Trusting the Sovereignty of God

Introduction

We are in our Advent series called “Christmas with Joseph—when things don’t go as planned.” What we’re trying ...

Praying Through Our Struggles

Introduction

What is the one thing we all have in common? We all struggle, we all know what it’s like to go through hardships. We may struggle with ...

Loud Cries and Tears

Introduction

It’s dangerous to preach on suffering because many of us are in very different places right now. Some of us are in agony, some ...

Our Great High Priest

Introduction

The overall message of Hebrews is to keep moving forward, don't turn back. The writer to the Hebrews is doing this by showing ...

Advent: Hope

Introduction

If you are new to Advent, it’s based on an ancient Latin word. Ad is Latin for “to ”, and vent for “come.” ...

Persevering Through Suffering

This sermon is part of the “More Than a Holiday” sermon series. See the whole series here.

Introduction

Isaiah 53, a very familiar chapter for ...

Miraculous Births: Samuel

This sermon is part of the “Miraculous Births” sermon series. See the whole series here.

Introduction

On December 1, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ...

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 ...

Hope Through the Night

Introduction

Let's consider the Psalm where our God tells us that lament is appropriate but never the final word—never the final word—as we ...

The Crack in Creation

Introduction

(Read Mark 5:21-43)

Perhaps Jairus had taken his eye off of his little daughter for just a moment, never thinking she'd go near the edge of ...

Christmas Stories: A Dark Story

This sermon is part of the “Christmas Stories” sermon series. See the whole series here.

Introduction

(Read Matthew 2:13-18)

The gun fired and ...

Successful Suffering

Introduction

Give me an S.
Give me a U.
Give me a C.
Give me a C.
Give me an E.
Give me an S.
Give me an S.

What does that spell? "SUCCESS."

Hope in God

Introduction

The beautiful thing about the Psalms is that they are so applicable to our own lives, and they also give us guidance as we minister to others. ...

Suffering and the 'U-Curve' of Life

Introduction

A story that I think about from time to time may also be one that you are familiar with. There was a wise man who lived on the northern frontier ...

How God Works Through Tragedy

Introduction

Life can seem pretty vicious sometimes. As a church, over the last about five weeks we've had two major tragedies within our family here ...

When Good Things Happen to Bad People

Introduction

One of the strangest lawsuits in US court history was filed on September 14, 2007. Nebraska Senator Ernie Chambers—one of the first ...

Death Is Not the End of the Story

On the morning of October 1, 2015, a young man entered a classroom at Umpqua Community College (UCC) in Roseburg, Oregon, and began shooting people. Nine ...

Your Best Life Is Not Now

Introduction

This room is full of hopes: fans hoping for a championship season, all of us hoping for another beautiful summer. Hopes can be more personal, ...

God Uses Suffering for Our Good

Introduction

I remember standing next to the late Joan Rivers. It was May 2006, and I had been in Sydney, Australia, preaching in some Anglican churches ...

Christians Aren't Always Happy

Introduction

You may have come here this morning seeking happiness. In one sense, how could you not? Seeking happiness is as natural for us as our desire ...

Temptation

Introduction

One of my favorite father-son stories in Western literature has to be story of Pip and Joe Gargery in Charles Dickens' novel, Great ...

Weathering the Storms of Compromise

Introduction

People wonder, Is it really possible to be a Christian in today's world? So much of the values of this world are inimical to Christian values. ...

Meditation for a Fallen Police Officer

Editor's Note: In the early morning hours of Christmas Eve 2012, police officer Jennifer Sebena was gunned down while on patrol. She was killed by ...

Rachel Weeping

The story behind the sermon (by Ken Langley)

Pastors struggle to find a fresh word at Christmas. We also struggle with expressing authentic sermonic lament ...

Mysterious Grace

Introduction

A few months ago my wife and I met with a woman who was telling us about her family. She told us that when her daughter was born she had big ...

Where Do We Find Hope?

Introduction

On the hillsides and on the mountainsides along the ocean in Japan there are stone markers, some of them over six hundred years old, and on ...

What to Do When Your Fig Tree Doesn’t Blossom

Introduction

Picture Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. He's swinging on a swing in the school playground. Picture a bully named Mo, twice as big as Calvin. ...

God Is Trustworthy

Introduction

I began this series by quoting A. W. Tozer's famous contention that "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important ...

Finding God in the Dark

Introduction

Surely you know the Chronicles of Narnia movies, right? Well, those movies actually come from children's novels written by C. S. Lewis. The ...

We Can Do This the Easy Way or the Hard Way

Introduction

For most of my time in college, I attended a small church in Chicago with my now wife, Jamie. The pastor of this church had been commissioned ...

The Divine Legacy

Introduction

I'll never forget walking into the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., maybe 20 years ago. Just inside the ...

Amazing Faith

Story behind the sermon (from Steve Mathewson)

Every so often, a particular sermon stirs a congregation—and their pastor!—in stronger ways ...

God Is Still Loving

There are times in our lives when it seems like God is against us. I mean, we know that God is for us, but there are times when it seems like God is treating ...

The Undefiled

When I was in seminary, the wife of one of my classmates worked as a quality control inspector at a pharmaceutical company downtown in order to support ...

When the Bottom Falls Out

I remember the events that led to her tears. My wife, Kathy, had come home from a weekly grocery trip with more than groceries to be concerned about. ...

Faith in the Furnace

How do you win the World Series? A few decades ago, when the New York Mets were the underdog darlings of the National League, two young pitchers told ...

Looking Up to Heaven

A shattered Colossus

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelly tells of meeting a traveler from an "antique" land who describes the ruins of a great statue in the desert. ...

The Judgment of Grace

Chapter five of Daniel addresses the question of what would happen if you gave a party, and God crashed it. Nebuchadnezzar was no longer on the throne. ...

The Song of a Broom

Sunday school pictures of a ruddy faced lad in a lions' den have scant resemblance to the actual situation described in this sixth and last chapter of ...

The Crook in the Lot

Introduction

One of the first people that I hope to meet in heaven is the Scottish theologian Thomas Boston, who was the subject of my doctoral research ...

The Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Introduction

Today we're going to look at Luke chapter 2. There is a Christmas song tucked within this Christmas story that I want to uncover—a song ...

Heart Burn

The man's name was Toby. He was the youngest son of a lawyer from Cleveland who'd struck it rich and moved his family to the upscale community of Rancho ...

Heart Attack

If I asked you to take your finger and point to yourself, where would you point? Most of us, I imagine, would not point to our heads. That's interesting ...

Heart Scan

I'm going to talk today about the most important thing there is about you or me or anyone else we are ever going to meet. To get there, I want to take ...

Heart Ache

More than 3,000 years ago, near the city of Shechem, in the land we know today as Israel, an unknown seeker began digging a hole in the crusty soil where ...

The Dark Side of Grace

Introduction

In the structure of John's gospel, John 11 serves as a hinge between two halves. The first 10 chapters are concerned with the ministry of ...

How Did the World Get So Messed Up?

Introduction

Not everything in the world is good. Not everything in the world is happy. Not everything in the world is beautiful. In fact, real evil does ...

Loss, Loyalty, & Lament

Introduction

I've never been one to read romance novels, but lately I've been reading one. It's been a good one, too. Believe it or not, it's a book I ...

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 ...

A Christian's Happiness

Introduction

If you're a Christian, you know that Christianity is supposed to be about joy. You probably also know that you're supposed to experience ...