Sermons on Characteristics of God
God is Light
Christianity spread throughout the Roman world despite encountering fierce, consistent resistance. Its growth reached a tipping point early in the fourth century when Rome officially legalized the religion and, only ten years later, adopted Christianity as its official religion. Roman emperor Julian (AD 332–63) came to power shortly after Christianity’s legalization and adoption and wanted to undermine its rise by reinvigorating Rome’s ancient religion. However, his agenda met with resistance that he blamed on Christianity’s practice of love. Writing about…
The Just God
Romans 3:20-26 The God of the Bible is just. Romans 3:25-26 says God has demonstrated His justice for all to see. We are made in God’s image and are born with a sense that there is a certain way the world should go. Knowing God demonstrates justice, we recognize He demands justice from His people. Is the justice we long for Biblical justice?
God was Satisfied
God was Satisfied Romans 1:1-7 The book of Romans comes out of the gate hard. God reveals His wrath. All men have compromised God’s truth for their own ways. Those compromises resulted in the suffering around us, and God is not satisfied. Like we do with broken appliances, God could’ve wiped everyone away and replaced it all, but instead, He offered restoration. God gave something precious to restore something broken. His wrath was satisfied. The result is people who are…
Healer
Healer
Mark 1:40-45
God’s healing comes kindly, patiently, and graciously. He heals enemies and outsiders. At the same time, the sick don’t prescribe their own treatment. The Lord doesn’t let us tell Him how to meet our deepest needs. Instead, the Lord demonstrates kindness to those He is in conflict with while not affirming attitudes & behaviors He defines as bad & wrong.
God, Our Mother
Nearly twenty-five years ago, I began seeing gender-inclusive religious slogans like, “Our God, She is alive.” Academic debates about feminism and patriarchy had reached a popular level and started to appear in bookstores and on bumper stickers. While some opposed gender-inclusive Bible teaching because of prejudices and others pushed gender-inclusive Bible teachings into unbiblical areas, the debate revolved around a clear center – God does describe Himself using feminine imagery in the Bible. As we celebrate Mothers’ Day today, we…
An Unexpected Return
This lesson will consider the unexpected way God returned to His people, the way prophesied by Isaiah 51-53 and fulfilled in Jesus. In a similarly unexpected way, God returns His presence to the world today through the lives of Christians, sinful people united into an unlikely family through Jesus.
The Smart God
THE SMART GOD-1 Corinthians 1:18-24–We don’t often say that God is smart. We tend to prefer more spiritual-sounding words to describe his wisdom, knowledge or understanding. Even so, our God is amazingly smart, and we are better off when we acknowledge it. Ever since Eve looked at the forbidden fruit and saw that it looked good to eat, humans have struggled to accept the fact that God knows more about life on earth than we do. Most of our sins…
Love Story
The 1970 Academy-Award winning movie Love Story traces the relationship of wealthy heir Oliver Barrett and working-class Jennifer Calleveri. Oliver, against his father’s wishes, married Jennifer, a decision that motivated his father to disown him and withhold the family’s wealth and privilege from him. Happy but struggling, the movie follows the young couple as they begin their life together until a tragic illness takes Jennifer’s life early in their marriage. The movie ends with Jennifer’s death bringing reconciliation between Oliver and his father, marked by Oliver telling his sorrowful father, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
We respond to stories like the one told in Love Story not merely because they narrate universal human experiences of love and loss, but because we sense a certain nobility them. I suspect we respond to those stories because they reflect aspects of God who “is love” (1 John 4:8). God’s identity as love shapes the Bible’s narrative, which tells a great love story. We will therefore consider the Bible’s love story in this lesson and what it means for our lives.
The Lord is…
The book of Nahum contains a small collection of poems announcing God’s judgment on Assyria and its capital city of Nineveh. God did not address its contents to us nor does it speak to any situation in our world, yet it’s message resonates with our world. This lesson briefly considers that resonance by exploring Nahum’s message and the applications it has for us today.
God is…Holy
God censored Moses for failing to respect His holiness in Numbers chapter twenty, a censor that illustrates the importance of holiness to God’s identity. We will therefore consider that story as a starting point for thinking about God’s holiness and its meaning for our lives.
God is…Just and Merciful
God revealed Himself to Israel through His interactions with the nation and, in His response to the nation’s incident with the golden calf, He revealed both His justice and His mercy. This lesson explores that story to help us better understand God’s identity and its meaning for our lives.
God is Generous
The memorable, Old Testament story of God giving Israel manna to eat in the wilderness illustrates more than God’s care for the needs of His people; it also reveals His generous character. We will therefore consider the story of God’s manna as we continue to explore the things He revealed about Himself through Moses.
God is Faithful
– This lesson continues our exploration of God’s character as revealed in the story of Moses by considering how God’s remembrance of His covenant with Abraham (Exodus 2:23-25) evidences the faithfulness that defines Him.
God is… King
God’s kingship offers one of the early, important things He reveals about Himself. This lesson considers God’s sovereign identity and begins a series exploring some of the things God revealed about Himself through Moses.
God Reveals Himself Through Beauty
Ever-present, all-knowing, all-powerful – these tend to be the words we sometimes resort to when describing God. Or maybe we rightfully describe God as love, as the God of justice and mercy. But how often do we describe God as the God of beauty? This lesson will consider God’s use of beauty in the Bible to reveal Himself and what it means for us.
From Everlasting to Everlasting
From Everlasting to Everlasting
Psalm 90:1-2
In a world full of change & innovation & temporary things, something is eternal. Psalm 90 teaches us that the God of the Bible is from everlasting to everlasting. The writer of this Psalm finds God’s eternal nature both sobering & comforting. May the knowledge of God’s eternal nature not be lost on us today.
How Can I Give You Up?
Hosea 11:1-9
Hosea’s message addressed the northern kingdom of Israel, a nation formed from the eleven Jewish tribes God stripped from king Solomon as punishment for his disregard of his covenant relationship with God (1 Kings 11:9-13). Even though God formed the Israel in response to Solomon’s unfaithfulness, the northern kingdom did not pay attention to Solomon’s example and itself embraced unfaithfulness (2 Kings 17:7-17). God consequently sent Hosea to deliver to Israel a message of coming punishment and future restoration.