Category Archives: Sermons

Suffering in the Spirit: Death, Adoption, and Groaning

How can Christians have confidence in the truth of the gospel when their present situation is so different than what the Bible says they have been given in Christ? In this sermon we see the connection between the believer’s present suffering and future glory. The Holy Spirit, Paul tells us, connects us with our future resurrection even in our present struggle with sin, the curse, and death.
The text for the sermon is Romans 8:10-27. It was delivered by me at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Cleveland,TN on June 26, 2011. The previous message can be found here.

062611amsermon

Living Under a Pro-Choice President

John Piper discusses what it is like to be a pro-life Christian under a Pro-Choice President. He writes:

That is the title of a sermon I preached January 17, 1993, three days before Bill Clinton was inaugurated president. It is just as relevant—or more—today.

The text was 1 Peter 2:17, “Honor the king.” I closed with eight ways to honor a pro-choice president. The seventh was this:

We will honor you by expecting from you straightforward answers to straightforward questions. We would not expect this from a con-man, but we do expect it from an honorable man.

For example,

  1. Are you willing to explain why a baby’s right not to be killed is less important than a woman’s right not to be pregnant?
  2. Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?
  3. Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?
  4. And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the “Freedom of Choice Act” by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Perhaps you have good answers to each of these questions. We will honor you by expecting you to defend your position forthrightly in the public eye.

You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better.

[HT: James Grant]

The Doctrine of Glorification

My former Hebrew professor’s teaching assistant has posted a good sermon online at Sermon Exchange on the topic of Glorification and the various passages of Scripture that expound upon it. I encourage everyone to read it and be encouraged! Below is an excerpt…

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Glorification – Various Texts

by Ike Huges

House, MASH, St. Elsewhere, ER, Doogie Houser, General Hospital, Scrubs, Trapper John, MD, Dr. Kildare, Becker, Ben Casey, Chicago Hope, Gray’s Anatomy, Medical Investigations, Grosse Anatomy. What do all of these have common?

These are all shows about doctors. Some are dramas. Some are comedies. Some are soap operas, or stories as my grandmother used to call them. When you have shows about doctors, what else do you have?

Sick people.

Hollywood has made a very lucrative industry out of shows about sick people.

Then there are books. I went into our bookcase, well one of our book cases, to look for a medical dictionary so that I could regale you with big medical terms and I looked at some of the books that Michelle kept from her time in nursing school and I about fell over.

She has a stack of 4 or 5 books that equal close to an entire semester’s worth of reading for me. And those were a small token of what she had to buy and read during nursing school. I’m sure that Becky and Celia have similar books in their libraries.

Then there are friends of mine who are doctors. I checked out a website that told me it could take up to nine years to become a doctor.

9 years of your life in school and as an intern and as a resident. If you want to specialize in a certain field, it would take another 3 years of study.

Nurses and Doctors spend a great amount of time and effort to gain the information that they have to take care of …sick people.

There are health programs and diet programs and all sorts of programs where you, in the comfort of your own home, can help to prevent some of the illnesses that we deal with in life.

We as a nation invest thousands of dollars into research to prevent many of the illnesses. We take medicines; we exercise; we use anti-bacterial soap all in a effort to keep ourselves from getting sick.

America has made a huge, expensive industry out of health care.

But this fixation on health comes from a deeper drive. This drive to keep from getting sick is pushed on by our drive to stay alive. In many of the shows that I listed above, the people get better.

Usually someone only dies on a show when the actor is ready to move on. And then we know that they will show up on another show or in a movie at some point.

But it’s not the same with you and me. We know that many of the sicknesses that we face end in death. Cancer; Leukemia; Lou Gehrig’s disease; Muscular Dystrophy; Cerebral Palsy, just to name a few.

Funeral homes today are nationwide chains. I worked for a very short period of time with one of the chains that owned 6 funeral homes in Tampa and many more around the country. And I never set foot in a funeral home. I worked in a sales office selling arrangements. My job was to sell you your arrangements prior to your death.

Death is a huge industry in our lives.

No matter where we look, no matter what we do, no matter where we go, sickness and pain and suffering and death are all around us. Some of us today are sick; some of us today are in pain; some of us today are suffering.

Today we are going to look at what hope the Christian can take in the midst of all this pain and sickness suffering and death. We are going to look at a concept called Glorification and what it means for the Christian in light of the fact that we are surrounded by pain, suffering, sickness and death.

(continue reading…)

Why Did the Bridge Collapse?

Most of you have seen the new reports and seen the raw video footage of the bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsing into the river and killing many people who were driving across it. Though the details of why the structure collapsed in a material sense are not known, we do know why the structure collapsed and why it is that so many people were killed and injured.

For those of you who do not know what I’m referring to, please listen to John Piper’s message overlaid on the video footage from their video team that went out last night after the bridge collapsed. His ministry and church are within only a couple of minutes of where the bridge collapsed and several of the people who work for Desiring God drove across that bridge ever day.

Pray for their ministry and that they will have great opportunities to share this message and the reality of God’s love for this sinful place in the coming days and months of recovery and reconstruction that will take place right in their home town.

Free Download: The Best of Jonathan Edwards Sermons

Christian Audio has a great new offer for the month of June. They are giving away an MP3 set of Jonathan Edwards sermons! Here is the link.

The Best of Jonathan Edwards Sermons

The Best of Jonathan Edwards Sermons (Unabridged)

Author: Jonathan Edwards
Publisher: Hovel Audio
Narrator: David Cochran Heath
Run Time: 3.5 Hrs

The Jonathan Edwards trilogy includes three of the most important sermons ever preached on American soil. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is maybe the most important and well-known sermon of his, but also included is A Divine and Supernatural Light describing and illuminating what Edwards describes as a supernatural light imparted by God. His farewell sermon was given in June of 1750 and is a commendation to those who are in the Lord’s service, a plea to maintain unity, avoid dissension and false doctrine, and a call to devote themselves to prayer.

The original price: $14.98

After Rebate Code: $0.00

Hurry and download it before the month of June passes away!