All the Sermons

Ephesians 1:11-14 Listen Link:     http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw Today we celebrate God’s goodness and gracious provision! This text gives us some assurances of both our salvation and the real presence of the Holy Spirit infused into our very being. Can I tell you what it was like for me as a young lad? I was very bright in school, but not much of an athlete. I spent a lot of time in books and not much time on any ball field. I didn’t really like gym class. I was kind of awkward out there. Worst of all, in grade school and junior high, you don’t get much sympathy from your classmates for being a dork. I could do ok as an individual with physical exertion. For example, in third grade, I was the only one of the boys in my class who could climb the 15-foot rope all the way to the ceiling. I was really proud of that accomplishment because none of the bigger, tougher, more athletic boys could do it. They were so impressed they couldn’t cont...

John 20:19-23 Listen Link:     http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw Singer song writer, Jason Grey, has written a song called “The Sound of our Breathing.” I want to read you some of what he has written about why he wrote that song. Take a breath and breathe it out.  Do it again, slowly, and try to mean it.  Breathing – of all things maybe we take it most for granted. Do we ever wonder why we are built this way, this soft machine of ours always pumping oxygen in and out? In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs. In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst. In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down. When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.  When I think about it, breathing looks almost like a kind of praying. I heard a teaching not long ago about the moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is.  God was gracious enough to...

John 14:15-27 Listen Link:  http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw Just imagine for a moment that you are back in grandma’s house or great grandma’s house, whichever applies so that all you see for communication is a dial up telephone. But this is time travel, so while you’re there, you excitedly try to tell a younger great grandma all about the wonders of the future and you try to describe a cell phone to her. Cell phones do so much more now than regular phones could ever do. They take pictures. They play music and games. They have apps that do all kinds of useful things. It could be so confusing for grandma to try to grasp it all. But at least it still makes phone calls, so there would at least be common ground and a starting point. A lot of modern Christians might believe the disciples may have felt a bit like grandma when Jesus started talking to them about the Holy Spirit. As we look at Jesus’ words of instruction in John 14:15-27 we see that Jes...

Revelation 19:4-10 Listen Link:  http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw We have come to the end of our project to read the whole NT in 40 days. How many of you managed to keep up and get it all done? Go ahead raise your hands so we can celebrate! I love weddings! Didn’t we just celebrate a wedding about a month ago right here? I want to do more of those! But the wedding I am really looking forward to is the one in which I am not the pastor or the officiant. I am really looking forward to the one in which I am a member of the bride! But why do we call the church the bride of Christ? It is because Jesus said so. It was in Mark 2:19; Luke 5:34-35; and Matthew 9:14-15 that Jesus first called himself the bridegroom. All three of these gospel passages are recounting the same conversation. It says there that “John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered, “How can the...