Forward Church Cambridge Sermons

One of the main reasons Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians was their apparent lack of concern for sexual immorality within the church. Paul emphasizes the importance of addressing this issue and administering church discipline out of love for Jesus and love for the brother or sister who is engaging in sin. This sermon provides an opportunity to explore the importance of holiness and the nece...

In this chapter, Paul asks the Corinthians, "What do you have that you did not receive?" This question encapsulates Paul's theology of grace, which holds that everything we have is a gift from God. In order to encourage the Corinthians to live a life shaped by God's grace, and the sacrifice and surrender the cross calls us to, Paul employs a combination of irony, sarcasm, and tender love to guide...

"Despite their self-perception as wise, mature, and sophisticated, Paul makes it clear to the Corinthians that they still have much growing to do. Their tendency towards quarrelling and jealousy is a sign of their immaturity. There is no place for such behavior in the body of Christ. When we allow ourselves to be divided by boasting, factions, or allegiance to specific leaders or teachers, it demo...

As Paul has previously stated, wisdom is the understanding of the gospel message of Christ's death and resurrection. Those who are mature in their faith are those who have fully embraced this message. It is only through the guidance of the Holy Spirit that we can come to a true understanding of this wisdom. Logical arguments or persuasion will never be enough to fully convince others to believe th...

2000 years ago, God in the ultimate act of love he ultimate act of love, became a human and lived among us. Born to an unwed peasant mother and raised by her carpenter husband, Jesus lived a perfect life, teaching about the kingdom of God and proclaiming his own divinity. Despite his innocence, he was arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion at the hands of the religious and political leader...

The gospel message may seem foolish or weak to those who hear it, but that's how God often chooses to build his movement. Rather than seeking out the powerful or influential, he calls the weak, powerless, and foolish to proclaim the good news. In fact, the gospel was just as foolish to the people of Corinth as it may seem to those in Southern Ontario today. But despite its apparent foolishness, th...

The problems of division, factions, and idolizing church leaders are not unique to our time. From the earliest days of Christianity, believers have struggled with maintaining unity and avoiding the temptation to put leaders on pedestals. In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul seeks to address these issues by reminding them that the church belongs solely to Jesus. It is through Jesus' death a...

Paul begins his letter to the Corinthian church by expressing gratitude for the grace of God that has been bestowed upon them through Jesus. Similarly, we have much to be thankful for in the Corinthian church, as it serves as a reminder that if God can work through a community as flawed and in need of grace as the Corinthians, then there is hope for us as well. This Sunday, we will delve into the...

The world is an unsteady place. Our lives can be turned upside down in a moment. One event, one phone call, one diagnosis can shake us or shatter us. Sometimes God allows this shaking to reveal to us our own fragility and the fragility of the things we have built our lives upon. There are a few things we need to know when we are feeling shaken. First, while God may shake us God himself is is never...

What do we think of when we think of a blessed life? Maybe it’s a spouse, two kids and a house that we own, maybe it’s a secure retirement or a fulfilling career. Whatever the word blessed conjures up for you, it almost certainly is tied in to our view of success. In God’s kingdom success is measured not in dollars, degrees or the applause of people, it’s measured in obedience, faithfulness and ho...

Disappointment is the gap between our expectations and our reality. Disappointment is an inevitable reality in a broken world. Through Haggai God speaks a message of encouragement to a disappointed people. First, and most importantly he promises that He is with them. Second, He promises that despite how things may appear, He will use the temple they have reconstructed to make his glory known to th...

Haggai was a post-exilic prophet sent by God to exhort the small community of Jewish people who had resettled in Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity and exile. The community that had returned, returned to a city in ruins and a temple that had been destroyed. Their initial excitement and joy at returning quickly turned into a struggle just to get by. In the grind of trying to rebuild their liv...

We will be walking through John 11 & 12 and the story of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus and his resurrection. Looking at the various ways they said yes to Jesus and challenging us to make the coming year a time when we will live to say yes to whatever Jesus is saying.

All of us have a deep need to be loved. We’re also terrified that we’ll be rejected. For many of us our search for love and our fear of rejection are the driving forces behind the story of our lives. One of the most incredible truths we find in scripture is that there is a God who both loves us fully and knows us completely. The good news for those who are searching for love is that love came sear...

We often go searching for joy and settle for happiness instead. Happiness is a product of the present, it’s a result of my current circumstances. Joy however is rooted in both the past and the future. In order to find lasting joy and not just momentary happiness we have to root ourselves in the faithfulness of God in the past and the certainty of what he has promised to us in the future. We can fi...

Just the word is like a balm to our restless and weary souls. In a world filled with conflict and constant busyness many of us are desperate to find a little peace. At the birth of Christ, the angels came proclaiming “peace on earth,” and yet the earth seems anything but peaceful. However, just before his death Jesus doubles down on this promise of peace. In John 14:27 and 16:33 he promises that d...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: “To live without hope is to cease to live.” As human beings we need hope, and yet so often what we end up placing our hope in disappoints us and lets us down. In a world filled with politicians, products, and people that don’t live up to the promises they make to us. In a time where the hope of perpetual progress seems to have been dashed; where can we find the hope we ne...

As we near the close of the book of Acts Paul is in Jerusalem defending himself once again, this time to King Agrippa. In giving his defense he boldly stands before Agrippa and shares his testimony. He shares his life before Christ, his credentials as a Pharisee and his own disbelief of Jesus and his participation in the church’s persecution. Then he shares his conversion, his encounter with the r...

As Paul says a tearful goodbye to the elders of the church in Ephesus we see two things about his ministry and calling. First, we see that wherever God placed Paul for however long He placed him there Paul was fully present and invested. His life, lived out daily, gave testimony to the message he proclaimed. The second thing we see is that Paul didn’t hesitate to go when God had a new assignment f...

Paul’s engagement with the people of Athens gives us some very helpful principles for how to engage people with the gospel. One of the key skills we need to learn if we are going to be effective witnesses for Christ is that we have to meet people where they are. Paul contextualized his message to the people he was dealing with and the questions they were asking. In Acts 17:2 we see Paul addressing...

It’s one thing to confess that salvation comes through Christ alone, but it’s another to truly believe it and live it out. With Gentiles now being included into what had previously been a Jewish-only church the idea that Jesus alone saves began to be put to the test. What about circumcision? What about the Jewish dietary laws? Doesn’t being a Christian also require one to follow the law of Moses?...

These two chapters mark a pivotal moment in the history of the church. Here God makes it clear to Peter and through Peter to the rest of the church community that the gospel is not just good news for Jews, it is good news for gentiles as well. In fact what we see throughout the pages of the New Testament is that when it comes to the gospel barriers and partitions that divide and exclude are broken...

If you were a member of the early Christian community the last person in the world you would have expected to become a key individual in God’s plan to grow and expand His church would have been Saul of Tarsus. In Acts 8:3 Luke describes Saul as “ravaging the church” going from house to house dragging off men and women who were Christians and sending them to prison, yet by the time we come to Acts...

As the church grew it’s systems and structures needed to grow as well to make sure that the mission of the church could continue to move forward. This meant the identifying and installation of new leaders. These leaders were chosen first and foremost based on their character and faith, but also based on the changing needs and nature of the growing community. If we are going to be a multiplying chu...