Luke 17:1-10: How the Gospel Shapes our Service of Others
The differences between true religion and false religion are striking. False religion is judgemental, true religion is accepting; false religion is strident and forceful, true religion is gentle and yielding; false religion is critical and harsh; true religion is gracious and encouraging; loveless vs loving; external holiness vs internal holiness; hypocritical vs genuine; we all know the difference between true and false religion. False religion is repulsive but true religion is attractive. Our hearts are by nature religious; that means we are vulnerable to the deceptions and promises of false religion and hungry for true religion. Jesus throughout the...
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Luke 14:15-24: The Parable of the Great Banquet
We are all familiar with missed opportunities. A most important decision comes along and we don’t grab it, we choose the wrong thing and we regret it. There are many examples of this, here are some well-known examples from the world of business. In the early 2000s the company Yahoo was approached by Google to buy it for 1 million dollars, they rejected the offer and in 2020 Google reached the 1 trillion dollar mark. In 2000 Netflix approached Blockbuster to buy it out for 50 million, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and today Netflix is worth 228...
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Luke 11:37-54: Defleecing Wolves
What is a shepherd to do when there are wolves? You might think that the right thing would be to kill the wolves and protect the sheep. When spiritual shepherds are dealing with spiritual wolves our tactics are slightly different. We have to confront the wolves hoping that the Spirit will use the truth to help them see and repent, we long to see the wolves themselves saved and become sheep, but we also have the responsibility of warning the sheep. In this next section as we come to the climax of Christ’s confrontation with the unbelieving crowd, Christ...
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Luke 11:24-28: A Call for True Conversion
In 2021 there are about 2.5 Billion Christians in name in the world today. But how many of these Christians in name are Christians in truth? What is the difference between a Christian in name and a Christian in reality? There are all sorts of people who are associated with Christ but who are not believers. There are many who fill out in their funeral forms, or any forms that ask for religious affiliation, that they are Christian. There are those born in a so called Christian country and who have been baptised into a national church but are...
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Luke 7:36-50: A Forgiven Sinner’s Love for Christ
When do you know if someone is truly a Christian? This can be a difficult question to answer for on the one hand you and I cannot read the heart of another and so will always have an imperfect ability to make a judgement. However, there is also a call in scripture for us to evaluate a person’s credible confession of faith. The true test of someone’s faith is not the amount of religiosity they indulge in, a person can go to church a lot and not be saved; the amount of theologically correct doctrine we have, for some...
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Luke 6:43-49: Concluding Challenges to True Religion
As my introduction to this sermon let me give a quote about conclusions to sermons: ‘The last sixty seconds are typically the most dynamic moments in excellent sermons. With these final words, a preacher marshals the thought and emotion of the entire message into an exhortation that makes all that has preceded clear and compelling. A conclusion is a sermon’s destination. Ending contents are alive—packed with tension, drama, energy, and emotion. This never means bombast and does not necessitate grandiloquence, since deep and powerful thought are often expressed in quiet, sincere terms. Masterful conclusions sometimes thunder, and other times...
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Luke 6:17-26: Jesus Teaching on Blessing: Part One
Jesus was the greatest teacher who has ever lived, He would have spoken the truth perfectly with no error. Would He have had the greatest gifts in preaching? All we can know is that He would have been perfectly fitted to preach outdoors to very large groups. Jesus taught authoritatively on God as our Father, on Himself as divine and the Spirit as personal. He taught on angels, and demons, heaven and hell. He taught on the historicity of creation and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. He taught about the purpose of His coming to earth to save sinners...
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Luke 6:1-11: The Lord of the Sabbath
Many have the wrong idea about Christianity thinking that God has a taste for dry religious service. Many think God to be a stuffy bureaucrat who loves to multiply rules and empty ceremonies. But this is the wonderful thing about Jesus Christ, He reveals the Father and His will to us, and in this next section in Luke 6:1-11 we see that Jesus overturns false religion when he overturns man made laws which have been added to God’s laws, as well as loveless interpretations of His laws. Love and law are not opposites, but rather love fulfils the law....
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Luke 5:33-39: One Greater Than Fasting is here
Solus Christus, Christ Alone! This was one of the heart cries of the Reformation. It was a statement which spoke about the sufficiency of Christ as a Saviour, that His works alone and not also ours were enough, that His mediation and not that of Mary, the Saints, or the angels was enough. It was a rejection of all Christ-and… ideas. This challenge of Christ alone is still with us today. In light of Post-Modernism which doubts all exclusive truth claims, to insist that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to...
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Jonah 1:4-6: The Storm
Storms have proven to be effective means of bringing people closer to God. It was Martin Luther’s prayer in a thunderstorm that resulted in him giving up his law studies and taking up monastic vows. Louis Zamperini the WWII air gunner who was shot down and was stuck in a life raft for days lost at sea cried out for God to save him in the middle of a storm. John Newton while bailing out water in a damaged ship in the midst of a storm cried out to God for salvation. Jonah is another who God brings closer...
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Romans 15:20-24: Paul the pioneer missionary
Introduction: I would like to begin by adapting a well-known illustration relating to missions that John Piper uses in his book Let the Nations Be Glad.1 You along with ten others are on an old school lifeguard boat with oars attending to a sinking ship. You are the captain of this little band of life savers. The ship you are attending is a liner with many people that cannot swim and there are only a few life boats. You and you little team get stuck in and are trying to rescue as many as you can. But suddenly you...
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1 Samuel 4: ‘…having a form of godliness…’
Outline Emergency religion Pragmatic religion Idolatrous religion Introduction One commentator calls this section ‘rabbit foot theology’ because of the superstitious and unbiblical way in which the Israelites follow the living God in chapter 4. That about sums up the religion of the day. We are moving now into a new section where Samuel who has been introduced is put away for a few chapters and God takes the foreground. We have had several statements of God’s acting against the wicked and prophecies against the corrupt leaders of Israel, God is now going to act in fulfilment of those things....
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Romans 10:2-4: Religion that cannot save
Introduction: In the west we are becoming less religious and more religious at the same time. Christianity is on the decline and atheism on the increase, but ironically as Christianity is cast off other religious worldviews are rushing in to take their place. This growth in religion can be put down to many different things. Our increasing knowledge of the world has turned the many isolated countries into a single global village where we have been confronted with others cultures and faiths, this has caused many to re-evaluate their own Christian heritage in the West and opt for an...
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