religious people make similar demands too. And Jesus says to them, “The only sign you’ll get is the sign of the prophet Jonah.” So what exactly IS the sign of Jonah?
In the Christian faith, when you put your faith in Christ and invite him into your life, he begins to work on you to change you into the person he wants you to become. It's a process. It requires patience.
Theologians call it God’s “immutability”: the idea that God is unchangeable in His essence, His nature, and His perfections. Firstly, this is good news because it means God’s PERSON, God’s being, is unchangeable. Secondly, it’s good news because his CHARACTER is unchangeable. Thirdly and finally, this is good news because it means God’s PLANS and PROMISES to you are unchangeable.
God uses this story to teach us that he is both a God of steadfast love and a God of righteous judgment. And therefore, we need to be sure that we get right with him. Repentance is how we do that.
It is not unreasonable to believe in the divinity of Jesus, that it is not unreasonable to believe in miracles.
It’s often when we are at our very lowest that we have the deepest insights about who we are and who God is.
What Jonah teaches us from the very beginning is that it is foolish to run away from even the most demanding assignment from God. When God calls us to do something, the only way to go forward is to trust and obey.
The book of Jonah presents Jonah as disobedient, selfish, bitter, angry, and foolish. And yet, no one would have known the details of the story to tell it except Jonah himself. So the evidence suggests Jonah, on the other side of his own repentance and restoration, is inspired by God to tell his own story in a self-deprecating manner that highlights how foolish he had been.
...Because He is the One who supplies EVERY need. It’s ALL from Him. There is not a single breath we draw that hasn’t been given to us by Him. And so, the only fitting response is to praise him, to give glory to Him.
The logical connection is this: the more contentment we experience in Christ, the less we feel we need materials things to be content. So our grip on money loosens. We realize we don’t need those things to be happy, so we’re happy to give them away to others. Contentment leads to giving.
We can be confident Christ will strengthen us because He is faithful to complete His work in us.
Even when we're well taught about the Christian life, we have to work at resilient perseverance.
What do YOU do when you have a strong difference of opinion with someone at church? Well Paul does three things I’d like us to emulate: He entreats them both; He calls for mediation between them; He asks them both to “agree in the Lord.”
What we learn in this passage is that it is a sad and sorrowful thing that there are people in this world who are enemies of the cross of Christ, and some Christians are in serious danger of drifting off with them – joining them in a lifestyle as dishonoring to God as it is futile and empty. This reality breaks Paul's heart. It reduces him to tears... it is out of those tears that he calls us to live a different - distinctive lifestyle.
It’s sometimes said that seeing is believing. Baptism helps us to see and to believe. It helps us to SEE something that might otherwise go unseen, and in seeing it, we are helped to believe.
Paul tells us: if you want to KNOW Christ more deeply, more vibrantly, you must: Know the power of his resurrection, share in his sufferings, and become like him in his death.
What IS righteousness? Righteousness just means “being right with God”. The state of being fully accepted by God.
What must I do to gain Christ, to gain salvation and eternal life, and to be right with God?
In a culture that celebrates and, to some degree, pressures us to affirm people in whatever they are feeling, the danger is that we won’t cultivate what you could call a spirit of rejoicing as part of our discipleship, spiritual formation, health, and happiness. The truth is we need this.
Faithful Christians… represent a cause greater than themselves, as soldiers do; risk everything for that cause, as soldiers do; receive honor, as soldiers do.
How can we live life now so that when the time comes for us to go be with the Lord, we can do it without regrets?
WHY should we do all things without grumbling? HOW can we do all things without grumbling?
If God is fully in control of the universe, such that even the fall of a sparrow is ordained, as Jesus says in Matthew 10 - do my choices matter? If God ordains everything that happens, am I anything more than a puppet or a robot? Should I DO anything or just let God do the work?
If we’ve experienced the love of God in Christ, we are to share that same love with each other.
The reason we face a struggle is that, as Christians, we belong to a different kingdom than this world.
The gospel imparts an identity that calls for a new quality of life. Scripture calls those who have received the gospel to live in a manner that is worthy of the gospel.
The story of Paul’s life is Christ. That’s what he means when he says, “For to me, to LIVE IS Christ”.
When Jesus gave us the Lord's Supper, he also gave us what he called a new commandment.
A true Christian can have a deep confidence sustaining all of life because, from beginning to end, the Christian life is God's work in you.
When we talk about the joy of Paul, it’s not a solitary joy. The kind of joy he has can only exist in partnership with other believers.
Christ calls his people, having received his grace, to stand side by side for the gospel.
The church is a uniquely important fellowship of people called together by the living God.
The life of a disciple of Jesus begins with a spiritual rebirth that enables life-long growth.
A disciple of Jesus Christ is committed to living all of life in light of the Bible as the life-giving, life-shaping Word of God.
Jesus is the bread of life, and we satisfy our souls with him by continually believing in him.
Sometimes, before God can bless us, he has to correct us. If we want to enjoy God's blessing, we have to receive his correction.
Disobedience to God is sometimes something that seems small to us and yet can have a destructive power that we do not readily see.
It is good to consider our ways because we can easily lose the clarity of our purpose while dealing with demanding circumstances.
If we want to be whole-hearted, we need something outside of ourselves to ground us, to anchor us against the storms of life.
God has given us the gift of His revealed Word in Scripture. We should treasure that gift.
To live in light of the Father's compassion, you have to avoid two dead ends, both of which can lure you off the one true path.
God alone provides that for which we most deeply hunger, so we have to learn to find life's deepest satisfaction in him.
The way we react to the circumstances of life reveals a lot about our relationship with God. We should learn to let our reactions and emotions teach us to go deeper with Him.
It is possible to think of yourself as a good person when in fact, you are very far from the heart of God.
God is a God of great compassion who wants lost people found. That was Jesus' mission, and he wants us to share that mission with him.
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
The story of the Prodigal Son, as it is often called in Luke 15, is a well-known story of chasing after fulfillment and satisfaction that you never really find. It contains many lessons for all of us about our search for happiness.
We need to draw near and hear from Jesus the truth about the compassion of God because the truth about the compassion of God sheds light on all of life.
Because the longing to be known and loved and accepted by God is the greatest of all human desires.
The fact that God exists and created the world is at the heart of the Bible's story, and it makes all the difference in the world.
The resurrection of Jesus is important for every single one of us. It is the dramatic demonstration in history of the reality of who Jesus is and the power of what he has done.
God's good purposes will triumph because of the sacrifice of Jesus. That's why He is worthy of all our worship.
Because God is Light, we can only be right with Him through the forgiveness of our sins.
The Bible places a lot of emphasis on living in light of the truth that Jesus is coming again.
We need to be strong in the Lord because life is a battle against powerful spiritual forces.
The baptism of Jesus reveals deep truths about God and the Gospel, so remember your baptism.
If we want to live the fullness of life, we have to have God at the heart and center of our lives.
While being transparent and realistic, Paul shows us in Philippians how it is possible, and what it takes, to be very human and yet also filled with the light of Christ in the real world.
Because of the confidence we have in Christ, we can draw near, hold fast, and help others.
You overcome hardship when you face the hardships of life with a perspective of faith shaped by the truth of God's Word.
We can take stock, evaluate our lives, and if the Savior who came into our broken world the first Christmas has come into your life today, you can change and grow and, in the words of Romans 6:4, walk in newness of life.
The more fully you embrace the cross of Jesus, the more thoroughly you will be filled with an unshakable hope.
Hope carries the idea of something in the future that is sure to happen. It is the confidence that something has been set in motion that will in time come to completion or fruition.
…In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
For the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Paul talks about what we confess every time we confess the Apostles’ Creed: The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
We live our lives, but underneath all the ebbs and flows, we wait for God’s Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.
God uses the apostle Paul to call us to think about sowing and reaping in relation to our spiritual lives.
What does it mean to live “in step” with the truth of the gospel? What does it take to live “in step” with the truth of the gospel?
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
The gospel is the heart of the Christian church and life. To stay strong as followers of Jesus, we have to hold fast to our faith in the gospel.
I've never met a Christian who was changed by God without a dramatic encounter with God, face-to-face.
The reason we all need to understand the gospel more deeply is not just so that we can be prepared to answer a quiz question, but so that we can know deeper levels of God’s love and forgiveness of us, experience greater levels of his power at work in and through us, and find unparalleled hope as we experience the inevitable pain and suffering in life.
This is the Gospel; it is not based on what you do for God, but what He did for you in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
t shows us Jesus can graciously overcome the most hostile opposition. Therefore, we can give ourselves to him and his cause with confidence.
God is working in this world, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly, and we are made to walk and work with him in this life.
A presumptuous attitude toward God leads to resisting the Spirit, but humility before God leads us into God's presence.
Polarizing problems in the church must not be allowed to displace spiritual priorities. We have to address our problems together, while prayerfully putting first things first.
The Wholeness and Restoration we long for doesn't come through human power or piety, but through faith in the name of Jesus
The church is strengthened for its challenges and its mission through Spirit-led devotion.
When a person repents and believes in Jesus, they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit who empowers them for the Christian Life.
As the book of Acts begins, we enter a new season of Christ's reign, as he pursues people to the ends of the earth through his Spirit empowered witnesses.
God, who draws us into a spiritual oneness with himself and each other, calls us to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
In order to love life and see good days, we must extend the goodness of forgiveness to one another.
In the ascension, Jesus completed the work of redemption, poured out the Holy Spirit, and lives as our High Priest.
The women looked up and saw the empty tomb, we can look up and see the risen Christ assuring us of God's grace.