“We are to honor other people appropriately because we are all made in the image of God. That gives value to every human being and we are to acknowledge that value in the way that we think of one another and in the attitudes that we have towards one another and in the way that we treat one another. We are to show them respect as people who are valuable and significant because they are made in the image of God.”
Sermon Series: The Ten Commandments
“One of the secular beliefs that we will have to address is the belief that the secular world-view is based on reason alone while the biblical world-view is based on a faith that is not reasonable. Part of demolishing arguments raised against God is to show that no-one believes what they believe on the basis of reason alone. There are many factors that go into why we believe what we believe and one of the factors that is very powerful is the company that we keep, the society in which we live and the desire to be accepted and admired by people that we admire.”
Sermon Series: Biblical Responses to Secular Beliefs
Read: Ephesians 5:1-21
Text: verse 21
“In biblical thought the freedom of individualism is really bondage and the submission to God and to the obligations of belonging to the body of Christ is really freedom. True freedom in biblical terms is not freedom to express ourselves and to do whatever we want to do, it is living as God has designed us to live and that involves a significant dose of self-denial and submitting to the demands and constraints of our relationships with other people.”
Sermon Series: The Ten Commandments
Read: Matthew 24:1-14
“The application for us as we face a new year is, “Do not be complacent. Do not take it for granted that you are not being pulled into the current of worldly thinking and worldly living. Think very seriously about your life and values and priorities in the light of biblical teaching.” One of the common themes of the best Christian literature on this subject is that the only Christians who will survive in the current environment are those who go deep – that is those who are serious about their relationship with the Lord...”
Read: Isaiah 44:1-8
Acts 6:1-15
Read: Matthew 1:18-25
“Jesus is more than the reason for the season. Jesus is the reason for everything. As the risen and ascended Jesus himself says to John in Revelation 1:17, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.””
Read: Matthew 1:1-17
“There is no celebration of the birth of Christ that is in line with biblical priorities that does not have the overturning of sin by Jesus at its heart. The problem of all problems, both in each of our lives and in the world in general, is sin and the blessing of all blessings is the fact that God send Jesus and Jesus came to deliver us from the curse and the power of sin.”
Read: 2 Peter 3:1-13
“What Peter is saying is that we must prioritize what will matter on that day. Having lived a life of holiness and godliness will matter on the day when heaven and earth will be dissolved. What really matters now is what will matter then and that is what is to determine how we live as we wait for the coming day of God.”
“The key from a biblical perspective is that the abuse of authority is sin and it must be dealt with as sin. A related perspective is that God cares greatly about people who are suffering abuse at the hands of other people. Psalm 146:7 says that God “executes justice for the oppressed.” The oppressed are those who are mistreated by others particularly the weak who are suffering at the hands of those who are stronger than they. A wife who is suffering because a husband is misusing his authority is in an intolerable situation from a biblical perspective and such a situation should not be allowed to continue.”
Sermon Series: The Ten Commandments
