Category Archives: Sermons
Sermon: The Bible – One Long Story
Posted by Chris
on March 22, 2012
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I really shouldn’t call this a “sermon” so much as it was a short lesson presented from the material of our study. We are going through a book called “Handling the Word with Confidence” at The Upper Room right now, and while Pastor Jay and I do teach, we don’t exactly preach sermons, we go through the material and highlight important things that people absolutely need to know to get through the study. Here is the second session of the series.
Sermons Update – Ruth
Posted by Chris
on March 22, 2012
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Last Christmas, Pastor Jay and I took a break from our Judges series and switched out attention to Ruth. I had always felt like Ruth was kind of Christmas-y. I don’t know why. Probably because it ends with the birth of Ruth and Boaz’s son, Obed, who is in the lineage of Jesus Christ (I still have part of a song from like 10 Christmases ago called “Matthew’s Begat” memorized – “Ruth, she married Boaz, who had Obed, who had Jesse. Jesse, he had David, who we know as king”. Hehehe.)
Anyway, because of the Christmas production, I spoke 2 weeks in a row, and pretty much went through the background information of Ruth in preparation for Pastor Jay’s sermons, which really hammered on the points that we wanted to with this series – Biblical manhood and womanhood – and how it applies to relationships between men and women. In these two sermons, I focus in on the idea of “Hesed” – which is a Hebrew word often translated to “Lovingkindness”.
In the first sermon, I explained how this “Hesed” was seen in Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law, essentially leading to her salvation. I thus linked “Hesed” to the Gospel, and had a good ‘ol gospel presentation. In the second sermon, I had a two-fold concern. One was to set up Pastor Jay by explaining the concept of Levirate marriage. And the second is of course to exposit the scriptures I was assigned. So there seems to be a disconnect in this second sermon, but I nonetheless was able to tie it together someone in the idea of “Hesed as a way of life” – that is, after you’ve accepted the Gospel.
1 – “Introducing Hesed”
2 – “Hesed as a Way of Life”
Sermons Update – Judges
Posted by Chris
on March 22, 2012
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I finally updated all of the Upper Room’s online sermons. And I’ve got a few of my own to post… Here they are collated by series. Here are my 3 sermons in Judges. Although I taught 8 times in Judges, I only actually had 3 “sermons”. The others were different kinds of studies.
1 – Judges Part 7, “Deborah and Barak”
2 – Judges Part 13, “Samson: The Life Ruled by Sight”
3 – Judges Part 15, “Outro: Micah and the Levite”
Sermon Audio: Faith and Repentance the Response
Posted by Chris
on August 1, 2011
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Faith and Repentance the Response, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 31, 2011. Scripture is from Habakkuk 3.
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Sermon Text: Faith and Repentance the Response
Posted by Chris
on August 1, 2011
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Faith and Repentance the Response, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 31, 2011. Scripture is from Habakkuk 3.
I feel like I need to explain myself to you before we even begin the message for today… Because I think, you will sense a feeling of finality in this message. A sense that we’re finished. That the series is over, or whatever…
And on one hand, that is true.. Today is my last day preaching to you. That is until, or if, Pastor Alvin asks me back again sometime in the future. But I do need to get back to my own church, Morningstar, as they haven’t seen me there in almost 2 months now.
In addition to that, we are closing off the book of Habakkuk today… I already confessed to you last week that I didn’t think I could make it through the entire book, small as it is. But by God’s grace I did! And I’m actually really happy about that.
And then today, we are also finishing off the fourth and final point of what you might call the “Gospel Proper” or the “Gospel Core”. These four points make up the Gospel message, and if you forget everything else that I’ve talked about these past four weeks… five, if you include my introductory message at the end of June… I hope you’ll remember these four points.
1. God is the Righteous Creator. He created all things, and all things belong to him. He is also righteous, holy and perfectly just, and cannot ever tolerate wrong.
2. Man, God’s creation, rebelled against his creator and sinned. And so, God being perfectly righteous, holy and just, cannot tolerate man, who then must suffer the consequence – first of physical death, but more importantly, of spiritual death – eternal separation from God.
3. But… Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, came to earth, lived a perfect life, but nonetheless took on our sin, and was punished with physical death on the cross, but again more importantly, with the spiritual death of losing communion with the Father. But, Jesus conquered death, rising again on the third day, and now sits at the right hand of the father, offering his righteousness to those who believe in him. Read more »
Sermon Audio: Jesus Christ the Saviour
Posted by Chris
on July 26, 2011
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Jesus Christ the Saviour, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 24, 2011. Scripture is from Luke 24:13-31 (Mini-Sermon) and Habakkuk 2:2-20 (Main Text).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sermon Text: Jesus Christ the Saviour
Posted by Chris
on July 26, 2011
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Jesus Christ the Saviour, preached at KBCF Lighthouse Church on July 24, 2011. Scripture is from Luke 24:13-31 (Mini-Sermon) and Habakkuk 2:2-20 (Main Text).
Please turn to Luke 24, which is where I want to start the message today. Now if you’ve been here for a few weeks, you’ll know that we are actually going through Habakkuk in this series that we are doing, called: “What is the Gospel?” However, as a way in to that, I want to quickly look at one small story in the middle of Luke 24, kind of like a mini-sermon within a sermon.
Luke 24, starting on verse 13 is the story of two disciples – one of them, Cleopas, and the other unnamed – meeting the Resurrected Christ on the Road to Emmaus. It says in verse 16 that their “eyes were kept from recognizing him” when Jesus began speaking to them.
Jesus asks them what they are talking about, and Cleopas gives this almost incredulous response: he says in verse 18, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
Jesus, just calmly and cooly asks “What things?”
To this the two give a pretty good recitation of what had happened so far. Let’s look at verse 19, which is where they start…
“Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.
But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”
Can you imagine this situation? Two of Jesus’s disciples – not part of the twelve, yes, but still two students who were presumably pretty close to Jesus, their teacher and master, meet him on a roadside and don’t recognize. More than that, they seemed pretty ticked about his ignorance of the major events that had been going on around Jerusalem in the past few days. Major events that affected these two disciples quite personally.
Now to be sure, verse 16 is pretty clear in stating that “Their eyes were KEPT from recognizing him”, so you can kind of cut them some slack, because it does seem like Jesus meant for them not to recognize him at first. But then the reason why that is, is in their account of who Jesus is and what his mission on Earth was. You see what’s clear from what they said, is that despite all of the time that they spent with Jesus, all those teaching sessions that they had, they still didn’t get it. We see this in two ways.. Read more »