Category: Sermons

Published July 17, 2023

Growing Up

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2

This verse is the foundational principle for our summer series of messages – Transformational Discipleship. As followers of Christ, God wants to totally transform our lives – changing us into the people that He created us to be. But he doesn’t do that instantly in the moment that become a Christian. But rather, it is a slow, life-long process where we learn to know God’s will for us – which is good and pleasing and perfect!

So throughout the summer, we want to look at that process and hopefully discover where we are in that journey personally! And more specifically, we want to know how we can align ourselves with what God is already doing in us so that we can take the next steps in that process of becoming more like Him.

We started last week by looking at a few of the distinguishing marks of being both spiritually dead – as well as being a spiritual infant. And I’ll give you just a quick summary before we move on.

Being born as sinners with a natural desire to rebel against God and to do things our own way, our initial state of existence for every person on the planet is being relationally separated from God. And because we are separated from Him – the Giver and Sustainer of Life – we may be physically alive, but we are absolutely spiritually dead. We have no relationship with Him – and because of that, have no life and no hope for the future.

However, because of God’s great love for us even while we were sinners, He provided a way for us to restore that relationship. Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the grave – paying our penalty so that we could receive forgiveness and life. The only requirement for us is that we simply believe and accept that he did that for us!

When we make that choice to believe who Jesus is and what He has done for us, we become spiritually alive – born again – as we sometimes phrase it. At that point, we become a spiritual infant.

Now as infants, we really don’t know much of anything! Everything is brand new and there is very much a steep learning curve! In this stage of your spiritual journey, it’s really important to have some mature Christian people in your life who can help you along as you begin to grow and learn what it’s all about. This is what your church family is for. These people will be like your spiritual parents – or at least older brothers and sisters. They can help guide and direct you as you begin to figure things out.

But perhaps the greatest gift that you’ll discover in this stage of your journey is the Bible. God has given us a whole book on who He is and what He has done in the world over the centuries – so that we can learn what it means to live in right relationship with Him. Getting to know what the Bible says and being part of a Bible-believing church in this stage of life is so important.

And of course, just as physical infants need to learn to feed themselves and begin eating solid food, so too as spiritual infants, if we want to grow and mature, it is so important that we begin to read and understand the Bible for ourselves. If our only spiritual nourishment comes from the Sunday morning sermon, we’re probably going to be a bit mal-nourished! We don’t want to be like a grown person still being spoon-fed pablum all their life. That would be ridiculous and unhealthy – both physically and spiritually. At some point, you have to learn to feed yourself! You have to take responsibility for your own spiritual growth and health. This is one of the key ways that we begin moving into the next phase of maturity – growing from being an infant into being a child – which we’re going to talk about today.

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Published July 10, 2023

First Steps

Last Sunday we kicked off a new summer series which I’ve entitled “Transformational Discipleship”. The main principle for this series is rooted in Romans 12:2 which says:

Romans 12:2

The idea here is that, even though God loves and accepts us just as we are – with our sins, faults, and failures – it’s not His desire that we stay that way! God wants to totally transform us into new people – new people who know His will for our lives – which is good and pleasing and perfect!

And of course, this transformational discipleship is a life-long process. Certainly there can be some immediate, major changes in our life when we first accept Christ. Many times new believers can be radically different from the people they were just weeks before! But even though we may experience some immediate, major changes (which are often outward changes in behavior) – it always takes much longer to make those inner changes – the changes in the way we think and what we believe – the renewing of our mind as the NIV puts this verse.

This kind of changing the way we think is really a slow, maturing process. Just like how we physically grow up slowly from an infant to a child to a youth to an adult – in the same way, we spiritually grow up slowly as we mature and grow and develop as followers of Jesus.

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Published July 3, 2023

The Way of Transformation

This morning I am very excited to start us off on a new journey! Over the last 13 months, we have worked our way through the book of Acts – studying the early church and the first disciples as they began to carry out their Jesus-given mission of being His witnesses and bringing the Gospel message to the ends of the earth. And I trust that you’d agree with me in saying that it’s just been a real encouragement to us to watch how Jesus transformed those early disciples. I mean, they were just regular men and women like you and I, but God did some amazing things in and through them that totally transformed their lives and at the same time, also transformed the world around them.

Of course Paul is the poster-boy for people who were radically transformed for Christ – being a murder transformed into a missionary – but I think for a lot of us, he’s a little hard to relate to. Most of us don’t have such radical stories of transformation – nor do we really want to! I’m glad that I didn’t have to get saved from a life of crime or some other sensational life-disaster! While that is some people’s story, for the majority of us, we’re a lot more run-of-the-mill!

We probably relate more to guys like Peter and John – just regular, average folks who weren’t murderers or extortionists or anything like that. I mean, maybe they were a little rough around the edges – I can imagine Peter having a bit of a temper and maybe some self-control issues. But on the whole, I imagine they were both probably pretty decent fellows even before they met Jesus. They were hard-working fisherman – good jewish boys who tried to live good, decent lives… Much like all of us!

But you know, even these good, decent, Jewish boys still required a radical transformation. And as we follow their stories through the pages of the Scriptures, we see that this is exactly what happened.

We won’t trace their whole story this morning, but I just want to point out one little verse that kinda captures their transformation.

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Published June 26, 2023

Acts 28: The Extended Edition

This morning we have reached the end of year-long journey through the book of the Bible known as the Acts of the Apostles. Now if you were with us when we began this series way back in May of 2022, you’ll recall that right from the beginning, we noted that, instead of being called the Acts of the Apostles, this book really could more accurately be called “The Continued Acts of Jesus” or perhaps even “The Acts of the Holy Spirit” – since that’s really what the story is all about!

The author Luke, wrote this book as a sequel to his first work, the Gospel of Luke, for a man named Theophilus – and Luke begins the book of Acts by saying:

In my first book I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach…

Acts 1:1

The key here being – “everything Jesus began to do and teach”. The work of Jesus didn’t stop when he rose from the grave and ascended into heaven – but rather it continued as Jesus led and directed his Apostles through the Holy Spirit to spread the message of the Gospel throughout the world.

In fact, the final words of Jesus as he returned to heaven were as follows:

8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Acts 1:8

That’s really what this book has been all about! In the first chapters, we read how the Holy Spirit did indeed come upon those first disciples and totally transformed them from a small band of timid and fearful men, into a rapidly growing church, filled with the boldness and power of the Holy Spirit!

Then, under tremendous persecution, the believers scattered from Jerusalem and traveled throughout Judea and Samaria, proclaiming the Gospel message all along the way and people everywhere put their trust in Jesus for salvation. We read about God’s work through men like Peter, John, James, Philip, and Stephan – all of whom boldly shared the Gospel even under the threat of imprisonment or even death.

And then, in an amazing turn of events, one of their greatest persecutors, Saul – soon to be Paul, had a personal encounter with the risen Jesus and was miraculously transformed into one of the church’s greatest evangelists. And it’s been his story that we’ve most recently been following as he traveled throughout the known Roman world on three different missionary journeys – planting churches and sharing the Gospel everywhere!

The last few chapters of Acts has been the story of Paul’s journey to Rome – under arrest and on his way to stand trial before Caesar. And today, as we read the final chapter of Acts, we see… not really a conclusion to Paul’s story, but rather the conclusion to the beginning of the story of the Gospel. It’s like the closing scene of the first act in a play – the rest of which would continue to play out over the next two thousand plus years – a story that includes both you and I today – as God continues the story of transforming lives through the Gospel!

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Published May 22, 2023

Allowing God to Write Your Story

We are beginning to get very near the end of our journey as we continue working through the book of Acts. We are now in chapter 25 out of 28 chapters, and this morning we plan to cover both chapters 25 & 26.

Now last week, we read how Paul was on trial before the Governor Felix – and even before the trial began, Paul’s chances of being found innocent were pretty slim. Even though the charges against him were fairly weak, Paul was being accused by corrupt Jewish leaders (who were being represented by a corrupt lawyer) and he was being judged by a corrupt Roman Governor. So right from the beginning, the likelyhood of a fair trial was nearly non-existent.

But yet, God was ultimately in control, and in the end, the Governor Felix delayed giving any sort of verdict – hoping both to appease the Jews by keeping Paul in prison, but also hoping for some sort of bribe from Paul.

Of course, even after keeping Paul in custody for about 2 years, Felix received no such bribe – but instead, often received clear and compelling presentations of the Gospel message.

Unfortunately, it seems that Felix never accepted that message – never put his faith in Christ. He had clearly heard the Gospel on numerous occasions over those two years – but as far as we know, he never accepted Christ, and was soon succeeded as governor by a man named Porcius Festus.

Now, when Fetus took over as governor, he immediately began to deal with the loose ends left behind by Felix – which included, of course, the case of Paul vs. the Jewish leaders. And so that’s what we’re going to look at today.

As I mentioned, we’re hoping to get through two chapters worth of material today, so we are going to be moving fairly quickly, but hopefully through it all, we’ll be able to observe God’s goodness and guidance in the life of Paul. We’ll also see how, even through less-than-ideal circumstances from a human point of view, God’s perfect will comes to pass in ways that no one would ever guess.

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Published May 15, 2023

Before Felix

For the last several months we have been following the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul as we have been working through the book of Acts. Most recently, Paul has been on trial – several times actually – for a crime, that up until our passage today, has not even really been defined! He was originally arrested by a Roman Commander named Claudius Lysias after the commander rescued him from a rioting mob that was about to kill Paul. The commander assumed that Paul must have done some terrible crime to stir up such a violent mob – but upon further examination, he realized that Paul had not committed any such crime – certainly nothing worthy of imprisonment or death – at least not by Roman standards!

However, before he could settle the issue, he was informed of a plot where 40 assassins were preparing to ambush and murder Paul and so the commander swiftly sent Paul on to Caesarea where he could safely stand trial before the Governor Felix. And this is where our passage picks up today.

Today, we are going to be observing Paul’s trial before Felix. We will hear the Jews’ formal charge against him as well as Paul’s defence.

Now if you’re one of those folks who love a good court room drama, this passage is going to be right up your alley! But even if you’re not a fan of Judge Judy or Law & Order, there’s some pretty good stuff in here. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us:

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

And so that’s what we can expect out of this passage today. We can expect God to speak through His Word to teach us, correct us, prepare us, and equip us for every good work that He has called us to do.

So let’s dive right in to it, and see what God has to say to us today!

Our passage today begins in Acts chapter 24 – and we’ll be starting at verse 1.

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