Wider than the Ocean: Certainty

Wider than the Ocean: Certainty

A Sermon Based on Job 11:7-12

This sermon is the cornerstone sermon in a new sermon series called Wider than the Ocean. As we move along in this time of pandemic, we have the opportunity to enter it anew with the certainty, faith, hope, and calling of Christ. We begin today by seeing how to find real certainty amidst all the uncertainty. The temptation is always to try to know what we cannot know. Life with Christ begins when we know what we can know and content ourselves with that.

The Gifts of Christmas: Patience

The Gifts of Christmas: Patience

A Sermon Based on James 5:7-11

The Church selected this lesson that’s all about suffering for the time just before Christmas. Why? Christmas can be such a painful time of year. We stare at the dysfunction in our families. We mourn people we have lost. This Scripture teaches how to be patient during all the waiting we’re doing for restoration right now.

Coming Forth with Golden Victory

Coming Forth with Golden Victory

(A Sermon Based on Job 41)

Leviathan is so powerful. He attacks us and we tend to get overwhelmed. That’s clearly a message in Job 41. The sense of powerlessness and victimization that he engenders through that can be leave us far from God - despairing of his justice. This is a sermon designed to put Leviathan back in his place so that our trust in the Lord’s power and justice can grow. Listen in!

Coming Forth as a More Golden You

Coming Forth as a More Golden You

(A Sermon Based on Job 39:5-30)

It’s time to talk about suffering and take the topic straight on. That’s what the Lord does here. He comes straight at suffering by giving Job his vision of his creation. We need that vision - to be broken out of the smallness of our vision of suffering and to gain what this sermon calls an eagle’s eye vision of what’s actually happening in our lives through suffering. It’s how the Lord takes the suffering out of suffering while it’s happening in our lives. Listen in!

Coming Forth with Golden Wisdom

Coming Forth with Golden Wisdom

(A Sermon Based on Job 28:1-12, 28)

This chapter of Job seems out of place. We can call it an aside in the book of Job. Perhaps though we should give it a more elegant name. Perhaps we should call it an interlude. But is it really just an interlude? Does it really have nothing to say about suffering? And why is there such a profound and beautiful description of ancient mining? Why these verses - this incredible hymn to human progress? These and other far more profound questions find their answers in this sermon. Listen in!

Coming Forth with Golden Faith

Coming Forth with Golden Faith

(A Sermon Based on Job 16:7-21)

Why do we sometimes not pray? Why do we sometimes refuse to pray for ourselves? Why is it that sometimes when we do pray we pray prayers that are completely sanitized? Job raises his complaint to God powerfully and as he does we learn from him about how to lament and grieve over our pain with God. In so doing, Job shows us how to see our lives through the lens of Jesus. Listen in!