When three people from totally different worlds collide together in one space, you never know what’s going to happen! Well, something like that is happening at the end of Luke 7. A Pharisee, Jesus, and a Sinner all end up at the same dinner. Who knows what’s going to happen? Whatever it is, it’s going to be crazy. Throughout this passage, let's loo…

In these early days of His ministry, Jesus has been disclosing more and more of His authority and power. He’s cast out demons, forgiven sins, and most recently he’s raised the dead. Everyone is asking the question: Who is this Jesus? Some consider Him a healer; others think He’s a great prophet. Still, others wonder if He’s the Messiah who would re…

1,991 years ago, a Galilean carpenter turned Rabbi, who’d been crucified and buried for three days, arose and walked out of his tomb alive! In a moment that changed history forever, Jesus revealed His death-defying life for all the world to see! Let’s go back 3 years before that Resurrection morning to the early days of Jesus’ ministry.Jesus has pe…

What is a good person? It’s quite an important question. Have you ever felt like you knew someone who seemed like such a good person and then one day, it all came crashing down? Have you ever wondered if you are a good person? Consider these 4 parables that Jesus preaches in the Sermon of the Plain: The Blind Leading the Blind The Speck and the Log…

When comparing Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain in Luke with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, we get the same core message. But in Luke, Jesus is much more efficient and to the point. This means in Luke, we’re getting the core of Jesus’ central message. There are 3 major elements: The Blessings and Woes What is the good life? The Ethics of Love Wha…

Jesus has been causing quite a stir up in Galilee. Many are drawing near in astonishment and faith. While others are recoiling back in skepticism and disbelief. Jesus’ own followers are starting to feel the heat. They’ve left everything and followed Him. Now the Pharisees are starting to question where their loyalties lie. Of course, we know the an…

A Personal God The God of History The God of Liberation A Holy GodTakeaway: God – not nature – is the ultimate foundation of our existence. And, as he has shown us in history, he is on our side.על ידי Stefan Gustavsson

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” With those words, recorded here at the heart of Luke 5 & 6, Jesus is setting the stage for what He’s doing as His ministry begins. Like wine ripening in the …

As we come to chapters 5 & 6, we find Dr. Luke brings together two themes like a zipper. Jesus is beginning his ministry, and many are drawn to him and choosing to become one of his followers. Yet on the other side, many are skeptical of him, especially the Scribes and the Pharisees. Dr. Luke is zippering these two themes together, going back and f…

One of the best descriptions of Jesus is found in Hebrews 1:3, "He is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power." Jesus is the glory of God up close and personal. If you want to know what God is like look at Jesus! When God speaks and brings all creation into existence, t…

In The Lord of The Rings, when Frodo, Sam, Pippen, and Mary return to the Shire, they come home changed. When they left, they were a ragtag bunch of mischievous friends, but now they’re heroes. However, the other hobbits of The Shire don’t know about their adventures. So, as these four friends arrive home in all their regalia, their old neighbors a…

When being interviewed for a job, people are always asking about the same things: your background, your credentials, your qualifications, and your experience. They’re trying to see if there’s a fit between the job and what you have to offer. You’ve got to get the right person in the right assignment if you want to have the right outcomes. In 1st ce…

Dr. Luke has been weaving together the stories of these two remarkable boys—John and Jesus—born six months apart, both of whom will be integral in this new chapter of redemption that God is writing in salvation history. God is clearly on the move, and these two boys will be central to His saving work as it breaks through! The last we heard of John …

Imagine Dr. Luke sitting down to interview Mary about her son, Jesus. Of all the key witnesses he’d interviewed, his conversation with Mary must have been the most precious. She may have said, “Let me tell you when I first realized that He knew exactly who He was. He was 12 years old, just a boy, and we accidentally lost Jesus. We left him behind f…

What kind of story are we living in? Is life a comedic story? Or is it a tragic story? We call those who see life as a comedy, optimists. Their cheery outlook drives innovation, entertainment, and hopefulness. As for those who see life as a tragic story, we call them pessimists. They are honest about the pain and struggle life has to offer. But the…

Two gifts from the Lord that are available to every follower of Jesus no matter what they are going through. These two gifts are essential in helping us face the pain of living in a broken and fallen world and fight the temptations that it brings. And without them, we are far weaker and more vulnerable than we should be. Those two gifts are FREEDOM…

In the business world, most of the time companies are competing in an established market, each trying to marginally outdo the others. But every so often, a market disruptor breaks in. Instead of competing in the existing market space, disruptors redefine the space altogether. Disruptors break in and upend everything, changing the world as we know i…

What do you do when God sets you aside for a season? When you can’t do normal, but have to learn to wait on Him? There’s lots of circumstances God can use to set us aside: career interruptions; health challenges; romantic breakups; job searches; and family crises. In today’s passage, Zechariah’s season of being set aside finally ends. God enables h…

Sometimes in a movie, the scenes cut back and forth between two different characters in what appears to be two distinct plotlines…only for their storylines to suddenly merge unexpectedly. Something like that is happening in our text this morning. We’ve met Zechariah and Elizabeth, and rejoiced with them when the angel Gabriel told them God had answ…

Dr. Luke is documenting for us the life and times of Jesus. But it’s interesting that he doesn’t start with Jesus. Instead, his gospel begins with a scene in the Temple, as an aged priest lights the incense, and an angel named Gabriel appears to him announcing that he and his wife of many childless years are miraculously about to become parents. It…

In the Gospel of Luke, we encounter a King like no other. Most kings make it about themselves. They wield power, authority, and strength for their own benefit. But not Jesus. Jesus is the King who came to serve. He laid down all His rights and privileges in love to rescue us. From His place of glory, He came all the way down to the fringes of this …

The troubles of this world can be heavy to bear. The future is uncertain, and the present is filled with difficulty and pain. How are we supposed to navigate this all by ourselves? In this sermon from John 14, Pastor McCarthy shares with us a simple message: Stop It! Stop running on the treadmill of life to nowhere and trust in Jesus to be the way,…

This final sermon from the book of Malachi is about hope. Hope is something we can’t live without. Hope gives us reason to endure. Hope lifts our eyes beyond the shadows to the dawning of the light. And as the Book of Malachi draws to a close, it ends with a wonderous vision of hope. There’s been a lot of tough love in this book. God doesn’t pull H…

In this sermon, we explore the 6th and final dispute between God and the people of Israel. Previously, God was pouring out His heart in an appeal to the people to “test me in this” so that He would pour our His blessing on them, and to “return to me, and I will return to you.” But how will the people respond? In this passage from Malachi 3:13–18, t…

We live in anxious times; it’s a world of worry out there. Are you struggling to sleep at night due to anxiety? Are you fearful of what may happen in the future? Psalm 127:1–2 is a beautiful reminder of how God’s beloved children can find peace from a world full of worry. In this sermon, we’ll discover that our ability to experience the peace of Ch…

What does the Bible say about money and possession? There are approximately 2,350 passages about those topics in Scripture. By contrast, faith and prayer receive about 500 passages each. So, the Bible talks about money and possessions more than twice as much as the topics of faith and prayer combined. Now, why would that be? In this sermon, we’re g…

One the of hardest moments for those of us who are trying to live God’s way comes when those who couldn’t care less about God’s way end up coming out ahead in life. What’s the point in righteous living, if the unrighteous are the ones getting ahead in life? That’s exactly where God’s people were in Malachi’s day. They’d come back from exile with fe…

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment in all the Law and the Prophets was, He gave a two-fold answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, AND love your neighbor as yourself.” Because if we love God rightly, we will love our neighbor; and a failure to love our neighbor is a failure to love God. This an…

The slide into spiritual disintegration doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a steady slide over time. Have you ever wondered how the priests and teachers of the law got so far off spiritually that they couldn’t even see their Messiah, the Son of God, when He was standing right there in front of them? The spiritual decay of the priesthood went back centu…

The Book of Malachi is full of warnings that seem harsh at first but are actually filled with loving-concern to pull God’s people back from the edge of danger. Because although the people of Israel had come back from the exile eager to rededicate themselves to God, it wasn’t long before their fervor began to fade. They tired of waiting on God’s pro…

The central theme of the book Malachi is found in 3:7, “Return to Me and I will return to you.” As people whose hearts are prone to wander, whose religion can become performance, we need the message of Malachi to comprehend God’s tough love and tender mercies for our doubting hearts. There are six disputes outlined in the book. In this sermon, we’l…

Why should we read the Psalms? Music enhances worship, and music helps us memorize the eternal truths of God. Psalm 103 teaches us how to praise in all seasons and for all reasons. When it comes to the issue of praise, authentic praise requires our all, not lip service. In this sermon, we explore five reasons why should we praise God: God heals our…

Do you struggle with honest doubts about the Christian faith? Have you ever wondered what's the payoff for living a life of faith compared to the secular world? In this sermon, we explore Asaph's doubts from Psalm 73. Asaph was a musician who almost lost his faith; we would say he almost “deconstructed.” But he came out the other side spiritually s…

If you want to properly study what it means to be a Christian, you need to study God. As Charles Spurgeon once preached in 1855, “The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the Person, the work, the doings and the existence of the great God w…

When something doesn’t work out the way we expect, we ask, “what went wrong?” In the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25:14–30, we consider what went wrong with the servant who squandered their single talent, and how they could go from being a wicked and slothful server to a good and faithful servant. In this parable, we find Jesus describing a …

As Paul wraps up his letter to the Ephesians, he gives one final charge to stand firm in the faith. And to do so, he uses the imagery of a Roman soldier armed for battle as an analogy of spiritual armament. In this sermon, we’ll explore what the Armor of God is all about. 1) The Reason for the Armor We need the Armor of God because we are embroiled…

The Gospel shapes all of life. The Gospel doesn’t just matter on Sundays, the Gospel matters ALL days. It saturates and permeates and consecrates every facet of our lives. And to illustrate how the Gospel shapes all of life, Paul then goes to the heart of where most people do life: at work and at home. And Paul says, let me show you how the Gospel …

In this sermon from 1 Corinthians 3: 1–18, we explore Paul’s admonition to the church in Corinth to “be the church.” Paul’s intention is to push back against growing disunity and immaturity taking place within the congregation. A church is a people, not a building, but there are good churches and bad churches. Many of us don’t exactly know why a ch…

In chapter 5 of Ephesians, where the Apostle Paul has been exploring the implications of the Gospel for every facet of our Christian lives, he lays out the Christian understanding of marriage. The Christian understanding of marriage is radically different from the understanding of marriage found in both traditional and modern cultures. In Tradition…

There’s tremendous power in the quiet, organic, incremental, growth of the life of God planted in us. When the seed of the Gospel is planted within us, as the Father redeems us in the Son by the power of the Spirit, the new life of God starts growing within us. And we may not notice the growth as it’s happening, because we’re too close it, but over…

In Matthew 13:44-46, Jesus tells two short parables the church historically calls “The Parable of the Treasure Hidden in the Field” and “The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value.” This sermon explores three questions about the parables: 1) What is the kingdom of heaven? The Kingdom of Heaven in the same way exists everywhere God’s rule exists. In th…

“In God’s family, we choose to live differently.” That’s pretty much what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4. Now that we’re alive as sons and daughters of God, now that we’re members of His family, the house rules have changed. This new family doesn’t live like other families do. It’s all different. 1) The Old: Paul describes the old self—this Gentile …

The second half of Ephesians is about how God means us to live now that we are His children. Who we are shapes what we do. This passage from Ephesians 4:1­–16 is about growing up. It’s about who we’ll be when we’re all grown up in Christ, and it shows us how we’ll get from here to there. This sermon centers on three themes: 1) Unity The hinge of th…

During Missions Week 2023, guest speaker Rev. Michael Allen challenged us with two passages from Matthew 22:35–39 and Matthew 28:16–20. Pastor Michael Allen currently serves as the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Together Chicago, an organization that catalyzes faith, business, community, and government leaders to inspire hope and affect peace and justice…

For many, the deepest WHY of missions is lacking. The early church understood that EVERYTHING spirals out of our understanding of God—the triune God of the Bible. “...As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you. And with that, he breathed [on them] and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:19–22) As Missio Dei is the expression of God Himself, s…

The Apostle Paul has been leading us through a grand celebration of the Gospel: in Christ, by grace and through faith, we have been reconciled with God and with one another. We are alive as God’s sons and daughters. We are unified as God’s family, Jews and Gentiles together in this multi-ethnic family of God. All of this is—as Paul puts it in Ephes…

The Apostle Paul is writing the letter to the Ephesians from a Roman prison because the Jews in Jerusalem accused him of fraternizing with Gentiles. And here in Ephesians 3:1-13, Paul tells us it’s worth it! All the sufferings for the Gospel, all the hardship, pain, loss, and imprisonment, every bit of it is worthwhile…because of the wonder of the …

In this sermon from Ephesians 2:11-22, we’re going to see the glorious truth of what that salvation means for our relationships with one another. Salvation works on both a vertical and a horizontal axis (like a cross). Salvation reconciles us with God, and it reconciles us with one another. Salvation isn’t just about “I and me…” It’s about “us and …

A few years back a friend of mine in Washington State had a near death experience. In God’s mercy, he survived. And I asked him how it had changed his perspective, and this is what he told me: “When you’re a dead man, and God gives you your life back, it means He’s got a purpose for you.” And that’s what Ephesians 2:1-10 is all about: we were dead,…

Did you know that as a follower of Jesus Christ you have a secret identity? By grace, through faith, in Jesus, you are a son or daughter of God! You are royalty incognito. You are an eternal being hidden in time. You are a Titan in this everyday world. You say, “But I don’t feel or look very much like a Titan…” We think that Titans are supposed to …