December 6 Sermon

I will be posting my December 6th sermon shortly, but I first have some editing to do. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Eve: Jesus is Hope, Love, Joy, Peace

Throughout Advent, as we have been preparing for Christmas and for Christ’s return, we have been focusing on the four words of the Advent candles: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. Today, as we celebrate Christmas Eve, we lit the most important candle, the Christ candle. And as we light the Christ candle, it is only fitting that we would focus on Christ and his place within this wreath. Jesus Christ is not only the center candle for his obvious central role in the Christmas story, but his spot in the center of the wreath is because he is the fulfillment of all of the candles. We began Advent with hope. Fitting, that Hope Church would focus on hope. For a people caught in the “in between” times, Micah’s prophecy includes these words of hope: But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7) In the Old Testament, when you find the word “hope” it is almost always characterized not simply as “hope” b...
Read more

Joy in Prison

Philippians 1:12-30 In the last two weeks of our study of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, we have gotten all the way through the introduction and prayer. Today we will dive into the body of the letter. As we do, remember that Paul didn’t write this letter to right some kind of wrong; he is writing to thank them for their gift and to encourage them during a time of struggle. When you’re struggling, you’ll find that there are several kinds of people. The first kind really doesn’t care. They are simply self-absorbed. They say, “How are you doing?” and when you start to answer, they wait until you take a breath and interrupt to tell you their own story of woe. There are the well-meaning people who just don’t have the words to say to encourage you, but they feel like they need to say something anyway. They are the ones who you thought were your friends and then they say something so insensitive that you can’t believe anyone would say it, let alone a Christian friend. ...
Read more

Poverty: Broken Relationship With Others

Matthew 22:35-40 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”   One of Zambia’s biggest problems is poverty. Any NGO or service operation will tell you this. We all know this. Nobody can say any differently, because we can all look around and see poverty. And we can see poverty in our own lives. The West would like you to think that poverty is all about money, or the lack of money. They say that all you need is money, which will solve your poverty problems.   The problem with this approach is that it never addresses the root cause of poverty. Nor d...
Read more