Sunday Sermons

There is darkness in this world at every turn. No one is debating that. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” This statement presents a dilemma: either choose to follow the light and find life or continue to walk in darkness that ultimately leads to death.

Do you truly know Jesus? When Jesus walked the earth, people followed Him everywhere; not for who He was, but for what He provided for them physically. It’s the same for many today. Too often we don’t want Jesus for who He truly is but for what He can give us. Jesus calls Himself "the bread of life"; the One who satisfies, sustains, and saves.

Let’s talk about Jesus. Do you know Him? There’s a difference between knowing about someone and really knowing someone. When it comes to Jesus, we can have all the knowledge in the world about Him but live our entire lives never truly knowing Him. When Jesus physically walked this earth, there were many different ideas about who He was. Now Jesus himself was very clear about who He was, and he made seven distinct “I Am” statements that eventually led to Him being tortured and crucified. Here’s the most important question for each of us: who do YOU say Jesus is? Does that line up with who Jesus says He is? To truly know Him requires personal experience of Him, experiencing His transformation.

The first way Jesus was tempted was to meet a legitimate need in a way that was disobedient to his Father. The second way Jesus was tempted was to manipulate his Father to act on his behalf instead of cooperating with Him and His plans and purposes. This week, we see that Jesus was tempted to sacrifice what was ultimately important for what was immediately gratifying. If Jesus was tempted to sin in this way, we can guarantee that we will be too. But hidden behind that curtain of temptation is the question, “who will I worship?”

God is a God of love, blessing, salvation, protection, and forgiveness. He only asks for our faith and trust in Him as He works in our lives. When we fall into temptation, we are faced with the choice to either manipulate God and try and force these things out of him or have faith in God by cooperating with Him. The question is, will you try and manipulate God or cooperate with God in the midst of temptation?

Behind every temptation, our faith is at stake because temptation is always a test of faith, not self-control.

We all face temptations of different kinds. Too often we surrender to temptation because, well, it’s tempting, and we’ve failed and have given into that temptation before. But in every temptation we face, there’s always more at stake than we realize.

With each New Year comes the desire to reinvent ourselves, start new habits, turn a corner. Whether we admit it or not, most of us internally think, “Ok, THIS is the year I make a change.” But how often does that happen? Let’s take a different approach in 2022.

For 400 years before the birth of Jesus, God was silent. But even when God is silent, He is never absent.

To live worthy of the calling we received by maintaining unity, we must work on our patience. But not in the way one would think. We must work on our patience with one another by making allowances for each other’s faults. When doing so, patience paves the way to unity.