Hope in the Cross
1 Corinthians 2:1–5. Ryan Eagy looked at Paul’s hope in Christ and him crucified as his reorienting truth for the Corinthians in the midst of their concerns (suffering, disagreements, discord, etc.).
Caught By God
John 21:1–14. Andrew Knight looked at John 21 to see three main points—1. Jesus appeared to give you power and peace. 2. Jesus appeared to equip you to feed his sheep. 3. Jesus appeared to make you a fisher of men.
How the Resurrection Helps Us Kill Sin
1 Corinthians 15:50–58. Don Straka looked at how the resurrection of Jesus helps us to live our lives differently and to fight and kill sin, in preparation for our own resurrection at the last trumpet.
The God Who Appears
John 20:19-29. At Easter, we see that God does more than we can ask or imagine. And as we come out of Easter, we see that God is the God who appears to his people.
More Than We Could Ask or Imagine
Luke 23:32–24:12. What I want us to consider this morning as we read and reflect over the one who does more than we ask or imagine—especially of the ONE who does more than we ask or imagine during Easter week—that the same power at work at Easter time over 2,000 years ago has NOT been lost, but is alive and at work in you, and in me, and in this church!!
Crisis, Chaldeans, COVID | Drive-In Church
Romans 1:16–17 and Habakkuk 2:4. Whether we are being enticed back to the law, whether we are losing property and imprisoned, whether a hoard is bearing down upon us—faith. Crisis, Chaldeans, or COVID—God continually reminds us that he is saving us through faith alone. Difficulties like COVID are indeed, as one writer put it, a thunderclap from God himself. It shocks us into remembering that this world is temporary and filled with sin and ruin. It is a visible picture of the ugliness of sin run amuck and its affront to God and his ways and order. It is often a shaking of settled Christians out of their ruts and expecting them to grasp ahold of a reality that has always been there, but has been hidden behind comfort and complacency.
Post-Advent Response: Adoration
Philippians 1:8–10 & Hebrews 1:1–3: The best news in all the world is that God came to us in the form of a man to save us from the curse of sin and death. Jesus, the light of the world, radiated through the darkness and dealt a decisive blow to every single terrible effect of sin by his atoning death on the cross. This is worth remembering during Advent and every other month of the year.
Advent: Love
John 3:16. This Christmas, I pray you see in John 3:16 the amazing love of God, embodied in Jesus Christ, for you. God’s love is central and foundational to our faith and is not an old topic to just pass over. John 3:16 takes us directly to God’s love, but additionally, John 3:16 is packed with so many other amazing statements in such a short verse. God. The World. His Son. Whoever. Belief. Perishing. Eternal Life. It is not just the fact that God loves us that is amazing, but all the aspects that accompany this love.
Advent: Joy and Peace
Matthew 2:10–11 God has indeed created us to find joy. But everything outside of God himself will be a lesser joy. Joy is found in Jesus. In other words, you will find your spend your whole life searching for joy until you come to Christ. And texts like Matthew 2:10–11 give us great confidence that this is why we were created.
Advent: Preparation & Waiting
Isaiah 40:3–5 I am so thankful that throughout Scripture God chooses to talk to us in these types of pictures and metaphors, because it appropriately grabs us in exactly the right ways to help us know how to prepare our hearts in our waiting. Whether we are preparing and waiting in remembrance of what Christmas was and is to us today, or whether it is in preparing and waiting for Jesus’s second coming, our preparation and waiting is best guided not by what particularly needs to happen, but rather, by what (or who) you are preparing and waiting for.
Advent: Hope & Promise
Isaiah 9:2, 6–7 Hope and promise drives much of our endeavors as humans. We hope that a certain school or college, outfit, sports team, job, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, or spouse will bring us everything we ever hoped and wanted. When we don’t have everything we have hoped for, we look for promises. Promises that tell us if we just buy a certain item, say the right thing, engage with the right people, then our hopes will be fulfilled. Do you know and need the great promise of God found in the manger this Christmas season?
The Devoted Life
Acts 2:42-47. Devotion denotes a love, loyalty, and enthusiasm with which to live. The early church prioritized their time, energy, and money for this particular purpose: to live for God and make him known. To have a gospel community like these earliest Christians, we should endeavor to devote ourselves as they did.
What Shall We Do?
Acts 2:36–41. Last week we focused on Peter’s first sermon where he convincingly argues to the Jews that the Jesus they just killed was in fact God in the flesh, the Messiah that was promised them from of old. Today, we’re going to look mainly at their response to Peter’s sermon—what it means to be “cut to the heart”, how we hear the call, and making the call to others.
The Good News
Acts 2:22–36. We are going to look at Peter’s great sermon in Acts 2 and see how the Gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ—changes everything and, and what it requires of you and me. The good news of Jesus will bring you the only true joy you will ever have, if you will accept it!