Text: Luke 17:20-37 | Listen to Message If That...Then What? Jesus claimed that he would return one day – suddenly and unmistakably – to judge the whole earth. On that day, a separation will be made: the faithless will go into everlasting punishment and the faithful (those who trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior) will go into eternal life in the kingdom of God. About 2,000 years have passed since Jesus made these promises, and obviously he still hasn’t returned. So people tend to have one of two reactions: 1) A microscopic percentage of people engage in endless speculation over...

Text: Luke 17:11-19 | Listen to Message Is Jesus Your Sugar Daddy? It’s a familiar enough children’s Bible story: Ten lepers were healed but only one bothered to return and actually thank Jesus. The standard lesson is something like, “Don’t be like the nine; be like the one and live with a heart of gratitude.” Sure, that. But do you really think the other nine weren’t grateful? Lepers were “the walking dead.” Physically, they were gruesomely disfigured by an infectious disease that also made them ceremonially unclean – and thus unable to participate in the worshiping community. They were ostracized and...

Text: Luke 17:1-10 | Listen to Message Helping Others with Their Sin In stark contrast to the religious culture of his day, Jesus envisioned a culture in which everyone made it easier on everyone else not to sin – and easier to find true forgiveness when they did. This isn’t wishful thinking or pie-in-the-sky theology. Jesus wasn’t saying sin wouldn’t happen. He said it would – but that we could help one another before, during, and after it happens. He said we could work together doing these four things to break the power of sin over us. 1. You break sin’s...

Text: Luke 16:19-31 | Listen to Message Is Hell Fair? “How could a loving God send people to hell?” This is perhaps our culture’s greatest objection to Christianity: it’s impossible for many to fathom why anyone would choose to believe in a God who punishes sinners…forever. Ironically, the hell most people don’t believe in bears little resemblance to the hell Jesus described in Luke 16 and elsewhere. The “traditional” hell is a pit of fire where God is hurling sinners as they beg for mercy. Everyone is scrambling to escape eternal damnation but God slams the door on them with a...