Sermons

What do these have in common? All three will converge this Sunday morning at SGC. At least, that's our hope as we have been talking to Jermaine Powell about the possibility of creating some pieces of art that could embellish our auditorium but also capture some of the essence of what we are preaching.

This Sunday we begin a new sermon series, Wisdom for Suffering. The idea of this series is to take four books in the Wisdom Literature of the Bible and approach them with this question, "What does this have to tell me about suffering?" The sermons will look at the book of Job (Aug. 2), the book of Psalms (Aug. 9, 16), the book of Proverbs (Aug. 23), and the book of Ecclesiastes (Aug. 30).

The issue of suffering is a massive and complex one. This is true at a personal level, because my suffering has unique elements to it that…

Yesterday Jim preached on 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15. The primary burden of the text is for us not to walk in idleness--to be "busy at work" and not be "busybodies" (3:11). His opening sections on idleness were excellent, but something particularly helpful was a couple great questions on how to know whether you're being a "busybody" and imposing yourself in someone's life where it isn't right:

1. Is the other person inviting my help?
2. Is this about them, or is it really about me?

Sometimes I'm not invited in and I should stay out of someone's business, because it's…

Amazing Grace has to be one of the most familiar Christian hymns of all time. I haven't done any studies on it, but it seems to find it's way into all kinds of Christian and secular movies. If you start the song on a Sunday, everyone present will sing along, not just those who grew up in your church. It is a vivid reminder that something is "amazing" and worth singing about, namely, "grace." But what exactly is "grace"? Let's define it and then look to the New Testament to answer six important questions about it.

And by the way,…

Last Sunday we finished our 1 Thessalonians series and looked at 5:23 in that letter, "Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." The main burden of this text is assuring us that God will indeed finish his work of making us holy. He will not fail in that!

But this verse also presents us with a question: When it says "spirit and soul and body," is it assuming that we have three distinct parts in us—that…

This week we begin a short series out of 2 Thessalonians. Read the book if you can. It's only three chapters. For extra-credit look again at Acts 17:1-9 to recall what the church plant in Thessalonica looked like. Here are five things to know as we approach these sermons:

1. THE ORIGINAL CHURCH PLANT

In Acts 17 a group of apostles went to the city of Thessalonica to plant a church, estimated to be in 49 A.D. This was the team sent out by the Jerusalem church to deliver the letter written in Acts 15. Paul and Barnabas were originally…

Last Sunday I preached on 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, one of the most challenging passages on sexual immorality in the New Testament. The overall theme of the passage is on our holiness, but purity is the central focus of that holiness--at least, within this particular passage.

In the sermon we also looked at the category of lust from Matthew 5:28, I briefly mentioned pornography as one of the most significant issues of our day. It has made life treacherous for all of us regardless of our personal level of temptation. The ubiquity of the internet--through the obvious sources like mainstream…

This past Sunday Bruce Chick quoted from John Newton who wrote perspective-giving words on humility.

This morning in our sermon we're looking at the names of God from Psalm 86. Specifically we're looking at God's name, Adonai. It means, "my Master." To help us appreciate how David the Psalmist would have used the names of God, I switched out the English translations of God's names for the Hebrew originals. Sometimes it helps us to do this in our minds as we read the Old Testament to cause us to slow down and reflect on how much God's names reveal about him. Here is Psalm 86:

Psalm 86
A Prayer of David.
Incline…

The idea of our current sermon series on the names of God, What is God Like?,  is to use the names of God as a way to think about God.