We are going to spend a few weeks looking at what Jesus (and others in the New Testament) had to say about the Kingdom of God. We begin today in Matthew 5 with the Beatitudes and will continue to the Lord’s Prayer.
Christians are going to Heaven right? There are only two possible destinations when life on earth is over, heaven and hell. The Bible is clear on that fact, right? Well, it’s just not that simple. While I am not willing to come right out and say “We are not going to heaven” the truth of scripture is more nuanced than that. Which is to say, it’s just not that simple.
Let’s look into scripture as we begin a series on what Jesus (and a few others in the New Testament) have to say about the coming Kingdom.
I want to preach a sermon on heaven. We are going to start with The Word of God and hopefully get there soon.
This is a sermon I have preached before but this is the first time since Mom passed last year. Our church congregation has seen a lot of turnover in the past couple of years so most everyone, with the exception of perhaps my family, had not heard this interpretation of Romans 8:28 before.
It’s from a scripture passage that I’ve preached on before but we’re going to come at it a different way this time. How is it that Jesus was being tempted at all?
I want to conclude our mini-series of how the Old Testament helps us understand who Jesus is and what he does. This is also Labor Day weekend so I share a true story that happened early Sunday morning at my “new job.”
In Mark 1, John the Baptist is preaching a message of repentance and baptizing in the Jordan River when Jesus comes to be baptized. He has no sins to confess or repent of but God is about to do something new this event is just the beginning.
Why did John baptize? We are familiar with Christian baptism but John’s ministry began before Christ’s. There was no Old Testament baptism but washing something in water to make it clean is a pretty ancient concept. Let’s talk about how John the Baptist is and where he came from and see if anything points to God doing something new.
Faith is belief in action, but who or what you believe in is important. Trusting in the wrong thing, false gods, astrology, misinformation etc. could be worse than not believing anything.
*Near the end of the sermon I started a story about “back in my college days” that squirreled away from me. The point of the story was that our Bible professor was sometimes asked “Can God…” He took a moment to explain that “Can God…” is never the right question. The definition of God is all can. He could do anything but perhaps a better question is does God, will God, something along those lines.
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