Solid Rock Church Sermons

In this sermon, we kicked off the Jonah series by looking at the power of shame and the power of God's kindness in the storm found in Jonah 1:1-6. The story of Jonah opens with God's calling for Jonah to take the message of repentance to the gentiles in Assyria. Within the first 3 verses, Jonah has already disobeyed God to protect his own comfort and run from God's presence in an attempt to avoid the shame he feels. To keep His plan of redemption on track, God caused a dangerous, life-threatening storm to come against Jonah and the pagan sailors he is traveling with. Much to our surprise, the pagan sailors are closer to believing in God's kindness than Jonah, one of His own prophets. In the severity of the storm, we see the even-greater severity of God's kindness in what He's willing to do to fulfill His plan of redemption for those He loves.

In this final sermon of the Genesis series, we looked at how the resurrection of Jesus restored all that was broken by the Fall. In Genesis 3:14-24, God tells the serpent, Adam, and Eve that, from that point onward, everything that He had created for good would now be broken. In Romans 8, Paul describes the impact of Adam and Eve's decision, connecting our individual suffering to the futility and suffering that all of creation has been experiencing since the Fall. Paul and other Biblical authors point out that in Genesis 3, God was also looking forward to the day that an offspring of Eve would step on the head of the serpent in a final decisive victory. The resurrection is the God-ordained moment that washes over the full human timeline. The resurrection reverses the impact of sin and death and cleanses those in the Old Testament who died in faith, rendering them righteous. The resurrection also sent a wave forward in time to wash over all who would hear the Gospel and believe, rendering us righteous and securely tethering us to Christ so that nothing in this fallen world can separate us from His love.

In this sermon, we looked at how Adam and Eve's disobedience introduced brokenness into God's story and produced a need for creation to be redeemed. In Genesis 3, we find Satan masquerading as a serpent, twisting God’s truth into a lie to convince Adam and Eve that they are missing out on something good. When Adam and Eve believe the lie and disobey God, all that God had created for good becomes broken and fallen from His glory. Created for relationship, Adam and Eve are no longer able to walk in love and fellowship with God and each other; the shame of their sin drives them into hiding and emotional isolation. In His mercy and grace, God still shows up in relationship with Adam and Eve and provides loin cloths for them. While these loin cloths don't fix the problem, they point to the One who can fix the problem. These gifts reveal to us that God is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and love, and good to all; they remind us that the maker of the loin cloths is also the maker and redeemer of our souls.

In this sermon, we looked at God’s purpose for the Law in Genesis 2 so that we can better understand the purpose of God’s Law in our lives today. After placing Adam in the Garden, God gave Adam a Law to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This Law was meant to keep Adam and Eve in the knowledge of good and protect them from the knowledge of evil. For us today, the Law give us the knowledge of what is good by revealing the character of God and foreshadowing the future realities of God’s enteral Kingdom. However, because none of us can obey God’s Law, it also reveals what is evil and our deep need for the Gospel. We need someone to rescue us from the penalty of disobeying God’s Law and reconcile us to God. Jesus came to Earth as the Son of God to perfectly obey God’s Law and then offer Himself as a sacrificial payment for our disobedience. Through His death and resurrection, we have been forgiven of our sins and reconciled to an eternal relationship with God, restoring us as image bearers in God’s creation who await the coming of God’s fully restored Kingdom. 

In this sermon, we continued the Genesis series by looking at how God created man and woman in His image as relational beings. In Genesis 2, God declares that it is not good for Adam to be by Himself. This doesn't mean that Adam is able to be relational if he wants to; this means that Adam was designed to exist within perpetual intimate relationship. To address this need in Adam's life, God creates Eve as a helper. Before Eve is created, Adam spends time with the animals God had already made and can't find anything to fulfill his relational need. Eve isn't created primarily to help Adam with the workload of caring for the garden; Eve is created to help Adam with his need to be known. When we live in intimate relationships within our families and the Church, we are sampling the eternal realities of the coming Kingdom.

In this sermon, we looked in Genesis 1 and 2 at God's design for work and rest. As God told mankind to be fruitful and multiply, He was commissioning us to multiply and fill the kingdom with His image bearers. We were created to be small reflections of His Kingship in the world. God worked for six days and then He rested. We were created to bear this image in the world through our working and resting. Work wasn't created to be a burden and rest wasn't created as a means of temporary recovery from work; work and rest are inserted into creation by God to be a blessing and part of us bearing His image in the world. As we follow God's plan for work and rest, we bear His image to the world around us.

In this sermon, we looked at what it means to be created in the image of God. In Genesis 1:26-31, God created mankind with the explicit purpose of bearing His image in the world. God created us like Him in that He gave us minds with which to think, reason, and make decisions. He created us like Him by giving us hearts with a capacity for relationship and a soul that will exist for eternity. God created us like Him in that He gave us the capacity to work and create, bearing His image as sub-creators in the world. As image bearers, we are set apart from creation and commissioned by God to bear His image in the world. Where you see a human being living according to God’s design, you will see a small reflection of God Himself.

In this sermon, we looked at the function and purpose of God's creation. In Genesis, 1:1-25, we saw that all matter, space, and time has been created by God and exists under His rule and reign in order to reveal and glorify Him. God created the world with designed rhythms and divine purpose that are clearly seen in creation. Romans 1 declares that God made His invisible attributes visible through His creation. The immeasurable nature and incomprehensible complexity of the universe bear testimony to a creator who is even higher, more immeasurable, and more incomprehensible. As human beings, God designed our hearts with the capacity to worship. The rest of creation was designed to aim our worship toward God alone. When we see God as the author and sustainer of all that exists and behold His glory in His good creation, our hearts are drawn toward God, the only One truly worth of our worship.

In our final sermon of The Dawn of the Church series, we looked at the everyday mission of the Church. As seen in Acts 2:41-47, the first Christians had an immense joy in Jesus that gave them a passionate love for God and a compassionate love for their neighbors. This immense joy fueled a courageous response to persecution and suffering as well as a deep desire to care for the poor and discarded. Even though the number of Christians was relatively low in these early days, they quickly caught the attention of their society. These believers didn’t just make a difference in the world, they made the world a different place. From the dawn of the Church to our present day, knowing Jesus continues to produce a passionate love for God and a compassionate love for others. This love compels us to live the mission of Jesus in our everyday lives by serving others and sharing the life-changing message of the Gospel.

In this sermon, we looked at the heart of Biblical community. In 1 Corinthians 12, we see that Christian relationships are more than a working partnership for doing ministry; we are called to bear with one another, boasting in our weakness and exposing our neediness to one another. Fear of rejection is one of the most painful things a person can experience because the desire to belong is hardwired into who we are. The Gospel calls and empowers us to take the risk. The Gospel declares that we are accepted by God as needy beings that can’t fix ourselves. Believing the Gospel means we agree that we need help from God and others so when we tell the truth about our neediness, we live in unity with the Gospel. This is why Paul encourages believers to take the risk of being known by sharing our weaknesses with one another, trusting that the Lord will lead us to healing and strength in Him.