God's Exodus People - Exodus
The Way of God’s Presence | Exodus 40:34-38
Last week we talked about “The Gift of God’s Presence.” I spoke on why God’s presence matters for our lives and church, and how we can have God’s presence because of Jesus and grace. This week we’re looking at “The Way of God’s Presence”—the way God’s presence has come from Old to New Testament to today, and the way we long to know God’s presence now. Looking at the story of God’s presence from Genesis to Revelation helps us realize…
The Gift of God’s Presence | Exodus 33-34
If you could have anything you wanted, would you take it? Imagine for a moment that God is offering to give you whatever you want. You can have the husband or wife or kids you always wanted, and you can have the house, business, and career too. This blessing doesn’t stop with you, but everyone else in here get’s it too. We as a church can all have whatever we want. We are guaranteed a successful children’s ministry, a beautiful…
The Problem of Idolatry | Exodus 32
Jack works for a local telecommunications company. He tells his friends he loves his job, his company, and his boss. But if you were to follow Jack for a week, you would notice something is off. On average, he arrives 15 minutes late to work and leaves 15 minutes early. Sometimes he takes office supplies home, like when he needs a pen or highlighter. When he sits at his desk, he has one screen on his work, and one screen…
Jesus Bears Your Name | Exodus 28-30
Something I’ve learned from living near Boston is that we love people from here. We take immense pride in claiming our native Bostonians. If you think this is a recent phenomenon, it’s not. Boston Magazine calls “John and Abigail Adams “Boston’s original power couple.” Closer by, the locals in Concord remind everyone Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of them. The Kennedys, John and Ted, they’re Beacon Hill royalty. Robert Frost grew up in Lawrence. Conan O’Brien, a tall red-headed comedian…
God is With Us | Exodus 25:1-22; 26:1-6
When Pastor Jonathan asked me to preach on this section of scripture, I said, “no.” This section of scripture is where when I first decided to read through the Bible that I stopped reading. I knew that in order to preach on this I would have to start in the garden of Eden, forward to the tabernacle, then to the temple and then forward to Jesus and then point to the end of time. I would also have to study…
God’s Law Part II: How does the Law apply to us? | Exodus 21-24
I like to play games. Tomorrow night I’m having some friends over to play board games. One of my favorites is called Balderdash. It’s a game where one person looks up an unknown, strange, word in the dictionary, writes down the correct definition, and everyone else makes up a definition for the word as well. Then everyone tries to guess the correct definition. We actually own an official version of balderdash, which includes five different categories, one of which is…
God’s Law Part I: The Ten Commandments | Exodus 20:1-21
The Ten Commandments… chances are, you have heard of the Ten Commandments. Maybe you watched the old 1956 movie, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses. I watched all 3 hours and 40 minutes of that movie as a child and I’m sure I felt both boredom and accomplishment, boredom because it is a slow movie, but accomplishment because I survived. Today, the Ten Commandments are a cultural icon of sorts. We don’t just…
Dirty People Meet a Holy God | Exodus 19
If you’ve ever been in a relationship, chances are you and your significant other at one point had to DTR—define the relationship. That’s the moment when you’ve been seeing each other for a while, maybe you’re friends and things seem to being getting serious, so you label it. Aka. “We’re a couple.” DTRs can go really well if you each like each other, or they can go really poorly if one person feels differently. In the case of Monica and…
A Successful Beginning | Exodus 17:8-18:27
Lord willing, Cornerstone is heading towards autonomy this year. Currently, we’re a ministry of Immanuel Church in Chelmsford, our parent church. They’re a wonderful church but their goal for us is to one day become autonomous. That means we’ll be our own non-profit. We’ll have our own Elders and Deacons, By-Laws and budget, and most importantly, we’ll be the ones responsible for our ministries. As we think on this, we realize that’s a lot of responsibility. We don’t want to…
A Sanctified People | Exodus 15:22-17:7
Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that begins with the opening line “Once upon a time”? Usually they’re fairy tales, or Disney movies. These stories often end with a very similar line, “and they all lived happily ever after.” The Hungarian equivalent is “They lived happily until they died.” I prefer the Bulgarian equivalent, “…and for three days they ate, drank, and had fun.” If you’re like me, you’re happy the main heroes of the story…
Singing at the Sea | Exodus 15:1-18
As we come to Exodus 15, I want us to think about the role which music plays in our lives. I basically soundtrack my entire life – whether I’m working, exercising (which does not happen very much), driving, I’m always listening to music. Whenever, Emma and I play or work together, there is always a lot of music and dancing. She really loves to listen to movie soundtracks, so our go-to albums are the soundtracks for Frozen, The Lion King,…
Can You Remember? | Exodus 12-13
Do you have a good memory? If someone tells you something really important, and says, “you have to remember this” do you? Or do you have to write down? There’s a saying, “The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.” If you’re the kind of person who has to write stuff down, and then is also prone to misplacing small slips of paper, then there’s nothing I can do for you. I want to test our memories today. I…
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