Our Cornerstone

ORDER OF WORSHIP:

Welcome
Song of Praise “Lift High The Name Of Jesus”
Call to Worship  Psalm 118:22-29
Song of Praise “Cornerstone”
Confession of Faith Ephesians 2:19-20
Song of Praise “It Is Done”
Prayer of Adoration
Greet One Another
Testimony of God’s Grace
Prayer of Intercession
Giving of God’s Tithe and Our Offerings
Song of Preparation “Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me”
Scripture Reading Matthew 16:13-19
Sermon “Our Cornerstone” Craig Swartz
Prayer of Commitment
Songs of Response “How Great Is Our God”
“How Great Thou Art”
Benediction

SERMON NOTES:

Mahatma Gandhi:

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Brian McLaren:

“No wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both find ourselves shaking our heads and asking, ‘What happened to Christianity? We feel as if our founder has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say, under duress, things he obviously doesn’t believe. As their blank-faced puppet, he often comes across as anti-poor, anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant and anti-science. That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!”

1. THE  OF THE CHURCH

Matthew 16:16

C.S. Lewis:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

2. THE  OF THE CHURCH

Matthew 16:17-18a

N. T. Wright:

“Jesus has not come to build a physical temple, or church.

He is going to build a community consisting of all those who give allegiance to Him as God’s anointed king.”

Andre Crouch:

“I’ve got confidence God is gonna see me through no matter what the case may be I know He’s gonna fix it for me.”

3. THE  OF THE CHURCH

Matthew 16:18

Romans 16:20

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others…not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.”

4. THE  OF THE CHURCH

Matthew 16:19

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”

Martin Luther:

“And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”