Sermon / Matthew 11:1-6 / Are You the One?

Matthew is building up to Jesus’ climactic question found in chapter 16: Who do you say that I am?  But before Jesus asks us who we think He is…He tells us who He thinks He is.  This section is all about Jesus’ identity. Chapters 8-9 showed us His work, and chapters 11-12 show us his person.  And Jesus tells…

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Sermon / Matthew 10:5-15 / When the Going Gets Tough: The Relationship Between Persecution and Mission

Matthew 10 is Jesus’ sermon on missions.He is preparing his followers for their mission.In verses 5-15 He gives them power. They have power over sickness, the devil, death, uncleanness,BUT they do not have the power to escape opposition. In verse 16 there is a shift in focus: what is the relationship betweenpersecutionandmission? Jesus is preparing them for some of the deepest…

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Sermon / Matthew 10:5-15 / Are You Ready for This?

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations we are not prepared for. In 1939 a Polish cavalry officer, and his horse, were sent to defend Poland against a division of German Panzer tanks during the Nazi’s invasion of Poland. The officer found himself in a helpless and hopeless situation as he was sent into a fight…

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Sermon / 2 Kings 7:1-19 / A Day of Good News

When Jesus began his ministry, he called his first disciples who were fishermen and told them to follow him and he would make them fishers of people. And he went from town to town teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. At that time there was an expectation that religion was something to…

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Sermon / Matthew 9:35-38 / Mission 101

One helpful way of thinking about Matthew’s gospel is that it is a training manual for discipleship. It is a curriculum for the Christian life. You could say that chapters 5 through 9 give us our first semester’s study of who Jesus is: the teaching and touching savior. We hear him teaching, giving us His…

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Sermon / Matthew 9:27-34 / Over Coming the Darkness

One of the most famous psychology experiments of all time is the “invisible gorilla” test (You can take the test below). It is a funny test, that most people fail miserably…if they haven’t been tipped off in advance! But it shows us how much that is right before us that we don’t actually see. Matthew…

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Sermon / Easter 2021 / Life Under the Shadow

Matthew 9:18-26 In this sermon we will look at three different stories:  a 13-year-old girl who dreamed about being a broadway star,  a father who had to bury his daughter,  and a woman who silently suffered for 12 years.  And for each of them, what could have been the worst moment of their lives was…

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Holy Week 2021 / Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Today’s Song: O The Wonderful Cross Today’s passage: Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Today we come to holy ground. Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is a 5 stanza song about the crucifixion.  Let us take off our shoes…for the place he is hanging is holy ground. Spend some time thinking about each of the stanzas in this song. For each…

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Holy Week 2021 / Maundy Thursday /

Isaiah 63:1-6: A Day of Vengeance…a day of love? Today’s Song: Were You There?Today’s passage: Isaiah 63:1-6 Isaiah 63 brings us alongside the Lord’s Anointed and paints a picture of Him once He has completed His work of vengeance. We see him blood stained from the battle that brought salvation. And we see two realities together:…

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