Category: Sermons

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The God who has everything

green leafed tree beside body of water during daytime

Psalm 50 is a psalm of Asaph where God is the judge and he is calling his people (Israel) into the courtroom. He calls the entire heavens and earth together to witness His judgment of Israel. In verses 7-12, God addresses the defendant–His own people–not to condemn them for their failure to worship but to correct their understanding of worship. Up to this point, the Israelites were going through the motions of worship and sacrifice, but they were expecting something in return from God. They were essentially “buying” God’s attention by proving to God how much they loved Him.

God was not impressed, and now he was calling them into His courtroom. “I testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the field is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills” (vs. 7-10). Everything already belongs to God. God’s favor cannot be purchased with money, sacrifices, or worship. God is self-sufficient. He has no needs. What he wants is our faithful obedience. He wants us to serve one another.

God hates transactional worship. God cannot be bought, bribed, or fed. The pagan religions literally would lay food out for their gods to consume. If the gods were fed, they were pleased. If they were pleased, they would bless. God has no interest. You cannot enrich the owner of the universe. God wants our hearts. He wants our obedience. He wants us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Christ. We do not worship to meet God’s needs; we worship to recognize that he meets ours.

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The origin of generosity

photo of a beggar receiving money from a person

With the new year comes a new theme: “The giving heart: A journey to radical love.” This year we will focus on the importance of giving that leads us to a path of radical love. The more we give–of our time, ourselves, our money and talents–the more God blesses us. To fully understand this principle, we have to move away from transactional Christianity (doing things to get things) and towards transformational generosity. God is not transactional. He doesn’t want to enter into a contract with us. He is, however, transformative. He wants our hearts. He created us in His image and transforms us by His grace.

The origin of our generosity comes directly from God. James says, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures” (James 1:16-18). Giving is directly tied to radical love. God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal live (John 3:16).

This year is going to be the best year of giving that we have ever experienced! We cannot outgive God. The more we allow him to transform us, the more we are able to bless others. God is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega. God told the Israelites, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). And God has a plan for us!

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The baby who leaped for joy

smiling baby lying on bed in room

When Mary visited her relative Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, the baby leaped for joy: “For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:44). Joy surrounded the birth of Jesus. When the shepherds were in the field in the middle of the night, an angel appeared. The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. The angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people” (Luke 2:10).

As the wise men saw the star that went before them and came to rest over the place where the baby Jesus was, “they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10). In John 15:11, Jesus says plainly, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Jesus said this in the context of him being the vine and us being the branches. He says that if we abide in him and bear much fruit, we glorify the Father. Jesus concludes by saying, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

All throughout the scriptures, joy is a theme that is directly tied to Jesus. And this combination of love and joy is powerful. By keeping Jesus’ commandments, we abide in his love! In other words, we are controlled by his love and we can see people the way Jesus saw them. We instinctively know how to treat others because of the love of Christ that guides us. God’s love for us begins and ends with joy.

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Finding your God-given “ness”

stacked of stones outdoors

We often spend our spiritual lives striving to do more: read more, serve more, pray more. But what if the key to a fulfilling Christian life lies not in action, but in being? This is the power of the “ness” suffix—the state or quality of being. We aren’t called to merely perform kind acts; we are called to embody kindness. We aren’t meant to simply pursue good habits; we are meant to possess goodness. To find our “Ness” is to embark on a journey of discovering the whole, complete identity that Christ has already secured for us, moving from human striving to Holy Spirit-enabled character.

Our path to wholeness begins with the foundational “Ness”: Righteousness. This state of being right with God is not achieved by our efforts, but is received solely through faith in Christ (Philippians 3:9). Once established in this gift, the Holy Spirit cultivates the “Character Nesses,” such as Goodness and Kindness (Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 4:32), which reflect God’s heart outwardly. This character then informs our external disposition, leading to Readiness (1 Peter 3:15)—the active state of being prepared to share the hope we possess and to obey God’s call. Additionally, we are called to embrace Holiness, Oneness, Willingness, and Forgiveness as essential facets of our new spiritual identity.

Ultimately, these interconnected states lead us to the profound realization of our Completeness. As Colossians 2:9-10 assures us, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” You are not fragmented; you are not lacking. Your Christ-given “Ness” means you are fully equipped, fully loved, and fully whole. The challenge this week is simple: stop striving and start resting in the glorious state of being God has provided.

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Be the “yes” in a world of “nos”

an elderly man standing beside a wall holding a cardboard sign

The silence on the other end of the phone was crushing. A desperate young mother, Nikalie Monroe, was out of formula for her hungry baby, and in a recent viral social experiment, she called the institutional Church for help. Over and over, the answer she heard was a bureaucratic, hardline “No.” Isn’t that a devastating indictment of our priorities? At the very moment the church was locking the door, we witnessed the beautiful contrast of a Pittsburgh father, AJ Owen, who simply partnered with his two young children to build a free food pantry in their front yard. No committee, no budget approval, no bureaucracy, just an immediate, personal “Yes” to the needs of his neighbors. Over 18 million people viewed his TikTok video and many started pantries of their own in the past two weeks. This contrast forces us to confront a vital question: Which example truly reflects the heart of the Father we claim to follow?

This tension between the “No” of the institution and the “Yes” of the individual is woven all through Scripture, proving this struggle isn’t new. 1 John 3:17 says, “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” Remember the priest and the Levite who walked on the opposite side of the road of the man who’d been beaten? It was the Samaritan who cared for the man. Jesus replied to the lawyer, “‘Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You go and do likewise'” (Luke 10:36-37).

The challenge for us today is clear: Will we allow our systems to harden our hearts, leading us to say a collective “No” to the desperate pleas of our community? Or will we empower the individual, immediate, compassionate “Yes” right where we live? Our mission is simple: to see the person in need and care for them. The Apostle James reminds us, “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” Let’s commit to being the unexpected Samaritans our neighbors desperately need.

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The women who provided for Jesus

woman in white veil representing virgin mary

Jesus grew up in a poor family. He was not well off, yet his ministry was the most effective in the history of the planet. He instructed his followers to take nothing with them for their journeys, highlighting both the need for them to depend fully on their faith that God would provide and limiting waste. When we bring a lot of things along, we tend to get bogged down and the mission loses focus. We can see this with the vast amount of money churches put into their buildings and programs rather than in missions.

Though Jesus sent his disciples out without any extra food or clothing, he was supported by the Galilean women: And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joann, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means” (Like 8:1-3). Jesus’s mission work couldn’t have happened without the aid of these women “and many others” providing for them out of their means.

Jesus was not alone in this. Paul, who is known for being a tent maker, still received help from the Philippian church: “And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only” (Philippians 4:15). Increasing mission work also means increasing mission support. When churches work together, they can accomplish a lot for the kingdom!

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It has been granted to you to suffer for his name

a frightened man sitting alone on a chair

The Bible is full of stories of failure and promises of suffering. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul talks about advancing the gospel. He says that “what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ” (Philippians 1:12-13). He goes on to say that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul then encourages them by saying, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have” (vs. 29-30).

Simon Sinek, a famous organizational consultant, says that successful people have failed multiple times, often to the point of “hitting zero” or falling close to it. He argues that failure is not an endpoint but a crucial part of the journey, providing the most important lessons and driving the innovation that leads to success. The key is not to avoid failure, but to learn from it by getting back up and trying again.  The Bible agrees. Paul says we “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4).

Over and over again the Bible promises suffering. James says to consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds, because the testing of our faith produces perseverance. When we face trials, failures are bound to happen. Moses murdered someone. Peter denied Christ. David was an adulterer. Paul persecuted Christians to the point of death. It was those failures and their suffering that led to endurance, perseverance, character, and hope. Failure is not the endpoint but a crucial part of the journey.