Cedar Mill Sermon Podcast

Whether we follow Jesus or not, our sexuality is one of the great joys & one of the great struggles of being human. Last week we talked about the “approximations of love” our world offers, & there may be no area of life where those approximations are more tempting. Two stories are competing for our hearts. In God’s story, sex is His idea & it’s good. It was designed for oneness, for knowing & being known, & as a picture of the day heaven & earth are brought together. Sin distorted that design, & shame sent us hiding. Our world has rewritten the story so that desire is king, a story that promises freedom but often delivers loneliness. But Jesus goes back to the beginning, invites all of us onto a narrow way that turns out to be the broadest place, & becomes our hiding place. So our question this week is: Which story is shaping how I think about my body & my sexuality, & what would it look like to trust God’s story?

It seems like every day there is another headline about Artificial Intelligence: helping solve a major issue, or destabilizing banking; promising a glorious future, or predicting human extinction. For some of us, AI is already an essential tool for our life and work. For others, it remains a scary invader in our lives.

How should the church respond? When something has arrived that can approximate humanity, what does it mean to bear God’s image?

This week we are processing what it means to be a human made in God’s image in a time of AI and technological breakthrough. We are processing our call to love God, neighbor and self while pondering how tech aids and damages our ability to love. We are also processing how the local church community should look in such a time of upheaval.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about what it means to have a body, but a lot of our pressing questions (about sex, gender, aging, health, even AI) are rooted in this bigger question. This week we looked at two lies our world tells us about our bodies. Lie #1 says you are only a body, nothing more than “a vast assembly of nerve cells,” so your body becomes either a project to perfect or a bucket list to finish before time runs out. Lie #2 says you are not really a body, that the “real you” is a soul just passing through, an idea as old as the Gnostics that still sneaks into the church today. But Genesis 2:7 tells us something different: “the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” We are dust: truly physical, created good, & created with limits. We are breath: more than chemistry, made alive by God Himself. And yes, the dust has been marred by sin, but God has not given up on it. In Jesus He took on a body, rose with a body, & promises to raise ours too. Our bodies are not projects to perfect or shells to escape, they are gifts to receive! So, perhaps the real question for this week should be: How would I live differently if I really believed that I am a body and that is a gift from God?

Last week we discussed the trustworthiness of the Bible, but the question remains…what is the Bible for? Why do some people speak so lovingly about the scriptures, while others secretly battle boredom in those same pages? Does the Bible itself help us navigate what to do with it? The boy king Josiah assumed the throne in a time of idolatry, when scripture had largely been lost. The rediscovery of the Law changed him thoroughly in his heart, soul and actions. How can his discovery reignite our own passion for the word of God? What does a life oriented around a transformational relationship with the Bible look like?

Most of us have a complicated relationship with the Bible. We love it, we’re supposed to love it, and yet some of it we just don’t know what to do with. And many of us carry questions about it that we’ve never said out loud: Didn’t humans write it? Hasn’t it been changed over time? Aren’t the stories about Jesus just legends that grew? Isn’t some of it just regressive? This week we kick off our “Still Processing” series, and the first of two weeks on the Bible, by bringing those questions into the light. The Bible doesn’t hide that real people wrote it. Peter says the prophets were human, and that they “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Luke tells us he “carefully investigated everything” and relied on eyewitnesses, so that we could know the certainty of what we’ve been taught. But Jesus also warns that it’s possible to study the Scriptures diligently and still miss Him completely. The Bible isn’t trustworthy just so we can win arguments, it’s trustworthy so we can trust the One it points to! So, perhaps the real question for this week should be: Can we trust this book enough to let it lead us to Jesus?

This week we come to the end of our “In Christ” series, & Paul gives us one of the most passionate & powerful prayers in the whole New Testament. He begins by finishing the sentence he started back at the beginning of chapter 3: “For this reason…” & the reason is everything we’ve seen in chapters 1 through 3. We have been chosen, made alive, brought near, & built together into a dwelling where God lives. Now Paul prays that what is true of us would become real to us. He asks that we would be strengthened by the Spirit in our inner being, that Christ would be at home in our hearts, that we would be rooted & established in love (not fear), & that we would grasp how wide & long & high & deep the love of Christ really is. Then he can’t help himself & bursts into praise for the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine! So our question this week is this: are we settling for a tiny sip of God, or, by the power of the Spirit, are we building our lives on a God whose love is as vast as the ocean?

Paul talks about the mystery that God unveiled at the right 6me, which was this: all people gathered to Him under Christ, His church and bride. It’s the mystery that caused even the spiritual enemies of God to marvel at His wisdom. In this mystery, those of us who once didn’t belong now belong. It’s in this grace that we are all compelled to administer this grace to others.

One thing about the Gospel is that it changes things more radically than we sometimes realize or understand. This week Paul talks about the radical relational reconstruction of all society as he walks straight into the deepest divide of his world, Jew & Gentile. And he starts by telling them to remember. Remember that you were the ones on the outside. Remember that you had no standing & no hope. Remember what it cost to bring you in. Because Paul’s argument in Ephesians 2:11-22 is that the same mercy that made us alive back in verse 4 is the mercy that makes us one. There was a real wall in the temple, with a warning sign on it, & Jesus did not climb over it or negotiate around it. He tore it down, & then he used what was left to build a house he could actually live in. That is the Gospel! Mercy creates humility, & humility grows unity. So our question this week is a hard one: what walls are we still keeping up that Jesus already died to take down?

This week Paul opens with a shocking diagnosis nobody wants: we were dead. Not struggling. Not behind. Not low on fuel. Dead. Infected more deeply and certainly more fully than we may have realized. And then verse 4 arrives with 2 of the best words in the Bible: “But God.” Out of his great love & his rich mercy, God made us alive with Christ, raised us up with Christ, & seated us with Christ. And all of that was an amazing gift of grace that now asks us to surrender our lives to a new master, one who brings life, obedience & blessing. So, are we boasting in the grace of God? Are we fueled by the riches of his mercy? This is the new life each of us is offered and it puts God’s kindness on full display. So, what needs a “but God” in your life right now? What needs the confidence, assurance and humility of his grace? This week the apocalypse continues as the life-changing reality of God’s good news “in Christ” continues to change everything.

In Ephesians 1:15–23, Paul prays that the church would do more than simply know the right things about Jesus—he prays that the eyes of our hearts would be opened so that we would truly know Him and grasp the hope, inheritance, and power we have in Christ. The resurrection changed everything: Jesus reigns above every power, over every age, and His kingdom is already breaking into the present through His body, the Church. We are called to live as a tangible glimpse of the world to come—a community where death becomes life, enemies become family, and the peace of God begins to take shape here and now.