Christ Community Church - Leawood Campus - SUNDAY MESSAGES

Explore the search for meaning through work and the disillusionment it often brings. Discover how our toil can become idolatrous, overshadowing its potential as a God-honoring endeavor. Delve into the universal stress and exhaustion many feel, drawing parallels with corporate challenges like Netflix's subscriber loss. Finally, find hope amidst the burdens of work, emphasizing the priority of nurturing our relationship with God over relentless striving. This journey beautifully intertwines purpose with faith.

Pleasure also has no answer to pain. This is perhaps pleasure’s greatest weakness as a purpose to life. Qoheleth will point this out later, but life is so hard, even under the best of circumstances, and you can’t simply distract your way through that. No matter how much pleasure you can have, all it takes is one devastating diagnosis, or loss, or divorce, or death, to completely undo you. And you can’t throw pleasure at that pain, can you? It doesn’t work. The spell that pleasure casts is easily and immediately broken by pain. The human capacity for pleasure pales in comparison to God’s capacity for it. There is beauty, and delight, and music, and light, and colors, we can’t even experience. They only exist for God’s delight. Qoheleth’s lesson is not that he wanted too much, and it let him down. It’s that he wanted too little, when Eden was there all along. And God intends to make everything into Eden one day, and invite you in, if you are willing to follow him there. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4888253622.05.01

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48878305The paradox of human knowledge is the more we know…there is so much more we do not know…like climbing a mountain, when you get to the top, you see other mountains you have never seen before. This is life under the sun. Gospel life under the sun is smoke, but there is life over the sun and it is found in the Son! The vivid contrast between a life lived without God and a life lived in the face of God. John 10:10 reads…I have come to give you life and abundantly, a life of purpose…of deep joy and satisfaction that only ultimately comes in a deepening intimacy with God. The meaning we long for is found in a relationship. Our creator and redeemer, before the face of God. 22.04.24

There is no meaningful way to follow Jesus, no matter how compelling his example and his teaching, if you think he is dead and buried like every other human person from the beginning of time. If he is not raised, then we have no hope. But in fact, Paul says, and he bet his entire life on this: Jesus has been raised. And if he has been raised, then we have eternal hope in him. The only thing more wonderful, in fact, than worshiping this risen Jesus today, will be seeing him when he comes again, to make all things right, and when he utterly destroys our last enemy. And if you can begin to wrap your mind and heart around that, not only as something you hope is real, but something you know is real, you will begin to understand the power of the phrase we started this whole day with. He is risen. He is risen indeed.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4887441622.04.17

John recounts Jesus’ words to religious leaders who are hell-bent on rejecting and condemning him -–despite the evidence. These religious leaders are so motivated to condemn Jesus, they have already decided the verdict in their hearts. If we are honest with ourselves, some of us have made our verdict already, picking and choosing the things we “like” about Jesus. And rejecting anything that gets in the way of our desires or our comforts. We may like what Jesus says about heaven and love. But sexuality? Or money? Or caring for the marginalized? Or loving our enemies. Nah, I’m good. Our heart motivations may be different from the religious leaders in Jesus’ day. But the outcome is the same. We too reject Jesus. So the question we have to wrestle with today is this. Whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, When it comes to Jesus–what will your verdict be?Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4887074922.04.10

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48862957It is so easy for us to embrace a misguided religious faith founded in a religious consumer mentality. Christian faith is desirable to us as long as it is comfortable and helpful to us. When it helps us form friendships or our involvement in religious services provides a sense of connection or provides us with great business contacts, or helps our kids or teenagers make better choices and find better friends. Hear me carefully, making good friends and experiencing community are good things, often good things that are outworkings of authentic faith and authentic faith community. And asking our heavenly Father for the desires of our hearts and for things we need is often a very good thing, done with the right motives.  But sometimes our fair-weather faith becomes fickle and proves shallow when life is hard, when we confront suffering, rejection, loneliness, or when prayers seem to go unanswered. How does our faith hold up then? Ask yourself, what is my true heart motive for my Christian faith?22.03.27

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4885927222.03.20

It is easy to miss, in our polarized world, that Jesus seems to have intentionally drawn together people from across ideologies and cultures of the world to be worshippers. Jesus is not after ideologies. He is after worship in spirit and truth. This is Jesus’ language for a new heart that only the Spirit can give, a new obedience to the truth that Jesus is Lord of all. Does Jesus have our worship? This is something, whether we have followed Jesus for a long time, or we are considering him for the first time, that we have to ask ourselves. Jesus’ offer of living water comes at a price: you have to worship him alone, even at the expense of the culture, politics, ideologies, that have shaped you.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4885568122.03.13

When Jesus is invited into every part of our daily lives. Jesus becomes more present to us in our Monday worlds of work, work,  school, recreation. He becomes more present in our homes, in our friendships and family.  When Jesus becomes more and more Holy Spirit fills and empowers us. He draws us to deeper intimacy with Jesus and He guides us, teaches us and reshapes our priorities and reorders our loves. Jesus becomes more in how we do our work, how we treat and speak to our boss or fellow employees. In how we love our neighbor. How we serve, follow and how we lead. In how we sacrificially serve our spouse or honor our parents. In how we speak about, how we love those who we may disagree with. Humility grows when Jesus becomes more and more in our lives.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4885174022.03.06

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48847927From a posture of glorious holiness and a motive of unfathomable love, God the Father, sent Jesus his Son on a divine rescue mission to save us his fallen image-bearers from eternal separation from himself. When we slow down and pause to reflect on it, the intensity and beauty of God’s love, its breadth, and width, its sacrificial nature, the lengths God went to make possible our rescue is simply breathtaking, completely overwhelming to our minds and senses. God’s love unveiled by John is a saving love, a rescuing love, a love that takes the initiative. Saving faith in Jesus saves us from perishing, that is being eternally separated from God, Saving faith in Jesus saves us for eternal life.22.02.27