Imago Dei Community Sermons

2 Chronicles 1:1 - 36:23

A journey through the values of Imago Dei Community Acts 2:42 - 47

In our cultural landscape fathering is an area filled with much pain, loss, and abuse. Something is missing. The void left when father's parent badly only affirms the reality that every person is created to be fathered. The fact is, for fathers, you cannot choose to not parent. You will either father well, or father poorly. But you cannot not father. God has designed into our humanity an inescapable desire for a father's influence. Yet this influence is not one rooted in function. God has something much bigger in mind. Fathers become a primary way God chooses to pass on the faith. This is no less essential today than in was in the times of the Old Testament patriarchs. The verses below serve as a launching pad to how we should then father our children. In this sermon Rick offers a few ideas He has come to embrace in his own journey towards parenting His kids with this end in mind; that his kids would truly receive faith in Christ in a transformational way.

We have been studying Isaiah 61 for several weeks now. God is opening the door to give us a glimpse into what he's doing in the world, His cosmic plan of salvation. It's interesting that our personal transformation and our ministry come from the same place: God's invitation to let go of our own empire and join what God is doing. God takes us from a place of shame and turns us into priests. Our personal transformation includes walking away from the communion table and letting go of shame. It would make no sense to walk away forgiven, yet carrying all the same old baggage. God is replacing this baggage with a new blessing and inheritance. On this side of the cross, our inheritance is not a piece of land, but rather a piece of God. We get to be with God forever! This inheritance is not immediately realized, but is rather unfolding. We have the Holy Spirit as our deposit, and the promise that more is coming. The difficulty with this for us is that we live in a culture of instant gratification. Having to wait for

We have been studying Isaiah 61 for several weeks now. We have been looking at how God meets us in the deep streams of life and brings transformation to us. This transformation occurs so that his glory and righteousness will be put on display for the world to see. But how will this happen? Isaiah teaches us that when God's people have been transformed, they will be oaks of righteousness who will rebuild, restore, and renew the cities (or in the words of the New Living Tranlsation, rebuild/repair/revive). This picture of what is coming is a picture of hope and vision. We come to this ancient text of Isaiah on the other side of cross, and we can now join the ministry of Jesus to the world. We can join God in his rebuilding. We have been planted in the world in a particular zip code with a specific culture. Portland is a beautiful city full of rich culture, and desperately in need of rebuilding. We have been placed in Portland for a purpose bigger than ourselves. As we enter into transformation in our own lives,

Over the past several weeks we have been exploring the deep places where God wants to transform us. He is transforming us for a reason. What is that reason? Where are we headed? We are being transformed in order to go back into a broken world and redeem two important words and concepts: glory and righteousness. Glory is our motive for worship. Yet, there occurred a glory exchange early on in human history. We exchanged God's glory for our own. Yet, our glory is very short-lived. Humanity is in such bad shape largely because of this glory exchange. We seek our own worship and glory. Isaiah 40 compares human glory to God's glory. The comparison is of a vapor like instant to a Word that lasts forever. We need a weightier glory. A glory that is bigger than us. A glory that can capture our attention. A glory that only God is worthy of. And this God of glory chooses to love and pursue us. The world needs this glory! The second point of redemption the world is desperate for is righteousness. If we are living in a wo

Finding Christ in despair, mourning, and the grieving process. Isaiah 61:1 - 3

God has appointed Christ to provide freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Yet how many of us are stuck in addictions, habits, and sin? We begin by making a single bad decision. Pretty soon we've pursued this bad decision to the point of developing a bad habit. Eventually, it seems, the choice seems to no longer be ours...we're trapped. Addiction. Captive. There are the obvious addictions seen in our culture. Alcohol. Drugs. Pornography. But there are also more subtle ones that entrap us. Spending that leads to debt. Cynicism that leads to hardness of heart. It becomes critical for us to specifically name our personal entrapments. What is it in your life that you seem unable to stop? Whether attitude or action Jesus has come to forgive, but also to destroy the work of our enemy. Yet, though Jesus has unlocked the doors of our prison, many of us remain in our prison cells. Why? Either we don't know that we are free, or we we've gotten so comfortable with prison that we choose to

What we bank on for the fulfillment of our heart is extremely important. Most things we place our hope in are susceptible to leaving us confused, alone, and hurt when they fall apart. We find out our spouse has cancer. We lose our job. Our son/daughter informs us that they want nothing to do with Christ. We are still not married, and the pressure is building. Continue the list for yourself... Every single one of us is part of the community of the broken hearted. We have all experienced a broken heart at one level or another. It is important to name this. How has broken heartedness manifested itself in your story? Jesus came, fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah, to "bind up" the broken hearted. This concept, binding up, means to tie up a wound. Jesus heals our broken hearts. How? God is love (1 John 4:16). When we pursue things other than love, our hearts crack. When we turn to God his essential nature binds our hearts. The news is incredible...God desires to pour out his love on us and heal our broken hearts. I

Jesus tells us we will always have the poor with us. There is literal poverty. And there is spiritual poverty. All of us face poverty of one kind or another. How? Think about where it is in your life that you are faced with what you are not. What do you lack? Physical resources? Perhaps. More than likely we, living in America, are facing spiritual poverty. What is it that you continue to bump up against in your journey with Christ? God is looking for people who are willing to be honest about this. Where are the places in your life where you feel neglected or forgotten? These are likely the places of poverty in your heart. The good news (promised in Isaiah, and fulfilled in Christ) is that Jesus became poor so that we may become rich. God not only sees our situation, he acts on our behalf. In God's economy, there is no differentiation between people's access to God. All are equal and have access. Because God is just, he quickly steps in to defend the poor. This means that, though all have equal access, it is a

After the series on the prodigal son, we are left with the lingering question; "what does it mean to come home to the Father?" God is embracing us without any work on our part? Really? Whether we are coming home from a distant country of sin, or the backyard of legalism, we are left to navigate the Father's embrace. What does God want to do now that you are home? The book of Isaiah gives us some insight into these questions. Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 at the inauguration of his ministry. It is a chapter filled with hope. This hope is centered on the fact that deep, authentic transformation is available to us! The most important thing you can do with the gospel is believe it. How does God want to transform you? For those living in poverty, God promises good news. For those who are broken hearted, God promises whole hearts. For those in bondage, God promises freedom. For those who grieve, God promises comfort. Ultimately, it is for his glory that you are transformed. As people see your story on display, God is glor

In 1957, John Perkins met Jesus and decided to start teaching the Bible in the Deep South. In response to the transforming love of God, he has ministered for almost 50 years in Mississippi and across the United States, advocating and working on behalf of poor, oppressed, and marginalized people. His prophetic voice has made him a national spokesman on poverty, race, and class divisions. His life and ministry focus on the principles of incarnational living, reconciliation, and redistribution as a natural outflow of the love and grace of God. These principles and the power of the gospel can transform a community. Perkins’ story is a profound example of God’s in-breaking Kingdom. Read more at www.jmpf.org/jp_bio.html.

John 3:16

Dr. Paul Metzger joins us to speak on the glory of Jesus Christ. Dr. Metzger is a professor of Christian Theology and Theology of Culture, Director of The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins at Multnomah Biblical Seminary.

An invitation into the story of the scandalous love of a Father who is longing for you to come home.

Rembrandt depicted the story of the prodigal son as a picture of an embrace (see below). This image does not capture the action of the story, but rather the stillness of the Father’s embrace. For Rembrandt, coming home to the Father equates to an embrace. Is this how we read this story? Culturally (contextually), when this son leaves home with his inheritance he is telling everyone “I wish my Father was dead!” What kind of son would do this? A son who is trying to rid himself of the identity of being a son. A son who desires autonomy. We are all that son. For those who have read, and even studied, this passage before it is likely that we have viewed “prodigals” (even ourselves) as those who do very bad things. This foreign country that the prodigal travels to is a country defined by bad morality, isn’t it? This is viewing the story through a moral matrix. Understood at a much more significant level the distant country is actually a country marked by loss of relationship—a relational matrix. This i