South Fellowship Church

Sermon on the Mount | Standing in the Gap | Matthew 7:7-12 | Week 12

I grew up in an era where we didn't wear helmets for everything that was even a little bit dangerous, therefore, we had the chance to play games on the playground that mattered.  One of those games was entitled "Red Rover."  Red Rover is a game where you link arms with other people and there's other people across from you with linked arms as well, and you say, "Red rover, red rover, send Ryan right over."  When your name's called, you have to run and try your best to break through the human chain that's on the other side, without getting captured.  I've found that there's two types of people in life --- there are people who love to hear their name called in "Red Rover," and there are people who hate to hear their name called in "Red Rover."  
I think life is a little bit like "Red Rover."  I think life in the kingdom of God can feel a little bit like "Red Rover."  If you've been here the last few months, here's what you've heard Jesus invite you to so you live life knowing that you're blessed regardless of your circumstances.  You live life, in the kingdom of God, becoming more and more free from anger; becoming more and more free from lust; becoming more and more honest about who you are---the good things about you, the shortcomings you have.  You live in the kingdom learning to love your enemies instead of persecuting them, to bless people instead of cursing them---people that do you wrong.  You learn how to live a life of prayer.  You learn how to be a non-anxious presence in the world.  You learn how to trust your Good Father for everything that you need.  You begin to learn not to judge the people around you, but to be for them...  

Sermon on the Mount | Gavels and Flashlights | Matthew 7:1-6 | Week 11

We're going to wrestle with some very easy words from Jesus today --- DO. NOT. JUDGE.  Or you too will be judged.  It's Jesus's teaching on the Sermon on the Mount and I joked last week about wanting an easy sermon. . . .one easy message from the Sermon on the Mount. . .and I think this is it.  Here's why.  Because when we talk about being judgmental, all of us have somebody in our mind who should be here today, but none of us think it's us.  Judgmentalism is always a problem for somebody else, but very rarely do you meet somebody who says, "I'm just one of the most judgmental people you will ever meet in your life!"  We don't say that.  We say, "I think I'm right.  I'm not judgmental, I'm just right. And I'm right the majority of the time and I don't mind telling people that I am right!"  
So this gently---from somebody who's been wrestling with judgmentalism this week---you might fall into the same category that I found that I fell into that I'm a secret judger.  I'm judgmental.  I don't lead with it.  I cover it pretty well most of the time, but when it comes down to it, I'm judgmental.  Here's a few things that I'm judgmental about:  I am judgmental of you if you are a Yankees fan.  Or if you're a Patriots fan. {Bye, Felicia.}  If you think that cats are better than dogs, repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand!  If you don't like In 'n Out Burger, I don't have a place in my heart for you...  

Sermon on the Mount | Bright Eyes | Matthew 6:19-34 | Week 10

That was good worship, wasn't it?  But it stirred this question in me.  We're singing "This is My Father's World," right?  We see the sunrise, that he spoke into existence, that shouts for joy as it dances it's way across the sky.  This is my Father's world, and yet, I don't know about you, but there's time when I open my news app and think, "God, this is a weird world for you to own."  Sometimes You're way, way, way distant.  Sure, the mountains praise and declare your glory, but where are you when. . . .fill-in-the-blank?  Sometimes the darkness seems to hide His face, does it not?  There are times when the wrong seems oft so strong; one of the reasons we gather together is to say He is the ruler yet.  Amen?  So we gather today for a different vision of the world we live in, not one that's less real, but one that's more real.  Not one that's less observant, but one that's more observant.  To recognize that even in the midst of the darkness, our God is at work, and if we lose sight of that, it will dramatically shape the way that we live.  So all throughout the Scriptures, the God of heaven commands his people to live in such a way that they recognize that He's not distant, but that He's present.  He gives us commands and he gives us instruction that aligns with that reality.  
So all throughout the Sermon on the Mount, we've been talking about a different way of life.  We've been talking about a way of wisdom, Jesus's wisdom.  Sometimes Jesus's wisdom feels crazy, does it not?  Love your enemies.  Pray for those that persecute you.  Do good to those who wrong you.  Rid your life of anger.  I've been searching for an easy message in the Sermon on the Mount and I haven't found one yet.  Here's the reason why. . .when God presents his kingdom and his kingdom ethic, it flies in the face of our kingdom.  If we want to hold onto our kingdom, we're going to reject the Jesus kingdom.  In order to accept the Jesus kingdom, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the heavens, we've got to let go of our own kingdom and---look up at me for a second---that's hard for us!  It goes against the grain of everything inside of us that wants to hold on...

Sermon on the Mount | The Purpose of Prayer | Matthew 6:7-15 | Week 9

I want to say thank you to your pastor; we've been friends for eight months.  You have an excellent, top shelf, amazing, Bronco-rooting pastor in Pastor Ryan and his family.  I want to say thanks to Ryan and the whole staff for their hospitality and ministering to me as I come to minister the Word today.  I have been friends with Larry Boatright for 20 years.  We actually traveled for a year in a praise and worship band together.  
On the screen is my family.  This is my wife of fifteen years, Jennifer.  Together we have Hayley, Carter and Griffin.  We did pastor in Oklahoma for 12-13 years, but we are all die-hard Broncos fans, so when God said, "Go to Colorado," I said, "Yes, Lord, here am I, send me!"  My dad grew up in Sterling; my aunt lives south of the church here in Highlands Ranch, so it feels like extended family and it's an honor to be here with you this morning.  As I get to share on the Lord's Prayer in this series, The Sermon on the Mount: The Art of Human Flourishing, I want to specifically talk about the purposes of prayer...

Sermon on the Mount | Real Religion | Matthew 6:1-6 | Week 8

How many of us, in this room, would admit that we've done something embarrassing that we wish no one would ever see?  Wow!  When we do something embarrassing and then later on we think about it, we still kind of feel it, right?  It's crazy because the world that we live in now everybody has a cell phone and they can take video of this stuff, so when you do something stupid, it gets recorded for posterity.  Or security footage, as a possible example.  I did something kind of embarrassing recently, and I thought the wisest thing to do is to show you guys.  You okay with that?  Take a look.  I was in a hurry to get out (of the building) one day, I needed to make a phone call.  This is security footage from our lobby.  I was trying to get this call made...   (Video shows Larry crashing into tempered glass window.)  In my defense, as I was walking toward the window, there was a woman walking out and she had this cute little blond girl who was smiling at me.  I was like, ohhh! BAM!  
For some reason, every person I showed this video to has laughed.  I'm not sure why.  I want to go back and show it in slow motion, because I want you to see just how hard my head bounced off the window.  Take a look....boom! boom! boom!  It hurt like heck and was super embarrassing.  The woman rushed in and was, "Oh my God, are you okay?"  I was not okay, but I said I was because I was embarrassed.  I was stunned and embarrassed, but it also cut my lip.  I heard my tooth hit the glass when it happened.  Beyond that, it gave me a full-blown concussion.  I spent about ten days in a fog.  I was driving a few days later---which I probably shouldn't have been, but just to give you an idea the weird stuff my brain was doing---and I turned a corner and saw a gorilla on the street corner.  I told my wife, "There's a gorilla on the street corner!"  She looked out the window and she looked back at me and was like, okaaayyy.  I looked again and it was a black street light.  My brain superimposed a gorilla some how.  If you hear me scream and run off the stage, I saw a gorilla!...

Sermon on the Mount | Kingdom Re-Action | Matthew 5:38-45 | Week 7

We are exploring the Sermon on the Mount this summer as a community.  We are sort of in the middle of Jesus's teaching, it's in the gospel of Matthew.  Matthew, one of Jesus's disciples, records a collection of Jesus's teachings in one place.  It's probably the most famous sermon given EVER!  If you have your Bible, you can open to Matthew 5.  Over the last few weeks, we've explored some really light, fun subjects like adultery, lust, divorce, remarriage, being people who are honest.  Jesus decided to lighten up a little bit on us and today we're talking about loving our enemies.  That should be easier, right?!  This is one of those passages that probably isn't all that difficult to understand.  It's just really difficult to live out.  It's difficult to apply.  Let's pray and ask Jesus that he would, by the power of his Spirit, open us up to what he would say.  Lord, we long to not only hear, but to obey, because we know that that's where the foundation of our life is formed.  Father, that's our posture today.  Would you move, would you convict, would you lead us to righteousness for our joy and for the sake of your name?  Amen.  
The year was 525 BC, and King Cambyses II of Persia marched his army toward Egypt.  He knew something interesting about the Egyptian people. . .they had a deep love for cats.  They (the Persian army) carved into their shields an outline of a cat.  They brought with them hundreds of cats onto the battlefield.  In Egypt, it was a capital offense to kill a cat.  This battle was called the Battle of Pelusium, Persia vs. Egypt.  The Persians went onto the battlefield with hundred of cats.  Since the Egyptians so revered cats, they had a god named Bastet that was formed and shaped into the image of a cat.  They didn't want to kill a cat so the Persians were throwing cats into the faces of the Egyptian army.  {For 38 years I've been wondering what good a cat is and now we've figured it out.}  What's fascinating is that the Persians won this battle, hands down, without much of a fight at all, because the Egyptians were so nervous about hurting the cats.  Afterwards, to scorn and shame them (the Egyptians), they took the cats and rubbed them in their face after they won the battle.  I thought, "What a strange battle tactic!"  Can you imagine the strategy session?!  What a strange, ridiculous strategy!...  

Sermon on The Mount | The Paradox of Freedom | Matthew 5:33-42 | Week 6

We’re continuing our series in the Sermon on the Mount.  I’ve spent a lot of time in fear, trepidation, and prayer over these last two messages.  Last week we talked about lust and adultery, and that was really easy, so we decided to build on that and now we’re going to talk about divorce, remarriage, and oaths.  Did you come to hear from the Lord today?  I hope you did, because as much as I’ve wrestled with this passage, I feel like there’s freedom that Jesus wants to bring.  As Isaiah (50:4) said, my prayer has been along that I’d have the tongue of one instructed that I might have a word for the wounded today.  That’s my heartbeat.  Jesus, would you help us as we wrestle with your Scripture and your words.  Lord, I pray against the enemy’s voice of condemnation in the hearts and minds of your people here today.  God, may they not confuse condemnation with the conviction that your Spirit wants to bring because of your kindness that leads to repentance and to life.  Lord, let us not confuse the enemy’s condemnation with your conviction.  We want your words over our hearts and our lives that we might walk in your life and in your freedom.  And all God’s people said. . . . Amen.
The year was 1773.  There were boats sitting in the Boston’s harbor, Griffin’s Wharf, just waiting to bring in 342 chests of British tea.  You know the story?  Where roughly a hundred colonists jumped on those boats and they unloaded, over the next three hours, 90,000 pounds of tea into the Boston harbor.  It was the first act of defiance that the American colonists perpetrated against the motherland of Great Britain.  It effectively began the Revolutionary War.  That war commenced a year later, but it was that act of ‘we don’t want any taxation without representation so we’re going to throw your tea into the ocean,’ it was THAT act, that began that war that we celebrated the victory of on the Fourth of July.  We celebrated by blowing stuff up, to the glory of God, didn’t we?  Nothing quite says we love our freedom like lighting stuff on fire and blowing it up...

Sermon on the Mount | Directing Desire | Matthew 5:27-30 | Week 5

If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew 5.  We're continuing our series of the Sermon on the Mount.  We are about six messages in.  Let me give two disclaimers as we begin this morning.  Number One -- You got a service guide when you came in and it has an outline to follow along with the message.  You can make a big 'X' on said outline and flip it over.  There are three days between when I made that outline and today and God's done some different things in my heart and soul in that amount of time, so I want to be true to where I sense God leading us.  Secondly, we are going to be dealing with an issue this morning that may be an issue that has more pain surrounding it than anything else in our culture, and the by-product of it has destroyed many lives and many marriages.  I want to take as pastoral an approach as I can to this difficult subject, but I also want to hit it head on because I believe Jesus wants to bring some freedom this morning, and I believe the Scriptures want to invite us to live more in the kingdom of God, and I believe that's possible for us.  So let's pray and ask that God would invade this space of our hearts and minds and lives.  Spirit of God, we ask that you would do what we cannot do by will power alone.  Lord, we don't want the enemy's voice of condemnation in our ear, so we rebuke that voice.  Lord, we do receive your conviction, in order to lead us to a better way.  Lord, help us to discern those two voices in our own hearts and minds, and let us move in line with your Spirit as you lead us to life.  We pray this in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said. . . .Amen
When I was 10 years old, I had a friend of mine invite me to go to his parents' beach house in Oceanside, California.  We were good friends from school, so my parents let me go.  He had this tent in the backyard, sort of on the patio of their beach house, and we were sleeping out in the tent.  I can remember vividly him grabbing a stack of Boys' Life magazines and us walking into the tent.  He told his mom that we were going to be looking at the Boys' Life magazines before we went to bed.  In addition to the Boys' Life magazine, there was a Playboy magazine tucked in.  I can remember for the very first time in my life seeing pornography.  I'm almost three decades removed from that, and I can tell you, those images are still with me.  They did something to me.  They messed with me.  They imprinted themselves on my imagination...

Sermon on the Mount | Getting to the Heart of the Matter | Matthew 5:21-26 | Week 4

It's my privilege to talk about a passage of Scripture today that isn't very pleasant, but, hopefully, we'll be able to join together and realize we're not alone as we go to this passage.  This is part of the Sermon on the Mount series that Ryan started a few weeks ago.  When Ryan talked to me about it, I was excited to take a sermon; then I took a look at the passage I'm going to be dealing with:  You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment."  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment... (Matt. 5:21-22a)  Liable to the same judgment as if you commit murder.  Whoa!  Anybody been angry this week?  Hopefully as we dig in we'll be able to understand this topic of anger, and hopefully, leave with some hope.  
I want to take a little bit of time with "Travels with Dan."  Many of you know that this past November, Kerry and I were able to go to the Holy Land.  We had a great time.  When Ryan approached me about preaching a sermon from the Sermon on the Mount, it immediately brought up some memories of a place called the Mount of Beatitudes.  {Shows pictures of view from location and a church.}  Any time you go to Israel, any place where there's even a rumor that Jesus might have stepped there, they're going to build a church.  Right there at the church was a Catholic Retreat Center.  We stayed there overnight.  It was not fancy, but it was quiet and restful.  Kerry and I arrived at the Retreat Center, after dark, after a full day of seeing things.  We were pretty exhausted; I had in mind to take a nap because we had 45 minutes before they served us supper.  Kerry had in mind to go see things.  We got our cardkey for our room and entered our room.  We tried to flip the switches and nothing worked.  I was thinking we blew a fuse.  I went to the office and I said, "We must have blown a fuse or something, nothing works."  He said, "Did you listen to my instructions?"  "Well, no."  "When you get in there you need to be looking for a slot that's around the door, slide it in there and all your electricity will come on.  When you take the key out all the electricity goes off."  I went back and demonstrated for Kerry and everything worked fine.  Lights and air conditioning came on.  We put our luggage on the floor and I proceeded to curl up on one of the twin beds.  I was out!  When I fell asleep, Kerry was reading some of the pamphlets, but eventually decided to go see some things.  Since we only had one cardkey, she grabbed it and left.  Five minutes later, I wake up in a sweat; it's dark and I didn't quite remember where I was.  I got my way out of the bed and start walking and try to figure out what's happening.  I ran into my suitcase, barefoot, so I had a good stubbed toe.  Then I hit the coffee table, so that was my knee.  Eventually, I got to the door to shed some light.  Needless to say, I was a little bit miffed.  I caught myself saying, "How could she have taken the key?!"...  

Sermon on the Mount | In Living Color | Matthew 5:17-20 | Week 3

Take a deep breath and identify that unbelievable smell wafting into the worship center today.  BACON!  If you're a student of the Scriptures, you may be thinking to yourself, "Should we be eating bacon?"  Doesn't the Bible talk about bacon?!  Leviticus 11:1-3, 7  ---  The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "Say to the Israelites: 'Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud.  There are some that only chew the cud or only have divided hoof, but you must not eat them. (v 7) And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.  You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.    How many of you sinned already this morning?  How many of you think I'm leading you into sin by having bacon in our lobby?   Can we agree the Bible is a difficult book?  Sometimes, as followers of the way of Jesus, we try to say things like, the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.  I don't know how helpful that is for people when the Bible says, we DO believe it, but we're cooking bacon in the lobby.  What do we do with that?  I think part of the reason our voice in the public square has been tampered, if not put out altogether, is because we haven't been honest about the way that we read this book. 
Some of us have had experiences where we've been beat up by the Bible.  We've had people shove it in our face and say, "Well, you shouldn't do that.  The Bible clearly says...."  Maybe some of us have undertaken for ourselves the discipline of studying the Scriptures and sometimes we walk away scratching our heads going, I'm not exactly sure what I'm suppose to do with this.  If you've thought that, you're not alone.  If you're graduating from high school and you're going to go to college, I can promise you, you will be in a class at some point in time where you'll have a professor that shoves a Bible at you and says, "The Bible says don't eat bacon; do you eat bacon?"  You can go, praise be to God, I do!  The question is did God just recently decide he wants us to be happy?  Did he change his mind?  Does he now think it's delicious and we should eat it?  Did we change?  Did the Scriptures change?...