Pastor JD VanValin: Sermons

Text: Deuteronomy 4:1-9

One thing that makes the community of believers distinct from all other communities is our reliance upon God's word: written, spoken, and revealed. The written word of God provides so much for us, but more than anything, it helps us know God.

Text: Joshua 24:1-2, 14-27

As a community of believers, we are all servants. Servants of Jesus, of each other, and the world. As Jesus came to serve us, so we must also serve those around us.

Text: John 6

Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." What does that mean for us as a community of believers? This offensive teaching drove people away when Jesus said it and it still is tough to swallow. Why is Jesus the only "loaf" from which we eat? 

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

Jesus himself is our peace. Peace is not only about mending relationships, but with Jesus, it is about creating a new relationship, a new humanity, and a new citizenship. The church a community of peace when it practices the way of Jesus by allowing the presence of Jesus to be the core of their life. As much as the world talks about peace, or ending violence, the gospel of Jesus is the only hope for peace in our communities and our world.

Text - 2 Samuel 6:1-19

David dancing before the Lord, making sacrifices, and blessing his people is a wonderful picture of worship. Often it is the special moments of worship that we find memorable, but to be a worshiping community means more worship defines who we are as well as becomes what we do.  Worship is participating in the salvation story of God. We receive and respond, recite what has happened, and rehearse what is to come in the repetitive liturgies of our lives. 

Texts - Ezekiel 2:1-5, Mark 6:1-13

Jesus is the prophet that was rejected in his hometown. The Church must be prophetic considering that we are the body of Christ. Prophecy is not a new message from the Lord, but it is the same message of Jesus, the message of the gospel. Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ is risen from the dead. We as the community of believers not only believe this message and share it, but it is also the defining narrative of our life. It shapes how we view the world, our culture, and what we do. To live prophetically is to walk in the way of Jesus, the rejected prophet.

Text - Mark 5:21-43

The Church is the body of Christ. If Christ is a healing individual, so the Church is a healing community. We are healed by Jesus, and we heal others, not by our own power, but the power of Christ at work in us and through us. We can learn a lot about the healing work Christ calls us to by looking at the two individuals that Jesus heals, the synagogue ruler's daughter and the woman who seems to have no one looking out for her.

Texts - 2 Samuel 17, and Mark 4:35-41

The Church is a community of believers who are delivered from evil. Like David delivered the Israelites from the Philistines, so Jesus delivered us from Satan. We too are called to be a force against evil.

Texts: 1 Samuel 8:4-7, Mark 3:20-35

Doing God's will is difficult for everyone. We are bent toward sin as a result of the fall in Genesis 3.  The call of all people is to follow Jesus, who is the only one who has done God's will (to the point of death). He has also freed us from sin and empowered us to do God's will. The church is the community of believers who not only pray "Your will be done" but who also live doing God's will, which is good news for the whole world.

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

All Christians stand on the testimony, "I have seen the Lord" or "I saw the Lord." We worship and serve a God who has revealed himself to humanity, and most explicitly in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh. But we do not only believe others have seen him, nor do we just see him or try to see him, we are sent by him into the world. We, like Isaiah, respond to the Lord by saying, "Here I am. Send me," because God is alive and he welcomes us as his partners in his mission to all the earth.