preach-itSermon Archive

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April 2023

Gospel Motivation

We are in week three of a four part focus on our responsibility as Christ followers to be engaged in missional living. Each year we believe it is important to re-orient ourselves in an intentional way around God’s mission. God’s mission is to redeem his whole creation, and the mission of the people of God is to be the agents of God’s blessings that in doing so we might draw close those that are far from God. Knowing the necessity for each of us to engage in sharing the life of the son t



The Wheat and the Tares

Before you listen in, carve out some time to read the parable of the wheat and the tares found in Matthew 13:24-30 and its explanation in verses 36-43. In this message we explore this parable, seeking its meaning and its application in our lives.



Parable of the Sower

When I was a boy, my dad introduced me and my brothers to Old Time Radio programs. The era of Old Time Radio was long gone by the time I was born in 1978, but a few times a year my dad would get us cassette tapes featuring shows like George Burns and Gracie Allen, The Jack Benny Program, Edgard Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, The Great Gildersleeve and many others. I remember particularly liking a radio adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds.” We listened to these cassettes every



Missional Discipleship

For those of you that weren’t here last week, you are stepping into a conversation about missional living. For the rest of this month and the first Sunday in May, we are setting aside a time each Sunday to emphasize the mission of God here amongst us in a time we call Mission’s Emphasis. This year rather than an information dump about the ministries and missions we support we are looking at the characteristics of a believer engaged in missional living and it is our HOPE that in doing so we



Missional Prayer

I said it last year as I introduced missions emphasis in 2022, but there is no better place for missions emphasis than following the act that made us all missionaries. Maybe not all “travel to another country” missionaries, but men and women who have repented and put God’s will for our lives first. Those who through obedience to God’s call enter into God’s mission to save his people in the world.

God’s mission is to redeem his whole creation, and the mission of the people of God is




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,





 
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