Cities Church Sermons

This is judgment mingled with mercy. The ultimate judgment here is exile from the garden of God. Broken relationships, painful labor, war with the serpent—all of these are awful. But the worst consequence for man’s rebellion is that he is forced at sword-point to leave paradise. The loss of Eden. This too is mercy; God refuses to let us live forever in our sin and brokenness. But the loss is real....

They must learn to trust God’s wisdom before they can be trusted with wisdom and rule themselves. Forbidding the knowledge of good and evil is like forbidding children from driving cars. Driving cars isn’t sinful or wrong. But it’s for adults, for the mature. A child must grow up and demonstrate responsibility before he is given the keys.

The main reason you should rest is not because it’s the way you get to live a healthier, happier, more productive life — I hope you do — but the main reason for rest is that you remember that the God who made you does not need you. And what a gift that is!

We are to take the rooted loveliness of the world, guard it, protect it, and then, wonder of wonders, make it lovelier. We are to taste the goodness of the earth’s absolute givenness and make it greater.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. “Heaven and earth” means totality. It means everything. God created everything, and he did it out of nothing. Which means, he didn’t just arrange the puzzle pieces, he created the puzzle pieces, in fact, he created the very idea of the puzzle. God made things exist that did not exist.

"For us it is difficult to handle this tension. Yet the Bible often puts these two concepts, namely, our responsibility, and God's control, next to each other. We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and at the same time it is God who is at work in you."

"True doctrine is accompanied by living in the light. And in fact, one of the ways we fight for the gospel is by living in a way, acting in a way, behaving in a way, that fits with the gospel. Which means this: contending for the faith, a lot of times, has more to do with how we live than with what theological boxes we can check."

Imagine if you had been there as John began to write this letter. Perhaps he’s dictating it to Demetrius. He says, “I have no greater joy . . .” and pauses. Wouldn’t you say, “Jesus. Say Jesus. You have no greater joy than Jesus, right?” But John turns and says, “I have no greater joy than Gaius — no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

Because we practice weekly communion, every week our professing children watch the bread and wine pass, and so every week we communicate to them, “You’re not fully a part of us.” Which means we need to have an answer for them when they ask, “What do I have to do to become a full member of this congregation?”

His main point in the letter can be summed up like this: listen to Jesus, and love one another — and do it in a world full of opposition. That’s what John says in this letter, and that’s what we’re going to look at today.

God has his own timing. That’s Peter’s point. I don’t think we’re supposed to literally convert the 1,000 years per each day. The message here is just that God has his own timing and it’s not ours. And this is really important, because until we understand that God has his own timing we will tend toward accusing him of not doing what he says, until eventually, we will misunderstand his motives towa...

But before we go on there is one real surprise here. We said it shouldn’t be a surprise that false teachers arise. Jesus promised that. But we might say the surprise in this chapter is how little we find about their teaching, and how much Peter focuses on their living.

One of the ways we are assured that we will be in the eternal kingdom of Jesus is that we live now in a way that fits with that kingdom. Again, the way we live now doesn’t earn that kingdom. That comes by Jesus’s free invitation. And it’s his free invitation changes us. We become new people who are being fitted for a new world.

You know, we can’t control how other people respond. That’s not our part. That’s not our responsibility. Our responsibility has to do with ourselves, with what we’re doing. And if there is a relational rift in your life, the question you should ask is: Does this relational rift exist because of my refusal to ask for or give forgiveness?

"Finally, press into the Lord. In your sorrow, do not sin. Weep, wail, grieve, lament. Rage against this broken and cursed world and the evil powers that steal and kill and destroy. But never curse God. Don’t run from him. He is the only source of comfort. He is the God of all comfort. Press on to know him. Press hard into him. As surely as the coming of the dawn, he will respond."

The decreasing, the denying, the cost — it is real. We’re really giving up things. I’m really not playing softball. When you fast, you’re really not eating lunch. When you wake up early to pray, you are not sleeping. These are costs, they really are. But then one day, when we look back, it won’t look like a cost, not when we see Jesus.

The greatest of God’s provisions for us is not earthly wealth — good gift as it can be. It is not money — useful as it can be for showing love to others and advancing the kingdom. It is not earthly possessions, but it is the very presence of God himself in Jesus through the Holy Spirit. God’s greatest gift is God himself. And when he is the lodestar of our soul, when that truth is fixed in our hea...

"The goal, however, is that God always remain in front of me. Indeed, the goal is that he’s always close to the center of my vision. Even when he’s not the direct object of my attention, he’s right there; he’s present and I never turn my back to him."

"When a delight in a legitimate pleasure spontaneously erupts, take the governor off. If your joy in your family is going to shoot through the roof, don’t reinforce the ceiling with steel. Perhaps even open the skylight so that it has a clearer shot."

One of our common emotional experiences as humans is the feeling of emptiness. No matter how rich or poor, how heathy or sick, whether in success or in failure, we all have tasted the feeling of emptiness. We wouldn’t all describe it the same terms, but we have felt that internal emotional sense of emptiness or inadequacy — that haunting, gnawing ache that I’m not what I should be, or that some hi...

"Our words come out from our heart. Underneath our words is a battle. It is a battle to try and figure out what to say and how to say it, between spirit and flesh, faith and unbelief, obedience and sin. The battle is in our hearts and it is a battle for our worship. And our words and the way they come out reflect where we are at in this battle."

It should make sense to us that if Jesus is preeminent over the old creation of this world and the new creation of the church, he must also be preeminent over the details in our lives.

What Jesus did changes who we are, and therefore changes how we orient our minds, which therefore changes how we live.

The best way to explain the Christian way of life is not to give soundbites, but to give a story — because Christians have a story. It all hangs together.

There’s been a transition, both in history and in the lives of the Colossians, that changes everything. And Paul speaks of this transition in terms of death and resurrection.