Big Idea: Worship and serve – These two words are deeply connected. The first denotes a deep vertical connection between us and God. The second denotes a deep horizontal connection between us and those around us. Serving authenticates our worship, if it’s done with a heart of love. Worship and serve are two words in the Christian faith that cannot be separated. Worship is seeking to put God at the center of your life.  Serving seeks to live and act in ways that align our lives with the God whom we worship.

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Big Idea: For many of us the idea of being someone’s slave is repulsive, even subhuman. Yet Jesus calls us to be slaves to everyone. The idea of slavery that repulses us is brought about when people fear their value, their significance, and their greatness. In fear they use their power to push people down and oppress them. In God’s kingdom, Jesus calls us to know that we are valuable, significant, and secure in who we are. Then we can serve one another in love, using our power to lift others up, helping them to understand their their value, significance, and greatness is secure in God,  just Jesus did.

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9-25-11 Fruit: Fruit that will last

Big Idea:

Movie Clip: Madagascar 2 – 55:22 – two different types of love displayed for Gloria by Moto Moto and Melman

How many of you have ever loved someone? Sure, I pray that we all love lots of people around us. Here’s my question for the day and this may seem like a really bizarre question at first. How do you know? How do you know what love is? How do you know you’ve ever loved? How did you get your definition for love? How do you know the definition you have is legit? How do you know your love is really love at all? Where did your idea of love come from?

Now, you might say, “Awe, come on Adam, give me a break, love is love and you sort of naturally know what it is. Love is kind of instinctive isn’t it?”

When I was in elementary school, I love a girl by the name of Vicki. On recess I would chase here around trying to catch her and not knowing what to do when I caught her, I tackled her. That was love for me as an elementary school boy.

By the time I got to high school, my definition of love had changed. There it was rooted more in hormones and strong urges. I loved a few young ladies, or at least I thought I did.

Then in college, my definition of love changed again when I met a lady by the name of Shannon (my wife) and fell head over heels in love with her, knowing almost immediately that I’d marry her. I didn’t’ think love could ever get any better than that, but did.

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I’m going to start off with a few easy questions and then work our way into harder ones. What fruit does an apple tree produce? Apples. What kind of fruit does a pear tree produce? Pears. What kind of fruit does a grape vine produce? Grapes. Ok, you’ve done really well. Now for the harder question. What kind of fruit were you created to produce? We know what the purpose of an apple tree and a pear tree and a grape vine is, but what is your purpose?

I was reading Genesis a few weeks ago and I came across this passage:

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground–trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:8-9 (NIV)

Why does God put these two stories together? God had just formed all kinds of animals – birds, fish, mammals, but God doesn’t say anything about them. Instead he plants us so-to-speak with the other trees of the garden.

What’s interesting is that throughout the Bible, the authors of many of the books make references to us producing fruit.

If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb . . .Deuteronomy 7:12-13 (NIV)

When we think about it, this makes sense. The apple tree produces apples. The human being produces humans. Children are our fruit. But this isn’t the end of it. The Bible writers go on to tell us that not only is there physical fruit that comes from the womb in the form of babies, but that there is spiritual fruit that comes from the seed to God. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been talking about the kingdom of God for the last two months. For many of you, this has changed how you think about Christianity and it should. For many of us we have been taught cultural Christianity, not the Christianity that Jesus taught. Cultural christianity takes all the good news out of the gospel for us today.

The kingdom of God is the central message of Jesus. For many, we’ve come to falsely understand the kingdom of God as being an equivalent of heaven or eternal life, but Jesus never talked about it that way.

Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was something that was at hand, within reach, and available now, today. Then we looked at the place where Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” And we looked at the parables where Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is like this and it’s like that, it’s like buried treasure, it’s like the smallest of seeds that grows into largest of trees.”

For all of you who have been with us for the series, you should now have a good idea about what the kingdom of God is, but the question that I’ve been purposely avoiding until now is, “How does the kingdom of God grow inside of us?” How do we get the DNA of heaven to grow inside of us? How do we get the good things of life to grow inside of us and the dark things of life that grow inside of us to leave?

If you’re unclear about what the kingdom of God is, then I highly suggest going out to our website and review my sermon notes of those messages or the MP3 recordings of those messages, because growth as a Christian is nearly impossible without a right understanding of the kingdom.

The condition of our hearts are central to growing the kingdom of God inside of us. Just as a seed in a garden can’t grow in acidic soil, so it is that the kingdom of God doesn’t grow in an acidic heart. So today, let’s look to the master gardener and let’s see what he has to say about growing the kingdom of God inside of us. How do we get the DNA of heaven growing in our hearts?

Jesus said, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean (or pruned) because of the word I have spoken to you. John 15:1-3

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Props: 25 or more pairs of various different looking glasses, goggles, sunglasses, 3d glasses, etc.

Last week we looked at a very small part of Matthew 6:33 where Jesus said, “Seek first his (referring to God) kingdom”, or said another way is “Seek first the kingdom of God”.

In that message we looked at each of those four words. We said that “Seek” means that it’s not going to be obvious. The kingdom of God, as Jesus stated in the parable of the treasure is hidden. You’re going to have to want to find it. It’s going to take time, and persistence. You’re not just going to stumble upon it and say, “Oh, what do we have here.”

The second word is “First”, seek first. That means that there are other choices that will vie for our attention. Other things will probably try and crowd out that which is most important and you’ll have to make some decisions. Will I seek first the kingdom of God, or will I seek something else.

The third word is “His”, seek first his, which in this case refers to Father God.  His is a possessive word. It’s not ours, it’s his – it’s the Father’s. We don’t own it. We can’t have it, and we can’t get it apart from God. We’ll have to get it from him and from him alone, because it’s his.

And the fourth word is “Kingdom” – the kingdom of God. We’ve spent seven weeks talking about the kingdom of God. We said many people have thought that the kingdom of God is something that you will only experience in heaven, but Jesus rarely talks about it in those terms. He says, “The kingdom of God is within you.” It’s at hand. It’s within reach. It’s available now.

Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a small seed that is planted in your heart and it can grow to the largest of trees so that it takes over your garden and crowds everything else out. The kingdom of God is like a seed with the DNA of heaven planted in your heart and it has the ability to grow and produce all the fruit of heaven crowding out all other evil and all other ways that are not God’s.

We said that if we choose to seek first the kingdom of God that God becomes king of our life and his will is done through us and his Spirit works through us to do his good will. That’s one choice. We also said that if we don’t grow the kingdom of God inside of us, then the old saying is true, because you can just be full of yourself. You can make all the decisions and you can choose what’s right and what’s wrong and you can decide how to live in every area of your life and you can bear the responsibility for where your life goes and how it turns out. You can do that. You have that choice. You can either be full of the Spirit of God inside of you and you can decide to follow his will and his truth and his idea of goodness in your life or you can be full of yourself with you sitting at the center of you controlling what goes on in your life. You can seek first your kingdom or you can seek first your kingdom. It’s your choice.

Ok, let’s just assume that we’ve got that one settled. Let’s just assume that we want to live with God at the center of our lives. We want him to be our king. Maybe we’re honest enough to recognize God is not the king in our lives yet, or at least not in every area of our life – that’s good that we recognize and admit that, but how do we go forward. What does that look like? That leads us to the next two words in Matthew 6:33. Read the rest of this entry »

8-14-11 Kingdom of God – What’s at the Center?

Illustration need: Big Balloon

We’re in our seventh week of this series on the Kingdom of God. We’ve spent a lot of time on this series, because I’m convinced that many Christians have either no idea what the kingdom of God is, or they have a very distorted view of what the kingdom of God is. I was 35, and in my second year of seminary, before I found out that the kingdom of God is the central theme of the Bible and the central them of Jesus’ teaching. What’s worse is that I had grown up in church.

We’ve said that many people think the reason that Jesus came was to forgive people of their sins, or to help people get into heaven, or to teach them how to live good, moral lives, but none of these is the focus of why Jesus came. His self-proclaimed reason for coming was to preach and teach about the kingdom of God. Jesus taught about heaven, the forgiveness of sins, and morality, but these are part of something Jesus calls the kingdom of God. They are a part, but not the whole.

Imagine dropping a large rock into a pond. The kingdom of God is the rock and it makes a big splash. Morality, forgiveness of sins, teaching about heaven, are all the ripples created by the rock being dropped into the pond. They are not the rock. They are a result of the rock.

During this series on the kingdom of God we’ve been looking at the parables of the kingdom. In one set of parables Jesus began the parable with “The kingdom of God is like” and then he went on to tell us what the kingdom of God is like right now. How it works, what it looks like, where we can find it, and how we can experience it. Then, we spent a couple of weeks looking at parables where Jesus began with “the kingdom of God will be like” and in those parables Jesus taught about what would happen someday. And we said Jesus didn’t just give us those parables to teach us about what would happen someday so that we could know what it would be like, but rather, he gave us those parables because preparation is necessary today for the kingdom of God to grow in us.

Today, we’re not going to look at a parable as we have the other six weeks, but a command. No longer is Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God or telling us what the kingdom of God will be like, in this passage he’s telling us what to do in light of what we’ve heard about the kingdom of God. Today we’re going to look at just the first four words of Jesus command. Next week we’ll focus on the rest of his statement.

Seek first . . . his (God’s) kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow (Live at peace in the present), for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:33-34 (NIV) Read the rest of this entry »

Are you ready for Heaven? Are you ready for a time when God will wipe away every tear and right every wrong and stomp out all evil? Yeah, I think we all look forward to that day don’t we. Ok, let me ask you another question that is very much like the second one. Are you READY . . . for heaven? Are you preparing for heaven? Are you well prepared for heaven? These are two very different questions and for probably all of us the answer to the first question is “Yes,” but for some of us, really all of us, we have further preparation for heaven.

There are things inside of us that are not ready for heaven. There is still evil within us that needs to be purified before they will be acceptable in heaven. We have work to do, but sometimes we get stuck in comfortable ruts and we forget that preparing for heaven is something that we need to do every day. Preparation for heaven is never done. Today we’re going to talk a bit about what God expects from us at the end of our lives so that we can be ready and well prepared when we get there.

We’re in this lengthy series on the kingdom of God, because for many of us, we’ve always equated the kingdom of God, heaven, and eternal life as synonyms that mean the same thing, but for Jesus they were very different. For many of us, we’ve believed that the kingdom of God is the same as heaven and that it’s something that we will experience only after we’ve died and gone to heaven. However, this is not how Jesus talked about the kingdom of God.

In first four parables that we’ve looked at, Jesus began each of them with the phrase, “The kingdom of God is like,” and in each of these parables he describes how the kingdom works in the present. It’s like yeast, it’s like buried treasure, it’s like a small seed that grows into a large tree, it’s like weeds that grow up next to wheat. In each of these parables Jesus is teaching us what the kingdom of God is like now, so that we can understand what it’s like and live into it.

Two weeks ago, we looked at the parable of the talents where Jesus described to us what the kingdom of God will be like some day. There will be an accounting of what we’ve done with what we’ve been entrusted. In that parable, Jesus told us about the kingdom of God in the future, so that we could make some decisions about how to live in the present. In that parable, the future instructed us about how we should live in the present if we want to experience the kingdom of God now and in the future.

The parable that we’re going to look at today is similar to the one two weeks ago, but yet different. In this parable, he begins with the words, “At that time, the kingdom of heaven will be like.” Matthew 25

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Big Idea: God entrusts every human being with invaluable resources, gifts, and most importantly the seed of the kingdom of God. We must invest our gifts. When we do, God blesses us with even more. If we don’t invest what he’s given us, then God takes away even what we he had entrusted to us. When you put money in the bank, you expect interest. When a farmer sows seed in his field, he plants the seed expecting it to produce fruit. God entrusts you and I with an amazing wealth of gifts, talents and resources – many of them spiritual. He expect a return on his investment.

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