“Rescued By His Sacrifice” (Galatians 1:3-5 sermon)

Posted on 2021/03/29 by Shawn Thomas

In one of the first major battles of the Revolutionary War, the British routed the young American army on Long Island, New York. They hoped to destroy the rest of the retreating Americans, but American Commander William Stirling made the sacrificial decision to cover the retreat of all the other American forces. David McCullough writes how “He and Major Mordecai Gist and no more than 250 Marylanders attacked (British General) Cornwallis in a headlong, valiant effort to cover the retreat of the others and perhaps even break through the redcoats … The fighting was the most savage of the day. Driven back by a blaze of deadly fire, Stirling’s men rallied and struck again five times. Stirling himself fought ‘like a wolf.’ The Marylanders, who until that morning had never faced an enemy, fought no less tenaciously than their commander.”

General George Washington, watching from a Brooklyn hill, is said to have cried out as he saw the Marylanders cut down time after time, “Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose.’” (David McCullough, 1776, p.177)

But the sacrifice that Stirling and his men made, saved the rest of the American army to live and fight another day — and the Revolutionary War would one day be won, because of their costly sacrifice.

Today we are celebrating another sacrifice — a sacrifice even greater than one made for our country — the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made when He bought our salvation on the cross. Next week is Easter Sunday, and we always look forward to that celebration — but the week before Easter I always like to remember the sacrifice Jesus made that led to Easter: His sacrifice on the cross that brought us our salvation. We see it described in our passage for today from Galatians 1:

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.”

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“A Body In Motion” (Ephesians 4:11-16 sermon)

Posted on 2021/03/22 by Shawn Thomas

Sir Isaac Newton, the English scientist, is famous, among other things, for the “laws of motion” he formulated in the 1600’s: among them being that a body at rest tends to remain at rest, and a body in motion tends to remain in motion — unless acted upon by an outward force. 

Perhaps ironically, those two terms could describe a lot of CHURCHES today too:

— There are a whole lot of churches that are “at rest,” and they just “tend to remain at rest,” and as a result, many of them are dying. Several thousand dying churches will close their doors this year in America. 

— But there are also a lot of churches that could well be described as being “in motion”— and they “tend to remain in motion.” They’re always doing something. We might that of that as a “good” thing — and it CAN be good — but we need to make sure that the “motion” of our churches is in the right direction. 

And the place where check that “right direction” is the word of God. 

As churches of Jesus Christ, we are not here just to “remain in motion;” we are here to remain in motion by doing the right things, those things which are based on HIS WORD.

So this morning we are looking a passage of scripture (Ephesians 4:11-16) which describes what the church as a “body in motion” should look like.

We need to KNOW what this passage teaches we are to do as a church, and make sure that we are committed to it as a people in the days ahead.

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“Glorifying God as Salt & Light” (Matthew 5:13-16 sermon)

Posted on 2021/03/15 by Shawn Thomas

“(Victor) Frankl was a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist who lived in Vienna, Austria. In 1942, he and his wife and parents were arrested and transported to a Nazi concentration camp. At the end of the war three years later, Frankl was set free, though his wife and parents did not survive.” After this experience, Frank wrote a book he called: Man’s Search For Meaning. “In sharing his experiences in a Nazi death camp, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who lived and those who died came down to one thing — meaning. The reason is he was convinced we are driven, above all else, to understand our purpose in life.  (Richard E. Simmons III, Reflections on the Existence of God, p. 87-88)

If having meaning or a. purpose is life is as important a Victor Frankl says it is, do you know what YOUR purpose for being here on earth is? The good thing is, you don’t have to guess; Jesus TELLS us what it is in our passage for today. 

The first thing we need to remember is the context here. Jesus just gave His disciples the Beatitudes, and now He shows us what our purpose IS here on earth as His disciples who are becoming like Him:

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“Peacemaking: The Pinnacle of Christlikeness” (Matthew 5:9 sermon)

Posted on 2021/03/01 by Shawn Thomas

John Adams is probably best known as the 2nd President of the United States, but he himself wanted to be remembered for ONE thing more than any other. He wrote to a friend of his, ‘I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: “Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in the year 1800.”’”  (David McCullough, John Adams, pp. 566-567)  

France had been our ally in the Revolutionary War, but we almost got into a devastating war with them in 1800, as a very young nation — but through John Adams’ deft maneuvering and diplomacy, war was avoided.

So of all the things he accomplished in his life: as a member of the Continental Congress; all he did in the American Revolution, and even as the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams said that the ONE greatest accomplishment of his life, at least in his eyes, was that he kept peace between America and France in 1800. Peacemaking was the most important thing.

This morning we come to the 7th Beatitude, “blessed are the peacemakers,” and, similar to what John Adams expressed, peacemaking should be regarded as the greatest achievement in our character, the most Christlike thing we can do. This is the next to last Beatitude; all the others have led up to this. The last Beatitude is persecution, which is really more the response of the world to us for being like Christ — so this 7th is really the height of Christlikeness. When you have achieved this quality, people will recognize you as being like Jesus. Like John Adams said: this is the one thing you want on your headstone! The “Peacemaking” that Jesus describes here is, in a very real sense, “The Pinnacle of Christlikeness.” 

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“It’s What’s Inside That Counts” (Matthew 5:8 sermon)

Posted on 2021/02/22 by Shawn Thomas

When I got sick in 2012, they ran me through a bunch of tests trying to diagnose my illness. One day I found myself on an exam table, hooked up to an ultrasound machine, and the technician smeared some gel on my chest, and put a scanner right over my heart. As we looked at the screen she said: “Do you see that? That’s your heart. See that opening, and closing? That’s your heart valve. It looks like it’s working well!” I just sat there with my mouth open. It was the most amazing thing, that they could see inside my body like that, into what the valves of my heart were doing! Some of you have been in that same situation, and it is truly a wonder. 

But as amazing as that is, we need to understand that this is what God does all the time — and not just with our “physical heart” but with our spiritual heart as well. God says in Jeremiah 17:10  “I the Lord search the heart; I test the mind.” All the time – not just on “special checkups” – God is examining what is going on inside of us, in our hearts and minds! 

And this is really the point of this 6th Beatitude that we are looking at today. It is that the HEART is what matters to God. And if we are ever going to achieve the pinnacle of human existence/the height of human desire — to see God, we must be “pure in heart.” “It’s what’s inside that counts”!

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“The Character of Christ: Merciful (Matthew 5:7 sermon)

Posted on 2021/02/20 by Shawn Thomas

Several years ago, a man and his wife were traveling on the Interstate in Florida, when their car broke down, with the next exit 40 miles away. There had been a rash of highway robberies there recently, so no one would stop to help them. They actually counted 100 cars that drove past – until they just finally stopped counting!  At last one man stopped to help – a man who could barely speak English. He helped them out, and would take no money for it when they offered, and then he just drove away. Afterwards the wife turned to her husband and said, “How do you pay somebody back for something like that?” After thinking about it, the husband said, “We can’t; but what we can do is pass along to others, what he did for us.”  

Now in some ways, that couple’s story is very unique. But in another way, if you are a Christian, this is YOUR story!  God saw you stranded in your sin, and He did for you what no one else would do or could do — He sent Jesus to die on the cross to pay for your sins and save you, when you totally didn’t deserve it. What can you possibly do to pay Him back?  Nothing!  We could never with our whole lives pay God back for one drop of the blood that Jesus shed to save us! But what we CAN do – and what we WILL do, if we’re really grateful for what God did for us – is pass along to others the same kind of mercy that God first showed to us.

This morning we continue our study of the 8 character qualities of Christ from Matthew 5:3-12 that God wants to build into our lives. Today we come to the 5th quality: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

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“Hunger For Righteousness” (Matthew 5:6 sermon)

Posted on 2021/02/08 by Shawn Thomas

Bertrand Russell was one of the most famous atheists the world has ever known; he lived almost 100 years in Britain, from 1872 to 1970. But as much as he promoted atheism in his books and writings, Russell longed in his heart for something more than he had experienced in this earth. In one of his books he wrote:

“The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain … a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite. The beatific vision — God. I do not find it, I do not think it is to be found — but the love of it is my life … It is the actual spring of life within me.”

For all his atheist assertions, Bertrand Russell had an inner hunger for something more. He just couldn’t find it — or maybe he just wouldn’t allow himself to find it — in the place where God said his hunger could be satisfied.

This morning we are continuing our study of the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-12, in which we find 8 qualities which define the character of Jesus Christ, which it is God’s goal to build into each of our lives. Today we come to the 4th quality, found in verse 6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Today’s message is simple: we’re going to look first of all at what it means to “hunger and thirst for righteousness,” and then look at 3 different ways it applies in our lives:

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“Trust & Obey” (Matthew 5:5 sermon)

Posted on 2021/02/01 by Shawn Thomas

Conrad Richter wrote an amazing trilogy back in the 1940’s and 50’s about the settling of Ohio by the American Pioneers, from the perspective of a pioneer woman by the name of Sayward Wheeler. The story progresses through: The Trees, The Fields, and The Town as the land is settled, and it is very good reading. In the second book, The Fields, Sayward’s son Kinzie could not get the oxen to take the yoke. Richter writes “Kinzie’s face was red from hollering at the beasts and struggling with the yoke.” They just wouldn’t respond to him. But when his mom Sayward got there, he writes: “She set the yoke on Buck’s neck and held the other end up. ‘Come under, Bright,’ she called, and … the off ox lumbered around and under meek as a hound. Oh, they knew her voice when they heard it …” and they obeyed.

The picture of that ox, hearing the voice of its master, and gently obeying, is a perfect picture of the word we are looking at this morning in Matthew 5:5, where Jesus says, “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.” This quality is perhaps the most misunderstood of any of the Beatitudes. And it is partially because it is a very difficult word to translate into English. But we’re going to look together for a few minutes at what it DOES mean, and just how important it is, both for salvation, and for the way we live and respond to other people as Christians. And of course, it is a character quality of Christ that it is God’s goal to build into every one of our lives. But I think we can sum it up with the picture of that ox — and the little phrase from the old hymn: “Trust & Obey.”

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“Sowing In Tears” (Matthew 5:4 sermon)

Posted on 2021/01/25 by Shawn Thomas

I remember very well, listening to the young man in my church office a few years ago. He was burdened with some temptations to sin that he was experiencing. He couldn’t understand why he would have such feelings and temptations; and at one point he said, “It makes me wonder if I am even a Christian.”

Those feelings are very common — some of you here today, if you were honest, would admit that you have those same feelings as well. But what that young man needed to know — and what some of YOU need to realize today, is that genuine Christians DO experience temptations to sin — and those “bad feelings” you have, grieving over your tendency to sin, are actually GOOD. They are actually signs of a genuine Christian life!

— Jonathan Edwards, a pastor from the 1700’s, considered by many to be THE greatest American theologian, wrote that since he became a Christian, “I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion.”

— Donald Whitney, professor of spiritual growth at our Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, in his book 10 Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, wrote “the fact that there is a struggle with sin, and a sense of grief because of sin, is good. Unbelievers have no such struggles or griefs.”

That’s true. I’ve seen Christian guys who’ve just mourned over the fact that they had used pornography — but then I’ve also heard lost guys just laugh and boast about it! What’s the difference? The Christian person MOURNS over their sin. So, understand Christian person: feeling bad about your sin doesn’t mean you’re NOT a Christian — in fact, it may be the very best sign that you really ARE a Christian — or that you are about to become one!

This morning we are continuing our study on God’s goal for each of us, which is to build the character of Jesus Christ into our lives. We’ve seen that these qualities are spelled out for us in Matthew 5:3-12, in the passage we often call “The Beatitudes.” But the qualities we find here are not just 8 random qualities God blesses, but together they form a picture of the character of Jesus Himself, that God is causing “all things” to work together for good (Rom. 8:28-29) to build into our lives.

Last Sunday we saw that the first quality was “poor in spirit”, which means depending on God, first of all, for our salvation, but then also for everything in our Christian lives, and that we show how much we depend on Him, by the way we pray. If you missed that message, I hope you will go to our website at www.fbcangleton.com and listen to it, or go to my website at shawnethomas.com and read the text. It’s SO foundational to all that we are talking about here. You MUST learn to depend upon God to even enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, or to grow in it. But today we are moving on to the 2nd quality Jesus gives us in this passage: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

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