Brian's Sermons

When I was a little boy, I learned at church that the plan of salvation included recognizing our sin, confessing, repenting, being baptized, and living the Christian life. It was presented as something easy, and for the most part, it looked to me like the adult Christians around me never struggled. We even sang a song that went “I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time. Since Jesus Christ came in and cleansed my heard from sin, I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time.” I often wondered why living the Christian life was so much more difficult than I thought it would be.   Part of the problem, I found, was not a problem with the Christian life. The problem was within. We have been looking at the root causes of poverty. Poverty is not about not having enough money. Poverty is at its core, about broken relationship. Last week we looked at broken relationship with God. Today we are looking at another relationship, one that w...

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory We have spent months studying the Lord’s Prayer. We begin by recognizing and acknowledging who God is. God is the Almighty in Heaven, but he has chosen us as his children, so we can address him as “our Father.” We worship him and lift up his name as holy. This must always be our context for prayer. We do not lift up our prayers to someone who is just one of us. God is love; he cares for us. But he is also all powerful; he can answer our prayers.  We begin our petitions of God by asking for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done; in asking this, we also humble ourselves and bend our will to his. We call upon Jehovah Jireh - God our Provider - to give us this day our daily bread. We entrust ourselves fully to his provision.  We continue our prayer by asking for forgiveness and for the power and grace to forgive others, and we ask for the power to resist temptation and deliverance from Satan and his tricks. As we com...

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one . Matthew 6:13 Over the last two weeks, we looked at forgiveness. To get to forgiveness, we must recognize that we have sinned. We ask for forgiveness from our past sin. Now that we have done so, we ask for protection from future sin. The reality is, temptation will always be with us. The closer we draw to Jesus Christ, the more the devil will tempt us. Our goal as Christians is Christ-likeness, and so we should expect the same things that Jesus experienced. Right as he was to begin his ministry, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Hebrews 4:15, in describing Jesus as our high priest says this: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Jesus has been tempted in every way, but he did not give in to temptation. Sometimes Christians believe that temptation itself is...

Matthew 6:9-13 When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we first focus on God. Our Father in Heaven, whose name is lifted up and obeyed, on earth as it is in heaven. Now, in this part of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus shifts the focus. Having praised God for who He is, we now begin to ask of God. As in Philippians 4:6-7, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  Now it is the time to make our requests to God.  We begin by requesting our daily bread. This is a prayer for God to meet our physical needs. It is a recognition that God is the giver and sustainer of life itself. Sometimes we need reminding that Every good and perfect gift is from above. (James 1:17a) but this prayer keeps us rooted in this truth. Even our food itself is a gift from God.  Did you notic...

Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Matthew 6:10 Do you have any friends who always talk about the same thing, all the time? I had one friend who was always talking about girls. Another friend only talked about music. If you get me started talking about running, I’m sorry, but I will talk all day.  Jesus had one subject he talked about all the time. In the first three Gospels, He was always talking about the Kingdom of God. John the Baptist came, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people (Matthew 4:23). It was the center of Jesus’ ministry. The Kingdom of God. It was so central in his ministry, that when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to ask for God’s Kingdom to come, his will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. So what does this really mean? God’s kingdom is first and foremost the sovere...

8  “To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. 9 I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10 Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown. 11  Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death. What would you do if we, as a church, got a letter directly from God? How would it impact the way we do things? Would it change the way you looked at life? Would you do things any differently? Two weeks ago, we began lookin...

The Third Word: “Dear woman, here is your son.” (John 19:25-27) We have been looking at Jesus’ seven words from the cross. His first word was a word of forgiveness. He told his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, and even while he is being tortured to death, his heart is for those who caused his suffering. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The second word was a word of salvation. He told the criminal on the cross “Truly, today you will be with me in paradise.” He opens the door to heaven to those who will in faith accept him. Today we come to Jesus’ third word. While Jesus suffers on the cross, he is not the only one who suffers. He recognizes that there are others who are suffering along with him. What will happen to those who he leaves behind? What will happen to his disciples? Will they be able to carry on his work, or will they end up as he has? What will happen to his mother? In Jesus’ time, a woman was given her worth...

1 Kings 18:`-39 James 5:17-18:   Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. As we catch up with our normal guy Elijah, he has had quite the adventure in trusting and obeying God and accepting God’s provision. When God told him to leave the king’s court and go hide in the ravine and be fed by ravens and drink from the brook, Elijah went. When the brook ran dry, God sent him to a widow in Zaraphath, where God miraculously multiplied her meager flour and oil supply, feeding him, her and her family until God once again brought rain. To finish up that passage (and I apologize for not being able to get everything in – time is short), her son died, but God, through Elijah, brought him back to life! So in the third year of the famine, God tells Elijah he’s going to send rain once more. So Elijah, led by God (a...

Before I get to today’s scripture, I want to read another one.  I want to start with James 5:17-18:  Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. As I was preparing for the last five weeks I will be preaching here, I wanted to have a theme; I didn’t want to just preach five stand-alone sermons that don’t really have anything to do with one another. I wanted to find something that speaks to us today, no matter what we are doing. But I also didn’t want to go to my favorite, “pet passages” if you will. So I ended up with one of my favorite heroes of the Bible. Sometimes we can get caught up in the “hero” thoughts, thinking that this person or that person is so spiritual or so powerful or so whateverful that I could never do anything like this. This is the reason that I chose to read the passage from James be...

Matthew 7:15-23 Last week we finished 2013 with Jesus’ words: ask, seek, and knock, for whoever asks, receives, whoever seeks, finds, and whoever knocks will have the door opened. This should be our top priority for 2014: communicate with God. God is never bothered when we communicate our desires to him. Sometimes we’ll end up wrestling with God, but that is a good thing. Spoiler alert: God always wins those wrestling matches! If you are reading along at home, the next passage is the one in which Jesus differentiates between the narrow road and the broad road and the wide and small gates  – the weird and the culturally normal. We went into great depth on that concept and into that passage in the series “Weird” based on Craig Groeschel’s book. Because we spent seven weeks on this passage and what it means in our lives, I’m skipping it this time, and we’re going straight into Matthew 7:15-23. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inward...