Hoover Church of Christ Sermons

The Christian life is difficult, at times–something we all can relate to. It involves sacrifices and sometimes persecutions, and occasionally we get discouraged. We might even want to quit.

The writer of Hebrews compares it to a race, and I suspect he’s thinking of a long-distance run, not a sprint. When you’re running a marathon, for example, the adrenaline runs out in the first part of the race, and you have to tough it out in order to finish.

The Christian life is similar. We begin with exuberance, so thrilled that we’ve been saved by God’s grace. Like the thorny soil in the Parable of the Sower, we’re excited about our new relationship with Christ. But then the sun starts to get hot, and the excitement wears out, and we’ve got to decide if we’ll keep going.

In our text, the writer beautifully urges his people to think about others who’ve run the race and to recognize the importance of endurance. He encourages them to identify the weights (sins) that might be holding them back, and then he helps them see Jesus as the one who’s run the race before them–and who endured the horrors of the cross in order to finish the race.

I hope this sermon and text will encourage all of our members to hang in there even when it gets hard, and that it’ll help younger Christians not to be surprised when the discouraging times come. God is faithful, and when we keep our eyes on Christ, he’ll make sure we finish the race and receive the crown.

Jesus Christ meets our most basic human needs. We need companionship (we don’t want to be alone), we crave security (we don’t want to feel vulnerable), and we want a home–somewhere to belong (we don’t want to be rootless).

When God comes to Jacob, the patriarch is a fugitive who is alone and vulnerable. He’s been told by his parents to leave home–to leave the land of Canaan–and go about 450 miles to the northeast to find a wife. On that trip, he stops to sleep, and God appears to him in a dream and makes three promises: I am with you (you’re not alone), I will keep you (you’re not vulnerable), and I will bring you back to this land (you have a home).

It’s fascinating how Jesus uses this story in John 1 to show us something even more beautiful than what Jacob received. “Jacob’s Ladder,” for us, is actually a Person, and One who gives us everything that we truly need and want.

This chapter is an odd and interesting conclusion to the book of Samuel. Chronologically, it almost certainly belongs to an earlier period in David’s life, so the author probably intended for it to be a kind of summary of David’s life.

In a similar way to last week’s text (Psalm 51), David shows an attitude of remorse–probably the reason why God blessed him with a kingdom that would survive his death.

But the focus here is on God, who does something that is almost inexplicable, and it should probably stand as something that we can’t fully explain. We simply can’t put God into a neat little box where all of his actions are fully understandable by our finite minds.

Where this chapter points, though, is toward God’s mercy. Israel and David had done something that deserved to be punished, but God stopped his punishment before it was fully realized.

Here’s what we’ll observe about this text Sunday morning . . . please notice particularly the last point.

We learn from other texts that this is the same area where Abraham “offered” up Isaac, and the same place where Solomon would later build the temple. So this is a special place–one where God would repeatedly refuse to bring about the punishment that people deserved (symbolized by the thousands and thousands of animal sacrifices that would be offered on this site in future years). And, of course, Jesus’s sacrifice would be the one that would finally and ultimately bring animal sacrifices to an end. There God said once and for all that he forgives our sins completely . . . and gives us mercy instead of judgment.

Psalm 51 is one of the most famous of all the Psalms, perhaps because we’re drawn to the emotional rawness and vulnerability that it reflects. According to tradition, David wrote this psalm after Nathan had come to him and convicted him of the sins he had committed against Bathsheba and her husband, but especially against God.

We’ll reflect Sunday morning on what this Psalm teaches us about the ugliness of sin and what it does to us. We’ll think about how David’s response models how we should feel when we rebel against God’s will for us. And we’ll talk about the beauty of a “broken and contrite heart.”

Sometimes our hearts need to be broken, and we need to acknowledge the secret sins of our own hearts. God often waits to bless us with healing and freedom until our hearts are truly convicted.

And then, of course, he showers with his grace.

Sunday is Easter, of course, and people throughout the world will reflect in some sense on the resurrection of Christ. I chose Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 as my text because it was the first sermon preached after the resurrection, and so it was the first sermon from the apostles that was shaped by their new awareness of who Jesus really was.

Notice how Peter uses the phrase “This Jesus” three times in his sermon:

And the angels also used it in the previous chapter: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (1:11).

The phrase points to the theme of the preaching throughout Acts: “This Jesus.” I plan to focus on how Peter uses the phrase in Acts 2: “This Jesus” was proven to be the Son of God by his wonderful works, was delivered up to be crucified, was raised up from the grave, and was ultimately exalted to God’s right hand.

That’s where our faith is centered, and that’s where we’ll focus our attention Sunday morning: “This Jesus.”