Cities Church Sermons

After several decades of living in the desert, God calls Moses back to Egypt, at age 80, to be the deliverer of God's people. Moses tells Pharaoh to let God's people go. Of course, Pharaoh refuses. Moses seems to have accomplished nothing and his confidence is greatly shaken. However, in Exodus 6, we see that Moses’ discouragement and his lack of confidence doesn’t keep God from using him. Moses i...

In Exodus 5, Moses confronts Pharaoh. Moses tells Pharaoh that Yahweh wants him to release the Hebrews from slavery. Pharaoh, of course, refuses, citing the fact that he does not know Yahweh. This will begin the chain of events that leads to Yahweh doing two amazing things: 1) Freeing his own people from slavery, and 2) Making himself known to Pharaoh. The reason why God wants his people to be fre...

At age forty, Moses left Egypt. He spent the next forty years living in Midian. At age 80, he encountered God, and that led him back to Egypt, to be the eventual deliverer of God's people. Exodus 4 tells us the story of how Moses begins his trek back to the land where he was born. However, this passage is also filled with unique and strange elements. Passages like Exodus 4 provoke lots of question...

God is sovereign and free. He does what he wants. We cannot twist his arm. This is the picture of God we see in Exodus 3. Yahweh, the Creator, the Holy One, is absolutely sovereign over everything, and he is the one who saves by grace.

Many of us feel ordinary, or even subpar. However, God uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. God accomplishes his will through people who feel ordinary and subpar. God accomplishes these feats by first developing his own people, molding us and sanctifying us through desert experiences. We see this play out in the life of Moses in a beautiful and glorious manner. Before Moses cou...

Throughout the pages of Scripture, we see God's continual faithfulness to his own covenant people. This seems to standout to us when the circumstances are dire. In Exodus 1, the sons of Israel are not living in the land God had promised, and they face the threat of genocide in Egypt. They were not where God promised they'd be, but God is sovereign, and he always keeps his promises. We have no need...

Lies, flattery, and double-speak are rampant all around us. It seems like we face malevolent deceit, manipulative flattery, and two-faced deception at every turn. This was just as true in ancient days as it is today. In Psalm 12 we see the Psalmist lament this reality. But in this Psalm we also see the believer's hope: God is the one who sovereignty protects us from the deceit of our world. God is...

It often seems like anxiety is the air we breathe today. Whether you consider yourself an anxious person or not, you cannot deny that fear and anxiety pervade our cultural landscape. And anxiety has a wide range of intensity. At every turn, it seems like darkness and despair are everywhere. However, Psalm 11 models for us a faith-filled response and reminds us that God is our refuge. It may seem t...

If God is really present then how can the wicked live like he’s not and live so well? If God is really present then how can the wicked persist in their wickedness with no consequences? Those are the kinds of questions that try to mess with us. And to add insult to injury, or to deepen the disconnect, in Psalm 10 the psalmist shows us how the wicked actually think. There are four quotations in this...

God’s righteousness means that he rules his creation with impartiality, he punishes the wicked with wrath, he keeps his promises, and he rescues the oppressed. All of these things are right. But they are not the heart of God’s righteousness. They are what God’s righteousness does, but they are not what righteousness is. In other words, when we’re talking about God’s righteousness and justice, ther...

Because David was righteous. David did the right thing. So for this Benjaminite to accuse David of wronging Saul, for him to say that David was unethical, or that David had sinned against Saul — it’s just not true. David has walked with integrity. Which is not the same as self-righteousness. Only the righteousness of Jesus makes us acceptable to God; it’s our integrity that makes us usable for God...

David’s pain and confusion here is great. His words are no exaggeration. If anything, I suspect, they’re understatement. And in such a whirlwind, God doesn’t tell him, and us, to just grit our teeth, put on smile, and sing a happy song. God says tell me all your sorrows, even when we may be partially at fault. He sees and knows our disorientation, and doesn’t sweep it under the rug, but acknowledg...

This is the kind of praying that has a clear starting point. There’s this moment when you acknowledge that right now in prayer I’m doing something distinct from what I was just doing two minutes ago. I’m not merely thinking thoughts. I’m not just continuing on in a stream of consciousness, but right now, in this moment I am praying to God. Which means, right now, I am speaking to God and I believe...

To summarize, the original context that produced the psalm is not clear. The people that David addresses at various times is not clear. It’s not clear when the shifts happen in the psalm. And even some of the exhortations are ambiguous (“Be angry and don’t sin”). However, despite that ambiguity, there is a much that is clear. David pleads with God for relief from his distress. David knows that God...

Now this psalm is a psalm for sinners, for the weak and weary and ignorant like David. But the story behind it has some remarkable anticipations of another story. David faces foes and opposition from his family, his friends, and from the people of Israel, just as a thousand years later, the True Son of David faces opposition from his family (who think he’s out of his mind), from his friends (who f...

If you are here this morning and you are fed up with God and with the conditions of his rule, hear this urgent warning. Be instructed and become wise. The serpent would like for you to believe that true life exists outside of God’s kind designs. But it is a lie. Instead of being a servant to God, Satan would have you become a slave to yourself. That is a miserable exchange—and its end is dissatisf...

At the level of structure, Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 actually go together, and they are meant to be an introduction to the entire Book of Psalms. When it comes to Psalm 1 and 2, notice that unlike most psalms, neither of these have a superscript. There’s not a header to these that say anything about the author or the context about the time when they were written. These two psalms are just there, both of...

We all in Christ have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10) — and if you have wealth in this present age then one of those good works prepared beforehand for you is generosity. A good work for those who have money is to do good with that money — and again this applies to all of us. We, as Christians, especially as...

This is the mechanics of faith. It means we embrace the things hoped for. We have a deep conviction about things presently unseen (see Hebrews 11:1) — but that one day will be seen. And although they are not seen now, they are no less real, and so we grip them. We take our future reality and we bring it to bear on the here and now. We seize the assurance of our eternal life and we apply it to our...

For this sermon I want to move in four directions. First I want us to go into the Scriptures and make a few observations about what’s there. Then I want us to go inward and identify a discomfort that we feel about what’s there. Then I want us to go backward to the past to attempt to resolve that discomfort. And then I want to close with some exhortations for us as a church going forward. Into the...

This morning we come to a solemn text and a weighty topic. As Christians, we welcome all, and affirm none, because all of us are sinners. Including leaders. Including Christian leaders. And sometimes gravely so. Power often corrupts, or at least magnifies the corruption of sin already in us. It is tragic on Capitol Hill and in Hollywood, and even more tragic in the church. We all have heard far to...

Women have influence in the local church — that’s why the apostle Paul wrote this chapter. If women did not have influence — if women did not matter — then Paul would not be addressing them. But because women do have an important influence in the church, the issue has to do with how they use that influence. The issue is whether women will use their influence for good works or not. That is the opti...

On the principle level, for our context, we can use this passage as a guideline for helping others. First, we can look to help those who are in need. But we can also look at the practical guidelines that Paul gives Timothy on how to help those in need in the church family. Even with some of these possible guidelines from Paul that we just went over, at the end of the day let's be a church family t...

Who has your attention? Who has your devotion? What are you giving your attention to? You are devoted to something. Someone has your attention. What’s on your screen? Who’s in your ear? Who gets your attention? My plea with you this morning is that Jesus is worthy of your ear. Christian teaching, God’s truth, the word of God, culminating in Jesus himself, is worthy of your attention. He will not d...