Sunrise Church

Truth, love and obedience stand as the tests of our Christian faith.

As followers of Jesus, we should be known for and led by the love of God. It should impact our relationships, our priorities, and how we live our daily lives.

While financial circumstances don’t dictate Gospel outcomes, financial partnership in Gospel ministry multiples the fruit of the endeavor.

The Christian faith is not merely one of informational assent, but of transformational truth. Information is the cheapest shortcut to feigning maturity. Robust theology and doctrine is nothing if it is not transformative. Truth is transformative.

The Christian life is not a life of perfection, but of progress. Though we are fully redeemed and set apart by the Holy Spirit, we continue to grow in holiness as we are shaped more and more into the image of Christ.

False understanding of the gospel will inevitably lead to misplaced confidence in what has been done BY us instead of what has been done FOR us by Jesus Christ.

Christians must steward their honor diligently and refrain from giving honor reserved for good and Godly people, to the wrong people.

Unity isn’t a baseless idea. It comes from a common gospel experience; meaning it comes to us from a shared experience of redemption. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and our unity is founded on the common hope and faith in this reality. We are all together, in Christ, now truly alive and on the path of God in the confidence of the truth of the gospel.

The dualism of the Christian life is found in Paul’s Predicament: life or death…either way there is victory.

The Christian life is one of gospel partnership and proclamation, love for others, knowledge and discernment, sometimes strife and persecution, but all for the glory of God. In all this, we are called to be faithful and joyful citizens of Christ’s kingdom.

Much of the mess in the Corinthian church could have been avoided if they had merely obeyed Paul's five final commands to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong and act in love.

The church should take seriously the call to support suffering Christians around the world, support the advance of the gospel and provide real support to those who are discouraged.

Death is an inevitable reality, but for believers in Christ, death allows the perishable to give way to the imperishable and in resurrection, there is true victory. Therefore, Christians can live steadfastly in the light of Christ's victorious resurrection, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

We do not only have hope in Christ in this life and we are not a people to be pitied. We have a deep and abiding hope of our own future victory over eternal death because Christ has delivered us from death by His own resurrection.

What we see in this chapter is essentially a rubric for assessing the maturity of a church and its members and a format for understanding the role of our gifts in serving the church. 

The church's health is not measured by the activities we undertake, nor the programs we falsely assume establish our legitimacy or the petty things we think define ourselves, but by our love for one another.

So let us remember that the Gifts of the Spirit are given BY the Holy Spirit TO individuals FOR the well-being of the Church.

The Lord’s Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members of the church, through partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine, memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming. (Baptist Faith and Message 2000)

In our churches, men and women are to clearly, both in presentation and behavior, present themselves as men and women. As God’s image bearers, there should be no ambiguity in our homes and our church regarding the roles of men and women. The order of our church and our homes is meant to demonstrate the the glory of God regardless of the oppositional nature of the culture. 

When was the last time you didn’t do something for the sake of someone else’s spiritual good or well-being? Even if it meant the deprivation of our own wants or even the limitations of our own freedoms.

There is a real spiritual world and our contest is spiritual and we choose a side every time we give our praise to something lesser, every time we grumble and test the Lord, every time we ignore prohibitions against sinful practices and we must be reminded that when we do this, we are provoking God’s jealousy.

We are called to willingly lay ourselves down for others in order that some may be saved while rejecting the temptation of sin as we seek to reach sinners.

Paul makes the case that it is his right to be supported because God has made provision for it, but that the greater reward of ministry is the spiritual fruit.

Paul contends that our priority concern in the church isn’t what we know informationally, but that we know the love of God and that that knowledge shapes how we walk with our fellow church members.

Samson points us to Jesus who is a better judge in His perfect faithfulness and obedience to the Lord.

It can be tempting to run ahead without praising God for His past goodness, but when we consider God’s past provision and goodness, in both the good and the hard, we are better able to approach whatever comes in the future with incomprehensible joy and anchored peace.

The Creator of the sun has spoken and, in speaking, not on behalf of some other deity, but on His own authority, He has revealed Himself to His creation.

Living with the end in view means living now as citizens of the kingdom of God and subjecting our priorities, our concerns and our desires to God’s will.

In a world of identity politics, self-proclaimed identity markers and a social order that feels out of order, Jesus defines you in the truest sense in the context of His church/people.

Our singleness can be a gift in that it allows us to serve God with the fullness of ourselves. However, marriage is a gift in which we model the triune intimacy of God. Therein, we bring glory to God by mirroring Jesus’ relationship with his church and the raising of children to the glory of God. As such, Christians are to remain married as much as lies within them, but are not faulted if an unbelieving spouse chooses to leave them.

Often the source of our grievances is the sin we undertake against one another and how the church handles those grievances says much about our confidence in the gospel.

Is Jesus Christ the master of all of your life and do you serve Him with your whole self (body and mind) in order that God may be glorified in your life?

Sin should be challenged in the church, not for the satisfaction of the preferences of another’s conscience, but for the health and safety of the one at risk of going astray.

The cross shaped leader humbly serves and loves others in service to Jesus Christ.

As the church, we reject what the world sees and values in exchange for God’s work and God’s wisdom. This grounds our hope, not in men’s vision, but in God’s for His church.

Informational knowledge is a short cut to perceived spiritual maturity. Theological text books and doctrinal learning are tools for examining the beauty and wonder of God, but can be misused to load our vocabulary with talking points and rhetorical arguments while knowing nothing of the God of the theology.

The kingdom of God is foolish in that it humbles the wise, shames the strong and values the low and despised. No rhetorical flare can accomplish this; only in Christ Jesus can we be made righteous, sanctified and redeemed. No one towers above this…no one.

Members of Christ’s church, been rescued, not by earthly leaders and teachers, but by the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross whereon He drank the cup of God’s wrath against the sin of His people. This is the foundation of our unity.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians reminds us that church can be messy and there’s always time and space for course correction as long as we maintain the right things.

For all of the threats the church has faced, this threat of confusion around the Gospel cannot merely be endured, but must be addressed.

The full force of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is brought to bear in order that the prodigals and the lost sheep and the seemingly unredeemables might be gathered from every corner of the earth into His church.

Jesus resisted the temptations of the Devil in the power of the Sprit and with the Word of God, so he could fulfill the plan of God for his life and receive the promise of the Father.

God's sovereignty encompases every facet of His creation. This should bring hope to believers and a sense of urgency to share the hope of the gospel of Christ with those who are far from Him.

As the gospel comes to Antioch and a church is born, we see that the church has always been God’s plan for nations as a hub for the gospel and the place from which we are sustained in our faithfulness and called to serve.

For all of his religious faithfulness, Cornelius still needed to recognize that Jesus will judge all people, not according to their religious adherence, but by their trust in him for salvation.

In Christ we are called to be living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God in reasonable service to Him.

God’s plan for the spread of the gospel is not by worldly means, but by the simple proclamation of the gospel and the effectual work of the Spirit.