Posts by Kevin
The Law and New Life
One of the challenges of jumping into a sermon series is trying to figure out how to address everything that I want to address within a given passage because of the richness and depth of God’s word. There is a part of me that wants to spend a few weeks on only a few verses diving deep into scripture. But unfortunately, that is not an option in this season for this passage. But with such complex passages as Romans 6:15-23…
Who do you belong to?
There are different shapes that biblical sermons can take. The late great Haddon Robinson, who was a professor on preaching, talked about this in his book, Biblical Preaching. Among other shapes, Robinson talked about a sermon being a proposition to be proved, a principle to be applied, or an idea to be explained. It is that last shape that I believe Paul is utilizing in this section of the letter to the church in Rome. Though perhaps he wouldn’t have…
Fear of the Lord leads to Sharing our Faith
How often do you think about fear? Maybe when you talk with young children about a bad dream that they had. Or maybe when you talk with a parent of a teen that’s about to move to a new city and start college. Or maybe when you talk with someone who is in an unstable work environment and their future seems unsure. In all those cases, the root idea of fear is that something, whether known or unknown, is coming…
Until We Walk Again
Well, we’re almost there! It’s been a slow (but hopefully good!) walk through 2 John—a book that many of us have probably overlooked for most of our Christian walk. We have so far seen that the elect are those who remain in obedience to walk in truth and love and who will receive the reward of Christ. Through our faithfulness to allow God’s Word and our relationship with him to change every aspect of our lives, we will receive the…
The Walk Continues
If you think of this sermon series as a ham and turkey sandwich, the first week was the piece of bread laid down with some condiments, last week was the Black Forest Ham (only the best for LifeWay), and this week is the delicious deli turkey that we’re going to lay on top. That is to say, we are continuing the meat of the message with the second part of the body of the letter, verses 7-11. Next week, we’ll…
Let’s Start the Walk
This Sunday, we will be continuing in our series through “The Postcard Epistle.” Last week, we started by diving deep into the first three verses. That whole sermon was definitely more on the head knowledge side of things, but I hope that you found it helpful in understanding just how rich scripture is and how much is there. In understanding the context of the book we saw that, most likely, the Elder was John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee,…
An Introduction to the Postcard Epistle
This Sunday we are beginning a slow, four-week sermon series through one of the shortest books of the Bible: 2 John. It’s a book that is so small (about 245 words and only 13 verses!) that I’ve titled this series, “The Postcard Epistle.” You may be wondering why we seem to be jumping over 1 John and going straight to 2 John, and the reason for that is really two-fold: Unlike other books such as 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians,…