The Miracle of Christmas

Introduction

In Luke 11:33–35, Jesus says, "Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live in wide-eyed wonder and belief, your body ...

You Can't Fool the Lord

Introduction

One of the ministers at this church the television show 24 because of the things that Jack Bauer never has to do: eat, charge his cell phone, ...

Facing Off Without Falling Apart

Introduction

In Acts 4 we witness an epic battle between a David-like underdog and a behemoth giant. In one corner you have two unschooled, unimpressive ...

The Christian Subculture: Righteous or Rubbish?

Introduction

As believers, we sometimes feel pressured to act in certain ways, fit in with certain norms, or participate in certain activities. The pressure ...

I Will Build My Church

Introduction

I entered the ministry with my eyes wide open. Two great-grandfathers were preachers—one a circuit rider, the other a lay preacher. Both ...

Reactions to Evil

Introduction

John Roth tells what happened to him late one night on a commuter train in Hamburg, Germany. John says:

The train car was completely empty ...

The Last Temptation of Christ

Text: Luke 4:1–14
Topic: Why the novel and film The Last Temptation of Christ are controversial

Introduction

I think we all know who the candidates ...

How Does the Trinity Work?

Introduction

I want to begin our discussion of this difficult question about the Trinity not with intellectual speculation about how God is three and yet ...

Don't You Believe It: There's No Such Thing as a Little White Lie

One Sunday, a minister said to his congregation, “Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. In preparation for that message, I’m asking all of ...

Wholesome Thinking

Introduction

2 Peter is a manual for transformation, a how-to guide for holy living. It begins with the promise that in Christ we have all we need ...

Preparing for Battle-Part 1

Introduction

It was a Sunday evening several years ago. A church of which I am well acquainted in Dallas was beginning their evening worship service. The ...

"Trinity": The Christian Name for God

Sermon One

Introduction

Over the next few Sundays we'll explore a concept of God unique to Christian spirituality called the Trinity. It's ...

The Art of "Hanging Out"

Introduction

One of my favorite movie scenes occurs in City Slickers, when Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner have a heart-to-heart conversation. Reiner tells ...

Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?

Text: John 1:1–18
Topic: The commonalities and irreducible differences between Christianity and Islam

In 1995 there was a book published by Professor ...

Losing Our Minds

Sermon One

Introduction

How do you put together the pieces of the puzzle of life? When a terrible storm sweeps over your life and blows your careful constructions ...

Reality Shows

Sermon Two

Introduction

Imagine a report comes on the television that a terrible tragedy has just befallen a group of people beyond your town. Person "A" ...

Quantum Communion

Sermon Three

Introduction

For more than 1600 years, Christianity occupied the head seat at the vast communion table that came to be called Western Civilization. ...

Image is Everything

Sermon Four

Introduction

One of our church members recently recounted to me the story of a woman named Lorena, who directs the Onessimu Brother's Home in ...

Choosing Sides

Sermon Five

Introduction

The year was 536 B.C., the third year after the great Persian king, Cyrus, had overthrown the vast kingdom of Babylon, and a new ...

Payback Time

Sermon Six

Introduction

Almost everyone I know wants to believe what the Bible says in the first verse of Psalm 73—that "surely God is good to … ...

Bad to the Bone

Sermon Seven

Introduction

On all sides today we are reminded that something in this world has gone wrong. Women are abducted in increasing numbers. Precious ...

Superhero

Sermon Eight

Introduction

When I was five years old, I was sent to the school nurse by my kindergarten teacher, who was very concerned that I was ill. The ...

Radical Honesty

Earlier this week I was cleaning out my e-mail inbox, deleting old and unwanted messages, and realized that, during the past 3 months, I had received ...

Being a Promise Keeper

I was watching a football game one day and the camera zoomed in on a guy wearing a T-Shirt that said, "My wife thinks I'm at Promise Keepers."

If you've ...

Does It Matter What You Believe?

In the movie Oh, God John Denver asks George Burns (who is playing God) "What about Jesus? Was he your son?"

George Burns says, "Yes." There is a pause, ...

Salt and Light

Alienation was originally a Marxist word and Karl Marx meant by it the alienation of the worker from the product of his labors. When what he produces ...

Choices

Introduction

Life has been described by many as a series of choices. That's partly true. Obviously there are times when our lives are impacted by things ...

God and the Hebrew Midwives

Many of you perhaps were shaped the way I was in terms of where I really learned my first Bible pictures of the Exodus story. I didn't get mine in Sunday ...

He Lives, As He Said He Would

There's one long sentence in Mark 16 that caught my imagination. It's the angel's words to the women: "Go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ...

Worship: What We're Doing & Why

If a visitor from another planet attended a service of Christian worship anywhere in the world, he wouldn't have to be especially perceptive to discover ...

Telling the Truth

Traditions of truth verification originate in the ninth commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

This is the command about ...

Myths That Make Us Miserable

How many of you were taught about the Tooth Fairy as a child? How many of you heard about Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny? Has anybody here been taught ...

There's Something About Mary

It's rare that we take a service and we devote it to a book, but this is no ordinary book. It's been on the top of The New York Times bestseller list ...

What About That Other Bible

There's another bible you can buy in your bookstores. It is the Gnostic bible. This bible has books in it like The Revelation of Adam, The Sermon of Zostrianos, ...