Citizens Church Sermons

You were made to hear and respond to God’s clear and ever present voice, but the world and sin has disrupted our ability to do this with distraction and confusion. If we want to confront this, we need to confront how we consume too much, too fast and only what we want, and we need God’s word to redirect us back to Christ.

Scripture: John 1:1–4

On the seventh day, after forming and filling all creation, God rested. And yet, in a hustle and work-first world, we struggle with God’s rest-first creation, as we wrestle with our usefulness and striving for our identity. Our identity as God’s image bearers is to care and cultivate His creation, and also to rest and delight in His creation. The cure to our restless hearts is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we await his second coming, we rest in the work he's already done.

Scripture: Genesis 1:31–2:3 & Matthew 11:28–30

This passage reveals both the identity and purpose of humanity. God blesses his image bearers, having made them to multiply and rule over the rest of creation, in a way that is good for those around us and glorifies God. Inextricably Christ, we are not only saved and reunify with God, but restored to a sense of purpose: joining God in his mission of worldwide worship.

Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31

The gospel is not just good news for your soul, it is good news for your body, but many of us struggle to see our bodies the way the Lord does. We critique and compare, and despise that which the Lord created out of love. But in Christ, God became what he valued enough to redeem, and then laid down his body so that you may have union with Christ, body and soul. He loves you, all of you, body and soul. 

Scripture: Genesis 2:7

Humanity has value because they are made in the image of that God. How does Jesus minister to a divided world that doesn’t value humanity the way God does? He tells a story in Luke 10 to show us how God wants us to love other image bearers. Ultimately, we don’t love people only if they’re useful to us, or like us, or bring us value. Everyone loves those who are like them, but the Christian loves them because God loves them. 

Scripture: Luke 10:30–37

God places Adam and Eve in the garden to work and keep it, as a sacred stage to worship God. As they work and rest and love and serve one another, they are worshipping their creator God. We don’t think of a worship leader as a farmer or gardener, yet that is what we are all created for. Everyone is a worship leader. God created each and every one of us to lead worship. The world you’ve been placed in is a sacred stage for you to be image bearing priests who steward and rule over creation in such a way that all of it celebrates God’s glory. 

Scripture: Genesis 1:27–28; 2:15

This week we explore what it means to be made in the image of God. The beauty of this origin is that from the beginning, we were made with incredible meaning. For the Christian, the meaning of life is that we would look like Christ; that we would think, love, feel and act more like Jesus. That we would love God with all our heart, mind and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves as God’s image-bearers. 

Gen 1:26-27; 31a

In an age of increasing use of technology, there are so many questions around what makes a human human. This week we begin a new series to recover a Biblical anthropology; to recover who God made us to be through the life and death of Christ. As God’s design, though distorted by sin, we look to Christ’s redemption to become more like the humanity God made. 

Scripture: Genesis 1:1

In this passage, Jesus looks back at two stories—Naaman and the widow—as examples of the heart of his ministry. These two people represent citizens of the kingdom—enemies, foreigners and those seemingly outside the kingdom. Because the gospel is that Jesus came for the outsider, not the righteous, for we all fall short of the glory of God. It’s not by our own works but only by the blood of Christ that any of us enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Scripture Luke 4:16–30

This week closes our time in Psalm 23. There’s a moment in this psalm, when David shifts from praying about God, to praying to God. Because the Christian life is not just about us knowing about God, but dwelling with God in relationship. The psalm ends with the image of us sitting at God’s table, where we are in attendance but God is the host, pointing to the good news that Christ surrounds us from all sides in love—as he is leading us, with us, and pursuing us. 

Scripture: Psalm 23