Sermon Central
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Jim Butcher
Contributing sermons since Jan 1, 2000
Newest Sermons
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Why Does Jesus Tell His Disciples Not To Tell People That He Is The Christ
Contributed on Jul 1, 2025
This passage provides an interesting insight into why Jesus told His disciples not to tell anyone He was the Christ.
KEEP QUIET: Proclaiming that Jesus was the Christ would create a lot of wrong expectations. - Luke 9:18-21. - It’s an odd thing to hear Jesus telling His disciples to not tell people that He is the Christ. You would generally think that He would want it proclaimed often and loudly from every ...read more
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Jesus On Family
Contributed on Jun 12, 2025
It's easy to overlook just how radical a statement Jesus makes here. He is doing nothing less than fundamentally redefining the family. What are the implications of actually living this out?
ONE QUICK POINT BEFORE WE GET TO THE ACTUAL SERMON: The definition of a Christian is someone hearing God’s word and putting it into practice. - Luke 8:21. - Matthew 7:21, 24, 26; Matthew 12:50; John 7:17; John 14:23; John 15:10; 1 John 2:17. - Jesus says something here that is crucially ...read more
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The Consequences Of Producing A Crop
Contributed on Jun 5, 2025
After sharing the Parable of the Four Soils, Jesus tells us what the consequences in our lives of seeing that fruitfulness will be. This sermon unpacks four consequences of seeing a "crop" of God's fruitfulness in your life.
- I need to start with a word that I use quite a bit in sermons: context. - It is essential that we don’t pull passages out of their original context and try to make them mean something that the original author didn’t intend. Further, we need to look at what comes before and after to see if that ...read more
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Do We Want To Avoid Temptation?
Contributed on Jun 2, 2025
We finish up the Lord's Prayer sermon series with Jesus' words on temptation. Do they match how we normally approach sin in our lives?
AVOIDING TEMPTATION: Do I want this for my life? - Matthew 6:13. - Now we come to the close of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus has invited us to pray about a number of important subjects and now we have a final one about spiritual victory. - What does v. 13 mean? I think a summary statement would be ...read more
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Do I Want God To Forgive Me As I Forgive Others?
Contributed on May 20, 2025
Jesus puts forward challenging words in the second half of v. 12 - calling us to ask for forgiveness in the same way we have forgiven others. Verses 14-15 emphasize the expectation from God that we will forgive others as part of having been forgiven by Him. What happens when we live this out?
DOES THIS SCARE ME? Do I want God to forgive me as I forgive others? - Matthew 6:12b, 14-15. - I said last week as we unpacked the first half of v. 12 that we often don’t put a lot of thought into what that actually means. In that case it had to do with making confession of our sins a regular ...read more
Newest Sermon Series
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How You Should Pray: Embracing The Lord's Prayer
Contributed on Apr 9, 2025
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Ezekiel
Contributed on Mar 11, 2024
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Re-Creation
Contributed on Jan 24, 2024
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The Greatest Gospel Explanation Ever
Contributed on Nov 7, 2023
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How To Disagree
Contributed on Sep 15, 2023
Newest Sermon Illustrations
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Before The Water
Contributed on Nov 15, 2018
Scott Harrison, founder of charity:water, shares this story: "I recently had the chance to visit charity:water's very first project. It was a well that we had funded on my thirty-first birthday and then built in the IDP camp of Bobi, Uganda. "The sprawling camp of 31,000 people had cleared out, ...read more
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It’s Only A White Collar Crime?
Contributed on Oct 16, 2018
C.S. Lewis died in 1963, but a comment in one of his writings speaks directly to the current opioid crisis. Lewis wrote: “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its ...read more
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Rescue
Contributed on Oct 16, 2018
I am really struck by the lyrics of Lauren Daigle’s recent song “Rescue.” The singer is speaking from God’s perspective and says: “I hear the whisper underneath your breath I hear you whisper, you have nothing left I will send out an army to find you In the middle of the darkest night It’s true, ...read more
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What Khris Davis Did That No One Has Ever Done Before
Contributed on Oct 16, 2018
Khris Davis is an outfielder for the Oakland Athletics in the majors. In 2015, he batted .247 for the year. In 2016, he batted .247 for the year. In 2017, he batted .247 for the year. And during the last season, in 2018, he batted . . . , you guessed it, .247 for the year. He went 0-for-2 in ...read more
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What God Told Me At 4 A.m. In Guangzhou, China
Contributed on Apr 13, 2018
Note: this story is told by me - Jim Butcher of Madison WV. I want to tell you a story about an insight that God gave me into John 14:1-4, the passage where Jesus speaks of going to prepare a place for us. This is the story of something that happened to me several years ago while I was in ...read more