Category: Sermons

Published April 18, 2019

Separated By Sin

This morning we want to continue to count the cost of sin. Well, actually, that may not be entirely true. We probably don’t WANT to count the cost of sin. If fact, I think most of us would much rather not talk about sin at all!

Talking about sin is unpleasant. It’s depressing. It’s discouraging. But it’s also necessary. To ignore the topic of sin is to ignore the reality of the world in which we live.

As we talked about last week, sin and its consequences are unavoidable. We have all experienced the shame, the guilt, and the fear that comes when we do wrong. We know what’s it’s like to have broken relationships. We know what it’s like to endure the struggle and the pain of this life.

That’s the reality we all experience. But of course, that’s not the reality that God intended for us. We were reminded last week that the world that God created was very good. As John MacArthur put it….

When God completed His perfect creation it was very good because there was no disorder, there was no chaos, there was no conflict, there was no struggle, there was no pain, there was no discord, there was no disease, there was no decline, there was no death. ~ John MacArthur

That’s the very good world that God created – a world free from all that junk. But that’s sure not the world that we find ourselves in today. The curse of sin has tainted and twisted God’s good creation – and we all suffer the consequences for it. We suffer because of sin in the world and we suffer because of the sin in our own lives.

We saw two weeks ago that we are born as slaves to sin – slaves to our own selfish inclinations. As a result, much of the shame, guilt, fear, broken relationships, struggle and pain we experience in this life – we bring upon ourselves. Not all of it, of course, but much of it – because we act selfishly and we fail to love one another and we fail to love God. We fail to be accurate reflections of God’s goodness and glory.

And as a result, we suffer the consequences of our own sinfulness. And we talked quite a bit about that last week – about those consequences of sin, and today I want to dig into that a little more – specifically regarding the consequence of death. And again, I know that’s not a real uplifting topic to talk about – but it’s the reality that we face.

We read Romans 6:23 last week which says:

23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23

So today we’re going to continue to count the cost of sin – or as this verse puts it “the wages of sin” – which is death. But don’t worry – we’re also going to look at the second half of that verse and see how the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. We’re going to see how Jesus came to make right the wrongs – and to restore God’s good creation and to free us from the slavery of sin and to give us life.

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Published April 8, 2019

The Curse of Sin

Last week we took some time to increase our vocabularies with some old English words that most people today have never heard of – words like sluberdegullion, glabriety, quockerwodger, snoutfair and of course, that ancient word that hardly anyone uses anymore – the word sin.

And I noticed something very interested as I was speaking last week. When I was talking about sluberdegullions and quockerwodgers – the mood in the congregation was light-hearted and jovial. People were chuckling and smiling at these strange words and their definitions. But as soon as I said the word “sin” – the mood instantly changed. Everyone quickly become solemn and quiet.

And I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising. Sin isn’t a very pleasant topic. It’s not fun to talk about. After all, sin is the word that reminds us that each one of us have missed the mark. We have failed to be who God created us to be.

That was really the main point of what we talked about last week. Last week we tried to define sin.

When we looked at the original Hebrew word for sin “Khata” – we saw that it literally meant to miss the target. We read in the book of Judges about these expert slingers would could slingshot a stone at a hair and not miss it! They would not Khata – not miss the target – they would not sin.

And so the basic definition of sin is to miss the mark – to fall short of whatever we’re aiming for.

The Bible tells us that we have all Khata-ed – we have all missed the mark and fallen short of our target. And do you remember what our target was? Our target was the Glory of God. Romans 3:23 tells us:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 NIV

All of us have missed the mark and failed to do what God created us to do – that is to reflect his glory. We looked back in Genesis and saw that when God created mankind, He created us unique in all of Creation. God created us in His own image – to be as much like Him as humanly possible – to be reflections of his goodness and glory.

But that is the target that we have all failed to hit. We fail, probably on a daily basis, to love God and to love one another the way that God loves us. We’ve failed to reflect the glory and the goodness of God. We have sinned.

And I think that most people – at least most people who believe in a good God – would not argue against the fact that every one of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Most people will admit that there are times when they have lied or acted selfishly or thought evil things about someone else.

It’s impossible to go though life without sinning. In fact, we briefly looked at how the Bible says we are slaves to sin. We have this inner drive to be selfish. To rebel against or to ignore God and to care for our own well-being at the expense of others. Try as we may to mimic God’s goodness, our sinful nature makes it impossible for us fully reflect the goodness of God. We just can’t do it.

And to say that that creates a problem for us is an understatement. There are all kinds of consequences that come with sin – some of those consequences are experienced here and now in this life and some of them will be experienced in the life to come – but all of sin’s consequences are extremely destructive. And so for the next couple of weeks I want us to look at what some of those consequences are.

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Published April 1, 2019

Falling Short of the Glory of God

This morning I want to expand your vocabulary a little bit and teach you some new words. Now these words aren’t new in the sense that they’ve just been invented – they are actually very old words. These are words that have fallen out of use and have become somewhat archaic – kinda like some of those words you hear in Shakespeare or the Old King James version of the Bible. Words that were maybe quite common at some point of time, but you’d probably never hear them today.

But these are some great words and I think we should start using them in our everyday conversations. So let me teach you four new old words.

Sluberdegullion—slacker; couch potato
Glabriety—baldness
Quockerwodger—marionette/puppet on a string
Snoutfair—a good-looking person

Aren’t these great words? I would challenge you to use each one of these words sometime this week!

And there are so many great words out there – I found these four in a list of nearly 500 other archaic words and I’m sure there are many more than that!

In fact, I’d like to share with you one more archaic word that I found. And this word, perhaps even more than these other four words, was once widely known and understood throughout the English-speaking world. But in recent years, it’s use and most people’s understanding of this word has dropped dramatically. Fewer and fewer people today understand this word.

But it’s a very unique and important word – and so I wanted to bring it up and explain what it means for you today.

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Published February 25, 2019

Submission Equals Trust

Last week, we waded into a potentially controversial topic. You see, for the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about the church in your house. That church being, of course, your family.

When we started this series, we noted that “church” is not just a building or an event – but it’s people. The church is the family of God. And anyone who has put their trust in Jesus is part of that family.

That means, that if your family is part of the family of God, then your home is really like a little mini-church. There is a church in your house – and each person in your house has a role to play in that church. So what are those roles?

Well over the course of these past few weeks, we’ve spend quite a bit of time looking specifically at the roles of husbands and wives in marriage and we’ve discovered that God has actually designed our marriages to be modelled after Christ’s relationship with his church.

We’ve discovered that husbands are to play the role of Christ – and we are to do for our families exactly what Christ has done for us. Not that we can die on a cross for the forgiveness of sins, but we are are to love our wives with that same self-sacrificing love that Christ demonstrated for all of us. Likewise, wives are to play the part of the church – relating to their husbands in the same way as the church relates to Christ.

And this is where the potential controversy comes in. In describing this role of the church as it relates to Christ and the role of wives as they relate to their husbands, the Bible describes this role as one of submission. Ephesians 5:22 says…

22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24

Now in our modern North American culture of 2019, this idea of wives submitting to their husbands often comes across as a very negative thing. Many would say that it is demeaning to women – that it robs them of their true value and worth and degrades them as second class citizens.

But that understanding of submission is not at all what the Bible teaches. In fact, I would argue that Biblical submission actually goes the opposite way – it actually affirms the incredible value and worth of women.

Think of it like this: It’s kinda like how the president of the United State puts his trust in his secret service body guards. To a certain extent, the president places himself under the care and protection of his body guards. The president is the important one – and those bodyguards affirm that because they are willing to take a bullet to keep him safe.

Well, in Biblical submission – the husband is the bodyguard. God has entrusted him with the job of keeping her safe. In fact, the definition that we’ve been looking at for headship is this:

Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home. ~ John Piper

The husband is the bodyguard. That’s why the Bible tells husbands to love their wives like they love their own bodies! We are to be willing take a bullet both figuratively and literally for our wives. We put her good ahead of our own!

Of course, this is exactly what we see Jesus doing for us. He took the bullet – he died on the cross for our sin so that we could live. Why? Was it because he thought we were worthless and second-class citizens? No way! He did that because of how valuable we are to him. Ephesians 2:4 says…

4 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) Ephesians 2:4-5

Jesus took the bullet for us because he loved us sooo much! When we accept Christ as our Lord and saviour – when we willingly submit ourselves under his leadership, under his provision, and under his protection – that doesn’t de-value us in any way. It’s actually the opposite – what Christ has done for us affirms how valuable we are to God.

So when it comes to our roles in marriage, in the same way, I think submission only affirms the great value and worth of our wives.

For a woman to willingly submit to her husband means that she knows without a shadow of a doubt that he loves her like crazy – and that he will sacrifice his own good for her good! When she places herself under his protection and provision and leadership, that’s a huge responsibility for him! For him to take on that responsibility, he has got to think the world of this girl!

Biblical submission in marriage should only affirm the incredible worth and value of our wives.

But that being said, that’s not always what we see in the world around us, and it’s not always what we experience even in our own marriages.

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Published February 19, 2019

Submission vs Subjection

I have done some foolish and dangerous things in my lifetime – some of them years ago when I was a kid, and some of them not all that long ago. For example, when I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, I decided one day I wanted to see how long and how far I could ride my bike with my eyes closed. For some reason, I didn’t really see the potential danger in this and so I took off down our driveway of our farm – eyes closed and pedalling hard! It wasn’t until I was slapped in the face with a spruce tree branch, that I began to realize that I may have done something foolish. I opened my eyes just in time to avoid the tree trunk but still ended up in the barbwire fence. I still have a scar on my arm to remind me of my foolishness that day.

But that didn’t keep me from doing foolish and dangerous things as an adult. A short time after my wife & I were married, we lived in the farmyard across from her family. Her brother Roger was still living at home at that time, and so we often got together to do guy stuff in the shop – like carefully filling up lightbulbs with acetylene and oxygen and watching them explode when you turn on the light and things like that. Well, we had learned that if you mix tin foil with a certain cleaner – there is a chemical react that lets off a couple gases. If you do this in a 2 litre pop bottle and close the lid, the pressure increases until the pop bottle explodes with a tremendous bang. So one day, we decided to explode a hot water bottle – It would be pretty exciting to see how big those things would become until they finally burst!

So we filled the bottom of the hot water bottle with little balls of tin foil and then Roger went to put in the cleaner. Well, it reacted so quickly, that as he was pouring it in, the pressure began spewing out the cleaner out the top of the bottle. Of course, we had never thought to wear eye protection or anything and so Roger got this highly corrosive cleaner in his eyes! So we immediately drop the bottle and rush to flush his eyes out. I think we put him in the shower or put his face under the gardenhose or something like that. I believe he eventually went to the doctor to get his eyes check out – and if I remember correctly, there was some marks on his eyeballs, but thankfully no damage was done to his retinas. But the potential for significant damage was great! We’re thankful that God was watching over us – even while we did those foolish and dangerous things.

That being said, I’m trusting that God will watch over us again today, as I attempt yet another potentially foolish and dangerous thing this morning. This morning I want to talk to you about the role of women in marriage.

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Published February 4, 2019

Drenching Your Home in The Gospel

This week I happened to see the headline for an article in Psychology Today – and the title was “Why Would Anyone Want To Be A Leader?”

And that’s a good question! Being a leader is hard. I know many of you have been in some type of leadership role and you know that being a leader comes with a lot of challenges, it comes with stress and frustration, and you have to deal with a lot of difficult stuff. The article focused mostly on how hard it was in the workplace to lead and keep employees motivated and on task and all that stuff – but I think leadership in any realm is hard.

In church. At school. In the community. On a team of some sort. In your family. Leadership of any kind is hard.

So why, as this article asked, would anyone want to be a leader? And I bring this up today because the answer to that question is really what we want to talk about today as we continue talking about the church in your house.

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