Cornerstone West Los Angeles » Sermons

Thanksgiving should be a natural response to the God of the universe, but so often we forget to thank Him or choose not to take the time to. In Psalm 34 David draws our eyes to characteristics of God that will fuel our hearts for thanksgiving in all circumstances. Application Questions 1. Do you remember to give thanks to God after He delivers you from difficulty? 2. Is your thanksgiving focused m...

Laments are the most common form of Psalms found in the Bible. So, why are they so unfamiliar to us? Most often it's because we don't truly understand what lament is. Living in a fallen and broken world, lament ought to be an expected part of our lives and relationships with God. This week we explore how to correctly understand biblical lament and how to develop it as a regular spiritual disciplin...

What do we do when we need rescue? We bounce back and forth between feelings of confident joy as saved people, and treacherous despair when darkness surrounds us. By showing us what it means to live as saved people and as people who need saving, Psalm 40 teaches us how to live our life as people who are continuously being saved by God. Application Questions 1. How often do you retell the story of...

We often think of confession as something to be either avoided or endured. We don't want to think of ourselves as being “that bad.” But when we confess our sins to God, we acknowledge the truth of our imperfection and the holiness of God. In doing so, it draws us deeper into Him and frees us to live more authentic lives. Application Questions 1. What comes to mind when you hear the word“confession...

The psalms teach us how to respond to life and connect our daily experience to God. As we begin a short series on the psalms, we start with the foundation behind them all: adoration of God. David teaches us to adore God in his greatness and his goodness, pointing us ultimately towards Jesus. True Christianity leads us to adore God for who he is in himself, and set our gaze on him as we live our li...

Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount with a simple but powerful image: homes built either on sand or on the rock. One is fragile and eventually washed away; the other is secure and withstands the storm. In this image Jesus is summing up the entire Sermon. What is above ground and external can be beautiful, but anchored to sand. It will eventually fall. But what is anchored to the rock—to Jesus h...

There are people who pretend to speak for God and who pretend to act for God. But God is not deceived. One day standing before the judgment seat of Christ, there will be those who will receive the judgment of eternal condemnation. Some will be confused because they have spoken for God as prophets. Others will be confused because they have done mighty works for God. But salvation is not based on us...

It is very hard to go against our natural selfish desires and it is easy to love ourselves only. The whole world around us continues to tell us that our lives are more important than the lives of others. And in the mist of this way of living, Jesus commands us to be empathetic to the needs and suffering of others. Jesus knows that the path of empathy will bring life to our souls if we choose to ob...

Where do we get the resources to live out the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus addresses our need to ask, seek, and knock in prayer to God for this and much more. Our problem is not just that we don't ask, it'swhywe don't ask: because we doubt God's goodness. When we hear Jesus'teaching and see his death and resurrection, we find a God who is a good, generous Father. With this kind of Father, why wouldn...

As Jesus begins to sum up the Sermon on the Mount, he addresses the way we engage others. In a fascinating set of images, he demonstrates that disciples are to lovingly evaluate others for their good, not stand over them in condemnation. At the same time, disciples are to be wise in the way they move out into the world, always being discerning in relationships. When we live this out as Christians...

In light of the call to lay up for ourselves“treasures in heaven,” most of us inevitably respond with some form of worry. If we are to give ourselves up for others, who's going to look out for us? We can feel alone, confused, and hopeless when anxiety washes over us and we feel paralyzed by our own fears. But Christ shows us a better way. He shows us the way to be freed from our anxieties and fear...

We tend to live out lives investing in temporary treasure, but God calls us to something greater, more beautiful, and more lasting. Investing in eternal treasure is one of the hallmarks of a disciple of Christ, and it is a radical call. But as we are empowered by the Spirit and motivated by the gospel, God transforms our generosity in ways we never even knew were possible. Application Questions 1....

On this youth Sunday, we spoke about prayer on several levels. We learned with our children's church kids about how we always talk to people we love, which is why we pray to God. We learned with our junior church kids how God wants us to engage him about the real things in our life. And we learned through our shorter sermon how the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray by remembering who God is, relati...

This Sunday we invited new and growing preachers in our church to each preach at one of our three services. They covered the next section in the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus teaching about the danger of religious hypocrisy. The Christian life is not just a bunch of religious activities, but a changed heart that is motivated differently. When we see how many of our good actions are actually motivated...

Jesus takes aim at our obsession to get what we think we deserve, and to give others what we think they deserve. Instead of operating our lives on“fairness,” Jesus asks us to operate on love. But how do we do that when our default mode is to live for ourselves and not for others? The gospel opens to door to a grace that leaves us eternally secure and reshaped to love others not based on what they...

The Pharisees were fixated on finding“loopholes” to the rules of God's Word. They weren't concerned about obeying and following God from their hearts, they were focused on doing what they were“supposed to” in an external way, but their hearts were far from Him. God calls us to something radically different in Christ- to be people who are so enraptured with what Jesus has done for us that we live a...

The concept that looking at a woman with lustful intent is a form of adultery is ridiculous and offensive in the world today. But, it is just another part of the radical ethic Jesus is laying out in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, he is so serious that he tells his disciples that dramatic steps must be taken to pursue his ethic. However, he gives them hope in the fact that through his sacrifice...

We've all heard that Jesus said that being angry is like murdering someone in your heart. But, is that really true? Is this just Jesus using hyperbole, or is he genuinely laying down a radical ethic that is seemingly impossible to keep? In our sermon this week we explore how each one of us has a problem with anger that is greater than we knew, how God's grace is greater than we imagined, and how G...

How do we handle God's requirement that we be righteous? Typically we try to either build our lives on being good enough, or reject the idea that we should be good in the first place. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses God's law. He tells us that we can't ignore it, and that we'll never live up to it. Instead, he has come to fulfill it in our place, giving us a righteousness deeper than w...

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus offers a different way of life that stands in sharp contrast to the world. He calls His followers to have a different purpose for their life (to live for God, not for ourselves), different priorities (to radically love God and others rather than radically loving ourselves), and a different posture (to serve others rather than serve ourselves). And yet this“differen...

Jesus goes up on a mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount. The crowd is eager to hear how his kingdom will deliver them the good life: more comfort, more security, more approval. Instead, Jesus gives them the beatitudes, a jarring set of blessings that run counter to everything we think about the good life. When we look closely at Jesus'words, we find that he is here to deliver a blessing tha...

Palm Sunday is the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem to begin the last week of his life. In that way, Jesus the King arrives in his capital city to do battle with sin. We cannot understand sin without seeing how it intersects with our King. When we do, we are humbled, repentant, inspired, and most of all beloved. Application Questions 1. Why does it matter that Christ“knew no sin” ? 2. How does unders...

Christianity has always believed in a God of wrath, who stands in judgment over humans in their sin. But we don't talk about it much. What's more, for people in the West, God's wrath is hard to reconcile with God's love. If God is love, should he ever get angry? The Bible helps us make sense of God's wrath, square up to the reality of our situation, and appreciate the love of God displayed on the...

We all want to change and grow, but we are sometimes fuzzy on the end goal. In what direction should that change and growth take us? What are we aiming for? God makes clear that the basic Christian life is growth in a single, encompassing direction: Christlikeness. As we walk in love for God and love for others, God is growing us to look more and more like his Son. We need to keep our eyes on him,...

Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment, which encompasses all others, is love—love for God and love for others. In this sermon, we look more closely at growing in love for others as his disciples. Across the Bible, we find that loving others means close relationships with Christians, close relationships with non-Christians, and pursuing our God-given roles and responsibilities. These large ca...