Central Community Church | Sermon Audio

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Sexual desire was created by God and given to us as a beautiful gift. But the inappropriate or excessive desire for sexual gratification – lust – is a destructive path that leads to death. However, God has made it possible for us to win the battle with lust and to maintain sexual purity through the redeeming work of His Son, Jesus, and by the indwelling presence,...

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Lust is a sin which twists God’s good invention - sex - into a pale imitation of his original design. Lust corrupts sex to make it more about personal pleasure and self-fulfilment than glorifying God. But because of what Jesus has done and will do for each of us, our sexual desires can be cleansed from Lust to glorify God, just as he created them to do.

1 Corinthians 6:18-20  Sexual sin is a challenge practically every Christian believer wrestles with at one time or another.  What does God's Word have to say about this...and what kind of help will that give when we're in the middle of a moral battle?  

Hebrews 13:5 Greed demonstrates two personal faith failures. First of all, greed demonstrates a lack of trust in our heavenly Father’s care and provision for His children. Secondly, greed exposes our belief that Jesus cannot satisfy all our needs and desires. But Jesus demonstrated generosity at its fullest by giving His very life for us. Through our generosity we can honour his sacrifice an...

Hebrews 13:5 Greed is a dangerous, insidious sin that can creep into our lives in more areas than just money and possessions. Nevertheless, the Gospel challenges our excessive personal desires for more with the sufficiency of Christ, which in turn drives us to be generous because “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Hebrews 13:5-6 Greed is the sin that promises us that if we have enough stuff, we will be happy.  However like all other sin, greed keeps us in chains bound under a desire that cannot be met.  Ultimately our true contentment is found in Christ which releases us to be generous to others. 

James 4:6-7 There was pride in heaven; what hope is there for us on earth? Pride is a magnified and perverted view of self, is the root of all evil, and always precedes destruction. The only antidote to pride is a right view of God and ourselves and that is made possible through Jesus Christ, who not only shows us His supreme greatness but also the way of humility.

James 4:6-7 Pride – the essence and chief of all sins ... the root of all the vices known to man – is a sin that must ruthlessly eliminated from our lives. And the way that we make war on this deadly sin is through the virtue of humility – the same humility that is given us by Christ who humbled Himself that our sin might be forgiven. “God opposes the proud but gives grace...

James 4:6-7 Pride is the original sin that loves to insidiously inhabit the hearts of any who will welcome it. Little do we sometimes recognize the deadly effects of pride as it makes us enemies of God. Through God’s grace we are invited to humbly draw near to God, as we reflect on how God, in humility, first drew close to us through Christ.

James 4:6-7 The sin of pride is often identified as the beginning of all other sins.  Lifting ourselves over against others, even against God is the source of all kinds of sins.  But God’s grace works in our lives to humble us, following the example of Jesus, and finding our exaltation in God.   

Ephesians 3:14-21 Christians “know” that Jesus loves them but the Apostle Paul wants us to KNOW that Jesus loves us, and the indwelling strength to live in light of that profound reality.

Ephesians 3:14-21 Paul prays for the church to know God’s love.  He recognizes that we need God’s power to live in Christ, we need his strength to understand what Jesus has done for us, and to live out the fullness of what he has done.  All of this is for God’s glory.

Ephesians 3:14-21 In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul includes a beautiful prayer.  In it he outlines a progression for the Christian from experiencing the Power of the Holy Spirit to the Fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:1-13 For thousands of years the Gospel was a mystery hidden from human hearts and minds. But at the perfect time God made His sacred secret known to the world in His Son, Jesus. As stewards of grace and ministers of the Gospel, we, the church, are called to make God’s wisdom known to every corner of the universe and spiritual realms. To help every person behold the wondrous myste...

Ephesians 3:1-13 Have you ever felt unworthy of receiving the Gospel? Or having received Christ, have you ever felt unfit to share the good news of Christ? In Ephesians 3:1-13 Paul shares how he received by personal revelation from God the mystery that salvation is for everyone! Jew and Gentile alike! He then shares how God called him to preach this good news to all, a calling that extends to the...

Ephesians 3:1-13 Paul speaks to the incredible truth that the Gospel breaks down all barriers, bringing people of every background into one family through Christ. The mystery revealed to Paul was that Gentiles are now fellow heirs and part of the same body as Jews. This unity in Christ isn’t based on who we are or where we come from, but on God’s grace. As believers, we are all called...

Ephesians 3:1-13 Sometimes we think that some people are beyond the reach of the Gospel and it's hopeless to talk with them about Christ.  Today we learn that this is not true...and that we each have the privilege to share our faith with others and see the Holy Spirit work in their lives!

Ephesians 2:11-22 Paul seeks to remind the Ephesian church of their past apart from God and how hopeless it was. This is not an attempt to bring despair, but to highlight the glorious current reality of the peace we now have with God. He seeks to spotlight this reality to spur them on to unity and peace with one another.

Ephesians 2:11-22 Reconciliation is hard work. It involves great sacrifice. We are reconciled to God only through the cross of Jesus Christ, brought near to God by the blood of Christ. And when we are reconciled to God, we can – and must – be reconciled to each other. And that, too, requires great sacrifice.

Ephesians 2:11-22 After beautifully displaying the way in which God’s grace saves us from our sins, Paul now goes on to demonstrate the corporate ramifications of our salvation. We have not been saved to follow Jesus accompanied by me, myself and I. Rather, we have reconciled to other believers and to Christ to become the Spirit indwelled household of God.

Ephesians 2:11-22 We have all felt like an outsider at some point in our lives. Through the saving work of Jesus, we are all brought into the family of God. We can be unified on the foundation of Christ and his word in scripture.

Ephesians 2:1-10 You would be hard-pressed to find a more glorious passage of Scripture than this one in the entire Bible. The Apostle Paul painstakingly contrasts our helpless state apart from Christ (dead in our sins) with His intervening salvation (making us alive together with Christ) and doing so by grace through faith as a gift.

Ephesians 2:1-10 What does God’s love look like? As Paul is praying for the church he begins to show them the incredible depths of God’s love for us. For when we were dead in our sin, he loved us so greatly that he sent Jesus to forgive our sins that we might be saved. We are his workmanship prepared for good works to display his glory.

Ephesians 2:1-10 is thee single clearest, most beautiful Scripture passage concerning the grace of God. God’s grace is an undeserved gift that rescues us from death and saves us from our sin to new life in Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-10 The crowning jewel of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – and possibly all of Scripture – was well summarized by the hymn-writer John Newton in 1779: “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch; like me!” Jesus Christ makes us right with God ... makes us alive when we were dead in in our trespasses ... by His work of grace through faith. Tha...