"hope" Tagged Sermons (Page 2)
Memento Mori
In most of our life we don’t tend to think about death. But every now and then we get a chilling reminder that death is not an abstract concept for us humans… it is a very real reality and our very certain destiny. Now while a sermon of death doesn’t seem that edifying, the fact Ecclesiastes speaks so candidly about it gives us something that perhaps nothing else in life does… it vindicates the pain and fear we feel around death. …
The vaporous vapour
While the book of Proverbs has shown us the good paths of wisdom that God calls us to walk and how following the voice of folly will lead to our demise, it hasn’t given us the whole story. We know that life is far more complex than Proverbs can make it out to be… that sometimes those that walk in folly succeed while those that walk in wisdom suffer. It is into this confusing space that the book of Ecclesiastes…
The Unshakable Hope
All of us are looking for a kingdom, not a stereotypical kingdom with a castle and a mote, but we want to set our lives up to be safe, prosperous, and secure. The people of the first century were likewise tempted to build a life of security and safety for themselves but because they had chosen to follow Jesus their lives had become less secure. So the preacher, knowing their fears and insecurities, calls to them with the glories of…
God’s Story, told by faith
“You’ve just got to have faith.” This is often the way we end conversations about how it is we believe in an unseen God. But all too often it feels like a cop out. I mean what is faith anyway? Well as the preacher of Hebrews continues to plead with his people to cling to Jesus by faith, he unpacks the role this faith has played int he history of God’s people. This the the story of God, told by…
Anchor for Your Soul
We speak of our faith a lot in church but I wonder how often we stop to consider what faith actually is. It is easy for us to get confused into thinking that faith is some mystical belief against all evidence… or maybe that faith in built through our striving to attain godliness in one way or another. As we continue in our Hebrews series we will unpack what faith really is and how is gives us assurance of our…
Waiting for Reform
AS we have journeyed through the book of Malachi we might be forgiven for thinking that the entire nation had completely lost the plot when it came to worship… their worship was nothing more than the smooth, clean shell of a rotten egg. But as we finish the text of Malachi we see that there was one small group of people that God listened for… and as we hear their voice and God’s response we will find out why the…
Waiting for Justice
When we look out at a world full of injustice, oppression and betrayal it is easy for us to wonder where God might be… if God is a God of justice, why is the world such an unjust place? People throughout history have asked this question, many of them have been faithful worshippers of God whose words are recorded for us in Scripture. But when the people of Malachi’s day asked this question, their motives were far from worshipful. As…
Waiting for Commitment
We tend to very easily separate the vertical aspect of our life (where we worship God who is above) from the horizontal aspect (where we relate to people alongside of us). As Malachi continues to uncover the brokenness of the society of his day this week he will touch on the most intimate horizontal relationship the people knew and how their destruction of it was destroying their vertical relationship with God. Divorce causes great sorrow and pain in our society…
Hope on the Road to Emaus
Many of us know the pain of placing our hopes and dreams in somebody that we love only to have them let us down… the disciples we meet this morning were feeling this gut-wrenching pain as they wrestled with how the man they hoped would be the Messiah could have let them down by dying and leaving them alone. Well as Jesus encounters these disciples on the road as the travel we will see that their hopes are resurrected and…
Worship – the chief end of humanity
Worship is the number one task that God has called us to! And worship informs all the other tasks as well. But so often we get it wrong. Pastor Joe finishes off our doctrine series by looking at 2 common mistakes we make when it comes to how we think about worship… and he will show us just how wonderful true worship can be.