Podcast: Gospel in Life

What does Christmas mean? The Old Testament book of Isaiah helps us come to grips with the riches of Christmas. If I could put it in one sentence, it tells us that Christmas means the unexpected, ultimate light comes through the God-man, which can only be received by grace.  Let’s look at it: Christmas means…

The end of a worship service is always about mission. A minister says, “Let us go forth to serve the world as those who love our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Then the people say, “Thanks be to God.”  Do you realize how significant this is? You are being sent out into the world to…

What is a benediction? Is it a little perfunctory ceremony that helps everybody know it’s time to find your purse and get ready to leave? No. I’d like to show you tonight that the benediction is the meaning of your whole life.  If you understand the benediction, when it’s said to you, your whole life…

This is a sermon on how to listen to sermons.  Psalm 19 is a great Psalm, and it can teach us a lot about what it means to listen to the Scripture be read and taught. How do we listen to the Scripture read and taught? We’re going to learn three things here: 1) we…

Every week we gather for worship, and we move through the same order of service. But after a while, do we realize what we’re doing? We’re going to look at each of the elements of our services, so we can understand them and catch ourselves when we’re going through the motions. This week let’s look…

If we’ve experienced God as a God of grace, how does that change our attitude toward money? The early church was an economic subculture that was radically different from the culture around it. In fact wherever the early church is described, we see the Christians’ drastic generosity—so drastic that it seemed unreasonable to those outside…

You can’t escape the city anymore. Technology means the kids in the farmlands of Iowa are getting immersed in the culture that’s formed in the cities. The problems of cities dominate the regions and societies in which those cities exist.  But as we see in Genesis, the city is a fundamental part of the human…

The story of Noah and the flood is about the fact that God is committed to creation, and he’s ready to give new beginnings. He’s ready to give a second chance.  In Genesis 9, God says to Noah and his family the same thing he said to Adam and Eve. In some ways, it gives…

It’s fratricide, it’s brother killing brother, it’s a sensational story—the story of Cain and Abel. People call this the first case study of murder, but I think that’s missing the point. It’s actually the first case study of life east of Eden.  In Genesis 4, we see three realities are always present in every day,…

The Western romantic idea of human nature was that we’re inherently good. But the problem is over the last century, we’ve discovered that oppression and evil have not gone away but rather have erupted with ferocity over and over again regardless of social and political arrangements. This has created a crisis for the modern secular…