Fielder Church Sermons

When things don’t go our way, we tend to argue with God rather than obey Him. He questions Jesus with a heart posture that wants to protect our control rather than submit to Him as the answer. Jesus calls us to give to God what is God’s. We do this through faith in the Gospel. When we stop arguing with the Resurrection and the Life, and start trusting Him, surrendering our control to give Him cont...

Everyone is invited to eternal life, but we can let busyness, rebellion, or self-reliance keep us from Christ and thus from his kingdom. Christ obeyed the Father and earned the robe of righteousness, the only approved garment for the kingdom. Then he died and rose from the dead so he could clothe us with it. When we choose to trust in Christ and follow him, we get his robe and are made ready for h...

We don’t like it when Jesus establishes His authority by disrupting our lives. We’re okay with Him being good to us, but not with Him exposing us. We cannot separate His goodness from His work of exposing sin in our hearts. The exposure of sin is a demonstration

When it doesn’t look like Jesus is in charge, we easily lose faith in him and wither up spiritually from it. Doubt maligns the soul. Jesus proved to be worthy through his death on the cross and to be King through his resurrection. No matter what our circumstances seem to indicate, we can maintain our faith in him and see the fruit of that faith when the impossible becomes possible.

We want Jesus for what he can do for us. We act like he owes us something, thinking mostly of what Jesus can add to our life to make us great. We tend to miss his purpose, because we are so consumed with our own. The gospel illuminates that the way of Jesus is sacrifice. To lay your life down as a servant for the sake of others experiencing life and salvation. Jesus took our place as the perfect s...

When we think we deserve God’s grace more than someone else, it ceases to be grace, and therefore we cannot celebrate it or enjoy it. That comparison robs us of the joy God’s grace should give us, and we end up miserable in the end. The gospel reminds us that we are so flawed and sinful that God had to take on flesh to die in order to save us. But He gladly did so for all who would believe in Him....

We often try to be “good enough” on our own, but Jesus shows us that eternal life isn’t earned by our good deeds. The rich young ruler did many things right, yet he couldn’t let go of what he loved more than God. Either Jesus is Lord of all, or He isn’t Lord at all. Christ calls us to release every lesser treasure so we can receive something far greater—Himself. When we remember that He emptied Hi...

We often think ourselves too important to help those who most need our help. This the opposite of the heart and actions of Jesus. Though Jesus was the most important person on earth, he humbled himself to the lowest by allowing himself to be crucified on a cross. But his humility released the Father’s power. So too, when we humbly remember what Christ has done for us, we humbly serve His agenda an...

Jesus teaches that there is supernatural power in unity in our personal lives, in our marriages, and in the Church. Unity is not just a pleasant ideal; it is the key to experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit. When believers are unified in prayer, worship, and purpose, we stir the heart of God and open the door for His power to move among us. But when disunity enters through bitterness, anger, o...

Our pride keeps us too confident in self, too unafraid of sin, and too dismissive of God. Christ became weak and vulnerable and broken so that the weak and vulnerable and broken could find life and salvation in him. Faith in a crucified Christ should lead us to be confident in God, afraid of sin and dismissive of self.

We miss his power, purpose, and provision because we forget to put our faith in who he is and what he came to do. When we put our faith in Jesus and his resurrection, we realize that who He is and what he did is everything that we need. We have power over the enemy, purpose for sacrifice, and provision to point others to him.

We don’t realize what we have available to us when we meet with Jesus, so we don’t pursue an encounter with him like we should. Jesus’ Resurrection means we can encounter the risen Lord Jesus Christ whenever we choose. We just need to make time to meet with him and let him change us like only he can. Faith in Christ compels us to come to Christ.

We think that life is about what we can get out of it. We don’t realize that church is more about sacrificing what we think is life to gain what true life is which is his presence and his glory. The gospel teaches us that every sacrifice for the sake of gaining eternity with God is worth it. So much so that God the Father was willing to sacrifice his son Jesus, and Jesus was willing to sacrifice h...

Our natural tendency is to focus on earthly things, causing us to miss Jesus. Any focus on what is temporal will cause us to miss who Jesus is eternally and what he has done for us eternally. Belief in the gospel redirects my focus to eternity. The sign of Jonah, Jesus’ resurrection, reminds me to live for Jesus, the Bread of Life, who alone can satisfy me forever and bring me into His eternal Kin...

Our tendency is to trust in our evil hearts instead of the Holy Spirit, and because of it, we remain dead in our sins, powerless to change, and unable to enter the Kingdom. Jesus came in the power of the Spirit to bring the Spirit into us by his death, burial, and resurrection. When we trust in Christ, we receive the Spirit of Christ who transforms our evil hearts into new, obeying hearts that exp...

We think that listening to our heart is a good idea, but our hearts are defiled and deceptively wicked. We have a heart problem, and when do what the culture says and “follow our heart” all it will do is lead us to sin and destruction. Jesus came to heal my defiled heart and give me a new one. Belief in the gospel of Jesus makes the old pass away and makes me new in Christ Jesus.

When we don’t grasp Jesus’s power, we will live lives of fear and failure. We’ll keep our eyes on our problems instead of fixing them on the Lord who can handle them. Jesus proved to be the Son of God through his power (not just walking on water and multiplying food, but mainly through his resurrection), and when we place our faith in him and look to him, we experience his healing and his saving.

We we come to the end of ourselves, we feel defeated, powerless, and afraid. We assume that if we’ve lost control, Jesus has as well, and we can give up even trying to fight. Jesus does his greatest work in the hardest moment. The whole gospel message is that the glowing light of resurrection emanates from the thick darkness of death. When we fix our eyes on this, we can rise from despair, give wh...

When we don’t value Jesus the way we should, we don’t sacrifice for him or live for him, and our faithlessness robs him of power in our lives. The crucified and resurrected Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament truths. When we believe in him, we’ll sacrifice for him. And when we sacrifice for him, we receive the return on that beautiful investment. But we must choose. Everyone must cho...

Both evil and good can spread and grow in us and in the church, and sin blinds us from seeing which one is growing in us and around us. The seed of the gospel is the only thing that can transform our bad into good. When we trust in the gospel, though evil is all around us, it cannot get in us. We will attain to eternal life in Christ. Our hope must be anchored in Christ and his gospel. Takeaways:...

Human hearts are naturally hard, shallow, and distracted by the things of this world. These heart conditions make us resistant and unresponsive to God’s word. We think we need things around us to change, but what we need is for someone to change our hearts. Jesus, the true Sower, transforms our hearts to receive the life-changing gospel. By his death and resurrection, he softens our hearts, heals...

We reject Jesus because we don’t want to surrender lordship of our own kingdom. We feel like we have too much to lose. The gospel teaches us that whatever we lose by surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus doesn’t compare to what we lose when we fight to keep the lordship over our own kingdom. To keep lordship over our own kingdom brings death (v. 43-45), but to surrender it bring life (v. 46-50) Ta...

Our tendency is to trust in our evil hearts instead of the Holy Spirit, and because of it, we remain dead in our sins, powerless to change, and unable to enter the Kingdom. Jesus came in the power of the Spirit to bring the Spirit into us by his death, burial, and resurrection. When we trust in Christ, we receive the Spirit of Christ who transforms our evil hearts into new, obeying hearts that exp...

We prefer a god we can box in, control, and contain with rules and regulations, but because of it, we end up serving a false god made in our own image. It is called legalism and is merely a cover for our attempts to control the universe around us. Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is the One truly in control of the universe, and he gets to determine what we do and when we do it. His thoughts are highe...

In our sin, we are naturally inclined to ignore God’s work, choosing self-reliance over dependence on Him. We are born with a prideful desire for independence from God, seeking in vain, rest for our souls through our own efforts rather than through his grace. Jesus call to us is “Come to me.” To answer that call is to take his yoke upon us, meaning we repent from self-reliance to turn to reliance...