Solid Rock Church Sermons

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how God redeems our suffering for our good. In James 1, God calls Christians to find joy in suffering because He is redeeming what was intended to bring us harm and using it to lead us to something better. God is using suffering to expose where our faith is diluted by doubt and where it is rooted in false doctrine, in order to bring to completion the work that He began in our lives. Redemption is the miraculous process of restoring something to better than it was. God is using the hardship, trials and suffering in our lives to lead us to something better. God is refining and stabilizing our faith, solidifying our doctrine, and using Gospel-saturated community to redeem our suffering and lead us to full maturity in Christ.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the Gospel calls and empowers Christians to wage war against the sin that we face in our daily lives. In Romans 8, we see that the Holy Spirit leads us into battle. The war for our souls has been decisively won with one very specific battle victory: the resurrection of Jesus. However, the war has yet to come to an end and we fight this war in small battles with sin everyday. As Paul reminds us, the battle with sin is a battle of the affections. The reason we still struggle with sin is that we love it too much and Jesus too little. It’s not enough to want Jesus; we must love Him more than we love our sin. We love sin because it makes us promises, offers temporary relief to pain, and brings us momentary pleasure. Jesus offers us something better: His love. Romans 8 reminds us that nothing cans separate us from the love of Christ. Jesus makes us a better promise and offers us the comfort of His never-ending presence in the midst of the battle. The Gospel reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus because He has already won the war for our souls. Therefore, we should wage war on sin in our everyday lives.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the forgiveness we receive from God should compel us to readily forgive our neighbor. In Matthew 18, Jesus uses a parable to tell Peter that there should be no measure to the forgiveness we extend to one another. The debt we owe God for our sins is immeasurable and impossible to fathom ever paying back in 10,000 lifetimes. Yet He freely offers His forgiveness. When we consider forgiving one another, there is no comparison between the moral violation of sinning against us and the moral violation of sinning against an infinitely Holy God. Jesus isn’t minimizing the pain a person experiences when someone is sinned against; He is maximizing the chasm between sins committed against us and the sins we commit against God. There is no comparison. When we try to fathom God’s immeasurable forgiveness toward us, our hearts can’t help but become stirred with gratitude and a readiness to forgiven others, without keeping a record.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the Gospel informs and impacts the way we pray. In Matthew 6, Jesus lays out a framework for how His followers should pray, in light of the Gospel. Because of what Jesus has done for us, we are not praying to a far-off, unknown spiritual being; we are praying to our Heavenly Father. Our familial bond to God means that we are praying to One who loves us and in whom we can trust. At the same time, Gospel-saturated prayers are tempered with a sense of awe and wonder. We pray confidently and intimately with God because He is our Father, while never losing sight of the truth that our Heavenly Father is also the Creator and sustainer of the universe. Prayer should be an everyday journey into the awe and wonder that comes from intentionally stepping into the presence of an infinitely Holy God. All of this is made possible only by the grace of Jesus.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the Gospel impacts the way we view our money and possessions. In Matthew 13:44, we learned that the Kingdom of Heaven is the greatest treasure a person can find. In fact, the Kingdom is so valuable that the person who finds Him willingly and joyfully trades allegiance with every earthly treasure out of the joy of finding Him. He is infinitely more valuable than anything else we can find in our lives. Jesus tells us that whatever our treasure is will hold the position of “primary stakeholder” in our hearts and will ultimately become our master. When Jesus becomes our ultimate treasure, our ultimate object of worship, our master and our King, we are free to receive His provisions and blessings with joy, while holding them with the loose grip of wise stewardship and sacrificial generosity.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the Gospel impacts our physical health. Because of our sin nature and ever-present battle with our flesh, we have a tendency to see our bodies as irrelevant to spiritual living. As we saw in 1 Corinthians 6, Jesus died and resurrected that we might experience the eternal resurrection of our physical bodies. Therefore, our bodies matter to Jesus. Our physical bodies were bought, with a price, by the death of Jesus. The sins you commit in your body have been atoned for and the residue of your sins will be completely cleansed from your resurrected body. The Bible calls us to steward our bodies for the glory of God. We should see our physical bodies as the means by which we live out the mission of Jesus on earth for God’s glory. Therefore, we should strive to live healthy lives in order to live out our redemptive potential as followers of Jesus.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we continued the Everyday Gospel series and looked at how the Gospel impacts our work. In Genesis 1 and 2, we see that God created human beings to flourish through work. As a part of God’s original design, untainted by sin, work is the cultivating and harvesting of God’s creation in order to receive God’s good provision. Because of sin, the way humans view and interact with their work became marred and distorted. Rather than being a joy through which we receive God’s good provisions, work has become a burden, full of pain and obstacles. However, through the Gospel, God is restoring our hearts to see our work the way He designed it to be. As Christians, we should work hard and honestly, not for wages or recognition or to make it across the
finish line into retirement. The grace of Jesus stirs our hearts to give great effort to our work for God’s glory and the joy of cultivating, creating and keeping as part God’s design for human flourishing. We work hard until the day we enter into eternity, where we will, quite possibly, continue to work as Adam and Eve worked: as a means to receiving God’s good provision for all eternity.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at the Biblical mandate for children to obey their parents and for parents to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is a calling to walk in faith toward complete restoration of what was before The Fall. Parents, the purpose in disciplining your children is to imitate your Heavenly Father. Your children should see a reflection of their relationships with God through their relationships with you. When they receive discipline and
instruction, tempered in patience and love, you are teaching them how to interact with their heavenly Father. When you engage in Biblical parenting, you and your children both have the opportunity to see a beautiful reflection of who God is, stirring your hearts for worship of your Heavenly Father. When you fail as a parent, you personally experience what your children need to experience when they make mistakes: patience, love, forgiveness and gentle correction. As the Gospel covers you with grace in your parenting, you are reminded of how patient God is with you. Through your parenting mistakes, God displays His amazing love for you by restraining His anger, patiently disciplining you, and instructing you,
without provoking you to anger.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how gender is part of God’s
design for humans flourishing. Our gender-based identities are inherently part of the Imago Dei and the way we interact within our genders reflects the way that the Godhead interacts within Himself; This is especially true in marriage. The Bible presents a blueprint for marriage that leads to human flourishing and true joy. We are all called to mutually submit to one another and we are all called to submit to Jesus. Wives, as a part of their specific roles as image bearers, are called to also submit to their husbands. A wife’s submission to her husband is a reflection of the Church’s submission to Christ.  Husbands are called to lay down their lives (literally and metaphorically) for their wives. Just as Jesus lived His life in sacrifice for the sake of the Church, husbands are to do the same in their everyday lives. The ultimate purpose of marriage is to serve as a
reflection of the relationship between Jesus and the Church. When we seek to find our fulfillment and happiness in Jesus alone, mutually submitting ourselves to Christ and living within our God-designed roles, our marriages will be saturated in joy.

In the sermon this past Sunday, we looked at how the Gospel shapes how we invest our greatest commodity in this life: our time. Every calendar entry reflects our personal theology on happiness. Our commitments govern how we spend our time; How we spend our time reflects what we give our lives to; And what we give our lives to is guided by the answer
to one primary question, “What will make me the happiest?” The lie of the ‘American Dream’ is that I will be happy if I can graduate from high school, go to college and make good grades, find a nice-looking, easy-to-get-along-with spouse with whom I can raise well-mannered, nice looking kids, live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood, and drive a nice car to my fulfilling job; All of this until the day when I will glide into retirement with ease, die quietly in my sleep and not go to hell. The problem isn’t that these are evil things, but that they can’t deliver on the promise to bring us true happiness. True happiness is found only in a life surrendered to
knowing Jesus and making Him known in this life, until that day when we step into eternity to behold His majesty finally and forever.