Capital City Christian Church | Podcast

One of the hardest things God tells us to do is to share Jesus with those we don’t like, or who don’t like us. Sometimes being a “witness” starts with forgiveness.

Jesus calls us to be his witnesses, and tells us to start at home. The focus in this sermon will be on doing whatever we can to raise up a new generation of Jesus followers.

When you follow a hero, you tend to do heroic things. And there is nothing more heroic a Jesus follower does than to rescue someone they love by introducing them to Jesus.

We are made to worship God with other believers. God made us for community and by engaging God through God’s church, we are better together.

Following Jesus isn’t just about believing in God and waiting for heaven; nor even just about doing life for God; it’s about doing life with God right now. The discipline of a daily quiet time with God is extremely hard, but well worth it. Today we launch a 30 day “Verse of the Day” challenge.

Too often Christians define life with God as “sin avoidance” - doing the dos and avoiding the don’ts. Jesus points to a different way to do life with God, encompassed by just two commands: love God, and love others - his way.

Once we accept the rescue - what is different? What’s new? What’s next? And what does being rescued mean for me?

Who wouldn’t want real Christianity to be true? God recklessly offers grace: his undeserved, unearned, unearnable favor...through Jesus. This sermon wraps up part one of Life: A Hero’s Story which we’re calling “The Rescue.”

How could God get us to see our sin for what it is, and where it is taking us? With a cross God shows us the depravity and danger of our sin, how much he loves us anyway, and the way out.

We love hero stories - in part because they are echoes of our own story. Now, we tend to focus on what a hero does. But before the action, he or she often sees what others can’t see, feels what others don’t feel and may find intolerable what others have learned to tolerate. Today, we explore the heart of God.

We love hero stories - in part because they are echoes of our own story. The problem is, we see ourselves as the heroes, instead of those needing rescue. We kick off a series entitled “The Rescue.”

God gives us the means to be generous, and the honor of being used by him. Generosity not only helps those we give to, but stretches our faith and helps us live outside ourselves. We climax the series with an offering that will be donated to RIP Medical Debt.

Normal is spend, repay debt, pay taxes, save if there’s any left and give if there’s anything left after that. Jesus followers flip that around: give, save, live on the rest. We will especially focus on the spiritual principals behind “saving.”

Decisions we made in the past limit our options in the present – with respect to our money, too. Too often, our choices led to the prison of debt. What can we do to start digging our way out?

Money isn’t fun to talk about. It seems like we’ve always got problems and more money could solve them. Today we’re talking about the number one secret to managing your money well.

We think “Judge Not” means "Never make any kind of judgments at all, ever!” We’ll take a closer look at what Jesus really meant.

Today’s culture doesn’t like the concept of “absolute truth.” That’s where we get the saying “It doesn’t matter what I believe.” It’s tempting to accept that - some people have their truth and we have ours. But that’s not the way Jesus explained things.

We hear, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But God never promises that. What he does promise is to be with us and that his grace is sufficient.

We kick off a series on cultural myths which Christians buy into. We morph “I have a right to be happy,” into “God wants me to be happy.” Although there is truth in that, there are things God wants way more.

We wrap up the series on “Necessary Sins” by talking about lust - every good man’s battle. It’s a war with extremely high stakes, a war we often choose not to fight and a war we cannot win without God’s help.

Words do hurt; use them wisely when speaking of another person; we can leave long lasting scars with our words; we can actually murder the reputation of another. Gossip is unacceptable behavior within God’s culture.

Although we can be angry and not sin, we tend to sin in our anger. In this sermon, we examine the root causes of anger and God’s antidote.

There may be some kinds of “lies” which are innocent (as in humor), but too often we justify our lying. Lying is a failure to trust God, it corrupts our character, and it corrupts our relationships with people and with God.

We wrap up our “Love Handles” series with a focus on “Forsaking all others, till death do us part.” Although some question whether that is possible or a worthy goal, it does reflect GOd’s will and is part of his growing us into the “godlike” creatures he meant us to be. It’s a choice we make, to live outside ourselves.

We promise to love and to “cherish.” What’s the difference? And how do we do it?

As in our life with God, a healthy, God-honoring marriage requires “perseverance.” The “happily ever after” is on the other side of the better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health.

What does it mean to take someone as your spouse “to have and to hold?”

What is the faith of the next generation worth to you? What about the faith of everyone that you know?

If God gave you whatever you wanted - what you ask for? What wish would you have God grant you? You might be selfless with your response - but would it really be the best thing?

What if we recognized that God is in the room? What if we recognized that worship is a dialogue, not a monologue? What if people came expecting “church”, and “worship” broke out!

We wrap up our Making a Messiah series with God’s verdict on Jesus. The earliest Jesus followers were just as skeptical as anyone today after Jesus’ crucifixion, and none of them expected a resurrection. It was the resurrection that turned them around and launched the church.

Baptism is a picture of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus When we identify with Jesus in baptism, we come to grips with who we are, who He is and what stands in our way.

We walk through the trials of Jesus and see him rejected six times over the course of just a few hours. Their reasons for rejecting him are templates for some of our own. And in the end, our verdict on Jesus will determine God’s verdict on us.

Jesus didn’t come to add to the Old Covenant, he came to replace it. And the was to do life with God, for God, God’s way under this new covenant is encompassed by this one new “law”: Love one another, as I have loved you.

The temple was the center of Judaism, the path to doing life with God, for God, God’s way. When Jesus entered the temple and disrupted the buying and selling of Passover lambs, he was throwing down a gauntlet: “You can crown me or kill me - but you can’t ignore me.”

Until now, Jesus has been quelling public speculation that he was the Messiah. Now he goes public, in a remarkable fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecies. Now he forces our hand: crown me or kill me.

After blowing their minds by telling the disciples that as Messiah he had to suffer and die, and that following him might make their lives much harder, he confirms that he really is their Messiah by giving them a peek at who he really is. And God the Father shows us, and tells us to listen, and follow him. We probe the historical evidences that it really happened.

Jesus asks the biggest question anyone will have to answer - who do you think he is? And then he redefines what it means to be the Messiah of God, and what it means to follow him.

40 years before it happened, Jesus predicts with great detail the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. If he could speak with authority about the future, he deserves to be followed.

They thought he might be the Messiah, but they thought he was doing it wrong. Jesus tells these parables to teach them: God’s Kingdom is not what you think it is; but it’s going to win; and you need to do whatever it takes to be part of it.

Jesus was no used car salesman. He challenged us to stay faithful no matter how hard Jesus following will inevitably get. His claims to our allegiance were unbounded.

Jesus claimed absolute authority over everything in heaven and on Earth. In his teaching, he claimed to supersede Moses, to have the right to countermand the law. If he was wrong, he would be a raving lunatic or a maniacal liar. If he was right…what do you say he is?

Jesus had incredible power, which he used with maddening restraint. But he didn’t come to fix all of our problems…but he did give us a glimpse of what is coming.

Satan and his demons are incredibly powerful; Jesus infinitely more so. It’s not just demon “possession,” sometimes it’s “under the influence.” All of us allow him to slip in, and unless stopped, he will enslave us. And there is only one powerful enough to stop him.

Storms are incredibly powerful; Jesus infinitely more so. Four big ideas: there is a good kind of fear; fear does not exclude love; God will not keep us out of all the storms; but you can trust him in the storms.

Jesus’ power was unmatched, the power of God. But sometimes we obsess over the wrong things. He didn’t come to fix broken bodies, he came to fix broken souls.

So much information exists to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person. But was he truly the Messiah, son of God? We’re going to look at the stories written about Jesus and some of the people who lived right alongside him and see if we can figure it out.

The classic Christmas story we’ve all heard is pleasant; God born as a baby on a silent night in the little town of Bethlehem. But that’s not all there is to the story. The true Christmas story has more to it than just what we can see.

The Book of John is unique in its telling of the birth story of Jesus. While Matthew and Luke wrote about Jesus’ birth on earth - John stepped back and described how Jesus, the one who is forever, stepped from infinite space into our little world. The very one who created the universe being born as a vulnerable baby.

We're in our second week of Advent and the Christmas series, "The One Who Is." We're looking at the peace that Jesus brought when he came to earth and the miraculous birth story in Luke.