April 9, 2017 | Luke 23:44-49 |
In the gospel of Luke, the seventh and last word of Jesus on the cross was a prayer that expressed His total dependence in the Father to bring Him home. God hears and answers the prayers of those who will express their total dependence in Him.
April 2, 2017 | John 19:28-30 |
Do you ever feel defeated? Have you ever felt as if you were a failure at everything? School, work, marriage, parenting, etc? Do you ever feel defeated by sin? Like certain sins continue to beset you? Jesus took what looked like complete failure and turned it into total triumph!
In the Gospel of John, Jesus let out a triumphant cry from the cross that He had finished the work of salvation. This salvation is a finished work, yet we still have to respond to it.
March 26, 2017 | John 19:28-29 |
Are you thirsty today? Would you admit your thirst? What are you thirsty for? What desire goes unsatisfied, so that you thirst for it always? As Americans, we rarely go thirsty for basic needs. Food, water, clothing, housing… most of us have these needs met. Yet, our thirst remains. Have you tried to quench your thirst with material things? You spend money you do not have to purchase things that will not satisfy. Yet, the thirst remains, so you keep spending. You thirst for love and relationship, so you give your body away, and settle for sexual lust rather than waiting for covenantal love. So your thirst remains. We thirst for significance, for meaning, for happiness, yet the more we have, the more we drink from every worldly fountain, the more we thirst!
Jesus cried out with the constant cry of all humanity, “I thirst.” Jesus took on our thirst that we might be satisfied. He poured out his life that we might be filled.
March 19, 2017 | Mark 15:33-39 |
In this sermon, we will be looking at the fourth of His last sayings, the word of despair. We will consider Christ’s questioning cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Have you ever cried out to God like Jesus did? Have you ever felt forsaken and alone? Have you ever felt distant from God? Have you cried, “God, where are you?” We all feel lonely at times. We all want acceptance. We want to be accepted and approved. But instead, we often feel rejected and alone. The truth is, if we would rightly understand how our sins have separated us from our Creator, we would cry out with a deeper feeling of despair than we’ve ever felt. It was for this, that Christ took on our despair, that we might receive in exchange, His oneness with God.
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus cried out in despair to God as He experienced the extravagant exchange that it cost Him for our reconciliation. We can understand the cost of this extravagant exchange.
March 12, 2017 | John 19:16-27 |
Have you ever wondered whether God cares? Especially asking, “Does God care for me?” I’ve heard some say, “I’m sure God has better things to do than care about my little problems. Shouldn’t He be busy solving world hunger or peace on earth?” What do you think? Does God care for the details of your little life? Or is He too busy running the universe? In this third word from the cross, we will realize how much God cares for us. He cares for the big stuff and He cares for the little stuff too. There’s no detail too small for His loving care. In the third saying of Jesus from the cross found in the gospel of John, Jesus revealed the loving care that He had for His mother. We can know the loving care that Jesus has for us.
March 5, 2017 | Luke 23:32-43 |
Last words – we will all someday speak them. The seven last words of Jesus on the cross were recorded in the four gospels. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus responded with a promise of salvation to the criminal hanging on the cross next to Him, who had called on Jesus to remember him. In Christ’s response to the criminal on the cross, He revealed the promised salvation He has for us. How can we respond to Christ’s promised word of salvation?
February 26, 2017 | Luke 23:34 |
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
In the gospel of Luke, we have the record of Christ’s first word on the cross and it was a word of forgiveness. It was a prayer to His Father, that He would forgive those who were crucifying Him. In this prayer, Jesus revealed the boundless forgiveness He has for us.
February 19, 2017 | 2 Timothy 2:2 |
Our desire is to be a disciple-making church. Pastor Gary laid out the strategy we have been working on for the past year to be a church full of disciples who are making disciples through our Life On Life Discipleship process. We are following the pattern established by Jesus to pour his life into a few people who then turned the world upside down with relational and strategic relationships, one on one, over the years. The the apostle Paul instructed Timothy in this pattern as well in 2 Timothy 2:2, saying “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”
February 12, 2017 | Matthew 28:18-20 |
Disciple making begins with being a witness for Christ, sharing the gospel and inviting others to attend church with you. But why don’t more Christians witness? Recent statistics state that “86% of people who visit were invited by a friend or relative.” Yet, “only 2% of church people have invited an unchurched person to church with them.” What kind of a disciple are you? Do you want to be a disciple who makes disciples?
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus commissioned his disciples to be disciple-makers. We call this the Great Commission. Christ made being a disciple and making-disciples inseparable. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you will be a disciple-maker. In Christ’s Great Commission, he taught them how to make disciples. We can obey Christ’s call to be disciples who make disciples.
[Note: Pastor Gary was visiting the Rocky Mount campus, Eastgate Community Church, this Sunday. This campus did not have the ability to record video of his message, so only audio is available for this sermon]
February 5, 2017 | Matthew 16:24 |
Full Transcript Available
In the book of Matthew, Jesus described what it meant to answer the call to come after Him and be one of His disciples. We can answer the call to be a disciple of Jesus.