Brian's Sermons

Isaiah 53 It’s not popular to talk about this Jesus. We like our Jesus to be neat and tidy, like he was in his senior picture, wearing that clean white robe. We like to see him happy, playing with children, healing people, feeding thousands, walking on water and turning water into wine. It’s another story to look at Jesus suffering. I have a theory as to why we often don’t look at this side of Jesus. My theory is this: if we think about a happy, smiling Jesus, we can ignore the cross. We can bump him straight from earth to heaven without a struggle. Without suffering. Why would we want to do that? Recognizing Jesus as the suffering servant from Isaiah, the one who was despised and rejected, leads to the realization that: Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and b...

2nd in the series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey Towa rd Mature Discipleship* Last week, we began our search for the missing piece of the puzzle: emotional health. We established that God made us emotional beings and He did it on purpose. Jesus, being fully human, experienced the full range of emotions. Thus it isn’t possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally unhealthy. We were reminded that we need to address emotional issues in order to love God and others, and that evangelism flows naturally from emotionally healthy people. Today we’re going to start digging beneath the surface, because in emotionally healthy churches, people take a deep, hard look inside their hearts, asking, "What is going on that Jesus Christ is trying to change?" The image I want to use today is an iceberg. When the Titanic ran into one, their big issue (besides thinking their ship was unsinkable) was neglecting the fact that when you see an iceberg, you only see the 10% tha...