How do people start to follow Jesus. In the witness of John the Baptist and the story first disciples, we find out.

Let's find out about Jesus together. Not the cliche Jesus. Not the cuss word Jesus. But the real Jesus.

For the month of August, we are talking about who God is in a series called “God•ology 101.” We have talked about the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have seen in both the OT and the NT that God is a Trinity. Last week we talked about the question, “What is God like?” What are God’s character traits or attributes. God has two kinds of attributes: incommunicable and communicable. Last week we talk about two foundational incommunicable attributes: Incommunicable attributes (ways we can’t be like God) God is totally unique, unlike any other (“there is no one like him”) God is independent and self-sufficient, (“the living God”) There are many more incommunicable attributes of God, but this morning we are going to look at two of God’s communicable attributes. There are many more than just these two. Communicable attributes (ways we can be like God) God is Holy God is Love 11 Lord, who is like you among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders? 12 You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. 13 With your faithful love, you will lead the people you have redeemed; you will guide them to your holy dwelling with your strength. (Ex 15:11

God is like no thing and no one else. God is better than your best thoughts about him.

Today we address three questions: Is there a God? What is God's name? Why should you care?

God•ology 101: How does the Trinity show up in the Old Testament? In this sermon, we look at all the ways the triune God shows himself from Genesis and beyond.

Are you in Christ? How can you know? Learn the answer from Romans 8.

You know the song. “When you wish upon a star.” I bet you already have the tune in your head. Disney’s theme song, written in 1939 for the movie Pinocchio, ends with the line we all know: “When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” For all the ways we dismiss this as cartoony, Disney kid-stuff, the song has soaked into the way we think and plan our lives. We believe we have a right and even a responsibility to pursue our dreams. A poet named Langston Hughes captured this in a poem called, “Dreams”: Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow. But what happens when your dreams don’t come true. Hughes has another poem about dreams called, “A Dream Deferred” that starts with the line: “What happens to a dream deferred?” What do you do when the dreams you dreamed don’t turn out the way you wanted? What do you do when the dreams you dreamed come true, but they don’t give you the happiness you’d hoped for? The book of Haggai speaks to this very thing. The book of Haggai was named for the prophet Haggai who wrote the book. Haggai was called by the God to speak to the people of Judah at a pivotal moment in their history. What to Do When Your Dream Fails You (Haggai 2:1-9)

For Israel, it wasn’t possible to have true worship without the temple. So failing to rebuild the temple was really a crisis of worship. And God loved them too much to let them ignore his temple and to live their lives backwards and without true, wholehearted worship. He loves us too much to less us lose vision and fall into misdirected worship. He wanted them to build and he wants us to build because he is worthy and because he wants our hearts. He wants us to experience the joy of wholehearted worship. In this message, we see Five Ways to Return to Wholehearted Worship.

Many have described the current status of our culture and society as “post-Christian.” Before now, Christian faith influenced our society in many ways. It even influenced the thinking, decisions, and actions of people who did not follow Jesus in a committed way. In past times, the church centered the community, and people respected the Bible’s teaching. This cultural Christian influence did not make society a perfect place or a utopia (just ask millions of black slaves and their descendents), but it did seem to make the role of the church fairly easy to understand. The church’s building marked the time with its chapel bells ringing in the hours of the day and the church’s ministers called upon people to believe what they already knew about God and the Bible. The church today in the American and Western world faces a very different situation. Committed Christians who believe the Bible and Christian teaching increasingly find themselves as a minority population. This trend will continue as our culture and society move further beyond the cultural influence of Christian faith. The question is not whether or not committed Christians will be a minority population. The question is, “What kind of minority population will we be?” How will Christians respond to our status as a cultural minority? Will we get angry and defensive? Will we get scared and reactive? Will we get complacent and halfhearted? I don’t think God wants us to respond in any of these ways. He doesn’t want his people to be angry, scared, or complacent. He wants something better for us, and he’s told us what our response should be. one place we find the blueprint for our response is the little-known, often-neglected, tiny Old Testament book of Haggai. Haggai spoke into a situation very similar to our own. The people of God has lost ground. They had been exiled from their land. Their temple had been destroyed. They were struggling and they had lost their nerve. They had lost sight of God’s call upon them as his people. And God loved them enough to send them a prophet to call them back to God’s better way. The message of Haggai to the people of that day speaks to us directly today. Haggai’s call is the same today. It’s not the time to get angry. It’s not the time to fear. It’s not the time to give up. It’s time to build.