Hoover Church of Christ Sermons

This is the last of the sermons I’ll preach in 2018 on the theme for the year: Love God. Love People. Change the World. I will try to wrap it up, summarizing the theme as we end the year and look toward a new one. There’s plenty of evidence around us that loving God and the people he created will need to be a continual emphasis of Christians everywhere. We’re surrounded by hate and violence and political division. What the world needs from us more than ever is for us to model love and compassion and truth.

Thought I won’t go into great detail, I will look briefly at the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of what Loving God by Loving People looks like, and I’ll encourage our church to let this emphasis be a motto for their Christian lives as we move forward.

The essence of Satan’s nature is that he lies to and about us. He loves to make accusations concerning us, and here’s one of his favorites:

About the good news of Jesus Christ, he’ll say one of two things: For some people, he tells them that they’re too bad, that they have no hope for mercy. “Your sins are worse than everybody else’s . . . God doesn’t show mercy to people like you.” And many people believe him, assuming there’s no hope for them.

On the other hand, he tells some people that they’re good enough not to need the gospel . . . people like them don’t really need forgiveness. “Well, at least you’re not like those awful sinners who do _____ and ______. God’s actually pretty happy with where you are.” And many people buy in to this notion of self-righteousness. “I’m not really that bad . . .”

But as you know, the message of the gospel is for everyone. No sinner is beyond the reach of God’s mercy, and no one is good enough not to need it.

All have sinned, Paul says, and all need the gospel, regardless of what they’ve done. And the good news is–it’s freely accessible to everyone.

A few weeks back I started a four-part series under the heading, “Why We’re Here,” focusing on Luke’s description of the earliest Christians in Acts 2:42-47. The previous sermons have emphasized the church as a learning community, a sharing community, and an eating together community.

For this last sermon in the series, I’m going to emphasize the church as a worshiping community.

If you’ve traveled to Europe, you’ve noticed that what used to be the center of Christianity–as indicated by the large number of vast cathedrals–is now largely irreligious. Many of these cathedrals exist as little more than stopping points for tourists who marvel at their beauty and architecture.

Surveys suggest that we’re following in the footsteps of our cousins across the pond. There’s a correlation between age and church attendance in America: younger people are much less likely to attend religious services regularly than older folks. Many people do not see the value in taking time out of their weekend to worship.

Are worship services going extinct? Should they? Are they irrelevant to the coming generations?

We’ll reflect on these questions in the sermon time Sunday morning. I believe–as I hope you do–that corporate worship is a crucial part of spiritual formation in the lives of Christian communities, and we neglect them at our own spiritual peril.

On each month’s first Sunday morning in 2018, we’ve emphasized our theme: Love God. Love People. Change the World. As we near the end of the year I’m using a couple of these Sunday morning sermons to emphasize the last part of that theme: Change the World.

God put us here to make a difference, not for us just to meet weekly and talk about how bad the world is, but for us to worship so that we might be present in the world as people who reflect Christ’s light to those who need it so badly. In the text above Paul challenges the Christians at Philippi to recognize their role as “lights in the world” (v. 15). In the “midst of a crooked and twisted generation,” Christians are to be “blameless and innocent.” In a world of darkness, we are to be light.

No one would argue with the darkness of our world: hatred, division, violence, immorality. But what are we doing about it? How are we challenging the prevailing norms of our society? How are churches–small communities of Jesus-followers–functioning as darkness-dispelling beams of light?

How are we salt? How are we light?

In this text Paul helps us think about this, and he challenges us to live so that the world takes notice and wants to know more about the Source of this light.

This is the third of a four-part series called “Why We’re Here.” I’m aiming to help us as a church think introspectively about some practical reasons why God put us here. To do this, we’re considering Luke’s description of the earliest Christians.

The third thing Luke writes that these Christians were devoted to is “the breaking of bread.” Sometimes that expression means the Lord’s Supper, and it may very well have that meaning here. But sometimes it refers to normal meals, and since verses 46-47 (included above) suggest that these Christians were “breaking bread in their homes,” we’re going to reflect on the importance of Christians engaging in table fellowship (part four will be on worship).

Actually, this Sunday we’ll do more than think about eating meals together . . . we’ll think about the significance of meals throughout Scripture with an emphasis on the life of Jesus and how he seemed to spend quite a bit of his ministry time sitting around a table with people. And we’ll think about what that means to us. In Scripture it’s clear that God wants us to fellowship with one another around tables, but he also wants us to think about the table in other, fascinating ways. We’ll flesh those out Sunday morning, Lord willing.

We live in a world where many people—especially younger adults—are turning away from organized religion. They still believe in God, but for different reasons they no longer see the need to be a part of a church—a local, visible community of people who are following Jesus.

In this world, we in the church need to ask ourselves: Why are we here? Why should Christians be involved in a local church? Why did God put us here?

This was the second of four sermons in a series that discusses those questions. We’re using the four things to which the early Christians had “devoted themselves”: “the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). On the first Sunday we looked at “the apostles’ teaching,” and this past Sunday we considered the second: “the fellowship.”

The basic meaning of the word translated “fellowship” is “association, communion, fellowship, close relationship.” It often refers to the sharing of possessions or money with people in need, and the context suggests that it refers to that idea here. The early Christians shared what they had with one another. We also notice that Paul uses this same word in 2 Corinthians 8-9 to discuss the need for churches to send financial relief to struggling churches.

Here’s the most important point we observed Sunday: a fundamental change that Christians embrace when they decide to follow Jesus is that because they know God has poured out his grace on them, they pour out blessings on the people around them. God has given everything to us, so we freely share with others.