Total Sermons: 41
Total Amens: 1
The Ark of the Covenant
God's glory is real and awesome. This text shows that God's glory is at odds with man's contempt, religiosity and wilfulness. We show contempt for God's glory when we are hypocritical, superstitious or presumptuous. Our wilfulness and innate desire to find significance beyond the finite and material can also work against us understanding God's glory. But God's glory is fully expressed in the person of Jesus Christ and appreciated through the Gospel.
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Fixing Society, Step Three: The Call to Lead
As God calls and trains Samuel to replace Eli, the leader of the nation of Israel, we see how God calls and trains us to become leaders and influencers in our world today. The key to Samuel’s (and our) successful leadership is (1) to know God personally, and (2) to know his word. As we gain the experiential knowledge of these two things, we will be used to provide leadership in the areas of life and society that need to be healed and restored.
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Fixing Society, Step Two: Church Leadership
As the second step toward healing the brokenness of society, God confronts the hypocrisy of the church, bringing severe judgment against its leadership. Eli and his sons are confronted, convicted, and cast out for their flagrant abuses of religious power. Hope begins to emerge from the brokenness of Israel’s leadership as Samuel’s quiet but faithful service demonstrates that God has plans to bring about the longed for healing and redemption of the nation.
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Celebrating God’s Goodness
After Hannah is blessed with the birth of Samuel, she dedicates him and then offers a prayer of thanksgiving to God. She rejoices over his deliverance, rests in his control, trusts in his knowledge of her situation, and hopes in God’s plan. We are encouraged to do all those things as well, but the focus of the passage is the “anointed one,” Jesus Christ.
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The Cry that Saves
As Hannah deals with the anguish of a hopeless life, she is driven to pour out her pain-wracked heart before God. God hears her cry, and she is granted the desire of her heart, but only because she re-centered her life by putting God first. Hannah’s cry invites us to follow her into the presence of God with our own heart cries, and it calls us to search our own hearts to make sure that there is nothing in our lives that we are putting before God. The son God provides for her is also the answer to the larger problem of Israel, who desperately needs a leader to free them from the brokenness of their society. God changes societies in response to the cries of individuals.
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Welcome to the Table
David shows kindness to Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth, by searching him out, blessing him with Saul’s inheritance, and including him in the royal family. A wonderful story about how God’s grace in the gospel takes initiative to love us, bless us even when we don’t deserve it and can’t repay it, and then adopt us into God’s family.
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The Armor Of God
In concluding this extraordinary letter, Paul sums up all of the power and blessings that come from the gospel in this extended metaphor of a Christian battling against the forces of evil and darkness in the world. He combines the image of a roman soldier with the Old Testament imagery of God himself coming to defend and fight for his own people. Christians are to wear this same armor so that they can resist the power of the devil and push back the darkness in our world today.
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Working Relationships
We are called to glorify God in our relationships which God sovereignly gives us. Family and workplace are key areas of ministry God has given every believer. He has given us in and through Christ all the spiritual resources we need to bring Him glory in these areas of our ministry.
1 Amens
God's Vision for Marriage
God has a glorious vision for marriage! God’s vision is so wonderful, that even if you have a great marriage, you will be motivated to reach for something far higher. And even if you are not married but wish you were, or you are married but wish you weren’t, you will find sweetness and joy right where you are now!
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Full of What?
God’s vision for humanity is that people would overcome the darkness that plagues the world. To do that, people need to know God’s will and be filled with his power. Both of these come when people understand the bible, and experience it in community and worship.
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