Sermons on Freedom (Page 2)
Revelation 2:12-17
To Pergamum: The Too Free Church Freedom is one of the greatest words in the English language. It’s also a great biblical term. Paul wrote in Galatians 5:13, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.” And one of my all-time favorite verses is this: “If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” I really believe in Christian freedom, which I would define as the liberty to make my own doctrinal decisions and lifestyle choices under the boundaries of Scripture and under…
Luke 7:36-50
Have You Miscalculated Your Indebtedness? Every one of us likes stories, and Jesus was a storyteller par excellence. It just so happens that the first parable I am going to tackle is a parable about two debtors, but that is where the connection with last Sunday stops. Missionary aviation is a field of service that for the past fifty years has enabled the gospel to penetrate the most remote areas of the third world. About six years ago I left the southernmost…
2 Corinthians 3:7-18
The Superiority of the New Covenant I want you to engage your sanctified imaginations this morning. Transport yourself with me back to the year 950 B.C. Solomon is the King of Israel; the magnificent Temple of Solomon, which took 150,000 workers seven years to build, is just about 15 years old, having taken the place of the Tabernacle which was built in Moses’ day some 500 years before. You live in Jerusalem and are a devout believer, so you walk to the Temple…
Galatians 3
How to Turn Legalistic Homes and Churches into Havens of Grace Jean Jacques Rosseau began his famous treatise, The Social Contract, with these famous words: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” I would like to paraphrase that slightly: “Man is born‑again free and yet everywhere we see him going back to the chains that bound him before his conversion.” I see two common kinds of slavery among Christian people. One is a slavery to worldliness–materialism, sinful pleasures, and spiritual…
Galatians 4:21-31
Two Sons, Two Covenants When I was in Seminary my homiletics professor waxed eloquent on more than one occasion on the advantages of expository preaching, as opposed to topical preaching or textual preaching. Among the advantages he reiterated were that it keeps the preacher from riding hobby horses, it gives the people a balanced diet, and it allows the Bible to speak for itself. There is another important factor which I don’t recall my prof mentioning, namely that expository preaching forces…
Galatians 5:1-12
The Only Thing that Counts I heard about a preacher of the last century who preached on the same text, John 3:16, every Sunday for five consecutive years and never preached the same sermon. Well, I’ve been accused of preaching the same sermon for the past three months, only from four different chapters. And in a sense that’s true. Virtually every paragraph of the Book of Galatians from the first verse has employed a different way of saying the same thing, namely that…
James 1:19-27
When Religion Is Worthless (or, I Believe in Christian Living) I have given two titles to my sermon today. The first is When Religion Is Worthless, the reason for which title will become clear as we go through the text. The second is I Believe in Christian Living. I want to explain where the second comes from. As you will recall, we did a two-month series in April and May on our proposed new EFCA Statement of Faith, called This We Believe. I took the eight major topics…
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