I don’t know about you, but the older I’ve gotten, the more I have appreciated the gravity of Christmas. As a child, Christmas is all about the presents. It’s all focused on Santa Claus and Christmas morning. As you move into adolescence and young adulthood, you begin to have an appreciation for the entire season, the music, and the traditions. For many, nostalgia about childhood becomes a major part of the celebration. But the older you get the more you pile on experiences that make some of that wear thin. You have friends and family that go in and out of your life–sometimes through broken relationships and sometimes through death.…

One of the most dangerous traps we sinners can fall into is to think about God, to relate to God, or to speak to God as if he were the creature and we were the Almighty. It is exactly this sort of attitude that Jesus confronts in John 5:31-47. In this passage, Jesus explains two actions that are rightly performed by the Deity toward his creatures but must never performed by creatures toward the Deity. John 5:34, “I do not receive testimony from man.” John 5:41, “I do not receive glory from men.” [Hear the rest of the message at the Spotify or Apple links below.]

A sermon on John 5:24-30. [Hear the message at the Spotify or Apple links below.]

Last Saturday, I watched an old video of the moments right after my son’s birth. Right after the delivery, the nurses took him to a table near the bed, cleaned him off, and put medical tags around his wrist and around his ankle. Do you know why they did that? So that no one at any time would get confused about who this baby is. I recently read about two men who were born on the same day in the same hospital in Canada 67 years ago (source, source). A few years ago, the men discovered that the hospital sent them home with the wrong families. At this point, all…

We are a people prone to allow lesser things to loom larger in our thoughts than God does. For those without Christ, ignoring God or denying His beneficence is a way of life. The apostle Paul says it this way: Romans 1:21, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” But even for those of us who have experienced the grace of God, is it not the case that we too are often tempted to let other things loom large in our imaginations while God appears to be…

Why did people reject Jesus and fail to give him honor? Because the old secular proverb is still true: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” People witnessed Jesus’ perfections with their own eyes. Nevertheless, they could not fathom how ordinary and imperfect Mary and Joseph–with all their other rascally kids–could come produce someone worthy of worship. They knew his parents. They knew his siblings. And they knew him. And there was nothing remarkable to them in anything that they had seen. And so they appeal to their familiarity with this family as a basis to dishonor Jesus. [Hear the rest of the sermon at the Spotify or Apple links below.]

Jesus’ behavior toward women reflects the fact that God created both male and female in his image with equal value and dignity and differing complementary callings and roles. Their differences don’t negate their equality, nor does their equality negate their complementary differences. Thus, wherever Christianity has taken root in a culture, the lot of women has improved. “Men treat women with respect, and they take humble, courageous initiatives to protect women and create stable, loving families where the covenant faithfulness of husband and wife display the mystery of Christ and to his church to the world” (Piper). Jesus is showing us that even if other men wouldn’t give this woman…

Sometimes we have an egocentric allergy to confrontation—to being criticized in any way. And yet how foolish and impoverished we are for it. It is this allergy to conflict that not only makes people behave in foolish ways, but also makes them resist following Jesus. Jesus offers a series of confrontations to the Samaritan woman at the well, and the only way she’s ever going to taste the living water is on the other side of these confrontations. How will she respond? How will you respond? I.   Jesus Confronts Sin (4:16-18) II.  Jesus Confronts False Religion (4:19-22) III. Jesus Confronts Unspiritual Worship (4:23-26) [Hear the rest of the sermon at…

The Gospel of John introduces us to a Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well. Jesus will say to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who speaks to you… you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” And do you know what her response is? “Where’s your bucket?” She’s looking for something from Jesus that He isn’t offering; and what He is offering, she’s not looking for. And I want to submit to you this morning that this isn’t just her problem. On display in this woman’s response to Jesus is the human condition—which means it’s all of…