Homily for Evan Cheung’s Memorial Service

Author’s Note: On Monday, June 5, 2023, Evan Cheung, a beloved student leader at our church, took his life by suicide. Evan’s parents, Andrew ...

God’s Restless Love

Introduction

Have you ever heard the phrase that “love will make you do some reckless things”? How many of you have ever experienced a love ...

Jesus’ Body Kept the Score

Author’s Note: The following sermon is based on John 20:19-23 and seeks to address trauma through the lens of Christ’s own wounds. The sermon ...

Heavenly Reality

Introduction

Happy Easter everyone! When you think about the future, how do you feel?

For most of us, when we think about the future, it brings all sorts ...

'Remember!'

Introduction

There were three sisters—ages 92, 94, and 96—who lived together. One night, the 96-year-old drew a bath. She put one ...

Unshakeable Hope

Introduction

Happy Easter! Welcome to the largest digital Easter the world has ever seen, as thousands of churches are online right now!

It’s been ...

More Than Your Personal Savior

Introduction

For over three decades, Paul Harvey made a name for himself by telling “the rest of the story.” Day after day he came on our radios ...

Lazarus the First

Introduction

When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was gravely ill, the first thing he did was nothing.

To be fair: I don’t know exactly what it ...

Burning Hearts

Introduction

Several months ago, my wife and I had the privilege of going to the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte (If you are ever in Charlotte, NC you ...

Believing Is Seeing

Introduction

As our tour comes to an end, we will watch one more story featuring an important discussion between Jesus and Thomas, the disciple who doubted. ...

An Upper Room Revelation

Overview of Sermon Series

Many years ago, my wife and I visited Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco, CA. Let me emphasize visited! We toured the prison via ...

A Tale of Two Trees

Introduction

This is the highest of holy days for the Christian church. This is the day where not only do we remember that Jesus died and he was buried, ...

Resurrection on Trial

Introduction

Have you heard of Snopes.com? If you want to check out a rumor or a legend that’s online—you get some email that says some guy ...

All About the Resurrection

Introduction

Are you really who you say you are?

We are doubted every day. Every time we log in. Every time we swipe. Every time we try to unlock our phones. ...

The Gain of Sacrifice

Introduction

I returned from a two-week trip to Nairobi, Kenya, and Jos, Nigeria, where we were visiting some of our dear friends and ministry partners ...

Jesus Shows Up in Mary Magdalene's Darkest Hour

Introduction

(Read John 20:1-18)

When we come to the resurrection, we first have to consider some questions that many of our friends have and why some believe ...

Easter Hope

Introduction

This is part of my story with my dad.

September 18 of this past year was profoundly memorable for me. My dad, who was almost 84, passed away. ...

Surprise Ending

Introduction

We like our Bible stories to end with a bang: Israel escaping from Egypt through the watery walls of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho tumbling ...

The Key to a Meaningful Life

Introduction

Maybe this is the first time you've ever stepped foot into a church. Or maybe you don't normally go to church unless it's Christmas ...

Not What We Expected

Introduction

(Illustration: Description of seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time.)

Have you ever had an experience where things didn't turn out as you ...

The Incognito Christ

Introduction

April 12, 2007: A 39-year-old man stationed himself next to a trash bin at the L'Enfant Plaza subway station in Washington, D.C. He had on ...

How Easter Turned the World

Introduction

When my dad was a young man in his thirties, he was working for an import/export trading company in Tokyo, Japan. One day he happened to be ...

Stories Converge at Easter

Introduction

Read (Mark 1:1)

I started to read Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. On the front cover is the title, the subtitle, ...

I Am Ascending

Introduction

In September 2013, the headline on the cover of Time read: "Can Google Solve Death?" Google's CEO announced a new division of Google known ...

Heaven: Hope for the Long Tomorrow

Introduction

Don't you love Easter? There's something about it, isn't there? Here are a few fun facts about Easter you may not have known: The word, "Easter" ...

The Death of Death

Introduction

There are moments in time when all of a sudden something happens and everything changes. There are so many examples of this that it's almost ...

Resurrection Realities

Introduction

Concerned with the quantity of church growth and the quality of church life confronts us on every hand. We are barraged at conferences with ...

The Final Week, Were You There?

Introduction

Artist Hieronymus Bosch painted Christ carrying his cross in 1505. Christ was surrounded in the painting by such notably ghoulish and revolting ...

The Resurrection Matters—Really Matters!

Introduction

Like many of you, this Easter, I celebrate a radical truth—that Jesus died and rose to pay the price for our failures and affirm he ...

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 Ultimate Challenge

Introduction

A few years ago a representative from Teach America paid a visit to one of the premier university campuses—Duke. Teach America ...

What Happens When We Die?

Introduction

A few months ago, Google made this announcement:

Not many of us like thinking about death—especially our own. But making plans for what ...

Hope Is a Who

Introduction

Life has a way of killing dreams, doesn't it? You set out with high hopes—for your schooling, your career, your family, and your ...

The Best Is Yet To Come

Introduction

It all began with Mary and Martha—that cool Easter morning—coming to a lonely Palestinian tomb. I don't think they had any idea ...

Jesus Vindicated

Introduction

Luke 24, verses 1 to 53—this stuff is too wonderful for words. It's very easy to outline this chapter:

• Lk 24:1-12, The empty tomb;

God's Power in Unexpected Places

Introduction

Good Friday and Easter lie at the very heart and center of the Christian message. But there seems to be a lot of confusion in our culture ...

Resurrection Hope Every Day

Introduction

I have a friend in Minnesota who is a landscape architect. A few years ago, shortly after she had moved to a new place, she led me around ...

Good News When You're Confronted by Death

Introduction

Luke 7:11-17 says this:

Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As ...

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 ...

Foresight

Introduction:

There are weights that only Christians carry. I talked to a friend whose daughter was angry with him, a feeling many parents know. But my ...

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, ...

Jesus Christ: His Resurrection from the Dead

"The gospel of God … regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendent of David according to the flesh, and who was declared to be ...

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 ...

Doubters Anyonymous

Introduction

"He is risen": it's the heartbeat of the message of the Christian church. These three English words are translated from one Greek word, egeirō, ...

God in Our Sorrows

The Advent is where God meets us in our sorrow.

The word advent means an arriving or an appearing. It's the arrival of something we hoped for, something ...

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 ...

Life and Death Advice

In Psalm 49, a man steps out of the pages of the Bible with a riddle in his hand, and he's desperate we hear it. In fact, he calls on us in verse 1 to ...

Victory for Us

Introduction

There are two things we discover at Easter. They both have to do with the victory of Jesus Christ, the victory he won on this the first day ...