Chapel Hill Bible Church - Sermons

In the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, Jesus teaches us that God’s massive heart for us transcends all human ideas about fairness. Though it sounds appealing on the surface, this is a difficult truth, confronting us on the ways live for our own prestige and compare ourselves to others. In this passage, we will come face to face with a generous God who invites us into a new vision of what it means to be His people in a world where status and competition rule the day.

In Ephesians 3:14–21, Paul pulls back the curtain on how he prays for the church—and it may not be what we expect. Rather than focusing on circumstances or outcomes, Paul prays for inner strength, deep roots in Christ’s love, and a growing grasp of the immeasurable riches of God’s grace. This prayer reveals what truly matters for the health and maturity of God’s people. As we listen in on Paul’s words, we learn not only what to pray for a church, but how God delights to work powerfully within His people for His glory and their good.

For our last Sunday in Advent, we looked at Jesus as our Savior in the birth narrative in Matthew. It is a brief passage and one that contains the whole Bible in a sense. Jesus is our promised, incarnate, Savior, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

This third Sunday of advent, we focus on Joy and the work of Christ as our King. God had told Israel they could have a king, but the catch is he had to be totally different than the kings of the nations. He had to be a pastoral king, a fatherly king, the king that served the purposes of the kingdom. Kingship is a really big theme in the Bible, and unfortunately in the Old Testament there are a lot of broken examples. But at the end of the day, they pointed to the perfect King. And we will revel in Him this Sunday.

This second week of Advent, we now look at the picture called Priest. Christ is our Great High Priest and that changes everything. We will look at Hebrews 7 as the author paints for us the Old Testament origins of the priesthood and its goodness but also its incompleteness. We need a perfect priest and a priest who finished the work of purification, once and for all. So, we see that Jesus is and always was the ultimate and forever priest who not only leads but actually is the purity of God's people. And, among other things, that brings PEACE (the theme of the second Sunday of advent), forever peace, powerful peace, experienced peace.

This week begins our Advent Series. Picture the series as four paintings, side by side. I know there are things called triptych, a 3 panel painting, but I am not sure if there are quadtychs? These paintings reveal a different facet of our Christ. One is the Prophet (this Sunday). One is the Priest. One is the King. And the final one is the Savior. We will trace how these four offices were promised in the OT, fulfilled in Jesus, and then what that means for us today and for Advent as we not only gaze into that paintings, but discover we are one of the characters God has painted into the frame.

God loves to right side His people by turning them upside down. This Sunday we will study Acts 17:1-15 and see the gospel turning people and communities upside down and thus right side up! We'll look closely at the Bereans and how they were eager and examined the Scriptures daily to see the connections and conclusions about Jesus that Paul was teaching them. God blessed that. Many were saved.

We continue with the Apostle Paul as the gospel breaks forth into Europe. The Lord is accomplishing His purposes and building His kingdom through faithful gospel proclamation. This is not without opposition, and though we find Paul and his team persecuted greatly, their demeanor, posture and persistence serve as an example to us and a demonstration of Christian contentment in every joy and trial.

Has a door closed on you lately? Has a chapter come to an end, and you did not exactly invite that? To boot, were you trying to serve God when the door closed or the chapter ended? Endings are hard. Really hard. But the things is, God does some of His clearest leading by funneling us by closing doors and then opening new ones. Every closed door leads to a new open door, and a beautiful door. God does not have dead ends. This Sunday's text will remind us of these truths of God's sovereign grace as it leads by way of closed relationships, closed opportunities, and yet new relationships and new opportunities. At the end of the day, we will see that the whole point of our lives is to make Christ known and the only doors we should want are the one's God has planned. What a solid and encouraging place to be.

Legalism is like the Applebee's menu. It promises so much and yet never delivers (apologies to you Applebee's fans 😉). Legalism is not debatable, though. Adding anything to Jesus as the ground of salvation is wrong and it robs us of life. Legalism never relents, it manifests itself in all times and in all cultures. The church in Acts 15 responds swiftly, clearly, and graciously in how it dealt with it in its own time and I think we have a great example of how to respond, teach, and disciple the church on how to reject legalism, all the while embracing the way of Jesus Alone love, which may involve choosing to avoid certain things for unity sake. Legalism is the forcing of unbiblical commands. Love is the choosing to give over rights for the sake of the common good. I think Sunday will be helpful to all of us as we seek to live by grace and truth together. 

The text this week is a summation of the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas. It lists a bunch of important and basic things these missionaries did as leaders in local churches. We will take the seven marks of a healthy church this Sunday and look at them. It might be helpful for folks looking at joining CHBC and hopefully it will help us value the basics more as a church, to long for growth in each of these reasons, and to see how we can help with our spiritual gifts in the growth of these health markers.

The passage this week has a lot to say about a couple things. First, is gospel clarity. Paul and Barnabas go to great lengths with their word and actions to make people clear on what they represent - the heavenly gospel, not an earthly worldview gospel. To that end, they push glory and honor away. Paul is then physically tortured because of this clarity, almost to death. But, with gospel power and hope, Paul gets back on his feet and heads right back onto mission? How? The dude was scared for life, physically. Well, because he knew he was in Christ and so lived like Christ, he believed his scars would lead to glory. May we feel reminded and anchored in that hope, for our own gospel scars, this Lord's Day as we sit under the good and loving Word.

A new chapter. A new city. But the calling is the same. Regardless of their location, we see Paul and Barnabas the proclamation of the good news to the Jews and to the Gentiles alike. In doing so, God bears witness to the word of his grace by signs and wonders (good works) done by the apostles. The text invites us to consider how we too can boldly share the gospel, join God in doing good works, and remain faithful to that calling regardless of where we are.

I confess that I often struggle to step out into my spheres of influence, even as a pastor, because I am fearful of the response. Preaching is intimidating, for instance. It never ceases to be so. What if the congregation rejects this? How clear should I be about what is in the passage? What if I have to teach a culturally unacceptable truth? This week's passage was a reminder. It was the Holy Spirit saying to me: "Jay, this is for you, too. Take care of the depth, and I will take care of the breadth." CHBC, this is the Word of the Lord for you, too. I bet there is a place in your spheres of influence you are hesitant to step forward in because you are not sure about how it will be received. Based in the passage this week, you can do it, because God has sovereignly planned out the result, both the fruit and the fall out. You can trust Him with that and this week we study the depth of that.

I love the Bible. I trust it as totally true, the very words of God. I hope you do, too. But, the Bible can actually get in the way of faith if we don't understand what God is trying to do with it. The religious leaders of Israel would have sworn by their allegiance to the Scriptures but Jesus rebukes them sternly about their faith-killing way of relating to God's Word. He says in John 5:39, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me." The Jews had lost sight of the point of the Bible. It had become an end to itself and it had become the means of their justification. From the beginning, God's Word was pointing God's people to the Messiah, and that Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth. When you get that, the Truly True Bible comes alive. It is all of grace. It is all of love. The whole Bible is whole Gospel showing us whole salvation through the Holy Savior. I say all that because we see Paul preaching the Word, showing the people Christ, knowing that is what the Spirit uses to save. And we should follow suit.

A key aspect of missional faithfulness is to confront with the gospel, not just contextualize and invite with it. Put another way, our mission field is occupied territory. Our enemy, the devil, does not have actual claim on the world, but he thinks he does and he will fight for it. Acts 13 is Paul's initial ministry on his first missionary journey and, unsurprisingly, it involves an encounter with evil. We will witness the missionary apostle rebuke and proclaim the gospel in one fell swoop. Evil is judged and new life is imparted.

This has been a hard week with news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Regardless of the political nature of his voice and organization, Charlie was a clear and animated Christian and his death is appalling and saddening. What to make of something like this? How do hold both the sin and accountability of the murderer in one hand and the sovereign and glorious purposes of God in the other. We must. Acts 12 has a lot to say to us in the moment, as well as in general about suffering, the Christ who will not be thwarted, and the increase of the Christian movement with the blood of martyrs.

Grace is scandalous. It ruins our well laid plans that legalism affords us. Don't eat. Don't touch. Do this. Vote this way. Affirm that. Identify as such. Jesus +. So, it is not a surprise that as the grace of God is given to the Gentiles, the Jewish believers were surprised and even perturbed. But, the Spirit's work and the Scriptural truth was clear. The gospel is gift. Jesus ALONE is the way. And, so grace among the Gentiles was and is a beautiful thing. Are we a Jesus ALONE church? Are there any ways our church, and our personal lives, still have some Jesus +?

Acts 10 is our upcoming passage as we get back into our exposition of Acts. This is a pivotal passage in Acts and in the entire NT! It is the longest narrative of Acts because of its purpose - to describe and explain that God wants the nations to know Him and worship him. The gospel crosses a threshold to to tends of the earth (Acts 1:8). This passage is designed to convict the believer that there are people who we consider unclean and we avoid them, but God has planned to save them - and He wants to use us to do that. And, this passage is a powerful word to God-fearers today, seekers if you will, that still need to know that the Almighty God is known in Jesus.

We are back to the book of Acts and this launch Sunday we will reorient ourselves back to it with Acts 2:42-47, a key passage in Luke's account of the early church. In that passage we see the basics of a healthy and fruitful church, basics that are just as true today, than ever. Maybe these basics are especially true in this day of distraction, decadence, and information overload. The basics can be internalized with the acronym FLOW: fellowship, learning, outreach, worship. Those four things are what God is calling us to do most of the time, as best we can, by his grace. If we do, the gospel is going to advance. It just might surprise us how powerfully it advances, too.