Sermon text: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

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This morning we are going to continue our theme of change. We have been talking about several different aspects of change. This morning we are going to look at the passage that the closing blessings I have been using comes from. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old is gone, the new is here.”

This morning we are simply going to march through this passage and talk about what Paul is doing with it. So let's read it. Read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21.

Sermon text: Acts 9:1-9

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This morning we are going to talk about one of the most radical and perhaps important transformations in the history of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – the conversion of Paul to Christianity.  Paul wrote 13 of the 27 books that we have in our New Testament.  Paul was God’s chief instrument in delivering the story of Jesus Christ to the non-Jewish world.  He went all over telling people about Jesus.  Much of what we know about the early church and what they believed came from Paul's understanding of Jesus and the events surrounding his life, death and resurrection.

Sermon text: 1 Samuel 17:1-51

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It is always a humbling task to give a sermon on a story that everyone has heard so many times.  Even non-Christians and the average person in our world – if we were to ask about Bible stories that they know would name this story of a small shepherd boy, David and the enormous giant of a man, Goliath.

What is it about this story that so captivates us as people and draws us in?  It is not exactly a pleasant story.  Goliath gets his head cut off at the end . . . it is about war, but we love the story because it is about an underdog that prevails.

It is the same reason that we got really excited about Butler in the NCAA basketball tournament earlier this year.  It was reported that Duke spends $394,068 per player on their basketball roster.  Butler spends $347,108 on the entire team.  Duke’s coach had 76 NCAA tournament victories.  Butler’s coach was mistaken for a player buy Lucas Oil Stadium security before the championship game.  Duke had 6 McDonald’s All-Americans and Butler had a bunch of guys from Indiana.

The story line was fantastic and anyone that did not have pre-existing loyalties rooted for Butler because we like underdogs.  And we like underdogs because there is a part of us all that believe we are underdogs at something.  Perhaps no one thought we would amount to much.  Maybe we are from a small town or didn’t do well in school.  Maybe we have had a lot of tragedy in our life.  For whatever reason when we hear stories of underdogs prevailing, it gives us hope that we can too.

Sermon Text: Luke 21:25-38