Archives For Grace

Easter Sermon: Running on Empty (John 20:1-31)

April 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Jesus’ empty tomb sends people running on that first Easter Sunday. Everyone is dashing through the cemetery, but why? They’re running to find answers to their questions and help with their confusion. They don’t know why Jesus’ body is not where they had put it the day before.

If I were to go to the gravesite of my parents at the Berks County Memorial Gardens in Reading, Pennsylvania, and I saw nothing but a big hole in the ground with no vaults or caskets, I’d be asking questions, too.

So the disciples are running around confused. And most of them are slow to believe in the resurrection—despite the fact that Jesus had said repeatedly it would happen. But here’s the good news: every time the risen Christ meets people after the resurrection, he helps them to believe in him.

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Radiate, Part 6: Crossing Borders (Mark 7:24-37)

February 16, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Christians have never been called to be hostile or obnoxious in society. We’ve been called to be a people of hope, filled with a sweetness of spirit and a gentleness of demeanor. As it says in Titus 2:10: we are to “make the teachings of Christ our Savior attractive.”

Or, to put it another way, the church of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a cranky little subculture, but a dynamic and joy-filled counterculture—one in which the surprising grace and spontaneous love of God is made known to our neighbors in real and tangible ways.

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Radiate, Part 5: Hospitality & Grace (Hebrews 13:1-14)

February 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

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Genuine hospitality is one of the tools in our gospel neighboring toolbox. Unfortunately, when we hear the word “hospitality,” we often think of Martha Stewart, the Cake Boss, or Better Homes & Garden. But those things are distortions of what the New Testament means by hospitality.

The command to show hospitality to strangers (Hebrews 13:2) literally means to show love to people who are different from you. Sadly, in our culture, many people sit around mocking people who are different from them. But that is not to be the case among the followers of Christ. Quite the opposite.

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Easter Sermon: A Resurrection of Hope (1 Peter 1:3-7)

April 8, 2012 — 1 Comment

There’s a multi-million dollar industry in this country that thrives on the sale of motivational posters. They seem to be everywhere—the gym, the doctor’s office, the lunchroom at work, the board rooms of large and small businesses, and the locker rooms of amateur and professional sports teams. Poster topics include vision, commitment, attitude, perseverance, dedication, etc. They seem to be everywhere because everyone needs a little motivation now and then.

But did you realize there’s been a backlash against the idea that people can be genuinely inspired by a nice picture and a clever phrase hanging on the wall? Continue Reading…

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Shadows of the Cross, Part 6: The Final Substitute (Select Scriptures)

March 26, 2012 — Leave a comment

Throughout our series we have seen the language of substitution. From the ram caught in the thicket in Genesis 22 to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, one creature routinely takes the place of another. A firstborn Jewish son could say, for example, on the morning after the first Passover: “That lamb died for me. In every Egyptian home today, there is a dead son, but in our house, there is a dead lamb. When the angel of death came to our house last night, he saw blood on our doorposts—indicating that a death had already occurred. So he passed over us, and I was spared.” Substitution is the language and the rhythm of Scripture.  Continue Reading…

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Shadows of the Cross, Part 5: The Crushed Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

March 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

In the 8th century B.C., the prophet Isaiah issued a series of visions about an extraordinary man he called “the Servant of the Lord”—a mysterious figure who would come in the future and bring the salvation of God. The last of these four visions is the most famous, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a passage that has captured the hearts and minds of Bible students like few other texts in Scripture.

Kyle Yates, an Old Testament professor, called it, “the Mount Everest of Old Testament prophecy.” Polycarp, a 2nd-century bishop and martyr, called it, “the golden passional of the Old Testament evangelist.” Charles Spurgeon, a 19th-century Baptist preacher, called it, “a Bible in miniature, the gospel in its essence.”  Continue Reading…

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Shadows of the Cross, Part 4: The Scarlet Worm (Psalm 22:1-31)

March 12, 2012 — Leave a comment

“God forsaken of God? Who can understand it?” And with that, Martin Luther threw his Bible across the room in frustration as he tried to get his mind around the opening line of Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted from the cross. But the mystery doesn’t stop there. The suffering king says, “I am a worm and not a man” (v. 6). Royalty could not sink any lower than this.

Yet the psalm is filled with hope, too. The suffering king recognizes that his God “has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (v. 24). He also believes that God is sovereign over, and is now superintending his entire ordeal: “You lay me in the dust of death” (v. 15c). He even envisions a worldwide revival in which all peoples bow down before the God he cannot find right now (v. 27).  Continue Reading…

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