Liberti Church Carrara Sermons

Full of faith and the Holy Spirit, Stephen became the first in a long list of faithful men and women who suffered the loss of their own lives for proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. Biblically and historically, opposition for the sake of the gospel is normal Christianity. And yet even in times and seasons of tremendous persecution, the message of God’s love in Christ continues to advance across the world. As the early church father Tertullian famously said, “Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust…the oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.”

In one of the most radical stories of transformation in Scripture, Jesus reveals Himself to a man named Saul; a highly educated religious leader and a fierce enemy of God people. Saul goes from being a persecutor of God’s people to a bold preacher of Jesus. Jesus uses Saul (who became known as Paul) as a monument of God’s sovereignty in salvation; that no one is so lost or broken that they are beyond the reach of God’s saving love.

In the middle of a full-scale revival in Samaria, the Holy Spirit led Phillip out into the wilderness to open God’s Word with a high-ranking official from Ethiopia. Through this encounter, the gospel leaks out of Samaria and spreads to the end of the earth, just like Jesus promised. God’s people are called to get going with the gospel, be open to the Spirit’s leading, and live grounded in God’s Word.

Emil Brunner famously wrote, “The church exists by mission, as fire exists by burning.” Every single one of God’s adopted sons and daughters have inherited the same missionary DNA that exists in the heart of God. The church is not a weekly event to attend, but a movement of ordinary people who gossip the gospel and live lives of compassion to bring glory to God and joy to their cities.

A healthy church is one that goes deep in God’s Word and wide with God’s love. As the early church increased in number, they also began to experience some of the inevitable growing pains that come with caring for more people. Yet in the midst of internal conflict and external opposition, they made sure that God’s Word remained central and that serving one another was normal. The result? As people heard the gospel and saw the sweetness of Christian love on display, the Word of God continued to spread!

Charles Spurgeon once quipped, “If you find the perfect church, don’t go there….you’ll ruin it!” At the end of Acts 4 we see a church experiencing unprecedented unity and radical generosity, but it isn’t long before sin creeps in. Both God’s grace and God’s holiness are dramatically put on display. It is only when we see the heights of God’s holiness and the depths of our sinfulness, that we will ever begin to understand the magnitude of God’s love.

When suffering knocks on our door, a theology of “let go and let God” ultimately leads to fatalism and passivity. Rather than a “let go” theology, Christians need a “go to” theology. Because God is a loving Father, we ‘go to’ Him in our trials. Because Jesus has adopted us into His family, we ‘go to’ one another with our burdens. Instead of trite cliches, the gospel empowers us to give others our tears, our shoulders, and ourselves in vulnerability.

Is your happiness grounded in your circumstances and achievement, or in a steadfast relationship with Christ? Like a fish out of water cannot improve its quality of life with things, our happiness cannot be complete without the foundation of the love of Christ. Only by dying to ourselves and living in Christ can we experience fullness of happiness and joy.

Whether it’s from a pop-star, an Internet meme, or a Disney movie, “Follow your heart” has become the narrative of our culture. But there’s a problem; our heart is a liar. Throughout Scripture, we are instead called to test our hearts, guard our hearts, and to follow Jesus with every part of our hearts.

How powerful are our words? Can we ‘declare’ prosperity into existence? Can faith guarantee us a life free from suffering? In this message, we examine some of the claims of the ‘prosperity gospel’ and how they fall woefully short of the Christianity found throughout the New Testament. The victorious Christian life is ultimately not one of perfect health, wealth and ease where God grants our every wish; but a life of deepening satisfaction, holiness, and trust in Jesus, whose grace is sufficient to meet our every need.

There is perhaps no more misquoted verse in the Bible than Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” In this message, we look at three wrong ways Christians go about judging, as well as the right way Christians are called to navigate these tricky waters without becoming hypocrites. As John Stott beautifully sums up, “The command to ‘judge not’ is not a requirement to be blind, but a plea to be generous.”

In this week’s message we take a deeper look at what may be Jesus’ most scandalous set of claims – that he is God, he is the only way to God, and he is truth. This leaves to decide whether Jesus is a liar, lunatic, or truly Lord.

A theology of God that lacks intimacy with God is both worthless and powerless. In the same way a branch draws its life from the vine, Jesus calls us to make our home in him and find our strength in him. Every person who belongs to Christ will bear fruit as they unmistakably experience the presence of God, the power of God, and the pruning of God in their lives

If Jesus is the light and hope of the world, this changes everything about the way His followers live and what fuels their existence. Christians are not stars generating their own light, but moons that reflect the light of the sun. To the extent our faces are turned toward Jesus, we will mirror His light in a sin-darkened world.

The centrepiece of Christianity is the claim, “Christ is risen!” As the Apostle Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” In this message we explore the historical evidence for the resurrection and the profound implications this has upon our lives. The resurrection of Jesus was the funeral of death!

What makes your life worth living? What defines your life? Every single person is seeking satisfaction one way or another. We all want our lives to have meaning. Yet in John 6, Jesus addresses the deeper issues that underlie many of our questions by exposing our broken motives, our broken definition of life, and ultimately pointing us to the one place we can find the satisfaction our hearts long for. Jesus promises, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Like the relationship between a faithful shepherd and his flock, Jesus is claiming that His authority is higher than we thought, that His compassion is deeper than we could imagine, and that He alone is the Protector in whom our hearts can rest secure.

There are millions of doors that lead to death. There is only one door that leads to life. And Jesus makes the audacious claim, “I am the door.” Jesus leaves no room for us to approach him as merely a good moral teacher. He is either a liar, a complete lunatic, or he really is Lord and God as he claimed. Join us as we explore what sets Jesus apart from every other person who has ever walked the earth.

The one weapon Paul mentions in Ephesians 6 for the Christian to make war on sin with, is ‘the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.’ God has given us his Word not only for us to deepen our joy in Him, but to use as a weapon against temptation and sin that seeks to destroy that joy. Christians are to see themselves as soldiers who know their weapon, use their weapon, and fight in God’s strength. Listen in as Pastor Adam teaches on how to approach the Bible and prayer as foundations of the Christian life.

For Christians, salvation is a past, present, and future reality. We have been saved from sin’s penalty, we are being saved from sin’s power, and one day we will be saved from sin’s presence. Knowing this – that the totality of our salvation is the work of God – gives us perseverance and a living hope in the face of life’s trials.