Sermon Central
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Navigating Home: A Study Of 1 Peter
Contributed by Scott Maze on Jun 4, 2021 (message contributor)
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1. Navigating Home
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
The rugged hope of the believer is not that we will escape distress or peril or hunger or slaughter, but that Almighty God will make every one of our agonies an instrument of his mercy to do us good. God gives us the staying power to make it home.
General Motors has a feature since 1996 that makes their cars unique. It’s the OnStar system. You have probably heard of the OnStar system on television. It can help you unlock your car when you lock yourself out. It can assist you finding a restaurant or directions to your hotel when traveling. It ...read more
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2. Never Lost
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Our faith lives in a hostile world. When navigating the road of life, God’s power directs your road safely to Him.
Warren Buffett is 77 and is considered strong and healthy even at this advance age. He filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for bicycle. His net worth is valued at over $62 billion and in the summer of 2006, he donated $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. ...read more
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3. Why Does God Allow Suffering?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
God’s plan for your happiness includes a design for even your distress.
This evening, I want to speak with you on this topic, “Why Does God Allow Suffering?” It’s important different religions answer this question in vary different ways. N. S. R. K. Ravi was born in 1953 in India into a family of wealth as they were in the second-highest caste, lower only than the ...read more
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4. No Really, You're Never Lost
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Can God keep me from losing my faith?
Before Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, he was president of Princeton University. One day he had to endure a one hour-long interrogation by an anxious mother who wanted to be sure that Princeton was the best place to send her son. He patiently tried to answer every one of her ...read more
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5. Navigating Safely
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
We should be amazed at the greatness of our salvation.
A store that sells husbands has just opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ...read more
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6. Why Hope?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Peter calls on the Christians in his day to have hope much like Martin Luther King Jr. did in his day. Peter says, “I command you to be hopeful though you are suffering greatly.”
Sometimes our hope is invisible. The last words of dying people have always fascinated me. They are so revealing of a person's heart and soul. John Wilkes Booth who assassinated President Lincoln said only two words at his death: “Useless. Useless.” These are words of hopelessness. Fox News ...read more
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7. Be Holy
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
The holiness of God is the most fundamental reality of all. It refers to the reality that God is utterly unique and in a class by himself—that is His set-apartness—none compares with Him.
Workers outside of Milwaukee are building a new vehicle, called a submersible that will allow oceanographers to plum the ocean’s depths. The submersible is to replace Alvin. Alvin, you may remember, was the Treasure Hunting vehicle that illuminated the rusting hulk of the Titanic. Alvin is able to ...read more
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8. Should You Fear God?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
We think that grace means there’s nothing to fear in our behavior. And so the sanction of judgment has no place in our lives. But God is gracious and calls us back today to fear the behavior that leads to destruction.
I heard about a young boy that went off to one of these extremely expensive universities, and the bills were coming in monthly to these parents and they were struggling to keep their head above water. One day his mother received a letter from him and he said: “Dear Mom, I’m writing to inform you ...read more
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9. Increase Your Hope In God
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Christ died so that both your faith and your hope are in God. He died to transform you from the power of sin.
James Hammond was a plantation owner during the Civil War who served as a congressman as well as the 60th governor of the state of South Carolina. Besides defending slavery, Hammond was guilty of an unbridled sexual appetite. In 1839, Hammond purchased an eighteen-year-old slave named Sally, along ...read more
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10. Divide Your Love
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
The command to love one another is sandwiched between two reasons to love that are both descriptions of the birth of hope. Love is encased in hope.
“What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life” (Emil Brunner) There are a lot of reasons for us not to be hopeful. I listed some just this week as I thought about this message: Suicide Stillborn children Multiple Sclerosis Sexual Abuse Eating Disorder Special Needs ...read more
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11. Multiply Your Zeal
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
The overall shape of the Bible’s story is like a U in which events begin in perfection, fall into corruption, and painfully wind their way back to the final defeat of evil and the triumph of good. The crucial turning point is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Number of spam e-mails sent each day in 2006: 183 billion? Number of work hours U.S. employees spent deleting spam in 2006: 22.9 million?Each of these spam emails are sent in order to create a desire in you. They are sent in order to increase your cravings. What do you crave? One person craves ...read more
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12. Decrease Your Love For Sin
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
While no official persecution of Christianity currently exits, there are signs that Christianity is becoming increasingly unpopular.
Jeff Lasater was 14 when he took his own life last month (October 20, 2008). A student in Las Angeles’ Acton High School, Lasater had been the target of boys throwing chili on him in the school lunch line. While others pulled his pants down. It was reported that the young man was the target of ...read more
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13. Who Am I?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
What gives us our identity is not color or culture. But “chosenness.” Christians are not the white race; they are the chosen race. Christians are not the black race; they are the chosen race.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but ...read more
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14. Why Being Good Matters
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
We must be vigilant and fight against gratifying ourselves in opposition to the will of God.
Today, I want to talk about “Why Being Good Matters.” And I want to express it in such a way that rebels who repent of their sins have hope. We want to examine our purpose in living against the backdrop of life itself. Not a sanitized view of life that we find in an ivory tower, stained glass ...read more
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15. War Of Your Worlds
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
When you see yourself as an alien and an exile with your citizenship in heaven, and God as your only Sovereign, you stop drifting with the current of the day. You ponder what is good for the soul and what honors God in everything.
When is something worth nothing? Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce a $50 billion note -- enough to buy just two loaves of bread – as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation. Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation now officially estimated at 231 million percent, and its ...read more
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16. The Church And The Government: Whose Side Am I On?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
You are citizens of two orders, two systems. This world with its necessary institutions, and the order of the kingdom of God with its necessary values. This is not because the two orders have equal authority, but because God is the ruler and owner of both.
We’re traveling through the book of 1 Peter. Peter’s two letters are a mere 166 verses. Nonetheless, they are packed with keen wisdom from a seasoned pastor about how to live amidst life’s trials. In this short little letter, Peter encourages the churches in now modern day Turkey to stand fast ...read more
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17. Making Sense Of Suffering
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
God is the unseen factor for the world. They will never understand our behavior when we live to God.
William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy. Jackson was Davis' house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level ...read more
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18. How To Be An Exceptional Wife
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Cosmopolitan can teach you how to win a man to yourself. But only the Scripture can teach you how to win him to God.
This morning I want to talk to women whose need hope. I want to speak to women who are married to men who are not converted to Christ. And Peter has some very unusual counsel for godly women married to ungodly men. He tells them to submit to such men! Talking to women about being gentle, quiet, ...read more
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19. Marriage And Men
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Men, I call on you to take responsibility for your wife. Take responsibility for your children. Take responsibility for your church. Take some responsibility even for your city. Jesus is our model for masculinity.
In Peter’s first letter – a letter that we have been focusing on since May of 2008 – Peter tells men that right living will help them pray. Peter tells us that our prayers can be clogged by how we treat our wives. This is an especially important commandment in our day for the definitions of men ...read more
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20. How To Give God's Best To Others
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
God wants to change how you feel. God wants to change what you desire. God wants to change how you work. God wants to change how you act. God wants to change how you love.
Today, I am praying for two families with rebellious children. Children who are now adults and addicted to drugs. These families need hope. I am praying for Breenan, a little preemie baby at a Little Rock hospital. Breenan was born seven weeks too early. I am praying for young newlywed husband ...read more
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21. How To Grow Through Suffering
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Peter tells us there is no need to fear suffering for it is the path to blessing. It’s was that way for Jesus and He has appointed this the path for every believer.
Zeus ordered the creation of a new goddess because of his sheer boredom. According to In Greek mythology, Zeus had run out of other goddess to seduce, so he had Pandora created. Pandora was given a mysterious box and was told that whatever she did, she was not to open this box. She resisted the ...read more
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22. Fatal Assumption: Exposing The Myth That Godly People Don't Suffer
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Unjust suffering carried out with unwavering confidence in God produce unimaginable impact and blessing for you and others.
The South Pacific Islands called Vanuatu consists of four main islands with additional 80 islands surrounding these. Approximately 220,000 people live on the islands today. The islands are around 1,000 miles from Australia itself and were first explored by Captain James Cook. 450 miles long, the ...read more
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23. The Anatomy Of Hope
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Christ saw pain as an opportunity for greater pleasure. Christ saw enduring pain for doing what is right as a door for His greatest delight – God Himself. We are to arm ourselves with this same mindset.
Psychologists tell us people want to be known. Some people want to be known for their work as an actor, a singer, or other want to be known as a culinary artist. Others just want to be known. Some people take the need to be known to the extreme. A Jamaican man set a distance record of 23.11 miles ...read more
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24. Purposeful Living For Perilous Times
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Because the end is near… pray, love, and serve.
Honestly, many of us are little afraid of closely examining the Bible’s message on the future. If we focus on the end times too long, we are afraid of turning into a guy walking around the city with a sandwich board yelling about judgment and the end of time. We easily get confused when reading ...read more
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25. Making Your Life Matter
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Christians are to display a willingness to be offended, disadvantaged, even abused without making a return, without requiring vengeance, without demanding an accounting – whether an apology, or punishment, or a repayment of some kind.
This is one of the most encouraging messages you’ll hear. Today’s Big Idea: God Works Diligently on Our Behalf. Over the next few minutes, I want to tell you God serves His children. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever ...read more
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26. Where Is God When I Hurt?
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
1 Peter is a book about suffering. It’s about how to live in a hostile culture for faith.
A pastor is cutting his front lawn. He looks up from mowing to see a dump truck back out of his neighbor’s driveway. Yet, the large truck backed over his neighbor’s eighteen month old son. The little boy had been squatting behind the truck’s huge tire. The pastor joined the boy’s hysterical mother ...read more
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27. A Minister You Can Trust
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
It is impossible to separate the message from the messengers. Our reflection of what is being said is influenced by who is saying it and how it is being said. Church leadership is important
On June 17, 2002 Federal authorities arrested a United States Forest Service employee for starting the largest fire in Colorado’s history. Terry Barton is a 38-year-old woman and had worked every summer for the Forest Service for 18 or 19 years. She had ventured into the forest to burn a letter ...read more
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28. Harmony Through Humility
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
HOW CAN YOU ACHIEVE HUMILITY? BY CONTINUALLY CASTING YOU CARES UPON GOD.
Humility is Self-effacing and it is Modest. It is quiet, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, and doesn’t believe it’s own press clippings. Humility is essential if you are a follower of Christ. Today’s Big Idea: Be Humble if You Want God to Work for You. “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with ...read more
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29. How To Face Satan
Contributed on Jun 4, 2021
Don’t be like the 2 boys walking back home from church. They had just heard the pastor preach a strong message on the devil when the one boy said, “What do you think about all this Satan stuff?” The other boy replied, “You know how Santa Clause turned out. It’s probably just your dad.”
According to a cartoon in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, God and the devil are discussing who gets to welcome Michael Jackson to the afterlife. The cartoon shows Satan holding a newspaper with a headline announcing Jackson’s death. He looks up and poses a question to God, who is leaning over a ...read more