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Luke Series
Text: Luke 12
You may know John Piper's famous admontion: don't waste your life. That concept is prominent in this Sunday's passage, as our Lord gives a stark word to unbelievers and gentle encouragement to His disciples. We'll draw fresh direction and encoruagement from familiar words; five phrases to be exact.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 12:1-7
Hypocrisy. It goes hand in hand with legalism, at least by my observation. Evil bedfellows. Both suck the life out of all involved and are certainly not what Jesus had in mind when He ushered in the new covenant. Grace is the antidote, and grace is the foundation of the Gospel. Like the Pharisees, we can drift in our religion away from grace and miss the heart of God. Our passage is a reminder not to do that, as well as a wonderful reminder to reverence God and remember His tender care for us.
Salt Sunday church-wide event. No Sunday morning service.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 11:14-26
Undoubtedly this is not your normal Mother's Day passage. It's intriguing and actually has great personal application to our lives and in particular, our children's lives. The restless spirit which has been ejected from a man grabs some of his cronies and returns. This passage serves a strong example to press on in the Lord and fill our minds with godly things and not be idle or passive in following Christ.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 11:37-54
We're going to bounce around a bit in Luke 11. This here is one of my favorite passages, because it displays a side of Jesus that most people miss. It also directs us to the true nature of religion and the heart of the Gospel. It is a dramatic exchange, but upon careful consideration, it yields a LOT about the human heart and God's grace. One the one hand, the Pharisees and scribes were exposed for their hypocrisy. Yet, the original intent of their "religion" was to safeguard God's laws. Over time it was corrupted by the natural deceit of the human heart: performance based religion.
Special Guest Speaker: Dr. Frank Turek - apologist, speaker, radio & TV host, and president of Crossexamined.org
Luke Series
Text: Luke 10:25-37
Luke 10 introduces a new focus to previous discourses: keeping the law (being good) won't gain you eternal life because it's an impossible feat. In chapter 10, this crushing truth is nestled in between two not-so-new truths: the reality of Judgment Day and the consistent teaching to love others well. We'll tie all this together and focus on the essentials of the Gospel. I'm not going to preach on the law as I mentioned last week, I've switched direction.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 9:28-36
This is the Mount of Transfiguration. Moses (law) and Elijah (prophets) appear with Jesus, glorified. Peter offers the usual discombobulated babble you would expect from him. Soon enough though, the two disappear and only Jesus remains. As great as the law and the prophets stood in the minds of the disciples, they fade away before the power and presence of Jesus Christ. This will lead into a sermon next Sunday on the purpose and role of the law in the life of the believer today.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 8:40-56
We've just celebrated Easter, the resurrection. It's easy to loose our focus on the power and hope that the Gospel brings. I know many of our people are walking through tough stuff and I don't want them to become weary in doing good or faint in petitioning God for big things. He's able. When Jairus' 12 year old daughter - his only daughter - was dying, he threw himself at Jesus' feet. After an interruption, someone told Jairus his daughter had died. "Don't bother the teacher any more." How sad. Hope was lost. How many of our people grow weary of doing good in their messy situations? How often do we grow weak in prayer? How often do our people quietly throw in the towel and walk away? God can do anything. I hope to revive our people through this message to not give up and persevere through times, even seemingly hopeless situations.
Luke Series
Text Luke 7:36-50
A Pharisee invites Jesus over for dinner. When a city woman hears about it she shows up and her brokenness is on full display. She wets His feet with her tears, wipes them with her hair and kisses and anoints them with perfume. Quite the contrast to the self righteous Pharisee.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 7:1-23
Next week we'll celebrate a dead man walking. Luke provides three successive demonstrations of the power of God, and the corresponding faith of those involved. The Gentile Centurion would not even have Jesus under his roof to heal his dying servant. When hope had passed, Jesus raised the widow's son from the dead, but she had not requested this of Him. With these and other events captivating crowds, John the Baptist languished in prison and openly questioned his confidence in Jesus. Though an abundance of convincing evidence was right under his nose he could not see it, for he was weak. We'll look at both the Centurion's and John's faith, because b/c there's a little bit of both in each of us. Life has that effect on us. What's important though, is the object of our faith...that's where we draw strength. After all, next Sunday, we celebrate a dead man walking.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 24:25-27
Well we've asked people to really dig into the Word. One thing that was enormously helpful to me when I was younger was to read a book which painted the big picture of the Bible for me. I gained an understanding of how each book and character fit together. This big thick book became less intimidating. I'll walk us through the narrative, covenants, principles, and timeless truths of God's unfolding drama of redemption.It is my hope that people will be inspired to dig deeper themselves.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 24:25-27
Well we've asked people to really dig into the Word. One thing that was enormously helpful to me when I was younger was to read a book which painted the big picture of the Bible for me. I gained an understanding of how each book and character fit together. This big thick book became less intimidating. I'll walk us through the narrative, covenants, principles, and timeless truths of God's unfolding drama of redemption. it is my hope that people will be inspired to dig deeper themselves.
Guest Speaker - Mark Whitacre
It's the third month of the year, so time for my third vision piece for DBC. This Sunday we will hear Mark Whitacre direct us to the Word and speak to the importance of personal discipleship. Someone invested in him and changed the trajectory of his entire life. His undercover work with the FBI during the ADM scandal was the inspiration for the major motion picture, "The Informant." The three topics you will hear me talk a lot about this year are:
1. Digging into the Word.
2. Loving people. Loving everyone, well.
3. Personal discipleship opportunities.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 6:37-42
We continue in our study of Jesus famous teachings, this one will probably hit close to home for a lot of us. We'll focus on the destructive habit of judging others and the shrapnel that that shows up everywhere in its wake. But before we get to that we need to correctly understand what it means to "judge not, lets you be judged". That's often take out of context and misapplied. Sunday's message will be highly practical and applicable. There will be a short vignette featuring some of our teens toward the end. A theme of the message will be protecting the unity and health of the body of Christ, particularly our church family. The Scripture Reading was chosen to reflect our ongoing commitment to value and dig deep into God's Word.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 6
Last week we chased some passages which show how deeply and unconditionally we are loved by God. If you missed the message, please catch it before Sunday. That message will inform this sermon, in which we'll lay out the Christian mandate to love others well. I've said before, that I was very convicted by my study of Isaiah 58; I do not think that I (or, DBC) do enough to minister to the poor and marginalized in our community. We'll have a special reading of that passage before diving into Luke 6; please read this chapter before Sunday. This message will have a special 'vision-casting' element for how I'd like to direct our church.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 6
In this message we look at the type of radical love Jesus requires of His followers. It's a tough and resilient love. This call to love is echoed throughout the NT. Paul, in particular, hones in on this and then makes a direct application to marriage: we are all to love each other, but husbands are called upon to heighten this love within their marriage. This Sunday will be a refresher message on what love should look like between husband and wife. We all need this reminder.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 6:17-26
This is the sister message to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus often repeated key elements of His teachings in different settings. An overarching truth is that what is to come is where we should be focused, not there here and now. When we suffer loss for following Christ, we are most blessed because life is short and our reward is in heaven.
Luke Series
Text: Luke 5
Those guys who brought their paralytic friend displayed intentional and servant friendship. They did not let obstacles stop them until they literally got their guy on the roof and lowered down before Jesus. There are so many tie-ins to what relationships ("one anothers") within the church should look like. As well, we'll look at sub-themes such as the power and freedom of the Gospel juxtaposed against the attending Pharisees and scribes (and how do we draw these parallels? Through intentional study of Scripture :-)). And we will ask ourselves:do the miracles performed by Jesus in Luke 5 match those displayed by faith healers today?