Sermons Christ Community Church: Daytona Beach, FL

In Christ you are called to freedom from the "curse of the law," the crushing constraints of legalistic religion, and to live in love.

...who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. That's the heart of the gospel for Easter and every day! Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

No matter how bleak our present circumstances, God’s holy name is the guarantee of all God’s promises. When all is said and done, God’s holy name will be our eternal reason for praise.

The more fully you receive the grace of the cross, the more thoroughly you find the power of hope.

The miracles of Christmas bear witness to the unparalleled uniqueness of the gift of Jesus. The proper response to these miracles for us - is to be filled with humble, grateful wonder.

…In [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Through the cross Jesus passed the test that Adam and every human fails, and bore the condemnation of our failures to bring us back into covenant with God.

What does it mean to go deeper in times of difficulty?

This morning we’re looking at how a deeper communion with Christ leads to deeper commitment to each other.

This morning we’re looking at how a deeper communion with Christ is deeply connected to a deeper obedience to Christ.

Jesus says fruitful spiritual life comes through deeper communion with him.

What are you building your life on?

The deeper strength you need in life comes from being deeply rooted in the love of Christ.

Firstly, can you have peace with God? Secondly, can you KNOW you have peace with God?

But again and again, we come up against the gravitational pull of our former selves or our current selves. We look into our hearts, and we realize - that thing I was struggling with when I was young, that thing I’ve been praying about for years, I’m still struggling with it now. So, is there any hope of deep and lasting transformation in the Christian life?

: You must walk with integrity because the Lord is coming to destroy evil and bring you home.

This is a passage about Kings, and how they react to the coming of the greatest King of all.

The Christmas story when believed changes the whole way you look at the world - the entire course of the life you live - can change not only your here and now but your hereafter and your eternal destiny and because of all that -- it can change any mood when deeply believed.

If someone like Jesus makes the extraordinary claim that He is the Son of God, you’re going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to back up a claim like that. Very religious people make similar demands too. And Jesus says to them, “The only sign you’ll get is the sign of the prophet Jonah.” So what exactly IS the sign of Jonah?

The compassion of God is purposeful.

In the Christian faith, when you put your faith in Christ and invite him into your life, he begins to work on you to change you into the person he wants you to become. It's a process. It requires patience.

Theologians call it God’s “immutability”: the idea that God is unchangeable in His essence, His nature, and His perfections. Firstly, this is good news because it means God’s PERSON, God’s being, is unchangeable. Secondly, it’s good news because his CHARACTER is unchangeable. Thirdly and finally, this is good news because it means God’s PLANS and PROMISES to you are unchangeable.

God uses this story to teach us that he is both a God of steadfast love and a God of righteous judgment. And therefore, we need to be sure that we get right with him. Repentance is how we do that.

It is not unreasonable to believe in the divinity of Jesus, that it is not unreasonable to believe in miracles.

It’s often when we are at our very lowest that we have the deepest insights about who we are and who God is.

No matter how deep our distress, we can call on the Lord for help.

First, sin always leads to a storm. And secondly, there is love in the storm.

What Jonah teaches us from the very beginning is that it is foolish to run away from even the most demanding assignment from God. When God calls us to do something, the only way to go forward is to trust and obey.

The book of Jonah presents Jonah as disobedient, selfish, bitter, angry, and foolish. And yet, no one would have known the details of the story to tell it except Jonah himself. So the evidence suggests Jonah, on the other side of his own repentance and restoration, is inspired by God to tell his own story in a self-deprecating manner that highlights how foolish he had been.

Jesus bears a shameful death for our sake.

The women looked up and saw the empty tomb, we can look up and see the risen Christ assuring us of God's grace.

We can know the Risen Christ through Scripture and the Lord's Supper

Jesus calls us to make disciples, relying on his power and presence.

In the ascension, Jesus completed the work of redemption, poured out the Holy Spirit, and lives as our High Priest.

In Communion our spirits are nourished and our Community is strengthened.

If You Want To Love Life You Have To Show Grace

In order to love life and see good days, we must extend the goodness of forgiveness to one another.

How do we seek peace in the midst of conflict?

God, who draws us into a spiritual oneness with himself and each other, calls us to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

As the book of Acts begins, we enter a new season of Christ's reign, as he pursues people to the ends of the earth through his Spirit empowered witnesses.

God gives the Holy Spirit to all who have faith in Christ.

When a person repents and believes in Jesus, they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit who empowers them for the Christian Life.

The church is strengthened for its challenges and its mission through Spirit-led devotion.

The Wholeness and Restoration we long for doesn't come through human power or piety, but through faith in the name of Jesus

Joy for a Chrisitian is the deeper realism of a resilient faith in Jesus.

Unbelief is a matter the heart, and we should not expect it to be any other way.

Polarizing problems in the church must not be allowed to displace spiritual priorities. We have to address our problems together, while prayerfully putting first things first.

A presumptuous attitude toward God leads to resisting the Spirit, but humility before God leads us into God's presence.

God is working in this world, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly, and we are made to walk and work with him in this life.

...Because He is the One who supplies EVERY need. It’s ALL from Him. There is not a single breath we draw that hasn’t been given to us by Him. And so, the only fitting response is to praise him, to give glory to Him.

The logical connection is this: the more contentment we experience in Christ, the less we feel we need materials things to be content. So our grip on money loosens. We realize we don’t need those things to be happy, so we’re happy to give them away to others. Contentment leads to giving.

We can be confident Christ will strengthen us because He is faithful to complete His work in us.

Contentment does not depend on WHAT we have, WHERE we go, WHAT we DO, or WHO WE ARE.

Even when we're well taught about the Christian life, we have to work at resilient perseverance.

We have both the opportunity and responsibility to develop our thinking in godly ways.

The object of prayer; the outline of prayer; the outcome of prayer.

Rejoicing in the Lord is a vital part of what we do together when we worship.

What do YOU do when you have a strong difference of opinion with someone at church? Well Paul does three things I’d like us to emulate: He entreats them both; He calls for mediation between them; He asks them both to “agree in the Lord.”

What we learn in this passage is that it is a sad and sorrowful thing that there are people in this world who are enemies of the cross of Christ, and some Christians are in serious danger of drifting off with them – joining them in a lifestyle as dishonoring to God as it is futile and empty. This reality breaks Paul's heart. It reduces him to tears... it is out of those tears that he calls us to live a different - distinctive lifestyle.

It’s sometimes said that seeing is believing. Baptism helps us to see and to believe. It helps us to SEE something that might otherwise go unseen, and in seeing it, we are helped to believe.

There is a goal God wants all of us to pursue.

Paul tells us: if you want to KNOW Christ more deeply, more vibrantly, you must: Know the power of his resurrection, share in his sufferings, and become like him in his death.

There is nothing more important than knowing Jesus Christ.

What IS righteousness? Righteousness just means “being right with God”. The state of being fully accepted by God.

What must I do to gain Christ, to gain salvation and eternal life, and to be right with God?

In a culture that celebrates and, to some degree, pressures us to affirm people in whatever they are feeling, the danger is that we won’t cultivate what you could call a spirit of rejoicing as part of our discipleship, spiritual formation, health, and happiness. The truth is we need this.

Faithful Christians… represent a cause greater than themselves, as soldiers do; risk everything for that cause, as soldiers do; receive honor, as soldiers do.

What will your legacy be? You are building one right now…

How can we live life now so that when the time comes for us to go be with the Lord, we can do it without regrets?

WHY should we do all things without grumbling? HOW can we do all things without grumbling?

God delights in giving grace to sinful human beings.

If God is fully in control of the universe, such that even the fall of a sparrow is ordained, as Jesus says in Matthew 10 - do my choices matter? If God ordains everything that happens, am I anything more than a puppet or a robot? Should I DO anything or just let God do the work?

If we’ve experienced the love of God in Christ, we are to share that same love with each other.

The reason we face a struggle is that, as Christians, we belong to a different kingdom than this world.

The gospel imparts an identity that calls for a new quality of life. Scripture calls those who have received the gospel to live in a manner that is worthy of the gospel.

The story of Paul’s life is Christ. That’s what he means when he says, “For to me, to LIVE IS Christ”.

Because of Jesus Christ, we can endure profound hardships with courageous faith.

To grow in Christian love, we need to grow in knowledge.

The truth of the gospel can be defended and confirmed.

When Jesus gave us the Lord's Supper, he also gave us what he called a new commandment.

A true Christian can have a deep confidence sustaining all of life because, from beginning to end, the Christian life is God's work in you.

When we talk about the joy of Paul, it’s not a solitary joy. The kind of joy he has can only exist in partnership with other believers.

Christ calls his people, having received his grace, to stand side by side for the gospel.

Jesus came into our world to fulfill a mission of grace and redemption.

The church is a uniquely important fellowship of people called together by the living God.

To truly live as disciples of Jesus, we must have a radical change of perspective.

The life of a disciple of Jesus begins with a spiritual rebirth that enables life-long growth.

A disciple of Jesus Christ is committed to living all of life in light of the Bible as the life-giving, life-shaping Word of God.

Jesus is the bread of life, and we satisfy our souls with him by continually believing in him.

A disciple of Jesus is focused on God.

When the Lord encounters people, he calls them to His purposes.

Sometimes, before God can bless us, he has to correct us. If we want to enjoy God's blessing, we have to receive his correction.

Disobedience to God is sometimes something that seems small to us and yet can have a destructive power that we do not readily see.

Scripture not only talks about the importance of hope but gives us reasons for hope.

Discouragement is often the context in which God calls us to be strong.

It is good to consider our ways because we can easily lose the clarity of our purpose while dealing with demanding circumstances.

God's message through Haggai is is about rebuilding what has fallen into ruin.

If we want to be whole-hearted, we need something outside of ourselves to ground us, to anchor us against the storms of life.

To live your faith you have to listen to God.