December 1, 2024 – Pastor Tim Nguyen
What does saying yes to Jesus and his teachings actually mean for us?
From our passage, we see it means:
Many of us have had to make complex choices. Some of us are burdened with guilt for the moral choices we’ve made. So, my big question is How do we navigate the right choice in complex situations?
Every day, we face so many different philosophies of life. A lot of them are kind of hippy-feel-good ones. Sometimes, you’ll come across quite heartless ones. But the philosophy you cling onto will make ALL the difference in life. A bad one will wreck you beyond imagination. But the right philosophy will make you into the greatest and most fulfilled version of yourself. The person God made you to be.
And our bible passage today gives us really good tools, signs that help you know you’re on the right path. And it has to do with being willing to reject and ditch the philosophies of many people around us.
Our focus today is this question:
What are some signs that show us we’re on the right track in life?
1 – The right track is narrow and rare.
2 – The right track is led by excellent role models.
Relationships are a huge part of life. They can be a huge source of joy, or they can be a huge source of pain. Today, our Bible passage is about the relationships that cause us pain. The big idea today is to look to God and imitate Him in our most difficult relationships.
God is a perfect father, but the knowledge of that is not enough. God wants us to emulate Him.
I think it’s understandable that a lot of people hate work. And they dream of a day when they can leave their work behind and just do whatever they feel like. But I believe we’re not meant to wish away our working hours. I believe that the ordinary work that we all do can be incredibly meaningful and rewarding.
So, my big question today is: how can we get the most out of our work? The answer I want to show you today is, we can turn work into worship. Sometimes our worship needs to be public, and sometimes our worship needs to be private. But all work is about worship. And my task today is to show you these ideas from two Bible passages in the Sermon on the Mount, so that you can build your life directly on God’s words.
Today, it might seem like we live in more “civilized times” when people won’t have to die for their faith. But this doesn’t mean that it’s easy to be a Christian today. The Christian life if lived right will be marked by difficulty. It won’t be comfortable and that’s what we learn from our Bible passage today.
Our passage today is famously called the Beatitudes, it is the start of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount.