Sermons About Rules
Psalm 1: Immersed
Psalm 1 speaks of happy people who delight themselves in the law of God. The Psalm writer says these people are like trees planted near living water. In his sermon, Pastor Jason reminds us of what Jesus says are the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love your neighbor. If we delight ourselves in God's law, focusing on these two central commandments, we will be immersed in God's living water--a source for our continued outreach and compassion to others.
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Lists, Loopholes, Legalities... Love
"Just give me the list - and I'll do it!" That phrase may be the exasperated cry of a person desperately trying to please another, and in far too many cases, it is how we have approached our relationship to God. We have reduced our "friendship with God" down to a sterile formula of "do's and don'ts" and as long as we have checked off all the items on the list, we feel fairly secure. But Jesus blows this kind of "list" Christianity out of the water, when He shreds the Pharisees for their attention to minute details of the law, yet have hearts that are cold and distant. What if Jesus was more concerned with your heart attitude than with your adherance to a list of rules? Novel thought? Key Passage: Matthew 5:20
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Freedom on the Narrow Road
Throughout the ages the church has had a bad habit of adding rules to God’s good commands in Scripture in an effort to try earn God’s acceptance by good works and to prevent people from sinning. The Apostle Paul had to confront the Galatians because they were trying to add old Jewish rituals like circumcision and particular feasts and festivals to the requirements for being right with God. Paul exhorted the Galatians, and you and I in turn, to fight for the freedom that God bought for us by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die for us and to not submit to the slavery that comes from living by rules. He then reminded the Galatians and us not to use our blood-bought freedom to be selfish and sinful but instead to love each other.
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Slavery off of the Narrow Road
Some of the people in the church at Galatia were leaving behind the gospel of grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone and were turning back to the idea that they could put themselves right with God through obeying certain rules and rituals. Paul confronts them and reminds them that going back to rule-keeping puts us back into slavery to the rules. We all end up as slave to that which we think we need for our acceptance or our happiness, whether we look to gratify our own selfish impulses that always cry out for more or the expectations of other people. Instead of such slavery God has extended to us acceptance and adoption into the family, and since this was bought by Jesus Himself on the cross, we are no longer indebted but are free people who live in His grace.
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Rules, rules, rules
God gives his laws for our benefit not for our demise or misery. The first few minutes were lost due to a recording glitch.
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Acts 18:1-18 - Preaching in Sin City
Paul’s missionary journey brought him to Corinth, a city with a reputation for immorality that would make Las Vegas blush. Paul first brought the Gospel to the synagogues, where the Jewish people there needed to hear that Jesus was their long-promised Messiah and they were not made right with God by following the Old Testament rules. He then told the Gentiles in Corinth about Jesus and how God had called them to repent of their sinful ways. In the same way God calls us to faith in Christ and to give up both the empty rules that we keep because we think they make us holy and the immoral habits that we practice that displease God and aren’t fitting for a child of God to do.
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Acts 15:1-29 - Defending the Gospel of Grace
Paul and Barnabas returned to Jerusalem it discuss a brewing controversy in the church. A council was convened to determine if a man needed to be circumcised in order to be saved from his sins. Paul defended the truth of the Gospel that a man is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, and not by anything he does, and the apostles in the council affirmed this. Peter and James then laid down some rules to help Gentile believers not offend Jewish people. In the same way we must be able to cling to the Gospel of grace alone and grow in spiritual maturity while not adding not needlessly offending the people we are trying to reach and not burdening them with unnecessary rules and restrictions.
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John 7:21-39 - Arresting God
Jesus went to a celebration to tell the people that He was the Messiah and the fulfillment of their celebration. The authorities tried to arrest Jesus because they were too stubborn to believe in Him as they were hung up on their man-made rules and were unwilling to admit to their own sinfulness and need for forgiveness.
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