Lincoln Avenue Baptist Church

While serving God is a beautiful and essential expression of love, it must be fueled by sitting at the feet of Jesus, our true source of life, peace, and supernatural provision for all our responsibilities.

What does it look like when our service to God becomes disconnected from our love for God? In Luke 10:38-42, we find Martha and Mary offering two very different responses to the same extraordinary moment: Jesus himself, present in their home. Martha is consumed with the weight of preparation and service, pulled in every direction, growing frustrated and even resentful. Mary, on the other hand, is seated at the feet of Jesus, absorbing his teaching, fully present to the one thing that truly matters. Jesus does not rebuke Martha for serving. He gently identifies something deeper: her heart has been dragged away from her power source. The Greek word for 'distracted' literally means to be pulled away from your point of reference. That is the real danger here, not busyness itself, but losing Jesus as our center while we work in his name. This passage calls us to examine the engine driving our service. Is it love for Christ, or is it anxiety, guilt, fear of failure, or the need for approval? When the wrong fuel powers our service, the load grows heavy and our hearts grow bitter. But when we stay rooted in Christ, our service flows from a place of joy and purpose rather than obligation and exhaustion.

What does it truly mean to love our neighbor? That question sits at the heart of one of the most familiar and yet most challenging passages in all of Scripture. In Luke 10, a legal expert approaches with a question about eternal life, and what unfolds is a masterclass in how we so often try to shrink the demands of love rather than rise to meet them. The parable of the Good Samaritan confronts us with an uncomfortable mirror: we are not naturally the ones who stop, bandage wounds, and commit to return. We are, if we are honest, the ones who cross to the other side of the road. The priest and the Levite are not villains. They are us, moving through life with schedules and fears and reasons that feel legitimate in the moment. What sets the Samaritan apart is not superior willpower but something deeper: a compassion that has feet, that actually moves a person toward the need rather than away from it. This sermon invites us to ask where we are applying our capacity to do hard things, and whether the people we pass each day are burdens to avoid or kingdom opportunities to embrace.

What does it look like to truly encounter Jesus? In Luke 7:36-50, we find two people sitting at the same dinner table with very different hearts. One is a respected religious leader who has organized the entire evening, yet approaches Jesus with a critical, evaluating eye. The other is a woman the whole town knows as a sinner, uninvited and unwelcome, who crashes the party for one reason alone: to express her love to the one who has forgiven her. The contrast is striking. The religious man, confident in his own moral standing, uses the occasion to judge whether Jesus measures up to his expectations. The woman, fully aware of the depth of her sin, is so overwhelmed by Christ's grace that she weeps at his feet, wipes them with her hair, and pours out expensive ointment without hesitation. The spiritual lesson here cuts deep. It is not the person with the cleanest record who loves Jesus most. It is the one who most clearly sees both the weight of their own sin and the surpassing greatness of Christ's forgiveness. The parable Jesus tells makes the point plain: neither debtor could pay, but the one forgiven the greater debt loves the more. The invitation for us is to honestly reckon with our own sin not to drown in shame, but to let that honest reckoning drive us into the arms of a Savior whose grace is greater still. When we see both truths clearly, the result is not guilt but lavish, joyful love.

What does it actually mean to love an enemy? Not merely tolerate them, not simply avoid retaliating, but genuinely love them? In Luke 6:27-38, Jesus lays out one of the most countercultural commands in all of Scripture, and he does not leave us to guess what he means. He defines it clearly: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. These are not passive postures. They are active, intentional, costly choices. This passage challenges us to examine whether the love we extend to others is shaped by what we expect to receive in return, or whether it flows from something deeper and more transforming. The spiritual insight at the heart of this teaching is that we are not the heroes of this story. We are the enemies. We are the ones who turned away, who rebelled, who had nothing to offer. And yet God loved us anyway, fully and freely, at great cost to himself. When we begin to truly receive that love, something shifts in us. We find ourselves capable of extending grace to people who have done nothing to earn it, because we remember that we never earned it either. That is the cycle this passage invites us into, receiving the love of God and pouring it out on others, which in turn deepens our experience of God himself.

What does it really mean to be blessed? Most of us instinctively reach for the same answers: financial security, good health, a comfortable life, the approval of the people around us. But in Luke chapter 6, Jesus takes everything we assume about blessing and turns it completely upside down. He calls the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the rejected the blessed ones, while issuing sobering warnings to those whose treasure is found in wealth, ease, laughter, and popularity. This is not a peripheral teaching. It strikes at the very center of what we are building our lives upon. The core question Luke is pressing us to answer is not how much we have, but where our treasure is. If our deepest satisfaction is anchored in things that are passing away, then we are, as Paul puts it, feasting in first class on a sinking ship. But if our treasure is Christ himself, then even in seasons of loss, rejection, and hardship, there is a river of joy that cannot be taken from us. This message challenges us to do an honest audit of our own hearts and ask whether our hope is truly set on the eternal or quietly settled on the temporary.

What happens when the Son of God faces the full force of temptation? In Luke 4:1-13, we find one of the most gripping and instructive passages in all of Scripture: the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. But this is far more than a story about Jesus resisting the devil. It is a window into the nature of every temptation we face and the only reliable weapon we have against it. The passage reveals that temptation is never really about the obvious thing on the surface. Whether it is bread, kingdoms, or a dramatic leap from a temple pinnacle, the deeper offer is always the same: an exit ramp from the road God has called us to walk. Satan's strategy has not changed. He identifies what we genuinely need or desire, then offers us a counterfeit path to get it, one that bypasses trust in God entirely. We also discover here that Jesus did not face these temptations as a distant, untouchable divine figure. He faced them as a hungry, exhausted human being, full of the Holy Spirit and dependent on the Father, just as we are meant to be. That means his victory is not just an impressive display of divine power. It is a template for how we can face our own moments of weakness. The word of God, alive in his mind and on his lips, was his weapon of choice. It can be ours too.

What does it truly mean to prepare our hearts for the King? In Luke chapter 3, John the Baptist steps onto the scene with a message that is as urgent today as it was then: the King is coming, and we must get ready. But this preparation is not about polishing our outward appearance or pointing fingers at others who need to change. It is about something far deeper. John calls us to repentance, a genuine turning of the mind and heart that flows outward into a transformed life. Drawing from Isaiah 40, the passage reminds us that the Lord whose way is being prepared is Yahweh himself, God in the flesh, arriving as King. That means receiving Christ is not simply about finding comfort or encouragement. It means surrendering to him as sovereign ruler and owner of our lives. The message challenges us to ask hard questions: What are we truly trusting? What lies have we embraced that keep pulling us back into the same patterns of sin? Repentance, we discover, is not a one-time event but the very rhythm of the Christian life, and it begins not with behavior modification but with confronting the unbelief at the root of every sin we commit.

What does it mean to lose the fire we once had for God? In Revelation 2:1-5, Jesus addresses the church at Ephesus with striking words. He commends them for their hard work, their doctrinal soundness, their perseverance, and their refusal to tolerate evil. And yet, in the very same breath, he delivers a sobering charge: they have left their first love. This message walks us through that tension and asks us to sit with an uncomfortable but necessary question. Is it possible to be doing all the right things, attending church, serving faithfully, knowing the truth, and still be spiritually distant from the God we claim to love? The answer, according to this passage, is yes. But the good news is that Jesus does not simply diagnose the problem and walk away. He offers a path back, built on five words that all begin with the letter R: remember, repent, repeat, remove, and repent again. These are not abstract theological concepts. They are a personal, practical road map for anyone who senses that the passion they once had for Christ has quietly faded. If we have ever wondered whether we are as close to God today as we once were, this message speaks directly to that question and invites us to do something about it.

What does it look like to carry the full weight of the gospel into the hardest moments of our lives? The book of Philemon gives us a rare and intimate look at exactly that. In this short but remarkably rich letter, we are drawn into a real conflict between real people -- a runaway slave, a wronged master, and an apostle writing from prison -- and we discover that the gospel is not just a message to be believed but a force to be lived out in the most complicated corners of human relationship. At the heart of the letter is a prayer that stops us in our tracks: that the sharing of our faith would become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ. The stunning implication is that we have not yet reached the bottom of what God has placed in us through Christ. There are depths of resurrection power, love, and truth that most of us have barely touched. And the path to discovering those depths is not passive -- it runs directly through the act of sharing. The more we speak the truths of Christ into our relationships, our struggles, and our everyday lives, the more of his glory we uncover. This is not just a theological idea. It is a lived experience that grows richer every time we open our mouths and declare what God has done.

What does it mean to truly be kept by God, and what role do we play in that process? The book of Jude brings us face to face with one of the most profound tensions in the Christian life: God is our keeper, and yet we are called to keep ourselves in the love of God. This is not a contradiction but an invitation. Drawing from Jude 20 through 24, we are reminded that genuine faith is not passive. God keeps us through means, through the Word, through the Spirit, through community, and through prayer. The doxology in verse 24, which describes God as the one able to keep us from stumbling and present us blameless before his glory with great joy, serves as both a promise and a motivation. We are not white-knuckling our way to heaven alone. We are held. And because we are held, we run. The call to persevere is not a burden placed on the uncertain, but a gift given to the assured.