Solid Rock Church Sermons

In this sermon, we looked at Malachi 2:10-16 and how God spoke through Malachi to address the Israelites' negligence in maintaining their covenant with God and their covenants with one another. He rebukes the Israelite men because they were divorcing their Israelite wives and marrying wives who worshipped other gods. This violated their marriage covenants with one another and the greater covenant that God had made with them. This section of scripture ends by calling the people of Israel to guard their spirits against unfaithfulness. Today in the Church, fulfilling our covenants still matters. When we break our covenants with other believers, we also violate our covenant with God. Just as God spoke to the Israelites, He is calling the Church to guard our faithfulness to our covenant relationships with God, our spouses, and other believers.

In this sermon, we looked at Malachi 1:6-14, in which God rebukes the people of Israel for their insincere worship. As God addresses Israel, He confronts the priests for offering defiled sacrifices and treating His name with contempt. God declares that He deserves better than their half-hearted offerings and threatens to close the temple doors to such offerings. This passage highlights the significance of sincere devotion and proper reverence in approaching God in worship. In verse 9, God invites Israel to turn its face toward Him, that He might be gracious toward them. This is true of our worship today: God doesn't want us to just show up and go through the motions. Our songs, our prayers, and our serving mean nothing if they aren’t rooted in honor and reverence toward God. As with Israel, God invites us to turn our faces toward Him, that He may be gracious toward us.

In this sermon, we looked at how Malachi 1:1-5 reveals the amazing love of God, expressed through His sovereign choice of Jacob over Esau. Despite Israel's disobedience and shift to pagan worship, God's deep affection for His chosen people remained unwavering. Through His deliberate choice to love Israel before they even existed, God establishes a covenantal bond that transcends human shortcomings, displaying His unconditional love and commitment. This passage calls for God's people to return to His love with sincere worship and obedience, inviting us to recognize and respond to God's unchanging love with hearts changed by its transformative power.

In this sermon, we looked in Isaiah 61:1-4 at God's promise to send a Messiah who would bring good news to the oppressed, brokenhearted, and captive. In this passage, God promises to send a Messiah to comfort those in sorrow, liberate those who are imprisoned, and provide hope and healing to those who are suffering. Here we see a beautiful and kind invitation from God to bring our pain and sorrow to the Messiah. We learned that in and through our mourning, the Messiah will heal our heart wounds and restore hope to our lives. In Luke 4, Jesus claims to be God's fulfillment of this promise and, all throughout Jesus' life and ministry, we see Him live out this claim in the way He gives comfort to those who are suffering, and healing to those who mourn. God's promise in Isaiah 61 is still unfolding today. Now, through the Holy Spirit, God gives us comfort and healing, and restores our hope when we take our mourning to Him.

In this sermon, we looked at the suffering of Jesus through the lens of Isaiah 53. Our Suffering Saints series began by looking at Adam and the fall, when sin and death came into the world. Sin and death had to be dealt with, overcome, and undone. Through His suffering, death, and resurrection, Jesus defeated sin and death once and for all. Jesus, the Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice, the sinless substitute, was crushed for our sin. Through His sacrificial death, those who come to Him in faith have peace with God and are healed. In His resurrection, we have a blessed hope that we will spend eternity with Him in heaven.

In this sermon, we looked at 2 Corinthians 1:3-9 in which the apostle Paul praises God as the ultimate source of comfort and compassion in times of affliction. Paul reminds us that God doesn't promise to fix our afflictions this side of heaven, but He has promised the abundant comfort of His presence. God's presence and grace are sufficient to give us what we need when we face affliction. Paul also tells us that the ultimate purpose of suffering is to move our dependence away from ourselves and onto God. It’s also meant to foster a shared experience of comfort in Christ within the Christian community as we confess our needs to God and others within our Biblical Community. Paul encourages believers to trust in God's comforting presence amidst suffering, knowing that our struggles lead to a deeper understanding of His grace and a strengthened faith in Him.

In this sermon, we looked at Acts 6:1-8:4 and saw how Stephen was persecuted for his faith in Jesus and how God used his suffering to bless others. Stephen was one of the chosen men appointed to oversee the distribution of food among the widows in Acts 6. Despite faithfully serving the community, some of the religious leaders falsely accused him and arrested him. In the face of these charges, Stephen fearlessly defended his faith and delivered a powerful sermon recounting the history of God’s people. This further angered his accusers, so they put him to death by stoning him. Although Stephen endured immense suffering, his unwavering commitment to his beliefs and his bold proclamation of the Gospel started a movement of Christians from Jerusalem to the other parts of the world, spreading the Gospel and fulfilling the Great Commission.

In this sermon, we looked in Job 2:1-13 at the suffering of Job and the comfort we can have from knowing that God is always in control, even when we don't understand the reason for our suffering. Because God is sovereign, we can know that our suffering is never meaningless and is always "preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." We also looked at how we can walk with others who are suffering. When Job was facing affliction, Job's wife was harsh and urged him to forsake God but Job's friends began comforting Job by being present and silent with him in his affliction. As we seek to understand our own suffering and the suffering of those around us, we can be assured that God's presence is with us as we are present with one another.

In this sermon, we looked at the suffering Joseph endured at the hands of those around him. Joseph's own brothers sought to harm him, other people lied about him, and there were still others who forgot about him over the course of his difficult trials. Through all of this, God was with Joseph. In each instance, God preserved Joseph's life, blessed his endeavors, and gave him favor with those around him. When Joseph was reunited with his brothers, he did not seek revenge against them; he displayed forgiveness and a desire to reconcile with his family. While Joseph endured many hardships, he came to understand the truth that he shared with his brothers in Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” This is true for us today when we face harm and suffering at the hands of others. In Christ, we have the assurance that God uses even our most difficult circumstances for our good and His glory.

In this sermon, we looked at the how the prophet Daniel suffered under ungodly leadership. From the time he was born through his time in exile, the kings who ruled over him were most often in opposition to God's will. However, when confronted with the expectation to disobey God, Daniel stood firm in his convictions. In Daniel 1:8-16, God mercifully granted him favor among the leaders despite Daniel's resistance to the king's orders. When Daniel was specifically targeted by people seeking to harm him and was found to be breaking the law in Daniel chapter 6, he didn't abandon his conviction to obey God, despite it possibly leading to his death. In his visions, Daniel saw a future in which the king was God Himself, and His dominion would be forever. As God's people today, we can face suffering and wrestle with obedience to God while, ultimately, placing our hope in the future reign of Jesus.