Behold the Lamb of God

Introduction

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Now we flip the page and enter the season on the church calendar known as Advent. Advent is different ...

Waiting for Christmas

Introduction

Isn’t it so hard to wait to open your gifts? I remember when I was around 9 years old, my brother and I wanted an electric race car ...

Doing the Right Thing in the Right Way

Introduction

Today marks the first Sunday of Advent in which Christians all across the world are preparing to celebrate the coming of Jesus.

This year as ...

A Better Trust

Introduction

Hebrews 7 has this great theme of Jesus as a high priest, not after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek. It is ...

Worthy Is the Lamb

Introduction

John, who is in prison at Patmos, writes letters to the church of Ephesus and churches that surround it. His goal is to comfort them and encourage ...

Free to Stay

Introduction

(Read Acts 16:16-34, Psalm 97, Revelation 22:12-21, John 17:20-26)

Happy Ascension, everybody. Actually, Ascension Day was Thursday, so I'm ...

God Wins

Introduction

(Read John 20:19-29)

On election night in 1976, I sat in a little dark storage closet at the back of a campaign headquarters in Yonkers, New ...

Forgiveness

Introduction

We know that we can't live in this world very long without being hurt. If I were to ask who here has been hurt, every hand would go up, ...

Free!

I used to think I needed a personal trainer, someone who'd get me to the gym and make sure I exercised regularly, someone who would put me through ...

The Reigning King

Introduction

2017 is going to be way better than 2016. The dumpster-fire of an election is over for one. Race relations in our country can only get better? ...

Christmas Stories: A Mission Story

This sermon is part of the “Christmas Stories” sermon series. See the whole series here.

Introduction

(Read Jonah 3:1-4:1)

It was a dark, stormy ...

Halloween: Rethinking This Weird Holiday

Introduction

Ever watch Sesame Street? Remember the old jingle "Which One Doesn't Belong?" They'd put up on the screen a picture of a beach ball, basketball, ...

Running to the Lost

Introduction

Should God have any enemies?

The popular answer these days is basically this: "No, God shouldn't have any enemies … if there is a God, ...

R-Rated: The Bible's Flawed Superman

Introduction

There are a lot of heroes in the Bible, but there's really only one superhero, and that's Samson. If you think about it, Samson ...

R-Rated: Rated R for Redemption

Introduction

(Read Joshua 2:1-20)

In 144 AD, the church father Marcion was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, Italy, because he held ...

The Potential of the Church

Introduction

The great English author, C.S. Lewis, is one of my intellectual and spiritual mentors and not too long ago I was re-reading one of my favorite ...

Satan Strikes Out

Introduction

Years ago Scott Peck wrote a book called The Road Less Traveled. He began that book with these memorable words: "Life is difficult. This is ...

The Glory of the Groan

Introduction

God started a revival with the preaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The people came to hear the preacher in the church instead of the preacher ...

Two Graves, Two Gardens

Introduction

Read Genesis 3:8-22 and John 19:38-20:18

There were no streetlights, headlights, or even flashlights. There was just darkness, and some women ...

The Promise of the Ages

Introduction

Our generation has witnessed a new and compelling interest in the study of genealogy. Perhaps this is because every five years more than twenty ...

Loving Our Work

Introduction

I want to fast forward to Revelation, and look at the last two chapters. Then we are going to backtrack to Isaiah 60. When we look at the ...

The God of the Left-handed

Introduction

Simon Birch is a funny and sad movie about two 12-year-old boys, Simon Birch, who is a little-person, and his friend Joe. Rejected and ignored ...

What's Your Story?

Introduction

Have you heard of Storycorps? Storycorps is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to celebrate the lives of everyday Americans by inviting ...

Boasting in the Cross

Introduction

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; ...

The Bible Alone

True North Backstory

One reason I enjoyed preaching the sermons in this series was the contrast between a "head" message and a "heart" message.

The message ...

God's Great Heart of Love

Introduction

In John Bunyan's famous Pilgrim's Progress, right from the outset of the book we are introduced to a man who is deeply troubled and who is ...

The World's Best Love Story

Introduction

Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that the entire world loves a lover. And if he was right that all the world loves a lover, then the best loved ...

A God Who Redeems

Introduction

Today, we're not only talking about a God who is with us, but also a God who redeems us. I want to talk to those who feel helpless and hopeless ...

The Guest List

Introduction

We're in part two of a series called The Heart of Christ, and I want to begin this week with a question: Do you remember the first Christian ...

Love Keeps Going

Introduction

Several years ago there appeared on Broadway a political satire called Of Thee I Sing. The opening scene of that musical took place in a smoke-filled ...

Blessed Forever

Introduction

In his book Leaving Home, Garrison Keillor tells a fictional story about a family from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Grace Tollefson married Alex ...

We Can Do This the Easy Way or the Hard Way

Introduction

For most of my time in college, I attended a small church in Chicago with my now wife, Jamie. The pastor of this church had been commissioned ...

Getting Out

Introduction

I want us to look at the account of the crossing of the Red Sea. You might call it the climax or epitome of Exodus. It's hard to overstate ...

Deep Clean

Whatever became of sin?

Some years ago a Harvard psychiatrist wrote a provocative book entitled Whatever Became of Sin? In it he expressed his fear that ...

Deep Truth

Liz is friends with people of many religious backgrounds, and she's just starting to realize that what she claims to believe about Jesus necessarily has ...

Jesus, Lord of the New Creation

The first sermon in this series started exploring this passage by looking at how Jesus is the Lord of Creation. Part two is titled "Jesus is Lord ...

Jesus, Lord of the Cross

There are few more exciting units of the U.S. Military than the Combat Search and Rescue (or the CSAR). If you've seen the movie Black Hawk Down, ...

The Power of Identity

The story behind the sermon (from Jeff Manion)

In preparing to preach on Ephesians 1:3-14, I felt that there were a couple significant challenges to overcome. ...

The Larger Story of Christmas

Introduction

It's just after ten o'clock on Christmas Eve, which means there are a handful of questions floating around this room: Did I remember ...

Heart Burn

The man's name was Toby. He was the youngest son of a lawyer from Cleveland who'd struck it rich and moved his family to the upscale community of Rancho ...

Encounter on Golgotha Road

From the editor:

We recently posted an Easter message by John Ortberg, because the themes like atonement, the Cross, resurrection, etc. are never out of ...

The Uncomfortable Truth of Easter

From the editor:

At the 2008 National Pastors Conference in San Diego, Preaching Today got to interview N. T. Wright about his book Surprised by Hope and ...

A Christian's Happiness

Introduction

If you're a Christian, you know that Christianity is supposed to be about joy. You probably also know that you're supposed to experience ...

Buying Friends

Have you started your income taxes yet? I started working on mine this week. I pulled up my computer records and looked at my general spending categories. ...

Forgiven, Forgotten

Introduction

Guilt runs rampant in the body of Christ. Though you already know you often feel guilty, it's important that we say it, because you would ...

The World's Greatest Step

The story behind the sermon (from John Ortberg):

For Easter I wanted to present some of N. T. Wright's material on the Resurrection. I love his work on ...

Death Is Life

From the editor:

Easter draws closer and closer (April 4), and we're here to help out with sermon ideas to inspire you in your own preaching. This week ...

Worth Your Attention

From the editor

More helpful resources for Easter! This week we're featuring a message from Mike Woodruff, pastor of Christ Church Lake Forest in Lake ...

The Last Enemy

From the editor:

This week we continue to roll out great Easter resources to help inspire ideas for your own preaching. Below is a sermon by Donald Sunukjian ...

Easter: The Benefits Package

From the editor:

This week we are featuring Leith Anderson's Easter sermon from 2009 to help inspire ideas for your own sermon for Easter 2010. As you ...