Sermons About Apostles
All is Not Calm, All is Bright
If anyone tells you that following Jesus is all smooth sailing, (health, wealth, complete victory now), don’t believe them. Exhibit A: the life of Christ. Exhibit B: the life of Paul and the Apostles. Exhibit C: Paul’s journey from Caesarea to Rome. You could call chapter 27 “The Disastrous Voyage.” Today in the Word we follow Paul on his journey to proclaim the gospel to Rome, the center of the world. This chapter reminds us of the inevitable storms in life, and also of the watch- care of the Lord over His people. Because of these two realities, we can modify the words of the classic Christmas carol, and say, “all is [not] calm, all is bright.”
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The Church in Ephesus: Revelation 2:1-7
The letter to the Ephesians in Revelation begins with a commendation. Jesus commends the Ephesians for their doctrinal purity. They have fought false teachings and have remained faithful to the truth without growing weary and giving up. Yet, though they have remained doctrinally pure, they have ceased to be faithful witnesses for Jesus because they lost her first love for Jesus. Jesus calls them to remember the depths of their sin and how much they have been forgiven. Some of us are like the prodigal son or the sinful woman in Luke 7, and we know we have been saved from a life of sin. We have been overwhelmed by his grace, but over time, the memory fades and we grow prideful and self-reliant. For others of us, the danger is that we have never had a sinful woman experience. We may not have ever felt desperate, out of control, absolutely empty, and needy. Our savior walks among his people and he sees them all. He will forgive us if we will stop trying to be perfect and simply fall at his feet and beg him for mercy. Run to the one who, though his face shown like the sun, willingly took on flesh to die on the cross in our place.
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be the Church
Rich Abraham gives us a challenge to step-up to the calling at hand and be the Church God has called us to be.
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Sunday Sermon for Week 33-09
The expression about equipping God’s people is of far reaching significance for any true understanding of Christian ministry. The New Testament envisions ministry not a prerogative of the clerical elite, but as a privileged calling of all the people of God. Paul envisions a church dynamically and spiritually vibrant as an every member equipped and functional organic community under the Lordship of the only real Pastor the Load Jesus Christ Himself. The people of the church, the ministry of the church, everything is held together by Jesus.
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Sunday Sermon for Week 31-09
The Christian Life will always be a struggle. The ‘struggle’ is what carries us through to unity in faith with Christ.
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Family Reunion
The family of God is so big that it encompasses all those past, present and future.
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Counterassaults on the Church Part 1: Destroy the Church By Force
One of the dangers in looking backwards (as we are in our study of the book of Acts) is that we tend to romanticize the past. We have a very selective, even idyllic view of things that happened and we forget the hard things. That is especially true with the church. Christians often think that everything was wonderful and easy in those early years. Yet as we carefully read the book of Acts, we find all kinds of challenges. But most of all, we find a counterassault against the church by the enemy of Christ. In Acts chapters 4-6, Satan is only named once, but he is behind a threefold assault on the existence and mission of the church. Today in the world we will look at his first counterassault—the assault of persecution. Unfortunately, this story is not “long ago and far away” because we are now living in the greatest age of persecution. So why did it happen? How did they respond? And how did they pray?
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A Call to Discipleship (Matthew 4:18-22)
In the midst of this present darkness, Jesus Christ came as the “Light of the world” to reveal truth to a sin entranced, sin darkened, sin enslaved humanity. His mission was to reveal God and rescue sinners from His own wrath. He came with a message of hope, a message of judgement, and a message of repentance. And it is a message that He would entrust to His people. A people He would call out for Himself. A people who would follow Him and be His heralds; to be His lights in the world. But it is being light in a dark world, that means it is not an easy call, though it is an extraordinary one. It is a call that comes with a price, but following the example of One who has gone before and paid that price. It is a call count the things eternal more precious the passing treasures of this world. That is to say ... The call to discipleship is a call to forsake all to follow Christ. In our passage this morning, Matthew 4:18-22, I want you to notice: 3 Aspects of the Call to Discipleship. (1) Call to Common People (2) Call to an Extraordinary Task (3) Call that comes with a cost.
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Holding Back From God
Holding back from God is not a new problem. The israelites did it, they would bring their leftovers to God instead of their best. Annais and Saphira didn't have to give all their money to the disciples, they did not have to lie. They wanted the status that came with giving the gift without the sacrifice. We can not lie to God and we are not to hold back from him. We hold back from God everyday by giving him the leftovers in our instead of our week. We are to no longer hold back from God.
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