Renovation Church Sermon Podcast

Jesus Revolution | A Community of Healers | Acts 3:1-10

Do you see the brokenness that surrounds us, hidden often by bright lights, exciting events and blissful ignorance, or do you think I am over-exaggerating? 

The question reminds me of a funny conversation I had with my little bro, Jason, who worships here with his family. At lunch, I asked him, “Are you as tired as I am of seeing trash all over the streets in our city?” To which he replied, “I don’t think I have ever noticed.”

A few days later, he texted me, “Why did you do this to me? Now that I see it, I can’t unsee it, and I see it everywhere!” 

Whether you believe what I am sharing is true or think it is overblown, the reality is that once you open your eyes to see it, you cannot unsee it. 

And even before I shared those several examples, many of you were already affirming the thought in your mind—there is a great deal in need of healing in our metro.

When discussing brokenness, one question often leads to another, and the question of “why” is inevitable. Why do these things exist? If you practise the way of Jesus, then I imagine you think, as I do, that sin has shattered all of creation, especially humanity.

And because of that needed healing, I know many of you want to see communities transformed because broken people and situations are healed and made whole. I truly believe many of us want that very thing in light of what we have seen and cannot unsee. We want to solve it.

But there's a problem with fulfilling that hope: our city's brokenness' often seems too consuming to heal.

The Jesus Revolution | A New Social Reality

Forming deep, meaningful relationships takes time, and it cannot happen if we allow the busyness we adopt and the isolation it causes to win the day. Deep relationships only form when our lives are unhurried and communally grounded.

And it is the desire of your heart. You want to be in a life-giving community. You want deep, lasting friendships. You want to find your people for the years ahead and the moment life ends on this side.

But there's a problem with getting what we want—the pace of our lives has led to our isolation, which leads to incredible loneliness. Researchers realised that Americans were lonelier than ever before the pandemic hit, leading them to conclude that we have an epidemic of loneliness. - Cigna Health Group

Small Group Showcase

Transfiguration Sunday

C.S. Lewis poingantly wrote, in his work Mere Christianity, “I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 Jesus left us little room to believe He is a mere man, and I believe we want to be confident about Jesus and not unsure. But there is a problem, and it may be so obvious that you overlook it. It’s doubt. Doubt is a subtle, creeping thing. It does not come on all at once.

The Jesus Revolution | Who Are My People? ft. Rev. Matt Adair

We continue in the Book of Acts in our sermon series The Jesus Revolution with guest speaker, Reverend Matt Adair.

In this sermon, Matt explains two gifts that meet us in our confusion and in our guilt that help us to get started or to continue on God's good intercultural/intergenerational road: clarity and grace.

Jesus Revolution | Tongues of Fire

You want to experience the all-encompassing divine presence of God. You do. So do I. How do I know? You could spend your Sunday morning in many other ways, but we are here together—both online and in the room—and experiencing His presence is the primary reason we are here.

Yes, some of us thrive in the community of church. Some of us might be present out of some sense of duty. But underneath all of the other “why’s” is an embedded longing to experience something transcendent. That longing is woven into our souls.

Even if you are a sceptic, I imagine you have wondered what lies beyond what we consider our “rational” world. And if you have ceased to live with wonder, is that any way to live at all?

The Jesus Revolution | Upper Room | Acts 1:12-26

We continue our series through the book of Acts. A few points from this weeks sermon:

Prayer is our great power.

God is forming a family from all peoples, for all peoples.

God’s word is always fulfilled.

Sin makes us run from God when we don’t know grace.

God sees your needs and your motives.

God makes His will known in unmistakable ways.

Jesus Revolution | Ascension

The Kingdom has not yet been fully manifested, and even for those of us who follow Jesus, the tension is real. We live in the tension of believing a better world has begun, but it is not fulfilled. War still rages. Poverty persists. Death is a reality for every living thing, and the wicked seem to keep rolling. 

The problem is we feel the tension of experiencing the Kingdom of God in our lives and communities before it is fully realised in the entire universe. We still see or have unbelief. Sin and brokenness shout to us that God’s will has not found its full expression. 

And how does that leave us feeling? The answer to that question could splinter in a thousand ways, but the word that surfaced for me is angst. It is an angst that makes us look to people, leaders, politics and systems to solve generations-old issues that will only dissolve when God’s Kingdom is fully realised. 

It is an angst that cultivates doubt and fear. It is an angst that quietly cries out in our hearts, “God, if you were real, you would solve this…”