Sermon Series (Page 6)
Stand Firm and See the Deliverance of the Lord!
Exodus 14:13 (NIV) “Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” In 1998 my wife, Patty, and I had accumulated a bunch of airline miles, so we took our two children on a wonderful adventure to Europe for four full weeks! We did a lot of camping and last-minute, drop-in bed and breakfasts. We’ve got lots of fun stories; our kids to this day refer to this as the most memorable family trip we…
Escape from a Trapped Life
Knowing God the Deliverer For Christmas a few years ago, our kids bought us one of those escape room events. The whole family went into a locked room, and we had to work together to figure out the clues on how to get out. It was very fun, but I found it very frustrating! I can promise you that if I had been put in that room by myself, I would likely still be in that room even now. I…
Knowing God—The Great Deliverer
The Denzel Washington movie from 2000, “Remember the Titans,” portrayed the true story of an underdog high school football team coached by an African American man who took them to the state championship. It is an inspiring story and worth a watch, for sure. But the center of the movie was that they, as a whole team, had to have confidence in what the new head coach was doing with them and where he was leading them. They had to…
Global Impact Celebration: A historical review
Where have we been and why do we do this? Eleven years ago at LifeWay Church, we began dedicating one week of the year to a Global Impact Celebration, or GIC. It is a week on our calendar, but if that is all the annual GIC is for you, then you’ve totally missed the entire point. Let me explain. Why did we start this, and what’s the history of GIC? To be honest, most churches, when they are involved in missions,…
A Global Mandate from Our Global God
If you had a dream of going somewhere in the world where you have never been—seeing something with your own eyes instead of seeing just tourist photos—where would it be? It’s a bit of a “what’s on your bucket list?” question. A cruise through the inside passage to Alaska? The tropical islands of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean? The fjords of Norway? The glaciers and penguins of Antarctica? The Gobi Desert of Mongolia? The Great Wall of China? Machu…
The Global Need
What’s the greatest need in the world today? Clean water? A secure food supply? Access to education? Each of those needs is significant, and they are also universal—meaning that everyone, no matter who they are or where they live, has these needs. But the greatest need we all have is a Savior. The Bible tells us that every person is dead in their sin until they accept the gift of Christ as their Savior. He is the solution to our…
Global
Have you ever met someone who is constantly focused on themselves? Maybe they aren’t actively mean or uncaring; they are just simply too occupied with their own lives to notice the people around them. They don’t notice if someone needs help or care if someone is celebrating a milestone. Their lives are about themselves. Sadly, a lot of churches and a lot of Christians can be inward-focused as well. We get caught up in our own church activities and issues,…
Asking “What If…?” of the Great I AM
Exodus 4:1Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Does God—the Great I AM, YHWH—take questions? In the classic 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and the band of misfits that she had collected along the yellow brick road finally come into the throne room of “Oz the Great and Powerful,” she begins to ask him basic questions. The first questions are met with anger, fury…
Awed, Not Overwhelmed
Be in awe of God more than overwhelmed by anything else that comes your way! This was the essential theme laid out last Sunday as we launched into a year of study we are calling, Knowing God. Just contemplate that for a minute: Be in awe of God. The story from which we are launching our year is Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush (Exodus 3). Essentially, Moses was just minding his own business, tending the sheep. He…
Knowing God: The Great I Am
This Sunday, September 11, we are launching into our third year of study and sermons to help us grasp the whole of Scripture. To remind you… Year 1 (2020-21) — The Book of Jesus We explored the idea that ALL of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is ultimately about Jesus and God’s rescue plan. Do you remember our memory verse? Colossians 1:15Christ, the visible image of the invisible God… Year 2 (2021-22) — Building His Church We sought to…
Christians in Conflict
Hello, LifeWay Family! It’s Edwin, and I wanted to take a moment to say how excited I am for this Sunday! For those of you who may not know, this Sunday will be my first opportunity to preach to the church as a whole! I am so elated to be able to share something that God has really been placing on my heart this year. Have you ever had a conflict with an unbeliever? Has a conversation and attempt to…
Gospel, Meet World
This Sunday I’ll be teaching again on the overall theme of the gospel and our culture. I’m going to be laying out some practical things from scripture about raising up a church family with the identity that we can find in Christ. I’ll teach some practical ways in which the body of Christ relates to the rest of the world and helps the world discover their identity as a creation of God. This is a bit challenging, because the church…
The Gospel in Our Culture
During the month of August, we are taking a few weeks to explore how to take the gospel into the very complicated culture that surrounds us. We are hopping around a little bit: On July 31, I launched the series by beginning an unfinished message about sexual identity. Last Sunday, Chris Berry taught about our government—and more importantly, how we should navigate our own relationships when we disagree politically. This Sunday, I am picking up where I left off on…
God and the Government
“My country, ’tis of thee…” From an American background, those words sound so patriotic and wonderful. We (especially those of us who are a little older) grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance at school and singing the national anthem for ball games. I even remember taking a patriotism class when I was young; such classes can be helpful, and they’ve come to us historically in our American culture because we grew up being taught to love and support our…
The Gospel and the Sexual Identity Crisis
Last week, I began a series of teachings wrapped up in the subject of the gospel and our culture. The plan is to address on Sunday mornings a few issues with which we all seem to be faced, and about which we are often confused. The intent is to deal with a few specific topics this August, and from time to time pick this theme back up and deal with a few more. This Sunday, July 31, I am addressing the gospel…
The Gospel and Our Culture
When the Church (Ekklesia) was being planted in Gentile territories in the 1st century, they quickly realized they were having to deal with issues that had long since been settled in the Jewish world of Israel—prostitution worship, emperor worship, allegiance to the government, paying taxes, polytheism, animism, child sacrifice, and many, many, many more issues. The issues today are not all the same, of course, but amazingly, most the core concerns of the historical church are the same core concerns…
The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For
At the beginning of my message series on Ecclesiastes, I said that the Book of Ecclesiastes was a hard book. Along with Proverbs, Job and Song of Solomon, we know that the Book of Ecclesiastes is one of the Wisdom Books in our Bibles, but God sure didn’t make it easy for us to extract wisdom out of Ecclesiastes. Much of the book is complex and enigmatic to me. It takes a lot of work for me just to understand…
At World’s End
Did you know that from polls done in 2012, some 14% of the population of the world believed that the world would end sometime during their lifetime? The lowest percentage was 6% in France. Can you guess in which country the percentage was the highest? You guessed it. America tied with Turkey at 22%. Does that say something about Americans? Anything? Fascination with the end of the world has always been a people’s topic of discussion. If you are as…
Wisdom About Wisdom
How can you tell if a person is a wise person? All things being equal, how can you tell a wise person from an unwise person? If you asked some people what are some of the things they look for when they set out to find a wise person, most people would probably say it has something to do with the ability to ask good questions, gain knowledge, analyze complex situations, apply common sense, recall past experiences, consider sensible options,…
It’s Not Fair!
One day when I was a teenager, my father bought a book from a local bookstore, handed it to me, and asked me to read it. Back in those days, I didn’t particularly like to read. I still don’t really like to read today. But the title of the book intrigued me: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I remember I was excited to read and see what the author had to say about the topic. By the time children…
Promises, Promises
Since the beginning of the human race, making a promise to one another is one of the most serious things we do in life. We make a vow or pledge to each other we will take an action or give an assurance that something will happen. And yet, how many times do we make a promise to someone, perhaps a friend, and we don’t follow through? A promise not kept causes frustration to that someone, especially if he or she…
An Appointed Time
For those of you who are a little older (than the rest of us), do you remember as a young boy or girl, your parents woke you up in the middle of the night because they thought it was important for you to watch a nationally televised broadcast of a NASA rocket launch? Either you were glad and your eyes were glued to the television screen, or you were cranky because someone had just rudely interrupted your sleep. But have…
Introducing Ecclesiastes
You did it! We did it! For this past year, we learned together what are the four walls of Christ’s church and the critical importance of building our church with those four walls in balance. And now we are off to take the final exam Billy gave us, pass it (or for you high achievers, ace it), and the whole summer is ours. Good luck! But just because the LifeWay academic year unofficially ended last Sunday, and the school bell…
Finals Week
“It’s Finals Week! Time to take the test!“ Those words struck terror for me in college and seminary. The pressure was on to go back and try to remember all that had been taught, all that I’d read, and then to articulate it on an exam. As a Religion major, most of my classes were the kind that required an essay of explanation in the old blue book, as opposed to math problems and equations. With every spring came final…
Guarding the Flock
What do church leaders do for the church? Guard the flock! Acts 20:28-31Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! In 1978,…