The FIVE Sermons

Like the church in Pergamum, we need to heed the warnings of Christ which will lead us to repentance.

Pergamum was a city that Jesus refers to as being "where Satan's throne is." Powerful forces were at work with the aim of introducing compromise, thus making the church impotent. While many had remained faithful, others had been stained by sexual immorality (among other things), which is the cause for Christ's warning to this church. The good news is that the mistakes and poor choices we make do not need to be the end of the story. The church at Pergamum was invited to repent with a view looking forward to a great reward. That same warning—along with the invitation to repent—is for us today as well.

The God who suffered for us continues to suffer with us.

The letter to the church in Smyrna is a powerful, pastoral letter. There is no rebuke or correction in this letter, not because the church in Smyrna is perfect, but because they’re hurting. There is a time and a place for everything, and when you’re going through hardship, that’s not the time for correction but for compassion...and that’s precisely what Jesus offers them. In this short but powerful letter we are reminded of God’s presence with us and for us, especially when life is crashing down upon us.

It has been said that a ship is safest on shore but also totally useless. So it is with the church. Removed from the world we may be safe, but apart from the world we cease to be the church Jesus intended.  

Wealth, wonder, commerce, beauty, spirituality; Ephesus had it all. It was one of the most desirable places to live in the ancient Roman world. And yet, it may have been the city’s very splendor, desirability and anything-goes-spirituality that proved to be most challenging for the churches there. This melting pot of culture and spirituality was open to anything and everything so long as your belief or behavior didn’t negatively impact the belief or behavior of another. Christians in Ephesus discovered rather quickly that loyalty to Christ didn’t necessarily blend all too efficiently into the go with the flow culture of Ephesus and in response they were met with hostility and various forms of persecution. Slowly, overtime, in response to these hostilities, the church in Ephesus resigned from the world, took a defensive position, and abandoned the missional love that birthed them in the first place. However, when a church abandons the world Christ died to save, it ceases to be the church God intended for the world. In this first letter, we’ll be discussing what it means to recover our ‘first love’ for the glory of God and the sake of the world.

Before we jump into the 7 letters contained within the book of Revelation, it might be good to take a step back and get a bird's eye view of the whole.

This week we’ll be looking at the first chapter of the book of Revelation to make sure we’ve got our bearings straight. It’s so easy to get lost in the incredible imagery and symbolism of the book so before we get too far in, we thought it best to lay a firm foundation and consider the nature, tone and purpose of the book itself. We’ll get to the first letter next week, but before we do that, we’ll uncover the heart coursing through the mystery of Revelation. And at its core, that heart is to bless. The book of Revelation is many things, but perhaps, most simply, it is good news.

We cannot experience the fullness of life God has for us apart from being filled ourselves with the fullness of God.

All throughout the Scriptures, there is a consistent trend  we see unfold through the presence and power of God and it is this: God loves to bring dead things to life. God loves to breathe life into lifeless things. God loves to take things that have the appearance of life and actually bring them to life. Over and over again we see that which is lifeless, dead and inanimate brought to life by the presence and power of God and perhaps nowhere do we see that more fully than in Acts 2 with the sending of the Holy Spirit. On this day the very Spirit of God was poured out on men and women, young and adult alike and the world was never the same. Jesus said he came to give us life, life in all its fullness and we are convinced that we can’t live the fullness God intends for us apart from being filled with the fullness of God’s Spirit. If you’ve been feeling dry, shallow, brittle or it just feels like your faking your way through life, maybe what you need is exactly what God promises: Himself.

What about heaven, hell and is God really that angry?

In Matthew 25,  Jesus tells a series of stories in response to a question posed by the disciples. Their question was essentially, "Hey Jesus... when is the 'end' coming?" I'm not sure they meant what we mean today by that question but regardless, Jesus answers with a bunch of stories. He describes bridesmaids waiting with lamps, servants being given money and sheep and goats being separated by the King. If they were looking for a straight, simple, easy answer well...they didn't get it. Instead they got a series of short image rich stories each highlighting different aspects of Jesus' answer. The piece we'll be exploring today is the section about God separating the sheep and goats (aka people) and then sending some to what we might call heaven and others to hell (Jesus uses neither of those terms). The problem for many with these words is this: How can a good loving God knowingly send people to eternal suffering? Is that God? Is that our God? Images of God gleefully smiting sinners is an image that has caused many problems and much pain throughout history and yet, we have scriptures like these which seem to say, "Yeah, it isn't pretty, but that is what God is going to do." So what do we do with this? Is God really this angry king eager to dish out divine torment or could there be more to this story than meets the eye? We're so glad you're here today to help us wrestle with this last scripture in our Vice Verses series. We hope your time here draws you closer to God and closer to others for the glory of God and the sake of the world.

If we fail to understand the content and context of tough texts, we’ll never experience the peace the conflict of the text wishes to lead us into.

Great...here Jesus goes being totally un-Jesus like. A poor woman desperately seeks Jesus’ healing power for her daughter and instead Jesus seems to insult her. Did he really just call her a dog? Did she just catch Jesus at a bad time? Was Jesus just in a bad mood? Did he say it and mean it? Tough texts like this have a tendency to push us away from God and yet, strangely enough, it doesn’t push the woman away. In fact it seems to do the opposite. Jesus’ seemingly harsh words seem to drive her closer to Him. Maybe before we jump off the handle, we should give them a second look to see if there’s something here we missed...something capable of giving life where previously we saw only harm. Thanks for joining us today - we hope you experience the presence and power of God here today like never before!

This week we’ll be jumping out of our Vice Verses series (don’t worry – it’s coming back next week!) to kick off a summer capital campaign geared to updating and renovating some areas of the church. As a community sent to help anyone and everyone become a follower of Jesus, we believe that the physical space here at University Carillon is part of our witness to the world. Every week, countless people come on our property for Upward, Preschool and Scouts just to name a few and we want to love them toward Jesus not just in word and deed, but through the testimony of the space itself. We may not think about how physical space communicates to people, but it does, and we are committed to being the best stewards we can be of what we have for the glory of God and the sake of the world. Thanks for joining us and may what you hear today become good news in you and through you to the world around you.

What do we do when Jesus says stuff like this: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, they cannot be my disciple."

In Luke 14:25-33, Jesus says something terribly unexpected. Unless you hate your family and even your own life, you cannot be His disciples. What do we do with that? Don't the 10 Commandments tell us to honor our mothers and fathers? So is Jesus giving us a pass on the 5th Commandment? And what about elsewhere when Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves? Is loving our neighbors somehow different from loving our families? What do we do when Jesus says one thing that seems to contradict, like, the whole rest of the Bible? As much as we'd like to sweep this under the rug and pretend like He didn't say it He did and that means, we've got to do something with it. For many people, this verse either gets ignored (maybe Jesus was just having a bad day) or discarded and trashed as uninspired (some scribe must have messed up somewhere) but we reject both of those options. We believe Jesus said it and we believe he meant it and that means we have to do the hard work of trying to understand what He meant, what his audience heard, and what that means for us today. We're glad you're here to help us process this and we hope that what you hear today will encourage, equip and empower you to better live for the glory of God and the sake of the world.

Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood there is no life in you – Jesus

At the height of Jesus’ popularity, when everything seems to be going right, when the people are ready to crown Jesus and make him king, Jesus seems to drop the ball. Rather than keep the momentum of his movement going, Jesus tells the crowds that if they really want what he has to offer, they must eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. As you might expect, that doesn’t go over all that well. While we have the luxury of jumping ahead to communion and making sense of his rather unappetizing words through that lens, Jesus’ listeners here in John 6 did not have that point of reference. And yet, Jesus doesn’t pull back and Jesus doesn’t try to soften to shocking nature of his claim. Unless you eat and drink of me…you have no life in me. In response, many of Jesus’ disciples leave in droves. From the outside we might call this an EPIC failure and yet, Jesus seems neither deterred nor discouraged by any of this. What do we do when we read something like, “eat my flesh and drink my blood”? How do we allow the original tension of the text to tear through the layers of comfort we’ve built up overtime? Maybe, when we come across a text like this, the best we can do is read it as if we’ve never read it before. And that’s precisely what we’re going to try to do today.