FHBC Sermon Notes

Preaching - Hunter Levine

There are two thing that the world always talks about but the church often does not.  Sexuality and money.  Two personal?  Or negligent if we do not talk about it. The truth of God has something to say on this, so if we love each other it is something we must talk about.

To main reasons that people don't give:

Do we do that with any other part of our life. If you have children and say, I don't need to plan for the care of my children, or say, "My kids are fine."  "They don't need me."  What would you call a dad like that.  A deadbeat dad.  Applied to church these reasons would simply be the average church member.

Treating God as the waiter that you tip.

God's only intention for our money is that we give it away.

As we earn and increase in wealth, we should do this not for our sake of living, but for our ability to give. 

Matthew 18:23-35

This parable is about forgiveness but it is also about money.  It shows us the purpose of money.

2) We are not to trust in riches and not to define our lives by the abundance of our possession.

Worry , worry worry.  This is what defines those that pursue and define them selves by riches.  Downside he following. Matthew 6:25-33.  Not even Solomon is dressed as those God cares for. Also, though God doesn't promise us that everything we be easy , rich and luxurious. What he does promise is that God is better than all those things.  It is true freedom to be under the care of God. 

Will you put ourselves under God's care?  Will you give all we have to Him? Nobody comes into  church and says, "I'm struggling with stinginess."  We all think we are poor. 

But what God what seeks is a people that gives  their lives to him, and are a generous people.

The exchange of forgiveness and the exchange of thankfulness.

Forgive me. I forgive you.- reconciliation

Thank you. Your welcome. - renewal and gospel declaration. YOU have been part of God's plan. God did it in you not without you.

Story if the lepers luke 17. Not just healing but salvation for the one who thanked.

We give gifts based in what God had given to us. We give thanks because if what God has given to others. We give thanks to them because God did it in them.

We forgive because God forgives us. We thank because God has been gracious with his grace to us.

Michael Strickland

Preaching - Craig Stewart

Titus 3:4-8

Sometimes there is a gap between our beliefs and our behaviors.  One of the thing about the book of Titus, is that Paul speaks to both the beliefs and the behaviors. 

These four verses in many ways summarizes the central themes of this book:

Verse 3 - For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

One of the reasons we have such a problem with other people, particularly those that make us uncomfortable is someway is because we tend to forget our own past. As is often said here at City Church we should be Provoked but not Offended by the world.  This is not to say that we our own sin and rebellion has no meaning, that we some how have it all together.  In fact, it is the opposite. Our own past, and the fact the Christ has forgiven us that should provoke us to pursue each person we meant, not matter what our initial reaction may or may not be, to pursue them with the love of God, and the good news of the gospel.

Verse 5 - "he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit."

But why would God forgive those who do wrong at all?  The reason is because of who God is, what his character is?  What it isn't is because of anything we have done.  Heaven is not something we can work out for ourselves.

If you ask a Christian what happen if he dies, that person would answer, "I would go to heaven." To the world, this statement might seem very arrogant.  "What makes you think you are so "worthy" of heaven."  Indeed, what makes us so confident, so certain.  Is it not because we have read this truth, and know that is isn't "because of our works" but because of God's "own mercy.". From God's character, from his mercy comes any confidence we have at all.

So how is this done? Why is it done?  -  Because of his mercy.  By the washing of regeneration. 

What is regeneration?  - Regeneration happens because of something that happens to us, not because of us. A newborn baby does not birth it self.  Birth is something that happens to it.  Our spiritual rebirth is the same.  The "washing and renewal" happens because of the HOLY SPIRIT.  The first sign of a newly regenerated heart is faith.   

But we cannot be renewed if we are not first justified.

Verse 7 - "So that being justified by his grace me might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

We are justified, our past gone and covered, by JESUS, not because of ourselves, but because of Him.  And do you know what the result of this is?  Whatever struggles we are having at this moment, and any moment begin to diminish.  Diminished by the "hope of eternal life".  What is to come is so much BIGGER that what we endure right now.  That is awesome.  That is true freedom.

What does this mean? What occurs when we live in this hope?  Without Jesus, we so often just live for ourselves.  Even if we serve, those works so often fall short.  What we make without own hands does not last.  We need Jesus. We are to "devote ourselves to good works." And good works in Christ do last.

Lastly, we do this not as a way to earn God's favor, but because we have been transformed and live in gratitude.

Don't live halfway. 

Fear of Missing Out #FOMO - Part II

Acts 19:23-27

*There is more to gain by disobeying God than there is in being faithful to him.*

Like last weeks lie, this one is based in idolatry.  While we tend to not think of idolatry as a "modern" thing, that it is a thing of ancient culture who bows down to statues, we must realize that there are still many idols we have today.  Of these are our things we do for fun, or make our business.  We worship many things whether we admit it our not.

The book of Acts brings us a specific example of this in the time of the early church.

>About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the Way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen. These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, "Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and that she may even be deposed from her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship. Act 19:23-27

For Demetrius it wasn't the honor of his god that was at stake, it was his business. What does this tell us?  Look at the peoples response.

>When they heard this they were enraged and were crying out, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians Act 19:28

This leads to an important question.  What thing in your life is such a central component of your life, that you feel you can't possibly exist without it?  Is it your hobby, your business, your family even?  Consider the example of new parents.  Our anxiety as new parents leads us to sometimes protect so closely that nobody can hold the baby.  So worried that we make the center of the family our children.  Can we surrender even our children to God? 

**The problem with idols is that many of them are in an of them selves good things.  But when those good things become "god" things, then that is when we have a problem.**

So how do we identify what we made idols.  Considers these truths about idols.

**1. Idols must always be protected.**

So many things this is true of.  Consider our football teams; how as soon as we hear someone criticize our teams we get immediately up in arm.  HOW DARE YOU!.

In Acts, Demetrius hearing his idols were being supplanted by the gospel, got up in arms.  He was going to run Paul out of town.  "from this business we have our wealth…" The great and powerful Artemis needed to be protected. Our God is different, because God doesn't need us to be his attorney, but to be his ambassadors.

It is easy to pick on Demetrius, but we have much these same in our lives.

**2. Idols need sacrifices to keep them happy.**

Don't think this isn't true to this.  If romance is your idol, you walk out on your spouse as soon as the romance is "gone".  Idols want time, money, and will ask us to give up all the things of God

What do you love that pulls you to keep cutting corners and making excuses?

In the South, I think it isn't atheism that combats God, it is indifference.  "Sure I want to be a Christian, but just make sure it doesn't interfere to much with my life."

This isn't about addiction. This is about worship.  When you change not how you act, but who you worship, the game begins to change. 

Divorce, pornography, alcohol

Career, "romance", comfort

What do we sacrifice to keep these things. 

>But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. Rom 6:17-18

>But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord Rom 6:22-23

Preview Sunday at City Church Tharpe Street

Preaching: Jim Lowe

The story of Zacchaeus, ends where he begins.  Luke in telling this story by bookending it.  It is using it to tell emphasize what he is trying to say.

That emphasis is this.  Jesus came to seek and save the lost. You see, Zacchaeus was concerned with seeing Jesus.  He was afraid that he would miss the opportunity.  This is interesting, because Jesus had come to seek and save Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus may have been a wee little man, but he had the power and authority of the Roman Empire behind him.  He was not just a tax collector, he was a chief tax collector.  This was no sweet little man.  He extorted people.  Stole from them, defrauded them.  It was the role and the kind of the tax collector of that time.  A tax collector in that time was terrible, and Zacchaeus is their chief. The chief of sinners.

No Zacchaeus had heard the rumors of Jesus.  Perhaps he had heard that he was a friend of tax collectors and sinners.  Perhaps he had heard of Matthew, the tax collector that had become one of the core 12 disciples of Jesus.  He wanted to see Jesus!

This brings us to Luke's second point.  Jesus came to save the lost.  And so Jesus does something strange to Zacchaeus, he calls to him and with emphasis says that he "must" come to Zacchaeus' house. This encounter with started with a faith like desire to meet Jesus leads after the encounter with Jesus to repentance.  This leads to must unlikely of responses and Zacchaeus demonstrates what repentance looks like.  Zacchaeus was saved as his life turned.

But that is not the end of it. The other part of this story is that Jesus was on his was to Jerusalem.   As part of securing the very thing that would save the man, Zacchaeus, who he had purposefully sought out.

Consider this strange picture.  The sinner, Zacchaeus, was in a tree.  Church leaders may have recognized the irony of this, because the scriptures said, "Cursed is the man, hung on a tree." But Jesus called that sinner down from his place of curse, and in just a few days Jesus was to be nailed to a tree himself.  He was to die on that tree to …. save the lost.  Jesus only had this moment to seek Zacchaeus, and would go to a cross just days after to save him.

There is another part of this story.  For Jesus when he arose to heaven left us with this task he had begun.  He is asking us to "seek the lost", and with the good news of Jesus, the work that he has done can save them. 

It is interesting that just preceding this moment, Jesus had just shared a parable that

As we go to seek out sinners, let us remember these two truths..

- Don't grumble. 

- Let them grumble.  There will always be others that complain as we share. We inevitably will break someone's "rules" for how we share.  How can we save the lost, if we never go to them. This is what the parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collectors in chapter 18 is about.  Now Jesus was in the midst of sinners, but he also was not one of them.  Sharing the good news of Jesus, doesn't mean we conform to the world is such as way that it changes the truth of that good news. 

Perhaps none of these applies to you, because you don't know Jesus at all.  But know this great truth then.  Jesus is calling you by name.  He has come to seek and save each of us. 

Amen.