Category: Sermon

People, not stuff | Ecclesiastes 4:1-16 Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

A sermon on Ecclesiastes 4:1-16, part of a sermon series on Ecclesiastes preached at our church.

What makes us happy in the end? Is it more and more stuff? In this passage from Ecclesiastes, we hear about how we need to prioritise relationships over things.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong between us in the world – whether that’s something overt like oppression or even something like envy. How can we seek to get our priorities right to enjoy our lives the way God wants us to?

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

You can see last week’s sermon on the blog as well.

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How to make sense of life | Eccl 3:1-22 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

A sermon on Ecclesiastes 3:1-22. This is the sermon which inspired my post yesterday about how death teaches us the meaning of life.

How do we make sense of the world when it seems so confusing? Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people? How do make sense of the chaos that seems to happen to all of us?

Ecclesiastes is a book which does not dodge the big questions – in fact, it takes them square on.

Read the passage online here.

See the previous one in the series here.

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How to find satisfaction? | Eccl 1:12-2:26 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

Ecclesiastes is a book which thinks hard about where we find meaning in our lives. Where do you look for meaning in your life? Family or friends? Job? Money? Projects? Things?

The Teacher here looks at all the different things people look to for satisfaction, and concludes that there is only one real place to find satisfaction.

Read the passage online here.

See the first one in the series here.

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How death should teach us to live | Eccl 1:1-11 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

We live in a society that doesn’t want to talk about death. And yet, death should actually be our teacher. This is what the book of Ecclesiastes is all about.

This is the first part of a new series on the book of Ecclesiastes. I’ve basically followed the pattern from Living Life Backwards. We’ll be looking at it over the coming weeks up until Christmas. It’s a fascinating book which I think many Christians don’t spend very much time studying – so I hope we’ll all learn something new.

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Grace vs Religion | Titus 3 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

What’s the difference between Christianity and other religions? At the end of the day it comes down to grace. This is an absolutely fundamental thing to grasp about Christianity, and Titus 3 is all about grace.

In this sermon, instead of working our way through Titus chapter three a verse at a time, instead we look at how it contrasts religion and grace. The two things are not compatible and they lead to very different results. This is the same whether the religion in question is a secular religion, like the current cultural “woke” phenomenon, or whether it’s an actual religion. Sadly you find it in churches as well, where it is called Pharisaism.

Read the passage online via Bible Gateway.

If you like this, you might like other posts about Titus or other sermons.

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The content of our teaching | Titus 2 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

Are sermons there for entertainment? Knowledge transfer? Moral instruction? Here we learn from Paul’s testimony about what Biblical teaching should be. A sermon on Titus chapter 2.

Apologies from the little interruption in the middle from my 3-year-old daughter.

I finished the sermon with the Valley of Vision prayer “Living for Jesus” but was interrupted so I didn’t include it in this video – but you can find it here and pray for yourself: https://banneroftruth.org/us/devotional/living-for-jesus/

This is the fourth part of a five-part series on Titus – see the rest of the series tagged under Titus.

Titus is one of the shorter books in the New Testament, written to a church pastor, and it concerns the pastoral role. However, it’s important for the whole church to listen to what it has to say. In particular, Titus has a lot to say about how the gospel drives our behaviour: it’s not the case that we change our behaviour to become acceptable to God. Rather, God’s grace leads to our behaviour changing. This is vital to understand!

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True Humility | Luke 20:41-21:4 | Sermon

Posted on by Phill Sacre

We are living in the era of the Selfie. Recently two American academics wrote a book called “The Narcissism Epidemic” – everyone is obsessed with themselves and their own ‘brand’. But that is not Jesus’ way – what he says in this passage is very counter-cultural and we need to hear it.

The quote from No Little People at the end which I unfortunately missed off is this. Just to explain, in this sermon he has been looking at Moses’ staff (or stick / rod) – how God even managed to use a stick of wood:

“The people who receive praise from the Lord Jesus will not in every case be the people who hold leadership in this life. There will be many persons who were sticks of wood that stayed close to God and were quiet before him, and were used in power by Him in a place which looks small to men.

“Each Christian is to be a rod of God in the place of God for him. We must remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God’s place for us, at each moment. Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under His Lordship in the whole of life, may, by God’s grace, change the flow of our generation. And as we get on a bit in our lives, knowing how weak we are, if we look back and see we have been somewhat used of God, then we should be the rod “surprised by joy.”

No Little People by Francis Schaeffer
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