Open House Church Sermons

Mountains can be treacherous places, whether the danger is real or just in your head. Psalm 121 was sung by pilgrims climbing toward Jerusalem, and it asks one honest question: when life gets steep, where does your help come from? The God who made the mountains also rules over them. He never dozes on watch. He stays at your side like shade in scorching heat. This is no promise of an easy road. Jes...

A runaway slave walks back into the very house he fled. Under Roman law, Onesimus could be imprisoned or killed. Instead, a short letter asks Philemon to receive him not as property but as a beloved brother. The gospel builds a new family that reorders every old power dynamic, obligation, and grudge. Slavery could not survive that truth for long. Behind the request stands Jesus, the master of heav...

A runaway slave, a former deserter, a wealthy hostess, and a Greek doctor all turn up in one short list at the end of Colossians. They were the kind of people the ancient world never expected to see united. What held them together was not shared background but a shared Saviour. Christ poured His love into them through the Spirit, reconciled old enemies, and made them one body. The same love bound...

Plenty of people treat faith as a private spiritual matter, separate from ordinary life at home and work. Colossians 3:18 to 4:6 refuses that split. The rule of Jesus reaches into marriage, parenting, and the workplace, reshaping every relationship. In its Roman setting these instructions were quietly subversive. Husbands were told to love, not just command; runaway slaves were named as brothers i...

A coffee-shop critic called a book "demonic." The false teachers at Colossae used the same trick, telling Christians they were not mature or spiritual enough. Colossians 3 answers that pressure: you have already died and risen with Christ, joined to Him like a branch grafted into a tree. From that reality, a new way of living grows. Sexual sin and rage and slander get stripped off like o...

A teenager once met a self-styled prophet who oozed spiritual superiority and looked down on ordinary believers. The false teachers at Colossae did the same. Colossians 2:16-23 names three of their traps: clinging to Old Testament food laws and festivals, boasting about heavenly visions and angels, and harsh self-discipline meant to conquer sin. Paul calls all three shadows. Jesus is the substance...

Full bank accounts, the dream home, the perfect body. The culture keeps promising wholeness one rung higher. Colossians 2:6-15 says you already have it in Christ. The false teachers at Colossae told believers that Jesus was good but not enough; they needed extra rules and rituals to be complete. Paul cuts that off. In Christ lives the whole fullness of God, and you have been filled in Him. Your de...

False teachers told the Colossian church that Jesus was not enough. Believe in Him, they said, but add a strict diet, spiritual rules, and devotion to angels for the real thing. Colossians answers plainly. The hidden mystery of God is simply Christ, and Christ lives in His people. That is everything you need for both forgiveness and growth. The gospel is not the entry door you leave behind; it is...

The world is in a mess, and no president, nation, or movement is big enough to fix it. Colossians 1 points to the one who can. Jesus made all things, holds all things together, and is reordering the whole cosmos through the blood of His cross. He is the perfect image of God and the head of the church, the beginning of a new creation. His death reconciles rebels to God and secures them for the end....

If you want to know what someone treasures, listen to their thanks and their prayers. In Colossians 1, false teachers were pressuring a small church to believe Jesus plus a strict diet, visions, and harsh discipline. The reply is steady and clear. The gospel itself is bearing fruit across the world, and it bears fruit wherever faith meets it. You cannot grow by adding to Jesus; you grow by going d...

When was the last time you spent six hours hungry to hear God's word? In Nehemiah 8, a whole community gathers at the city gate and asks for the Scriptures to be read and explained. As they hear God's law, they break down in grief over their sin. Yet weeping is not the end. A gracious God meets repentance with pardon, and mourning turns to celebration. Real strength comes not from rebuil...

A 13-year-old once swam four kilometres to drag his stranded family back to shore. You only grasp a rescue when you see how desperate the situation was. Sin is no joke. It is active hatred of the God who gives you life, and a holy God will not wave it away. Yet at the cross God did the unthinkable. He made the sinless Christ to be sin, took the guilt, and credited Christ's perfect record to y...

A wartime message turned from "send reinforcements" into "send three and four pence." Could the same garbling have happened to the New Testament? Four common objections get a fair hearing: the texts changed over time, the writers were biased, books were secretly left out, and parts just feel wrong. The evidence pushes back. Thousands of early manuscripts, embarrassing details t...

Some Australians file the resurrection alongside Snow White and Sleeping Beauty: a nice story, but not a true one. Luke 24 reads nothing like that. It opens with a careful, orderly account written by a physician for a man who wanted certainty. Four clues press the question: the empty tomb, Jesus predicting His own rising, embarrassing details the apostles would never invent, and valuable grave clo...

Most people think suffering disproves God. Good Friday turns that idea on its head. The trial, torture, and death of Jesus was one of the cruellest injustices ever, yet the one who hung there was God in the flesh. He drank the cup of judgment, the wrath rebels deserve, so anyone who trusts Him would not have to. So the real question becomes why an all-powerful God would let Himself suffer like thi...

A donkey, not a warhorse, carried the king into Jerusalem. The crowds waved palm branches and shouted for a Messiah who would crush Rome. The religious leaders wanted Him dead as a threat to their power. Both got Him wrong. Jesus chose a lowly animal to announce a king who comes in peace, fulfilling Zechariah's promise. He came not to kill enemies but to be killed, taking the judgement rebels...

A prophet sits outside a city, hoping God will destroy it. Nineveh has just repented, and Jonah is furious that God showed mercy to people he hates. His anger exposes a heart that loves being rescued but resents the same grace given to others. Sin flips our moral sense upside down, so God's kindness can feel like evil. God patiently confronts Jonah with a question, then leaves it hanging for...

A preacher who wanted his mission to fail still triggers a city-wide turn to God. Jonah marches a day into wicked Nineveh, mutters five Hebrew words of doom, and walks out. No mention of God. No hope offered. Yet the people believe, the king sits in ashes, and even the animals fast. God relents. This is the shock of grace: violent, murderous people forgiven when they repent. God's mercy never...

A man swallowed by a sea monster prays from inside it, and his prayer sounds impressive. It is stitched together from the Psalms. But Jonah quotes the songs of innocent sufferers, never the prayers of confession, and never mentions that he ran from God. He thanks God for rescue while pointing the finger at idol worshippers. So God tells the fish to vomit him onto dry land. Even then, God saves him...

A prophet runs from God, sails the opposite way, then sleeps below deck while a storm tears at the ship. The pagan sailors around him pray, cast lots, and tremble before a God they barely know. Jonah claims to fear the Lord but disobeys Him at every turn. That is fake reverence; true fear of God shows itself in obedience and delight, not religious labels. Jesus is the better prophet, the one who w...

God commands a young prophet to marry an unfaithful woman, then to buy her back when she ends up for sale in a slave market. It is a living picture. Israel had everything materially under a long, prosperous reign, yet abandoned the God who loved them, chasing idols like a wife chasing other men. Hosea pays silver and barley to redeem the wife who deserted him. That is what God does, and it is what...

Does long, unexplained suffering mean Jesus has gone cold towards you? The opposite is true. When a leper begged to be made clean, Jesus reached out and touched him, moved with deep pity. From heaven now, Jesus does not lead from a distance; as our great high priest He shares our pain and was tested in every way, yet never sinned. So you can pray with bold confidence and expect timely help. And Hi...

Most people fear they have sinned past the point where God would welcome them. Hosea 11 says otherwise. Even as the northern kingdom of Israel sold the poor and chased idols, God's heart recoiled at the thought of giving them up. His compassion grew warm because He is God, not a man whose patience runs thin. In John 6, Jesus promises that everyone the Father gives Him will come, and whoever c...

Jesus only once in the Gospels peels back every layer and names what sits at His core. He says it plainly in Matthew 11:29: gentle and lowly in heart. Gentle means He is considerate of your pain, your habits, your mental health. Lowly means He is not too important for the ashamed or the failures. Isaiah 57:15 confirms it: God dwells in the highest heaven yet also in the dust beside the broken and...

Christ bought His church with His own blood. That single fact redefines how you treat a local congregation. Acts 20 records Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders, laying out four ways leaders serve: by example, by love, by proclaiming God's whole counsel, and by the Holy Spirit's power. Pastors are not life coaches or therapists. They point you to Scripture and to Christ. False tea...