Hoover Church of Christ Sermons

Hoover Church of Christ Sermons

By Hoover Church of ChristReligion & SpiritualityChristianity
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Hoover Church of Christ Sermons episodes

  • Out of Egypt

    Christmas is a time of year when many people reflect on the birth of Jesus. It has arguably become quite commercialized, of course, and sometimes it reflects attitudes that are considerably dissimilar to those that characterized Jesus. But any occasion that gives us an opportunity to talk about Jesus in meaningful ways is good.

    Sunday we’ll study Matthew 2–about the wise men, about Herod’s decree, but particularly about Jesus’ trip to Egypt as a child and how that reflected a theme that began long ago. Jesus, like Israel, went down to Egypt. Like Israel, he came out of Egypt. But unlike Israel, he lived a life of perfect obedience and went on to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice (of which Israel’s animal sacrifices were mere shadows).

    Jesus’ birth is remarkable, and it’s fascinating to think about how from the very beginning he was destined for something eternally significant. His miraculous conception prefigured his identity as the Son of God, and his early trip to Egypt further signified that he was the Son of God who could accomplish what Israel never could.

    He was incarnated–God became a human being–so that he could do for us what we can never do for ourselves. May God help us take the spirit of Christmas beyond December, and may he help us to grasp the depth of his commitment to bring us back to himself.

    27 min
  • “In That Day” – Waiting on God
    Most of us don’t like waiting, and yet one characteristic of the walk of faith is its emphasis on living in the present on the basis of what one anticipates in the future . . . on what one is waiting for.
    All of the Old Testament patriarchs, as Hebrews 11 tells us, believed that certain things would come true, even though they never got to experience them. They believed that God would give them the land of Canaan, though they only got to pass through the land as nomads.
    In the Isaiah text above, notice the emphasis on the future: “There shall come forth . . . the Spirit shall rest upon him . . . his delight shall be . . . He shall not judge . . .” And so on. Near the end of the passage, he uses the expression, “In that day,” which in the Bible is loaded language (notice that the phrase is also in verse 11, which isn’t included in the text above). “In that day” points to the time of Christ, the time when God would act in incredible and beautiful ways on behalf of his people.
    In a real sense, the entire Jewish experience was in view of what was to come . . . what God was going to do in Christ. A shoot will come from the stump of Jesse, and “in that day the root of Jesse . . . shall stand.”
    But what about us?
    We also live in anticipation of what God will do. In the sermon Sunday we’ll look briefly at James 5:7-11, where James writes that we should “be patient . . . until the coming of the Lord.” He points to the example of the patient farmer who waits for harvest and says that we too should be patient because “the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
    Our lives of faith are waiting lives. We look back to Jesus’ first coming, of course, but we also look ahead to his return.
    And we wait. Waiting with joyful anticipation is a real characteristic of what it means to walk in faith.
    24 min
  • Do Not Lose Heart

    Depending on our particular situation, we can probably relate to Paul’s reminder that the “outer self is wasting away” and that “the tent that is our earthly home [may be] destroyed.” And we, like Paul, sometimes “groan” while we “are still in this tent.”

    We feel the effects of aging, we get bad results from an MRI, we hear the news of a good friend’s death . . . and we’re reminded again about the brevity of this life as it is now.

    But Paul helps us to focus on the fact that we don’t need to “lose heart,” because we “have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” We “walk by faith, not by sight.”

    Tomorrow we plan to study this text and reflect on how important it is for Christians to have an eternal focus. God wants us to remember that our hopes and dreams aren’t tied up in health and wealth here . . . that we were created for a different kind of world. We can look forward to what will happen when this sin-cursed world is gone and we live eternally with God in the new heavens and new earth when “what is mortal is swallowed up by life.”

    “So we do not lose heart . . . So we are always of good courage. . . . Yes, we are of good courage.”

    27 min
  • Faith Works
    Easy believism. Cheap grace. It’s called by different names, but it’s been around for awhile, probably since the beginning of time. Some people claim to believe, but they don’t live like it.
    James apparently had people in his community of faith who made a big deal of their faith, but their lives didn’t show it. Some of them were showing favoritism to the rich, while others weren’t helping the needy even though they had the means to do it.
    To them James wrote very frankly: “Faith apart from works is dead.”
    James’ message is important for every Christian to hear, but perhaps more so for those of us who live in the Bible Belt. It’s so easy to refer to ourselves as Christians–to attend church some, give a little, pray sometimes–but actually being a Christian is something different.
    28 min
  • Which Do You Want?
    Two weeks ago we looked at Jesus’ predictions concerning his upcoming crucifixion, and last Sunday we studied his taking the Passover meal and reinterpreting it for the apostles (and for the church). Tomorrow we’re going to reflect on a part of one of his trials that began early on that fateful Friday morning.
    The religious leaders had brought him before Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea, whose primary goal was to keep the locals peaceful and relatively happy so that his somewhat shaky political position wouldn’t be endangered by reports of unrest. Recognizing that Jesus had been brought to him because of envy among the religious elites, he thought that he might release Jesus–whom he knew to be innocent–according a custom where he released a prisoner of the people’s choice during the weekend of Passover.
    He had in custody an insurrectionist named Barabbas, and he thought the people would want this violent man to remain in prison, but he misjudged them. When he asked them if they wanted Barabbas or Jesus to be freed, they asked for Barabbas.
    There’s an interesting spiritual point here. Pilate’s question, “Which of the two do you want?”, can be read as the kind of question that we all must answer. Do you want Barabbas, the one who offers the best short-term outcome? After all, Barabbas probably had as his goal the liberation of the Jewish people from Roman oppression–something that was very important to them.
    Or do you want Jesus, the one whose counter-intuitive kingdom ethic would likely bring about short-term struggle?
    Which one do you want? Do you want the one who does what you want or the one who does what you need? Do you want the strong-and-powerful Barabbas or the meek-and-mild Jesus? Do you want the one who leads guerrilla warfare, or the one who washes feet?
    Which do you want? That’s what Pilate asked the people, and in a way it’s what we’re being asked today.
    24 min
  • He Must Go (and so Must We)

    The disciples spent much of their time being confused, and they pretty much stayed that way until they were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. What really messed them up was when Jesus started talking about going to Jerusalem to be mistreated and then to be killed. If he’s the Son of God, how can anyone kill him? The Messiah is supposed to conquer his enemies, not be conquered by them.

    Three times in our readings for this week Jesus stops to tell his disciples what lies ahead. It confuses and distresses them, even leading Peter to step in and try to persuade Jesus not to do it.

    Jesus’s response to them is his response to us . . . “take up your cross and follow me.”

    Jesus didn’t come to be pampered and served. He, quite literally, came to die. And he calls us to learn to live outward-focused lives and to be willing to live sacrificially, walking in his footsteps toward Jerusalem. It’s an all-encompassing and humbling call that we must spend our entire lives learning to follow.

    28 min

About Hoover Church of Christ Sermons

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Our church family here is a loving, close-knit group of Christians trying our best to live for Christ. We’re not perfect, of course, but we’re striving each day to let God’s Word be our guide for everything we do—in everyday life, at work, at school, at church. . . everywhere. Many of us come from different backgrounds, and we work in various fields, but we share a common love for Jesus Christ and His church and look for opportunities to share that love with others.