Sovereign King Church Sermons
Web Site: Sovereign King Church
Total Sermons: 69
Total Amens: 2
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Jesus in The Garden of Eden
I don't know about all of you, but I enjoy reading novels for relaxation. But I'll be honest with you. Unless I'm reading a novel out of recommendation, I'm not going to trudge through it without it grabbing my attention. Even from the beginning, it has got to bring the goods for me to keep going. Thinking about that, I went through a few novels in our collection to see how the very first line read. Of the novels that I thought were worth reading or owning, I wondered if their first lines jumped off the page. Many of them did. For example: - "One winter morning in the long ago, four year old days of my life I found myself standing before a fireplace, warming my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside." "American Hunger" by Richard Wright - "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter." "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain - "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston - "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." "The Gunslinger" by Stephen King Truly, the way books start cast an expectation for the rest of novel. It makes you want to keep going or it can turn you off completely. I suppose there is no grander beginning to any writing than, "Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This beginning is the foundation for not only all of Biblical history but all of history itself. God establishes Himself as the starting point of all things. Throughout the Bible, we find references to this moment (e.g., Psalms 8; 104; 148; John 1:1-3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15-17; Heb. 1:2; 11:3; 1 John 1:5-7) and the Gospel of John goes as far as to give us the complete picture of what happened. 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made...14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Now, the Gospel of John is either audacious in hijacking all of creation and making it about Jesus or it is continuing the unfurling of Jesus in every weave and fabric of existence. I say it is the latter. A student's look of the Old Testament finds not only Jesus in type and shadow but also in clear and overt in every book. What we want to do Sunday and over the next couple of weeks is to walk through the Old Testament and see Jesus on every page. As we celebrate the Christmas season and participate in all that goes with it, we want to walk backwards into scripture and see a grand plan orchestrated by a sovereign Lord who left nothing to chance. In that we will see an ancient faith which finds its pinnacle and purpose in the eternal son, Jesus Christ.
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House Rules Part 4
As we prep to jump into our passage this week at Sovereign King, we need to keep in mind several themes that are running through the book of 1 John. Let's keep in mind that John is trying to describe what it looks like to be part of the family of God. A few weeks ago, we saw a list of attributes that define the family. o A believer will be characterized as being humble understanding that they are a sinner. o Recognizing that sin means that the child of God will live a consistent life of confessing that sin to God. o That confession and repentance will cause them to walk in the light or live a consistently growing life of obedience. o Walking in humility, confession, and obedience, will cause them to be honest about that sin never pretending to be perfect. o Each individual believer then will be part of the fellowship of other believers in a community designed by God before the foundations of the world. Building on those characteristics, John also has been developing a few themes. For example: o A child of God will be in Jesus and Jesus will be in them. o A child of God will be in the word of God and the word of God will be in them. o However, the child of God will be in the world, but the world will not and should be in the child of God. That was the theme last week where John talked about not loving the world and all that is in it, but instead, we are to have our hearts and lives centered on the cross of Christ and all that Jesus has done for us. This week, however, John takes a turn in his teaching. Instead of explaining what the child of God looks like, he is going to describe a person who is NOT a child of God. What characterizes their lives, and what attributes describe them? Though we could probably assume the opposite of everything said about the child of God, John wants to be very specific. Now before we get started, we are going to run across some controversial language in this passage. We are going to see John use the word "antichrist" this week. As we move forward, I will make the same comment that I made when we saw the word come up in the book of Luke. o Every single generation since the day Jesus ascended heaven has declared that this is the generation that Jesus is coming back. o Every single generation has picked one or more really bad people and labeled them the one and only anti-Christ o And guess what? Every single generation has been wrong. That does not mean that being mindful of the times and the people of those times is not important. It just means that we should tread lightly and carefully before we start throwing labels and titles around. To be honest, we have made a joke out of Christianity in most every generation. o We have been so quick to declare that Jesus is coming around the bend that we have neglected our responsibilities in the here and now. We have been content to let this world go to h-e-double hockey sticks in a handbasket. o And any one that we didn't vote for or any terrorist on the landscape has been declared the anti-Christ. And you know what? We look like idiots, folks. Let's not let give the impression to the world that we are ready to start stockpiling weapons and freeze dried meals in order to stock our militia camp in the woods with a bunch of hillbillies that look like the guy from the front porch of the movie Deliverance. Instead, let's be wise students of scripture and our time, all the while holding to the mandate to proclaim Jesus while demonstrating love, mercy, and justice to a hurting world. Having said all that, this week at Sovereign King, we will examine this section of 1 John looking to see what the life without Christ looks like.
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House Rules Part 3
If you are even a casual student of scripture, you will find that there are just some verses and commands in the Bible that just seem...well...hard. There are just some verses that seem practically impossible to obey and some almost don't even make sense. We look at them and think, "Well God, you will just have to do that in me if you want me to do that because I don't see that happening. For example: - Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. o Are you kidding me? Why would I hate my parents? - Matthew 5:39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. o We devise elaborate explanations about why we don't to obey this one. - Philippians 2:3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. o We hear that and think, "Yeah, but there are few people that I know I am better than." There are always good, practical theological explanations for these verses, but when it comes down to it, obeying them is just flat out hard Here is thing. When we hear those verses and we think, "God is just going to have to do that if He wants me to obey," we are actually thinking correctly. We often fall into the mistake of thinking all the other verses in the Bible are easily within our grasp. If that was the case, Jesus surely didn't need to die. I Corinthians 15 makes it clear that Jesus' death on the cross was for the payment of our sin and His resurrection was for our new life. The only reason you and I can obey with a desire to glorify God is because Jesus' enables us to now. Otherwise we would be the dead men we've always been. You know there is an old hymn that sings, "I was sinking deep in sin/far from the peaceful shore." That hymn though sweet is completely wrong. We aren't sinking deep in sin; we are dead in our sin. The hymn really should sing, "I was lying dead in sin on the bottom of the ocean floor." If we are going to obey any verse, hard or not, it is because the Spirit helps us to obey. We don't discount the hard work obedience is, but as soon as we get away from dependence on God for that obedience, we have become lazy in our walk with Christ despite the contrary. Well this week in the book of 1 John, we are going look at one of these hard, nearly impossible passages of scripture. We want to pursue it well and understand its application for us, and then we want to ask our God to help us to obey.
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House Rules Part 2
Two weeks ago at Sovereign King, we started our new series on the letters of John entitled "House Rules" where we talked about how John is going to describe what it looks like to be a believer. Essentially he says that if a person is a believer in Christ, then there are going to be some family characteristics just like there are in any family. For example, my mom is five feet tall. My dad is five seven. My hopes of playing in the NBA were greatly diminished because I bear the family trait of being short. Now, I remember one time in college where I went on a retreat and there was a basketball tournament for anyone that was 5 feet 6 inches or shorter. Technically, I'm 5' 7" and 1/2 but I told a little white like so I could dominate the tournament. Sorry, didn't mean to make that confession time. The point of the story is that my height is directly related to my family, and the curly nappy hair comes from my mom's side of the family as well. In the same way, the family of God will share some similar qualities and resemble each other as well. We won't look alike physically, and I'm sure you guys are all thankful you don't have to look like me and to be honest, I'm pretty thankful I'm don't have to look like you. But we will live our lives in some similar fashion. In fact, in chapter one, John identified five of those characteristics. He said, If you are part of the family of God then you will have a consistent growing life of obedience and transformation. o The children of God will not be perfect, but their life will be described as the habitual process of walking in the light and not in the darkness. o John doesn't pull any punches. We are liars if we claim to have fellowship with God but consistently walk in darkness. If you are part of the family of God, then you must have fellowship with other believers. o Specifically, we have fellowship with each other because we all stand cleansed of unrighteousness before God. o This is not a loose, "Hey I have Christian friends," but this is a created community that comes out of the design of God before the foundation of the world. If you are part of the family of God, you walk in humility. o If you or anyone else who claims to be a Christian say they have no sin in their life, you and they are deceived and don't know the truth. Humility is described by John as admitting and walking in the realization that we are sinners. o A recent book entitled, "Unchristian" by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons surveyed folks who do not claim to believe in Jesus and asked them to describe their impressions of the followers of Christ here in America. Their top three responses were "hypocritical," "insensitive," and "judgmental" - humility was no where near the top, in fact statistically, the number of people calling Christians humble was non-existent. o We should see something wrong with that. We should hear that and repent. If you are part of the family of God, you will confess your sins regularly and you will be forgiven regularly. o A regular habit of the believer is to walk before your God, confessing sin, and asking for forgiveness of that sin. o We should walk around with in the ever present reality of both the ugliness of our sin and the beauty of the grace of Christ. If you are part of the family of God, you will be honest and admit to each other and to the world that you are a sinner. o Listen, if you aren't honest about your sin, and you present yourself as not constantly needing forgiveness, by default you are calling God your Father a liar. o Lack of honesty about your sin is evidence that the word is not in you. So we see some consistent characteristics there: obedience, fellowship, humility, confession, and honesty. So knowing what characteristics should shape the life of a believer, we get to ask a really practical question this week. People who have those defining qualities, what can and what should those kind of people...do? Let's find out.
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House Rules Part 1
Every single family has rules that are specific just to their family. They are those little things that define individual households and to a certain extent, demonstrate the values of a particular family. For example, at our house we have a few of those. One of those is, "No whining and dining," which means you cannot whine at my dinner table. You may not like what we are having for dinner, but you can't whine about. Another one is that you must at least take a "No thank you bite," which means if you are eating something brand new for the first time, you have to at least take bite and say, "No thank you," before deciding you don't like it. When I was a kid, the rule was that it was always better to confess than to be found out which meant you were going to get a much less profound beating if you told your parents what you did rather than them founding out from someone else. I remember one time walking into the kitchen and my parents said, "We know what you have been up to." I was petrified. One family in our congregation has this rule about the dinner table: "Clear, Cheer, and Chore" - clear your plate, show gratitude and thankfulness with a cheer for Mom or Dad for having prepared the meal, and chore being help cleanup afterwards. (Isn't amazing how many rules we make for eating btw?) Well, the family of God is no different. Belonging to that family comes with certain expectations and values. As we approach the letters of John, those expectations and values are exactly what we are going to find. In fact, John, the brother of Jesus, is going to use a lot of family language. His most common way of addressing the people in the letter is, "my children," or "my dear children." Sometimes, he will sound like Hulk Hogan and say, "brothers," and once in a while he will even say, "my dear friends." But no matter how he addresses the letter, the tone is always one of a kind family elder dispensing wisdom as to how to live. The interesting thing though is that this not wisdom in a vacuum. What I mean is that He is not just giving you random truths to live by. He is giving theological truth by which to guide you in greater living. Let me explain what I mean. When someone just walks up to you and starts giving you advice or just tells you what to do, most folks don't respond well. The thought is that that their advice is more or less just veiled criticism because it is not based on prior understanding. It just feels like an attack. However, if you notice, the writers of Scripture, and very much Jesus Himself, frame the practical truths of how to live our lives around the solid theological truths of who God is. Let me give you an example. In Romans 8, Paul talks about how we should endure suffering with great joy. Now that truth alone is harsh. That's like walking up to someone who is suffering and saying, "Hey, stop your whining. Nobody likes a whiner." But Paul doesn't give that truth alone or truth in a vacuum. He says: Our present suffering doesn't compare to the glory we will have in heaven. If we suffer for Jesus, we will be glorified with Him. And as we struggle, we have a great hope for the future. Just in the same that the earth groans to be liberated from the effects of sin, so do we. Framing that truth in that way is lot more gracious, encouraging, and inspiring than just saying, "Hey buck up little camper. Have some joy." We find much greater meaning and much greater sensitivity in our hearts when wisdom, encouragement, and advice are attached to truths of scripture or to theological depth surrounding the person of Jesus. That is what we are going to find in the books of 1,2, and 3 John.
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Love, Mercy, and Justice Part 10 - The Series Finale - He Will Again Have Compassion on Us
What is your God like? It is not an easy question to answer not because God is unknowable (He is) but because God's qualities and characteristics are so immense in number. I mean, what do you emphasize? His love, mercy, justice, knowledge, knowability...the list goes on and on. I'm sure if we made a list of the attributes of God just from among you here, we would get a cross-section of all the things that God has shown about Himself coupled with all the things that we like to emphasize. For example, out church is named "Sovereign King" and it emphasizes two things: God is the King of all creation and He is Sovereign in rule over that creation allowing no one, not even you, to usurp His authority. Sometimes I wonder though, whether or not the God we worship is the God we communicate. One way or the other, we are always communicating something about God from our lives, our choices, and the way we react to certain things. Unfortunately, what we communicate is not always what we say we believe about God. As Micah mentions, the world watches our lives. When we suffer they wonder, "Where is your God?" But when we can earnestly say, "God is just in all He does," the nations repent in dust. We don't and cannot live perfect lives, but the way we react to sin and imperfections is a powerful testimony as to who God is. So if we say, God is just in all He does, then we need to be able to praise Him in the midst of pain and suffering. If we say God is loving, we better be loving. If we say God is the God of all comfort, we better be comforting. But the world scratches their head when we say, "God is merciful and forgive," but we are slow to forgive. The world scratches their head when we say God is just in all He does, but we only get around to giving Him praise when everything in our lives get better. No matter what we communicate though, God is communicating Himself to the world. Romans 1 makes it clear that by nature itself people know that there is a God. One can just look at the beauty and complexity of the cosmos and know that at least God is creator and He creates beauty. John 13:35 say that the world will know that we are God's disciples if we demonstrate love, so constantly the message of who God is, is communicated to the world. So again I ask, "What is your God like?" This Sunday at Sovereign King, as we close out our study of Micah, the prophet is going to answer that question. He is going to tell us who our God is and what He is like. The challenge for us will be to conform our thoughts, beliefs, and actions to the truths of who He is. Then we trust that God will use those things to bring the nations in.
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Love, Mercy, Justice Part 9 - a message on giving
One of the lessons that should be learned from the economic crisis of 2008 is that the line between those in financial need and those that are not is pretty blurry. As home after home are foreclosed on, it is time to be honest with ourselves. Just because a person can afford to live in $300,000 home, does not mean that they are either doing well financially or that they have made good financial decisions. In fact, the person living in a $500 a month apartment struggling to make ends meet might actually be better off financially than many in upscale suburban neighborhoods. The main difference is that the folks in the nice communities get to walk the fine line of financial ruin in nicer accommodations. Unfortunately, it is easy to dismiss folks who file for bankruptcy or are mired in credit card debt because the temptation is to think they are just getting what they deserved. The thought, "If they had made smart decisions with their money, they wouldn't be in this mess," is easy to think. There is a sense of justice in many people's thoughts and speech that says, "Well, that's what you get if you aren't smart with your money." Now, our temptation if we are no where close to losing our house and if we don't have any credit card debt (or if we are even some where in between) is to look down on folks who make poor financial decisions. And I would say if that is the case, we need to be very careful of falling into the sin of self-righteousness. Yes, we need to obey and be fiscally responsible, but God always judges us on the heart behind our obedience. So, even though we are doing fine financially, we need to ask the question, "What is the heart motive?" Are you financially conservative and responsible because you want to be generous towards God and His kingdom or is financial conservatism just the smartest way to live the lifestyle that you want to live and the added bonus is getting to feel spiritually AND financially superior?
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Love, Mercy, and Justice Part 8 - Application
An application of the lessons we learned in the Book of Micah about Love, Mercy, and Justice. The last time we were in the book of Micah, we were confronted with the question that God's people were asking where they wanted to know, "With what do we come before our Lord?" To help us understand what they were asking, we restated that question a bit more simply. What the people of God really wanted to know was this: "Hey God, what do you want us to do?" Now we made a distinction in that last sermon that was important for us as we approached their question. They were not asking God, "How can we be saved?" No, they were asking, "How do you want your children to live?" God's response to His children as to how they should live is found in Micah 6:8 which reads, 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Now last time we talked about this, we just scratched the surface as to what that meant, and we asked ourselves a very specific question in response. We asked, "How do we know if WE are demonstrating love, mercy, and justice?" I would answer that question and say that we only know that we are living out that verse if our lives are given over to serving others and proclaiming Jesus. That was Jesus' encouragement in Matthew 22 when He was asked what the greatest commandment was. He said, 37 And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself". To truly love God by demonstrating a love of neighbor at least equivalent to the love of self, you have to put yourself in some pretty uncomfortable situations where you have to step outside of your comfort zone to serve and help someone. Demonstrating love mercy and justice, considering others better than yourself, and loving others as you love yourself are all very similarly themed verses. Actually obeying them is not done on paper or on the computer (though those things might play a small part) or by protesting or petitioning or even by obeying the laws of the land. Those things may all have elements of justice in them, but living out those verses is always done by getting our lives dirty by helping others who are suffering from injustice or need and doing it all in the name of Jesus Christ. It would mean that your life, and I say this with no hyperbole, is no longer yours because you have given it away to God and you have also given it away to others so that they might experience the mercies of Jesus. We cannot make the mistake that the people of God in Micah's day made, and we cannot make the mistake the Pharisees of Jesus' day made. Their mistake was to measure their relationship with God solely by their personal obedience. They thought, "Well I did all the personal dos and don'ts so that's enough. God is pleased with me." To make that practical, we can never be like the people of Micah's time where we say, "Well I've offered sacrifice or I've tithed or I've been honest on my taxes so God should be pleased with me." No, Jesus Christ had a rebuke for folks who thought that they could measure their relationship with God just by looking at their own personal obedience to the rights and wrong s of scripture. He said Matthew 23:23, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Jesus said, "Yeah you have obeyed and you tithe and you are good law keepers, but you're neglecting true obedience which is being faithful in showing justice and mercy to those that need it." So, here is where we stand. I think the most practical way for us to figure out how to apply this verse is by figuring out what this town and this community would look like if we demonstrated the love, mercy, and justice that God requires of us. So for the most part, since we covered the line by line explanation of the scriptures last week, we are going to make this sermon one of an application of those verses.
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What Then Shall We Do? - Love, Mercy, and Justice part 7
Two weeks ago at Sovereign King, we looked at a passage in Micah where God was literally holding court against His people. In His case against them, He accused them of forgetting several key things. They had forgotten… That God had taken them from slaves and made them children. That God had protected them from their enemies when they came into the Promised Land. That God had not always punished them as their sins deserve. That God had given them the freedom to worship Him without fear. Our take away from that sermon was that even though we may remember what God has done for us in the past, just remembering is not enough. If that memory doesn't give us hope for today, then we are essentially forgetting God as well. I encouraged us all in the day to day to remember what Jesus has done for us by His work on the cross. We can do that in some very simple ways: By sharing with others what Christ has done for us. By recognizing that Jesus' death was sufficient for us and therefore not living in guilt. By celebrating the fact that when we are faithless, He is faithful still. As we return to the book of Micah and we find that God's court case has come and gone, the people of Micah's time finally get around to asking the right question. They want to know, "Well, what should we do?" Now it is difficult to determine exactly out of what motivation the people of God were asking their question, but I do think this is the best time to ask that question. Knowing that God has been, is presently, and is always going to be faithful to you because of Jesus Christ, that is the perfect time to ask Him what He would have you do because you know that no matter what, even if you fail or succeed, God is going to be there for you. This is sort of like learning to ride a bike when you were a kid. My experience wasn't very good because my brother put me on the bike at the top of a hill and just pushed me down. I wound up with a broken nose, so that didn't end very well. No, most folks have a parent walking beside them, steadying them on two wheels. And if the child starts to fall, the parent catches them. Eventually, the child figures out that they can risk falling and risk riding because they know they have their parent there to catch them either way. That's what it is like if you are asking God what He would have you do when you know that He will be faithful to you even if you are faithless. So having said all that, in the sermon this Sunday, why don't we seek to answer the very question that the people of God were asking. They asked that in light of God's faithfulness, "What should WE offer back to God?" Let's find out.
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I Remember You - Love, Mercy, Justice Part 6
I knew a couple who told me a story about the morning of the wife's birthday. This couple generally made a big deal out of birthdays. I can relate because Amy and I are like that; birthdays in some ways are bigger than Christmas for the two of us. Well, this couple got up in the morning, and the husband didn't mention anything about the wife's birthday. At first, she thought maybe he was going to surprise her and was just playing it cool, but after a few hours, she started to worry. Well, the time came for them to head to the wife's family's house to celebrate her birthday, so she said, "I guess we need to head to my parent's house." The husband was getting ready to ask, "What for?" when the reality that he had forgotten her birthday hit him full on. Now instead of manning up and just saying, "I forgot sweetie; I'm sorry," he said, "Oh, hey the money was tight this week so I couldn't afford to get you a card. I'm sorry, but hey, happy birthday." Now, we've all forgotten something that was important at some point in time whether it was a meeting or even a commitment. Sometimes those slips ups come from just being busy, and sometimes they come up because honestly we are just not very considerate. But when we forget something really important, it hurts the people that are involved because when we forget something for someone, it is like forgetting them personally. That is the point that God is going to make in the book of Micah this week: forgetting what God has done is the same as forgetting God. So we should approach our study from the book of Micah this week asking, "What have we forgotten that God has done for us, and what would change about our life if we remembered?"
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