Cornerstonekaty

Acts 1"6-8

Psalm 118 Imagine being an Israelite in ancient history. They faced countless threats and had every reason to wonder whether God's promises would survive.  Suppose you were alive in Egypt. For four hundred years God's people had lived under slavery. Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew baby boys thrown into the Nile. If every son dies, the covenant dies. The promise to Abraham appears finished before it eve...

Luke 15:11-21 The Christian life requires continual repentance, honest self-examination, and dependence on God's grace. Like the prodigal son, people often seek fulfillment apart from God only to discover that their own solutions leave them empty. Lasting change begins when sin, fears, resentments, and destructive patterns are honestly acknowledged and brought into the light. Genuine repentance is...

Psalm 116 We read many psalms which are carefully constructed forms of poetry. Psalm 119, for example, has a unique section for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Other psalms follow chiastic structures where they build up to a climax and then parallel the verses leading up to the climax to bring it back to its starting point. With such works you can imagine the psalmist sitting at his desk, medi...

Psalm 115 If a proper worship of the Lord, both corporately and in the way you live in the world, leads to godliness, that is becoming like God in your character, then it only makes sense that worshiping other things will make us like these other things. This is what Psalm 115 is highlighting. You become like the thing that you worship. That should be a frightening notion, for if the object of you...

A few weeks ago we looked at Psalm 111 and 112, which shows how the character of God is shaped in the man who begins with a fear of the Lord. We saw how worshiping God and studying his works lead to this character formation. What we didn’t discuss much is what this term “fear” means. How do you begin life with this biblical “fear” of the Lord? What does that mean? While this psalm doesn’t use the...

Psalm 113 God calls people to praise Him because worship is what humanity was created for. God is exalted above all nations and even above the heavens, yet in His grace He stoops down to care for the weak, the poor, and the forgotten. He raises the needy from the dust and gives hope to the barren and ashamed, showing that His kingdom works through mercy and reversal rather than worldly power. The...

Psalm 111-112 One of the defining beliefs of modern western culture is that the truest thing about you is your inner desire. This is why we see the rise of “your truth” and “my truth.” It is why we see the rise in all kinds of self-identities. People are looking at their inner desires and defining themselves by them. Have you noticed that? Theologian Carl R. Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph...

Psalm 110 This morning we come to the most quoted Old Testament passage by the New Testament writers. It was absolutely central to their understanding of who Jesus is. It is a theologically rich text in terms of Christology. In fact, it is the text that Jesus himself and the apostles appeal to in order to prove that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ. I hope that is a powerful pull on your interest to...

Psalm 109 This morning we come to an imprecatory psalm, which is a psalm that calls down curses. There are several in the psalms. This is the last of them and probably the harshest overall. What are we to make of it? In the New Testament Jesus calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Does this not run counter to that? These are important questions that we must answer as th...

Luke 15:11-20

Psalm 108 I want to begin with a story about David. David was the greatest king in Israel’s ancient history. He was called the man after God’s own heart. With such accolades, you might be inclined to think that his life was easy. For those of you who are familiar with his story, you know that wasn’t the case. David’s life was filled with struggle. And when I say filled with struggle, I mean real,...

James 5:13-20 We’ve got one more sermon from the book of James and it has to do with prayer. If we put that in the context of the question we’ve been asking in James: what does saving faith, that is, genuine faith, look like? We can say that genuine faith leads a person to a life of prayer. Let’s be honest. Prayer is a challenge. Either we don’t know what to pray or we are skeptical of the effecti...

Zechariah 14:1-21 Easter is a pivotal day in history. It is arguably the most significant day of the Christian calendar. We hear that and believe it, but I’m convinced most of us don’t really understand it. That’s not to say we don’t value the resurrection. We think of the resurrection as God’s victory over death, which it certainly shows. We think of the resurrection as foreshadowing of our own,...

Zechariah 14 Easter is a pivotal day in history. It is arguably the most significant day of the Christian calendar. We hear that and believe it, but I’m convinced most of us don’t really understand it. That’s not to say we don’t value the resurrection. We think of the resurrection as God’s victory over death, which it certainly shows. We think of the resurrection as foreshadowing of our own, which...

Zechariah 12:10-13:9 Let’s jump in with a story; a story that begins in a place of darkness. It begins in ancient Jerusalem. Israel had left Egypt with grand hopes and a bright future. God would fulfill his promises to Abraham and make them into a great nation in a land full of “milk and honey.” He would made them the envy of all the world. And while there were moments in which that seemed possibl...

James 5:7-12 Last week James forced us to wrestle with a very uncomfortable question:  Where do you really find your security? Is it in what you can build, such as your career or your family? Is it in what you can save, such as your retirement portfolio? Is it in what you can control, such as your budget, your business? Or is it in what God has promised? James shows us the danger of building our a...

James 4:13-5:6 Each week we’ve approached James with this simple question: what does saving faith actually look like? How do we discern saving faith from false faith? For it is a frightening thing to build a life on something that, in the end, will fail us. As many of you know, I grew up going to a little lake in Michigan. It was a beautiful and magical place. But there is a dark reality to it, th...

James 3:18=4:12 Last week we ended with James statement: a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (James 3:18) James is talking about life within a community. Sowing peace is a powerful thing and is a product of saving faith. As we continue our series in James looking at the characteristics of saving faith, this would be the one we see in this passage. Saving faith sows...

James 3:13-18 We’ve been looking at James who gives us a clear look at what genuine saving faith looks like. I fear there are far too many people in the church today that believe they are Christians, but are not. Remember Jesus’ words, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the...

James 2:14-26 Our big question in the book of James, “what does saving faith look like and do I have it?” comes to its climactic moment in this passage. James sums up much of his argument for his entire letter in verse 26, “faith apart from works is dead.” Over the centuries the church has wrestled with the connection between faith and works and their role in salvation. One of the hallmarks of the...

James 2:1-13 This morning we turn to chapter 2 and find another characteristic of saving faith. It does not show partiality.  When I first read this chapter, I wasn’t quite sure why this was here. That is not to say we shouldn’t discourage partiality. It just doesn’t seem up to the same level of concern of some of James’ other instructions. Caring for widows and orphans, for example, is a consiste...

James 1:19-27 What is saving faith? In January I preached three funerals. Every time I do, I feel the eagerness that so many have that everyone goes to heaven when they die. With my mother, so many of my relatives commented about how all of these other relatives, who passed away years ago, are all together now, playing golf or sitting around laughing or whatever it is they used to do together. The...

John 11:17-40

Luke 22:7-22