These are sermons delivered during the Sunday morning worship services of Keystone Church, an Evangelical Free Church in Paradise, PA, USA. Please visit www.keystonechurch.org for more information.
Joel Wood | July 21, 2024 Jesus was, and still is, the greatest teacher the world has ever known. While Jesus taught in many ways, one of the most specific and impacting was in using parables. Often, we think of Jesus parables as sermon illustrations or stories that merely helped people pay attention. Jesus stories were certainly captivating and they helped to illustrate truth, but there is more happening in Jesus’ parables than that. Jesus spoke in parables to reveal the secrets of God’s kingdom, to help us to understand what that Kingdom is like, what it means to belong to it, and how we are to live our everyday lives in light of it. More than that, Jesus also spoke in parables to reveal who was truly a part of God’s kingdom. In fact, the parables Jesus shared were purposely designed to reveal the condition of His hearers’ hearts and bring the gospel to bear on their lives. Using a simple story to convey a singular and powerful point about the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ parables either draw us in to a closer relationship with Him through repentance and faith, or push us away in confusion and rejection. Our response to them makes all the difference in our lives both for today and for eternity.
Brandon Fisher | July 14 2024 We all long for a “perfect life.” We may have different ideas of what a perfect life looks like, but the longing for a perfect life is universal. Yet, one of the things we are reminded of on a regular basis is that our lives are far from perfect. We don’t always get what we want. We have hopes and dreams that go unfulfilled. Things regularly mess up our best laid plans. We rarely make it through a day without facing some sort of trouble or difficulty. We our reminded often and in various ways that we live in a broken world. But if we are looking for heaven here and now, then our unfulfilled desires, ruined plans, and everyday difficulties leave us constantly discontent. We easily respond in complaining, anger, or envy as the perfect life we want seems to always be just out of our reach. So often our discontent is rooted in expecting heaven here and now. The Bible teaches us to expect troubles in the present and perfection in the future. In other words, the Bible tells us to not look for heaven now, but to expect it in the future. And when we know that the future will be perfect, we can live with contentment in midst of an imperfect life here and now.
Kyle Kauffman | July 7 2024 Suffering. It’s the one thing we all wish that we could avoid. And yet it is the one thing that every single one of us will face in this life. The amount of suffering we face will vary, but no one makes it through this life without suffering. Whether it is loss, physical pain, mental and emotional pain, or a combination of all of them, everyone suffers. The hope of heaven does not alleviate suffering in this world, but it can transform how we think about suffering, how we face suffering, and how we have hope in suffering. Conversely, suffering can change how we think about heaven, increase our longing for heaven, and help us to live our lives focused on heaven. The Bible is a book full of people who suffered just as we suffer, but the Bible also points us to the hope we have that is able to sustain us through our all suffering in this life.
Kyle Kauffman | June 30 2024 What we believe about forever will shape how we use our money (and other resources) in the present. Or to put it another way, how we use our money will reveal what we truly believe about the future. If we believe this life is all there is then we will use our money to get as much as we possibly can out of this life. But if we truly believe that this life is short and heaven and hell are forever, then we will look for ways to use our money to make an eternal difference. Our use of money (how we spend it and save it) will reveal whether we are living for here and now or whether we are living for eternity. The more we set our hopes on the future God has promised to us, the more gladly we will give away our money in the present to invest in that future. Either our money will reveal we are living to gain all we can here and now, or that we are living to gain heaven and all that God promises to us.
Joel Wood | June 23 2024 One of the main things we are called to do as Jesus’ followers is to love other people in this life. We are to love others just as Jesus has loved us. We are to love other people by helping to meet both physical and spiritual needs. And yet to love others in the present will also require making sacrifices in the present. True love always requires a willingness to sacrifice something for the sake of another. This is where we find that Heaven and the future hope we are promised from God guides and empowers us to sacrifice much in the present in order to love others. Forever reminds us that we should care about both physical needs and spiritual needs. Forever reminds us that our acts of love in the present have eternal significance. And forever gives us the motivation to sacrifice much in the present in order to love others, knowing that every sacrifice will prove to be worth it.