Sermons by Matt Heerema (Page 4)
Matt serves as lead pastor, and focuses on teaching, leadership, and theological development. He and his wife Nancy have four daughters. He is a musician and led in Stonebrook’s music ministry for 15 years before putting the guitar down. Matt is an avid reader and massive sci-fi geek.
2 Peter, part 1 – A Fruitful and Effective Life
For the next several weeks, rather than a long walk through a single book of the Bible, or a thematic series, we’re going to take time to preach through some of the shorter books of the new testament. Two years ago we hit some of the shortest letters, 1, 2, 3 John – for the next five weeks we are going to cover 2 Peter, Jude, and Philemon. We’re starting with 2 Peter this AM and doing about a chapter…
The Final Rescue
This Sunday is the second Christmas Sunday! We have four days left! Hooray! 🙂 Christmas is the time of year when we, in a special way, remember and celebrate the birth of Christ, and the beginning of his rescue mission to find and save God’s lost sheep. We carried our Advent series topic, Rescues, on into Christmas as well, because what bigger Rescue is there than Christ’s rescue of us? Last week we talked about Christ’s rescue mission in offering…
Rescue: Famine
This advent season, we are looking at stories of God’s amazing rescues of his people through history. This week we are going to examine the life of Joseph as recounted in Genesis. We will see God’s amazing rescue of Joseph, and then using him to rescue the fledgling nation of Israel, and the whole world from a global famine. In this story we will learn that we can find hope and safety in God’s promises, no matter our circumstances on…
The Twenty-Ninth Chapter
As we look back on the 28 chapters of Luke’s account of the early church, we find Jesus making and keeping a promises to his followers: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth…” (Acts 1:8) Notice the form of this verse. It’s not a mission statement. It’s not a command. It’s a promise: “You will be my…
Acts 15: Disagreements, Debates, & Decisions
In this week’s section, we examine several conflicts that arose in the church as they spread “to the remotest parts of the earth”. With gentiles now becoming a large part of the community of faith, the chosen people of God, how ought they operate? New situations and clashing cultural habits lead to some difficult conversations and decisions. As we look at how the church handled these situations, we gain insight into how to handle disagreements and decisions in our churches today.
The Conversion of a Christian Killer
This week, as we continue our Acts series, we see how the Holy Spirit worked to further his mission of expanding the church through one of the most dramatic and important conversion stories we see in the Bible: Saul of Tarsus. The “Hebrew of Hebrews”, was so zealous for God that he would not tolerate this new sect of Messianic heretics, followers of “The Way”. They claimed that Jesus, the one who suffered the horrific shame of crucifixion, proving that…
Signs and Wonders
This morning we are in our fifth week of our walkthrough of the book of Acts. Please open your bibles with me to Acts chapter 3. We’ll be covering a fairly large part of scripture today. Chapter 3, about a third of chapter 4, and a bit from chapter 5. There’s a lot going on in this section, and we’ll be making two passes through here at least to cover some important themes. This morning, I want to talk about…
The Beginning of the End
We continue our walk through of Acts this week by looking at the very beginning of “The Last Days” – a period of time foretold by Old Testament Prophets – the age where God’s Holy Spirit is no longer limited to a single location in a single nation, but is now poured out on all who believe in Jesus, God’s Messiah. Luke chronicles the events of the beginning of “The Last Days” – Some amazing things happen! We will discuss how these events relate to us today as a church, and how we too should proclaim the mighty works of God to all nations.
Acts: The Holy Spirit and His Unstoppable Church – Part 1
This week we’re beginning a 17-week walkthrough of the book of Acts. In Acts we find Luke the Physician writing down a careful history of the progress of the gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. In Acts, we can find courage in the certainty of Jesus’s triumph over sin and death, and in the fact that no power of hell or scheme of man can stop God’s plan to spread the good news of His son Jesus…
Colorblind: Our Struggle to See the Multicolor Image of God
This past Tuesday morning, after I had spent several days preparing to handle the tricky subjects of the fire, eternal damnation, and tribulation described in 2 Thessalonians 1, the elders decided we needed tackle something actually controversial today: Racial harmony and social justice. In case you’ve been hiding in a cave somewhere for the past few months, recently George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota were captured in a gruesome 9 minute video, sparking protesting…
Stand Fast in Affliction
Our passage for today was written at a time when the apostle Paul, the spiritual father of the church, was kept from seeing the people in the church, kept from meeting with them and knowing how they were. And it opens with these words, which seem particularly apt for this day. Week 10 of being unable to meet together as a large group and our passage begins with: “…when we could bear it no longer…” 1 Thessalonians 3:1–13 (ESV) 1…
An Easter Afternoon Encounter at Emmaus
This Easter Sunday we will take a look at Luke 24 and see how the resurrection of Jesus can give us hope, courage, and strengthened faith even as we are couped up at home in a time where we may be asking ‘Where is God in all this?
The Marks of a Minister + Q&A session
As a minister of the New Covenant, Paul gave his heart and life to the proclamation of the good news about Jesus. He demonstrated his authenticity by his perseverance through great affliction and through his sacrificial, loving, and Spirit-filled actions. As we look at Paul’s life we can have confidence that Jesus really did appear to him, radically transforming his life. And, along with Paul, we should wholeheartedly believe in what God has one in Jesus Christ and give of…
The Marks of a Minister + Q&A session
As a minister of the New Covenant, Paul gave his heart and life to the proclamation of the good news about Jesus. He demonstrated his authenticity by his perseverance through great affliction and through his sacrificial, loving, and Spirit-filled actions. As we look at Paul’s life we can have confidence that Jesus really did appear to him, radically transforming his life. And, along with Paul, we should wholeheartedly believe in what God has one in Jesus Christ and give of…
Ministers of Reconciliation
When we become a Christian, God gives us a task: “the ministry of reconciliation.” Not only does he reconcile us to himself, but he makes us into coworkers with him in his plan to reconcile his people to himself from all over the world. This week we will discuss a core component of our new relationship with God through Christ: becoming ambassadors for the most high God to a lost world.
The Great Exchange
We will be spending the next two weeks (Lord willing) on the last part of chapter 5. In it we find a glorious two-part truth: God has reconciled us to himself, and we have been given a ministry of reconciliation. This first week we will be focusing on what God did, how he did it, and why he did it. Come be encouraged in the glorious truth of the core Gospel message!
Our Sufficiency for the Task
Christians can have confidence for this ministry when they realize that God’s Word is sufficient for accomplishing the task, and so speak it with sincerity and boldness.
When God Seems Absent
Where do we go with our faith when God seems absent? How do we maintain faith when prayers seem unanswered, our circumstances all seem to be stacked against us, and we are filled with grief and sorrow and darkness in our hearts? Are we trapped, or is there a way out? We’ll explore what David did during these times and how we can rightly follow his example.
Rise and Fall – Epilogue
This week we conclude our series with 2 Samuel 21-24, a carefully constructed epilogue to “The book of Samuel” which compiles scenes from the life of Samuel, Saul, and David. In it we find connections with the introduction to the book, Hannah’s poem/prayer, that help us see the main thrust of the prophet’s message: God is faithful to his promise in spite of man’s failures, God opposes the proud and exalts the humble, and that a promised king is coming which will bring blessing to all the nations.