Chestnut Mountain Church

John was writing his letter to believers because many believers had doubts. In 1 John 5, John writes that we can know that we will have eternal life because of how we are saved and the evidence of salvation. As believers, we may be through seasons of doubt as well. In these doubts, how can we know that we are saved, and what is the evidence of salvation? We are saved only by trusting in Jesus. God...

What is love? If you’re looking for what love is or about to give up on love, don’t give up on love, and John is showing us what love is in 1 John. God is love. Through Scripture, we see that God’s love is show and tell, God’s love is strong enough for the unlovable, and the presence of God is marked by love. Understanding what love is allows us to be loved and go out and share love by loving one...

As followers of Christ, how do we live in the love of God? We need to embrace the world we live in and love people no matter what. What does it look like to live the way God wants us to? We look to Christ and His love for us; this is the same love we should show others. You can love people well, like Jesus, wherever you are or whatever you’re doing. It requires us to lay down our life. Listen to t...

As followers of Christ, how can we know who we are, and how can we be sure of this? If you are in Jesus, you are a son or daughter of the King. If we are born-again believers, this is our new identity. If we could focus and grasp the love of God, our lives would look vastly different. This is how we can be sure of our identity. We will be known by what we do and by how we love. Not only can you se...

If you have a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ, you will look different than you did before you met Him. In his letter, John is saying it's not enough for us just to have Jesus all to ourselves. But our joy is ultimately made complete when we get the opportunity to tell others about the experience that we have. As a child of God, if you have truly experienced a relationship with Jesus Ch...

If you have a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ, you will look different than you did before you met Him. In his letter, John is saying it's not enough for us just to have Jesus all to ourselves. But our joy is ultimately made complete when we get the opportunity to tell others about the experience that we have. As a child of God, if you have truly experienced a relationship with Jesus Ch...

Looking to Adam and Nehemiah, the importance of men taking a stand is seen. The devil will wait for the opportune time to step in and turn your life upside down. There is a danger in being only physically present but not emotionally or spiritually present. God has called you to lead your home, to love your home, to lead your spouse, to love your children. If He calls you away from doing that, it’s...

The final piece of armor in the whole armor of God is an important piece of armor. It’s both a defensive weapon and an offensive weapon. The Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The Sword of the Spirit is important because it equips the man and woman of God for every good work. The Bible is undefeated, the Bible is alive, the Bible is forever, and the Bible is the Sword of the Spirit, wh...

For the Roman soldier, the helmet was important as it protected the head, but the design of the helmet still allowed for the soldier to have mobility to see the direction of the enemy’s attack. Paul is telling the Ephesians not to even engage in battle with the enemy until they have accepted or received salvation. Don’t even attempt to battle the enemy in your flesh. In the same way that a soldier...

After putting on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, and the shoes of peace, Paul reminds believers to take up the shield of faith. Just as a shield protected Roman soldiers from arrows and flaming arrows being shot at them all around, the shield of faith can be taken up to protect us from the attacks of the enemy. But what is faith and how do we grow our faith to be able to take...

The shoes that Roman soldiers wore were important so that they allowed them to be stabilized and mobilized. As Paul writes in Ephesians, he calls Christians to stand and put on the armor of God, including shoes of peace. You can’t afford to let life’s circumstances cause you to stumble. You are called by God to stand, and you are called to stand on the gospel of peace. The enemy wants to hinder th...

Jochebed was the mother of Moses. Around the time discovered she was with child, it was the same time that Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew males born were to be killed. At the time of Moses’s birth until she placed him in the basket in the Nile to protect him from being killed, we see Jochebed go through three seasons of motherhood: nurture, preparation, and surrender. It’s in these three seas...

Part of a Roman soldier’s armor was the breastplate. The purpose of the breastplate was to cover the torso of the soldier to protect the internal organs from being penetrated by the enemy. The most important thing it was to protect was the heart. In teaching a spiritual lesson through a physical representation of the armor of a Roman soldier, Paul is teaching believers to put on the armor of God....

In Ephesians 6, God gives a physical illustration of a soldier’s armor for Paul to use and communicate to the church of Ephesus, teaching them the spiritual elements of the armor of God. This is teaching us as Christians how to stand. The first thing we are to put on is the belt of truth. Like a solder’s belt, the belt of truth is to harness the schemes of the enemy to keep us from being hindered...

In Ephesians 6, Paul tells the church of Ephesus that the struggle and battle that we face as believers are not with flesh and blood but are much more about what we can’t see rather than what we can see. We have to comprehend the battle we can’t see. If we choose to ignore, we are playing right into the enemy’s hand. Satan understands that if he can’t have us then he can hinder us. Your assignment...

James doesn’t close his letter to believers with closing greetings or a prayer like other letters in the New Testament. Instead, he closes with a declarative letter. He is calling believers to a higher standard of living. James is teaching how to be made complete and whole. He is calling believers to a pathway of wholeness. There are four key points to obtain the pathway to wholeness as a Christia...

There is no secret recipe for how to avoid hardship or struggles in life. Tough times come not because God is mad or frustrated with us but because we experience tough times and heartaches in this life because we live in a broken world. However, James writes to believers about how to respond to tough seasons that are faced in life. As followers of Christ, we must respond to tough seasons with pati...

As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we look at how the disciples of Jesus scattered at the moment of His arrest and crucifixion but then were called to gather back in Galilee to meet Jesus after the resurrection. While the disciples had declared that they would never leave Jesus, prophecy and Jesus’ words were fulfilled as the disciples’ circumstances of what they were witnessing overwhelme...

As Palm Sunday is this start of Holy Week, it begins with the Triumphal Entry where the people went from being on top of the world that the King has arrived to making a turn when Good Friday gets here. The four gospels detail the account of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, and today, we focus on Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry. Through the obedience of the disciples and the colt owner, we see...

In the first six verses of James 5, James is calling out the rich for taking advantage of the poor. It’s a call to us as believers to be open-handed with what God has given us. While God doesn’t need your money, God does, however, want your heart. If we will live fully surrendered to God’s vision, He will provide. God is not going to call us to do anything and not provide for it, but it’s going to...

In James 4, James continues with reminding believers that life is fragile. We can make all the plans we want, and we can live like we are in control, but we don’t know because our life is short and fragile. While we want to control our lives, we need a life that says, “if the Lord wills,” because this statement declares God is in control, not us. We might not know what the future holds, but God do...

In James 4, James reminds believers of what it means to follow Jesus. When we declare Him as Savior, we also declare Him as Lord. Declaring Him as Lord means we surrender to His power, surrender to His authority, surrender to His influence, and submit to His commands. One of the commands we are to follow is to love one another. Because we are commanded to love one another, that means that we are n...

It’s frustrating when we are watching a movie or a show, and the audio and video don’t align together. Similarly, in James 4, James is writing with concern that what the believers are saying isn’t lining up with how they are living. As Christians, we have to ensure that what we are saying aligns with how we are living. Many times, it doesn’t because, even though our spirit is redeemed, we still ha...

Wisdom is referenced all throughout Scripture, and James writes about two types of wisdom in James 3, false wisdom and true wisdom. It is tough to define wisdom, but you will know it when you see it. True wisdom is not strictly intellectual but is mostly behavioral. How do we discern false wisdom from true wisdom? Listen to this sermon about false wisdom versus true wisdom in the tenth part of our...

In James 3, James writes about controlling our tongue. James alludes that we all have struggles and our struggles all look different, but the one struggle we have in common is that we have all stumbled or will stumble by our tongue. Humans have the ability to tame every single animal on Earth, but we can’t tame our tongues. We learn through James’s letter that the tongue is powerful, dangerous, an...