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What Do You Seek? (Gospel of John Series)
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?’ And…
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Anger, Personality, Gifts, Limitations, Gossip & an Apology
I’ve been encouraged by the Church Board, the Leadership Team, to take some time to clear the air and confront an issue that has been percolating in the background of the church for some time now. It’s a difficult issue to pin down though, which makes it difficult to address. The Board, for the…
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Why Loneliness Hurts So Much
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light…
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A Firm Foundation for the New Year
There seems to be a feeling of flux right now in the world. I’m sure you’ve felt it. A feeling of instability in our hearts, community, country, and world. There are people going through relationship transitions as the dynamics of their marriage, friendships, partnerships and workplace change around them. Some are facing personal transitions…
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The Importance of Knowing Who You Are and Why You’re Here (The Gospel of John Series)
Please open up to John 1:19-34. But before we get into the reading, just a quick reminder about the context. The Apostle John is writing his gospel to introduce his readers to who Jesus really is. The rest of the gospels had already been written and circulated for about 30 years by the…
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When Jesus God Speaks (Gospel of John Series)
I think it’s appropriate that we start off the Christmas season with the very beginning of the Gospel of John today. We’ve been working on “context and structure” for about a month now and I feel like we could keep talking about it for another few weeks. The structure of John is absolutely fascinating!…
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Multidimensional Meaning (Gospel of John Series)
The Art of John’s Gospel “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John…
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The Thread of Light (Gospel of John Series)
John’s Purpose A few weeks ago I told you that the gospel of John is all about explaining who Jesus really is. If you recall, I said that by the time the Gospel of John was written, the gospels and letters of the New Testament had already been written and been circulating individually for…
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When Should a Christian Leave their Church or Denomination? (Post-CLRA Meeting Report with Q&A)
Update on CLRA Meeting I thought it important to start with a quick update on the meeting Jason and I went to this week. I don’t want to take up the whole sermon time with it, but it’s important, and you are all invested in what is happening so I want to make…
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Context, CLRA & the CBOQ
We’re just beginning a new series on the Gospel of John. Last week we did a bit of an overview of who John was, and his audience was, how John’s gospel fits in with the other three, and that the major theme is introducing and defending who Jesus really is. He’s writing decades after…
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As One Beggar to Another (Introduction to the Gospel of John Series)
An Introduction to the Gospel of John Please open up to John 20:30-21, but before we jump in and read it, we need a little context. We are starting a series on the Gospel of John today, but I don’t’ want to jump straight into verse one. In fact, we’re going to start near…
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Elijah: A Nature Like Ours – Burnout, Depression & The Let-Down Effect
Turn with me to 1 Kings 18:1–40 and I want to read two stories about the prophet Elijah today, but we need to read a large section so we can get the whole story. A lot has already happened up to this point, but you’ll figure out how things are going as we…
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Free Sermon Collection E-Books
I’ve decided to take some of my older sermon series’ and put them into e-book format. My hope is that they bless God’s church and bring Him glory. Right now, I’ve only put together my 2008 series on James (it also has a Small Group study guide) but I hope to be releasing…
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Why Jesus, Only Jesus? (Does Roman Catholic Doctrine Lead to Salvation?)
Turn with me to Hebrews 1 and we’re going to read some scriptures there about the supremacy of Jesus. The whole message of Hebrews is an argument about how Jesus is better than anything and anyone. The people who first heard this message were Jewish Christians who were under a lot of growing…
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How Do I Experience The Power of God? (HC:LD18c)
Imagine following in the footsteps of Moses – how huge a task that would be. Moses is probably the most important person in the Old Testament. It was through Moses that the nation of Israel was delivered from Egypt. It was Moses that led and judged the people for decades. It was Moses…
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The Gift of the Holy Spirit (HC:LD18b)
Turn with me to Luke 24:50-53 and then we’ll be headed into Acts 1. Luke and Acts are actually two parts of the same work, both written in about 60-70AD by Luke, a gentile, Christian doctor who travelled with the Apostle Paul and was commissioned by someone named Theophilus to write a history of…
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Why Did Jesus Leave? (HC:LD18a)
A Farewell Address in the Upper Room On the night before Jesus went to the cross, He had a lot of things to say to His disciples in the Upper Room. Matthew, Mark and Luke give some of the story like what Jesus said and did, but it is the Gospel of John,…
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Jesus Rose From the Dead? So What!? (HC:LD17B)
Last week we looked at 1 Corinthians 15 in light of how critical the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to not only Christians but to the very meaning of life itself. We read it last week during the Easter service and I said that we’d be revisiting it today because there’s more to…
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The Resurrection is EVERYTHING. (HC:LD17a)
A lot of us are like those two followers walking down the road to Emmaus. They start out, perplexed, anxious, disappointed in how things have turned out, confused about God’s plan, talking to one another about things they don’t understand, and hoping that if they keep walking away, that somehow they will…
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EPIC (for Palm Sunday)
Chapter 1: The Beginning “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) This is the start of our story. Notice how I said that it’s the start of our story. Not the beginning of The Whole story. Just our part. God is eternal, existing before there was either heaven…
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Lord, Is This Normal? (Jesus, Founder and Perfecter – HC:LD16)
When doing any kind of experiment or making any kind of change, you need to establish a “baseline”, a starting point that serves as the one, known point of measurement that everything else will be compared to. Whether you’re studying climate change, time zones, altitude, typography, medicine, or physics, you need somewhere to…
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Why Must We Suffer? (HC:LD15)
If you recall back to the last series of weeks in our study of the Heidelberg Catechism you’ll remember that we’ve been talking a lot about the question, “Who is Jesus?”. This part of the Heidelberg is going through the Apostles Creed and we are on the second section that speaks of what Christians…
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Contemplating Sin & Rebirth (Lent 2019)
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God,…
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Lent & The Beatitudes (Lent 2019)
“Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the…
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Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? (HC:LD14)
*Sorry, no audio this week. 😞 * One of the people in that video, the artist, Makoto Fujimura said that at one point in his life Jesus became real to him. He said, “This historic figure was no longer just this historical figure… and he wanted to reveal himself to me in a way I…
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Why is Jesus Called “Only Begotten Son” and “Lord”? (HC:LD13)
The question we’ve been answering for the past few weeks is “Who is Jesus?” We’re going through the Heidelberg Catechism, which, at this point, is taking us through a line-by-line, word-by-word study of the Apostles Creed, the oldest and most reliable summary of Christian beliefs we have. It goes all the way back…
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Why is Jesus Called “Christ”? (HC:LD12)
Turn with me to Mark 8:27-33. This scripture occurs in the final year of Jesus’ earthly ministry as His focus has grown more steadily towards His journey to Jerusalem and the cross. He has already gathered His disciples and they have been with Him for a couple years. He has already done much travelling…
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Why is Jesus called “Jesus”? (HC:LD11)
“Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins…
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God the Provider (HC:LD10)
I’m consistently amazed how we can start studying something months ago, using commentaries written over a hundred years ago, studying a catechism written 450 years ago, based on scriptures written thousands of years ago – and how they all speak directly to our needs for today. Truly, our Lord, His Holy Spirit and…
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God the Father Almighty, Creator (HC:LD9)
We’re back into the Heidelberg Catechism and are now in Day 9. Just a quick review before we jump into it though. Our church, since last August, has been working out way through a teaching tool called the Heidelberg Catechism. It’s called “Heidelberg” because it was written in the 16th century by a man…
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The Lawyer, The Good Samaritan & Martha (New Years 2018)
Please open up to Luke 10:25–42, but before we read it I would like you to notice something as we read. I want you to notice that even though we are going to read two seemingly distinct stories, happening at different times and in different ways, they are actually very similar. Both are…
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A Family for Christmas (Christmas Eve Sermon)
Every year around Christmas time people all over the world set up nativity scenes – and there’s a huge variety. There are old-timey ones that have great detail and classic poses, modern, new ones that are more simple, even impressionistic, and there are the weird and silly ones. We have a Little People set…
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Jesus of the Advent Candles
Over the past while our church has been going through a study of the Heidelberg Catechism, a 400-year-old summary of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. When we paused for Christmas a couple weeks ago we were only on Day 8, but we’ve already covered a LOT of material. We covered the bad…
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Finding Hope at Christmas
*Sorry, no audio.* Have you ever read the book of Malachi? It’s the last book of the Old Testament and sort of has the qualities of a sunrise. You’ve heard that phrase, “It’s always darkest before the dawn” and this little book reads like that. It starts off super dark but ends with a…
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The Righteousness of God (HC:LD8f)
I’ve decided that I don’t want to be stuck in Day 8 anymore, so we are going to do one more attribute and then move on. But before I do that I want to give you a few tools for you to use at home to better explain what we are going through…
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The Holiness of God (HC:LD8e)
If you’ve been following along, you know that we’re a little stuck in Day 8 of the Heidelberg Catechism and that a bunch of the sermons I’ve preached over the past while are actually one, long sermon divided up into more manageable pieces. It started with a quick review of the Heidelberg and the…
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No Really, Do Your Devos
Audio: Text: As I said a couple weeks ago, working through all the things that Day 8 of the Heidelberg Catechism wants to go through takes a lot longer than just one week. In fact, we’ve done four sermons on Day 8 and it’s going to take us at least two more weeks to…
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Remembrance Day: Martyrdom, Suffering & Hope
John McCrae and Flanders Fields In Canada and around the world, the poppy has long been a symbol of the immeasurable sacrifice made by those who have died defending and preserving the rights and freedoms of others. It was a Canadian physician, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae who made it a symbol of Remembrance Day.…
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God’s OMNI Attributes (HC:LD8d)
Audio: Text: Review Last week I told you that the sermons over the past month have all really been one, long sermon divided up into more manageable pieces. We started with a quick review of what we’ve talked about so far in the Heidelberg Catechism and how studying theology and doctrine will lead to…
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God Wants to Be Known: General Revelation (HC:LD8c)
Audio: Text: Imagine for a moment that you are sitting at home one night when you hear a weird noise outside your door, see a bunch of flickering lights, and then moments later hear a knock on your door. You answer it and there stands an alien family from outer space – there’s an…
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The Trinity (HC:LD8b)
Audio: Text: Our celebrity-obsessed culture struggles with understanding what it means to actually know someone. People seem to fall in love with, give their allegiance to, or utterly hate someone they’ve never met, simply because they’ve seen them in movies or on TV. Their agent and their publicist work hard to craft a certain…
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How Study Increases Our Love for God (HC:LD8a)
Audio: Text: Theological Deduction I’m a fan of the mystery genre. I like shows and movies where the main character, or the team, has a big problem to solve and has to use problem-solving ingenuity and cool technology to try to figure out what happened. One of my favourites is when there’s a missing…
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Awesome Wrath, Amazing Grace (Thanksgiving)
Audio: Text: How many here have Instagram? I do. I’m pretty much done with Facebook these days, and I’ve mostly shifted over to Instagram. I like it a little more because it’s a little more dumbed down. There’s not as much going on in the feed as there is on Facebook. It’s just a…
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Why Do Christians Serve Others? (Volunteer Appreciation Sunday)
Audio: Text: Macy’s story is packed with some wonderful truths. First, that we never really know what’s going on in people’s lives, do we? We are pretty amazing at covering up our feelings and putting on a brave face for the world. Macy cried herself to sleep every night but didn’t want to share…
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How to Prepare for The Lord’s Supper
Audio: Text: Tonight we are going to be doing something a little special, something we haven’t done since I’ve been the pastor here, and that is to have an evening communion service. It’s interesting how this happened. Some people came to me and said that they felt like they wanted to “change up communion”.…
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Bible Reading, Prayer & Your Crucible
Audio: Text: I’ve been doing something lately that I rarely do. I can’t actually remember when I’ve done this before. I’ve been reading books for myself. I know that sounds weird to say, but usually when I read, study, or watch something, it’s so that I can learn for the sake of my job.…
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Introduction to The Apostles Creed (HC:LD7)
Audio: Text: Please open up to Romans 10:9-17 and let’s read it together, and then I have a short video to show you: “…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart…
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Believe in Jesus (HC:LD7a)
Audio: Text: Turn with me to John 3:16-21 and we’ll read it together. We talked about this passage a little bit last week when I highlighted the exclusivity of the claims that Jesus was making as being the only one to have faith in, the one and only way path to forgiveness and restoration…
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The Nature of Christ (HD:LD6)
Audio: Text: I heard an ad on the radio for the Canadian Legion that started with something like, “Think of all the things you enjoy in life, like summer fun, going out with your family, kissing your kids goodnight. We can take these things for granted because a veteran didn’t. They fought so we…
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A Mighty Mediator (HC: LD5)
Audio: Text: The more I study the Heidelberg Catechism, the more I like it. It appeals to me on so many levels – it’s beautifully written, theologically rich and complex, but is also laid out in such a logical way that it’s very readable and straightforward to follow. I wish that I had been…