Sunday, November 1
Jesus tells the story of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus who both die and wake up on opposite sides of a fixed chasm, and Abraham refuses the rich man's plea for a sign, pointing his brothers to the word they already have. The sermon presses the point that money and heritage can't save; hearing and heeding God's word can.
Sunday, October 25
Jesus tells three parables about losing something valuable and finding it to explain why he eats with sinners, and the last one ends not with the son's return but with the father running to meet him and then going out after the older brother too.
Sunday, October 18
Jesus turns to a crowd that is following him and tells them plainly that following him costs them everything else, and that wholehearted devotion is worked out not in a single heroic moment but in small daily faithfulness, powered by grace rather than willpower.
Sunday, October 11
Jesus tells the crowd at a dinner table that the kingdom is a feast thrown open to people who cannot repay the invitation, and he calls them to take the lowest seat rather than assume they already belong.
Sunday, October 4
Jesus answers the question of whether only a few will be saved by telling people to strive through the narrow door, warning that religious heritage and proximity to him are not the same as being known by him.
Sunday, September 27
The valley of suffering and loss is not outside the Christian life but inside it, and what holds a person there is not an answer to every why but the presence of God, shown most clearly in Jesus, who entered the valley himself. God does not waste the valley; he uses it to make his people more like Christ and to mend broken things into something beautiful.
Sunday, September 20
God blesses his people in order to send them out, so the life of a Christian is poured out for the sake of the place God has put them rather than hoarded for themselves. The sermon traces that from Abraham through Babylon to the church as salt, light, and ambassadors of another kingdom.
Sunday, September 13
The gospel is not just the door you walk through to become a Christian but the whole house you live in, and Paul confronts Peter because living out of step with that gospel is a failure to believe it. The good news keeps renewing a believer from the inside out, every day, in every part of life.
Sunday, September 6
Prayer is how a church pursues God: coming to him as a Father, calling on him to keep the promises of his word, and asking again and again instead of losing heart. The sermon holds out prayer as the instinct a hungry church should have, and one pastor's five-year-old shows him what that looks like.
Sunday, August 30
Everyone carries words about God, and the work of discipleship is letting those words move from information into the heart, the affections and the ordinary moments of life until what we believe and how we live become one thing.