See dishes to be washed? Wash them. Trash to be taken out? Take it out. Laundry to be done? Do it. Likewise, within the household of faith, do not leave the encouragement of your brothers and sisters undone. They are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, and it is good and right to acknowledge the grace at work in them. Listen to Pastor Haakon's exhortation for more.
Grabbing a delicious-looking apple only to cut it open to find it is rotten inside is an unpleasant discovery. The apple is quickly thrown away. Outward appearances with rotten motives are far from what God wants of his people and comes under Jesus' kingly condemnation in Mark 11:1-25. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon for more.
The path of discipleship is fraught with danger and missteps. We're going to need some guidance as we are following Christ in all of life. In Mark 10:13-52, we're given two virtues of faithful discipleship, each with a positive and negative example. Disciples ought to live in willing dependence and humble faith. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon for more as we follow after Christ together.
You have felt disregarded. You seem to have received the short end of the stick. You didn't receive the recognition you deserved. Why do you respond the way you do? If all that you have you've received as a gracious gift, why would you boast as though you did not receive it? Listen to Brian Wiseman's exhortation and consider prideful boasting or its cousin, a sense of entitlement.
No one ever likes waiting. We would much rather be moving on to the next thing or receive the thing for which we wait. Disdain for waiting is compounded when we are equipped to have almost anything we want instantly through the devices we carry. So it is no surprise we don't want to wait for relationships to develop or sanctification to progress. Listen to Pastor Brett's exhortation for more.
Divorce is commonplace in our culture and is assumed to be a given, similar to the expectations in Jesus' day. Yet the fracturing of a marriage has never been God's intent, and it is a sobering standard that Jesus conveys in Mark 10:1-12. Listen to Pastor Dan's sermon and be encouraged to value the glory marriage points to.
Glass ceiling. Toxic masculinity. Patriarchy. These phrases are used in varying degrees within our society to convey a message about female identity. We are bombarded with a message of what a woman is all the while that same culture cannot with clarity and consistency define what a woman is. A biblical worldview addresses femininity quite differently as the God who has created us has revealed himself and his purposes in his Word. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on womanhood in the final message ...
The preacher of Hebrews exhorted his audience for having become dull of hearing in respect to God's Word and thus unable to receive further teaching. We can succumb to the same problem with misplaced priorities. Listen to this exhortation from Pastor Haakon for more.
Every human life is valuable because each is an image bearer of God himself. In varied ways, we all diminish the dignity of such image bearers. As we focus these few weeks on "identity," it is necessary to reflect and repent of devaluing this divinely gifted identity in other people. Listen to Pastor Zach's exhortation for more.
Many things in life are more readily caught than taught. And as we breathe the air of our culture, we must be vigilant to look to Scripture and godly examples to catch the biblical vision for masculinity. A man's identity ought to be shaped by what God's Word says a man is, what a man does, and where all our hope lay. Listen to Pastor Haakon's sermon on manhood—our second sermon in our mini-series on identity.
Our culture is constantly making claims about who we are and what informs and shapes our identity. What the increasingly predominant worldviews are in fact doing is proclaiming another "gospel." We are bombarded with a different vision of who people fundamentally are, what our core problem is, the solution to remedy it, and the end result of this "faith." In this first sermon on the theme of identity, Pastor Brett speaks to how different our culture views ethnicity from what the Bible affirms....
The world and everything in it is weighted down by hardship, suffering, and woe. We can respond by complaining, with cold indifference, or in faithful groaning. Listen to Brian Wiseman's exhortation to grown before the Lord.
The reasons to celebrate Christmas are not as festive as the things we most often associate with the holiday. The reason there is Christmas is that we—all humanity—are not nice, not good. Rather, our feet are quick to run to evil. Listen to Pastor Dan's exhortation to hear more.
Humility is a good, commendable thing. But no one wants to be humiliated. Yet this is the very thing the Son of Man said would happen to him. And as his followers, he calls us to the same path through four exhortations: exchange pride with hospitality, replace status with blessing, forsake sin with a vengeance, give your very self. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on Mark 9:30-50 for more.
It can be easy to think we have been successful in our evangelism if we share how the Lord has worked in our lives. However, we must proclaim Christ. We must communicate with bold winsomeness the truth about Jesus Christ. Listen to Pastor Haakon's exhortation for more.
Faith seeking understanding. It's the posture of humility that characterizes biblical faith and is on display as a father comes to Jesus with a tentative request. We emulate the faith while learning from the request. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on Mark 9:14-29 for more.
Advent is a season of fasting and longing that pivots to the feasting season of Christmastime at the hinge of Christmas Eve. That which we have been longing for has come. Expectation has been fulfilled. Light has overcome the darkness. The prophet Isaiah anticipated these realities centuries ahead of Christ's birth. Listen to Pastor Brett's Christmas Eve sermon on Isaiah 9:2.
The line from Luke's Christmas narrative is a familiar one, "On earth peace among those with whom he is well pleased!" We all want peace, but will we lay down our rebellion that prohibits peace with the Triune God? Listen to Pastor Dan's exhortation on peace to consider more.
We see it clearly in the advertisements aimed at us—our culture is gripped by an idolatry of ease, comfort, and self. Any inconvenience should be avoided let alone actual suffering. Yet Jesus teaches another way. Those who follow him will suffer as he too suffered. Though he does not leave us without hope or encouragement. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on Mark 9:2-13.
"Joy to the world; the Lord is come." Is come? Is? The familiar carol words it that way to convey the ongoing significance for present life in the historical arrival of the incarnate Son of God. Yet we all to easily slip in rhythms and habits of life that display we functionally do not believe the Lord is come. Listen to Pastor Brett's exhortation for more.
Jesus certainly cares about suffering, but he is most concerned about delivering people from eternal suffering. As he heals a blind man, he does so in a way to point to spiritual realities. In our spiritual blindness, we must have God open our eyes to rightly perceive that Jesus is the Christ. This Advent, will you see Jesus just as a baby for a mid-winter holiday or will you see him as he has revealed himself to be? Listen to Pastor Zach's sermon on Mark 8:22-9:1 for more.
Even as our culture increasingly rejects any vestige of Christian heritage, we must guard against the same trajectory in our own lives. We must, therefore, receive Jesus by faith afresh. Listen to Pastor Haakon's exhortation for more.
When you walk through the woods, all sounds empty and silent. Yet when you sit and listen, it doesn't take long to hear and see all the activity. Look at Mark 8:1-21, we must do the same as it relates to following after Christ. Doing more and more isn't the solution if we haven't listened to what Christ says and follow him accordingly. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon for more.
Advent is a season of waiting, of longing, of yearning for what we do not now have. And we can all to easily suppress the intended purpose of the season by attempting to fill that sense of loss with gifts and presents and stuff. So we must be on guard against all covetousness and set our hope on what is fixed and true: the promised Second Advent of the Son. Listen to Pastor Dan's exhortation for more.
Our society in recent months has especially conditioned a deep feeling of disdain towards anyone labelled a racist or who exhibits signs of any illness. That kind of disdain is one highlighted in Mark 7 as Jesus shows the nature of the kingdom of God. The hope of the gospel overcomes religious traditions and ethnic barriers to create a people who are chiefly identified by their union with Christ by faith. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on Mark 7:24-37.
Anger is the emotion of moral judgment. We get angry when something matters, and we assess that something is wrong. It can be easy to self-justify our anger or dismiss it as just getting "a little hot under the collar" or "frustrated." Listen to Pastor Zach's exhortation to consider how you may actually give yourself to sinful anger.
There is an understandable desire among those pursuing godliness to set up boundaries to guard against breaking the Lord's instruction. However, a very real danger arises when we begin to give those boundaries the same level of authority as God's Word. We must hear Jesus' teaching in Mark 7:1-23 and keep focused on the reality that what defiles us comes from within. Listen to Pastor Haakon's sermon to be exhorted by Jesus' words.
Perhaps the best example of an unhelpful application of Scripture is to say to your friend gripped by anxiety, “Well, Philippians 4:6, ‘Don’t be anxious about anything.’” It certainly is true, yet not the most winsome or illuminating of exhortations; “just stop it.” However, we are in no short supply of things to be anxious about. Listen to Pastor Brett's exhortation to be prompted towards repentance of your own fears and distrust.
As we begin to see the holidays on the horizon, it's good to recall how quickly they move on and how readily we forget so many good things. Such forgetfulness is all to easy spiritually as well. We may know who Jesus is, yet we fail to live accordingly. So beholding Jesus for who he is and endeavoring to walk by faith is an ongoing experience. Listen to Pastor Brett's sermon on Mark 6:30-56 to behold Jesus in his Word.
Perhaps this year more than any other in recent memory, we are eager for the distraction of the coming holidays. However, we must guard against distractions that would lead us off the mission. Listen to Pastor Dan's exhortation and give thought, and repentance where needed, of how distractions keep you from following Christ in all of life.
