From Sampler to Sower

Teaching Series: Look Up

Message Title: Elijah Was a Man Just Like Us

Sermon in a Sentence: “Elijah was a a man, just like us. He prayed earnestly (James 5:17a).”

Text(s): Psalm 121:1-2, 1 Kings 16-18, James 5:17

Message Summary:

We started a new series at Water’s Edge this week called Look Up. The theme verse from the series is Psalm 121:1-2:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth (NIV).

The Psalmist asks where he can turn for help, and he knows the answer.  “My help comes from the Lord.”  When we need help, we don’t look to other things or other people.  We’re called to lift up our eyes and turn to God.  In this series we’ll be learning what it means to live a life a prayer — a life that looks up.

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Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Faithfulness and Self-Control

Sermon in a Sentence: Running to win the prize requires a certain trust and disciplined self-control.

Text(s): Galatians 5:22-23, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Message Summary:

This week marked the end of our Cultivate series. We’re still playing catch up from all the weeks we had to miss due to the snow and ice this winter.  While the other catch up combination weeks had a bit of logic to them — joy and peace; patience, kindness and gentleness — this mash-up of faithfulness and self-control wasn’t quite as natural.  Hopefully I did them justice, though to be honest I feel as though I may have shortchanged faith.  I would have liked to spend more time on the connection between faith and faithfulness.

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We’re just a few weeks away from our district’s annual Celebrate Life competition, when Nazarene teens from across Northeastern Indiana descend on a middle school campus in Huntington to compete in a wide variety of talent and athletic categories.  Everyone has fun.  Those who excel qualify to advance to the regional level at Olivet Nazarene University in May.

Due to @aaronscottallen’s success last year in the Bible Exposition category, I have some teens who have expressed some interest in giving it a try this year.  Bible Exposition is essentially a ten minute expository sermon.  By rule, it is not topical, but textual.  There’s no choosing a topic, coming up with some illustrations and then cherry-picking a handful of prooftexts to make the outline seem Biblical.  This is my kind of preaching.  Choosing a text, sitting down in the middle of it, and there staying until the small voice of God says “Comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”

To help them get a start  on interpreting their passages I’ve compiled a list of questions I typically think through in conversation with a text before I head to the bookshelf or the library looking for answers.  These questions help me know what insights I’m looking for from these other commentaries, and they also help me know the areas in which I need to push back against some of the popular interpretations or perhaps dig a little deeper.

Here they are:

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Weekend Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Goodness

Sermon in a Sentence: God does not save us because we are good, He saves us so that we can do good.

Text(s): Galatians 5:22-23, Matthew 19:16-22, Micah 6:8

Message Summary:

This week we continue our Cultivate series by looking at the sixth attribute of the Spirit’s fruit: goodness.  This is a difficult topic to address because in modern English the word “good” is almost meaningless.  What is good?

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Weekend Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Patience, Kindness, and Gentleness

Sermon in a Sentence: God calls us to bear with those who typically would annoy us, actively offer grace to those who have nothing to offer in return, and to serve those “below” us in our social structure.

Text(s): Galatians 5:22-23, Exodus 34:6-7, 2 Peter 3:9, Luke 6:32-36, Matthew 20:25-28

Message Summary:

This week we continue combining some of the fruit in the hopes of finishing the series on time.  I had already planned on combining kindness and gentleness, since as concepts they are so closely related.  And like any good auctioneer trying to make sure everything has a chance to sell, I threw in patience for good measure.  Just trying to keep up with the weather cancellations.

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Weather is wreaking havoc on our Cultivate series.  We’ve had to cancel three of our last four services. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but our next series starts on Ash Wednesday. That means we have to double up on some of the fruit if we’re going to finish on time.  Therefore this week I bring you joy AND peace.

Weekend Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Joy and Peace

Sermon in a Sentence: In a world of suffering and injustice, God calls us to make peace and find joy in the grace He gives.

Text(s): Isaiah 65:17-25; Matthew 5:9, Romans 14:17, Galatians 5:22-23

Message Summary:

One of the challenges in preaching this message is the pre-conceptions people have about what joy and peace are. When we think of peace we think of the absence of conflict.  A peacemaker is someone who smooths over the hard feelings in our world and finds a way to keep everyone happy.

And joy is even more difficult because we have to deal with two sets of preconceptions.  On one hand, when we think of joy, we think of happy people.  A joyful person is that annoyingly bubbly person, always bouncing around, naively giddy, filled with the kind of saccharine sentimentality that sets our teeth on edge…

…Or maybe not.  Because you also have the sermons that explain there is a difference between joy and happiness.  Happiness, we’re told, depends on circumstances.  Happiness is affected by what happens to us.  Joy on the other hand is centered in God and manifests itself as an internal confidence that God is in control.  It’s possible, we’re told, to be in unhappy circumstances and still be joyful.

So we approach the subject of peace and joy with these preconceptions.  The question is are any of these concepts what Paul is talking about when he says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace?

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In the fifth and final sermon from our True Love Waits series, the goal is to help students understand the pledge we are asking them to consider making.  We look one more time at what the Bible has to say about living lives of sexual purity, and then we break down the True Love Waits pledge to see that it really is a reflection of Biblical values.  The service ends with an invitation to prayerfully make a True Love Waits commitment and to communicate that they made that pledge by turning in a commitment card.

As usual, after the jump you will find a summary of the lesson as well as a fill-in-the-blank outline master and sermon audio. Also include is a sample of our True Love Waits commitment cards and the parent’s letters that we send to the parents of students who make first time commitments, as well as those renewing their commitments, inviting them to take part in the True Love Waits ring ceremony.

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In the first lesson of our True Love Waits series each year, we attempt to redefine the goal.  True Love Waits (TLW) is not just about helping teens remain virgins, it is about helping them live lives of true purity.

We take as our text 2 Corinthians 11:2

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. (NIV)

In modern English, “virgin” and “chaste” are practically synonymous (if, that is, anyone even  knows the word “chaste” any more).  Yet biblically speaking they are not the same thing.  Otherwise, Paul’s description here would be redundant.  Why does he feel the need to clarify the church is to be presented as a pure virgin?

After the jump, we’ll walk you through the rest of the lesson, as well as provide a copy of our sermon notes, a link to the audio of this sermon, and a script for a drama that can be used with this lesson. Just click on “More.”

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Granted, it’s been a while since week in review #20-almost exactly a year to be, well, exact.  So it’s high time to get back to this.

Weekend Teaching Series: Cultivate

Message Title: Love

Sermon in a Sentence: The solution to the problems caused by love is not to give up on love, or to tone love down; it is a radical reorientation of love.

Text(s): Romans 5:1-8; Romans 8:38-39; Galatians 5:13-26; John 15:1-17

Message Summary: This sermon was the second in our Cultivate series for Water’s Edge. It’s all a part of our church’s Homesavers campaign.  From the first of the year through Ash Wednesday, every department of our church, children, youth and adult, are all taking a closer look at the Fruit of the Spirit.

Read more to see our original video The Vegetables of the Spirit and to see a summary of our teaching for this topic.

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Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 of 10, A fairly typical week for us.

Message Summary: Our You Decide series was in it’s fifth week Tuesday night.  That’s encouraging.  When we started asking students to send in questions they might have about the Bible, I wasn’t sure just how well it would go or how long it would last.  But questions are still coming in to our Poll Everywhere poll and now I’m beginning to wonder how many good quesitions we’re going to have to leave unanswered.

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