Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose Ca

It is one of the greatest lines in any hymn or any carol I’ve ever heard. It is certainly my favorite line in any hymn or carol I’ve ever heard. It is the fourth line in the carol “O Holy Night,” and it simply says this, speaking of the birth of Jesus Christ: “Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” To appreciate this line in its fuller context, let me read you the entire first verse, and the chorus:...

It is one of those carols that make us feel better no matter where we are or what we’re doing when we hear it. Right from its first word, this carol expresses the deepest longing of our heart, not just for Christmas but for the entire year – joy. What we hope for this Christmas is joy, lasting joy. We’ve had enough sadness this last year. We have lost loved ones. We have lost jobs. We have had marriage struggles and health struggles and struggles on the job. We’ve had run-ins with our children and we’ve had run-ins with our parents. We’ve been angry, we’ve been anxious, and we’ve been apathetic, and now it’s time for a different emotion. We want joy, real joy, lasting joy, the kind of joy that Isaac Watts wrote about in 1719 in his classic Christmas carol we know as “Joy To The World.”

For most people, whether they believe in the Christ of Christmas or not, Christmas is a time of hope. We hope we’ll get certain presents for Christmas. We hope the presents we give will bring joy to those we love. We hope to see certain family members we haven’t seen for years. We hope to create some special memories that will live with us and our families for the rest of our lives. And while we’re feeling hopeful, why not hope for some bigger things? And so we do. We hope we get a job, a job that will be rewarding financially and personally. We hope to get out of debt, although that will probably have to wait until we pay the Christmas bills. We hope to get pregnant and have our first child. We hope we meet that special someone, the one who will love us as much as we love him or her. We hope to get our bodies healthy. We hope to get our marriage healthy. We hope to get into shape. We hope to make some changes in our lives – lasting, positive changes.

When was the last time you made a sacrifice? It probably wasn’t that long ago; we make them all the time. No, not the kind of sacrifice where you place an animal on an altar, like the people of Israel did in Old Testament times. But you know what I mean. If you’re a parent, you make sacrifices pretty regularly. You sacrifice your wants and preferences for the sake of your kids. You sacrifice your money so they can have they things they need and want, so they can get the kind of education we think they deserve. If you’re married, I’m pretty sure you made some sacrifices this last week. You wanted to watch an action movie, and she wanted to see another formulaic romantic comedy. You’ve seen so many over the years that within five minutes you know how the story is going to play out, and frankly it was something of a sacrifice for you not to lean over to your wife and tell her, “This is what’s going to happen …” If your part of a family, you

A few years ago a friend of mine had a chance to spend a week at Duke University at a fantasy basketball camp coached by Duke head coach Mike Kryzewski and a number of Duke’s former greatest players. Since basketball is one of my greatest loves and I have done a little bit of coaching myself, I was very interested to hear about his experience, and I found myself daydreaming a little bit about what the week must have been like. As I contemplated being at a fantasy camp with college basketball’s most successful coach, I tried to think of the questions I would have wanted to ask. “What is the best zone defense? How can I teach my players to shoot free throws? What’s your favorite in-bounds play?” If you’re a baseball fan, imagine what you would be like at a Giants’ fantasy camp hosted by Bruce Bochy and Buster Posey. Can you think of anything you might want to ask Buster, like maybe, “Can you show me how to hit like you do?”

At some time or other in our lives, most of us know what it's like to have an addiction, even though none of us ever want to admit that we have an addiction. A number of years ago I was forced to acknowledge an addiction of my own. But before you get too worried about me, let me give you the background. For as long as I can remember, I've had allergies. I actually didn't know I had allergies until I was 13, when my parents took me to an ear/nose/throat doctor because of my runny nose and red eyes. He took one look inside my snotlocker and said, "You have allergies." The next step was to figure out what I was allergic to, which I mistakenly thought would be a simple, straightforward scientific process. Some of you know too well what that process really involves -- needles, lots of needles. What they did was to prick my back and arms with these needles and inject just a little bit of all sorts of different things into my skin to see whether I would have an allergic reaction to anything. As best I can r

Do you ever find yourself in the mood to watch an old-fashioned "revenge" flick? I haven't seen Liam Neeson's newest movie called "Taken 2," but while I was recovering from my last surgery I did catch "Taken" on TV, in which Neeson's college-age daughter is kidnapped while she and a friend are on a trip to Paris. Neeson hears the whole terrifying event over his daughter's cell phone, and then in a quirk of fate one of the kidnappers picks up the cell phone, giving Neeson a chance to give him a message. Here's what he says: "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." And if you've seen the movie,

One of the oddest phenomena in sports is the slump. The word "slump" is usually used with baseball players, and it happens to even the best hitters. One month Buster Posey is hitting the ball all over the park, and then for no reason at all he can't seem to hit the ball out of the infield. The same batter who is leading the league in home runs suddenly couldn't get a hit if he was playing slow pitch, church league softball. And the harder the batter tries to get out of his slump, the more he thinks about it and the more effort he puts into it, the worse the slump gets. Have you ever gone through a slump? Maybe it was at work, where it just seemed that everything you did turned out wrong, no matter how hard you worked, how well-intentioned you were. Maybe it was an emotional slump, where you just seemed emotionally and psychologically stuck, where all the life and energy and joy was drained out of you and you didn't know how to get it back. Or maybe it was a relational slump. Maybe it was ev

Every year major companies all across America spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to recruit talented, skilled, educated employees. A company's most important asset, it is said, is its employees. And so companies pay headhunters and recruiters large sums of money to go out and find the best and the brightest to come to work for them. A while ago the Wall Street Journal carried an article about a new phenomenon in headhunting. These headhunters are not out and about looking for the best employees they can find. Instead, these headhunters have been hired by CEOs of major corporations to find these executives best friends. The executives claim they are simply too busy to make friends of their own, so they have decided to use the one thing they do have in ample supply -- money -- and use it to obtain what they most want -- friends.

So how cool is it when Jesus, the Son of God himself, gives you a compliment! And that's exactly what he does in our text this morning. This fall we are studying Jesus' best known sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. Two weeks ago we got started by taking a brief look at what we call the Beatitudes, which you can read in Matthew 5:1--12. Today our text is from Matthew 5:13--16; listen to what Jesus says: You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13--16) Now we're going to explore what all this means this mor

Well good morning Cornerstone it is always a pleasure to address the entire congregation. It seems I am called upon when Craig is out of commission. The last time I spoke he had surgery number one on his hip and now it appears that he is moving along well in the healing of his latest procedure. Please continue to keep him in your prayers, as I know he misses being up here so much more than we could ever imagine.

Myth Busters - Missions Editions

Kindness That Leads To Repentance Know The Whole Story...

Galatians 1:6-9 "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel -- which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!"

Twelve high school seniors were all dressed up for their senior prom. They had gathered at one of their houses to take pictures, and for the last picture they lined up on the back porch, which stood one level above the backyard. Some parents were taking pictures, and one father was taking a video of the whole affair, when suddenly, and without any warning, the deck collapsed. Fortunately the injuries were limited to cuts, bruises and torn prom dresses and tuxes -- no broken bones and no concussions.

We've been studying a book of the Bible this summer that frankly most Christians never get around to reading -- the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. We've met some extraordinarily courageous people in this book, people like Hannah, Samuel and Jonathan. The star of the book is unquestionably David, the young shepherd who defeated the giant Goliath with a sling and a stone. And even if you've never read the account of David's life in 1 Samuel, you've very likely read many of the songs David wrote, the songs we call "psalms." The book of Psalms, which you will find in the middle of your Old Testament, is a collection of 150 songs, roughly half of which were composed by David. And you might have noticed that there are liner notes at the beginning of many of the Psalms which clue us in to the context.

It wasn't your fault. You did nothing wrong. Your intentions were pure, your actions blameless. But that didn't stop him from hurting you, from trashing you, from stealing from you, from slandering you, from abusing you. And now you're faced with a choice -- what next? Do I go after him? Do I retaliate? Or do I forgive him? And if I choose forgiveness, doesn't that just let him off the hook? If I don't hold him accountable for what he did to me, who will?

Have you ever prayed about something and then stopped and asked yourself, "Is it OK to pray about that? Is this something I should be talking to God about?" I turned on my smartphone one morning to check for any new messages and I noticed something odd. I always have emails in the morning -- always. Even if no one needs me for anything, I always get the Mercury News link sent to my email, and I always get a link to a new sermon sent to my email. But this morning … nothing. I went downstairs, turned on my iPad, and boom -- about 20 emails popped up. Checked my phone again; still nothing. So I tried a variety of fixes -- I rebooted the phone, I checked all my settings, I took the battery out and wiped it off and put it back in. Still no luck. So on my way to the office that morning I swung by the Verizon store to see if they could help me. And as I was driving I found myself praying, "God, please help me to get email on my phone." And as I prayed that I started to laugh to myself and the thou

It's a car commercial, but in my mind it's really a commercial about friends. A young woman is sitting at her computer telling us about an article she read -- an article she partly read -- about how few friends people have as they get older. Assuming her older parents probably don't have many friends, she gets her parents signed up on Facebook so they can make some friends. Now, she says, her parents have 19 friends, which she then mouths, is "so sad." Why is that so sad? Because she has over 600 Facebook friends -- this is "living," she tells us. And the irony of the commercial is this -- while she's sitting by herself at her computer looking at a picture of a puppy someone has posted, her older parents are out with a bunch of their friends mountain-biking. So who is "so sad" -- the girl with over 600 Facebook friends or her parents who are actually doing something with a handful of their real friends?

It's not only one of the most famous stories in the Bible; it's one of the most famous stories in all of history -- David and Goliath. Even if you've never read the account for yourself from 1 Samuel 17, you likely have a pretty good idea of what happened. It's clearly a story of courage, in this case the courage to battle a bully. It's a story of faith in God. And as much as anything the author of this text wants us to see this as a story of perspective. The question the text asks us over and over again is this: "What do you see?"