Mercy Hill

This Sunday we’re celebrating the third week of Advent, by examining John 1:9-14. In verse fourteen, John tells us that Jesus is the “only Son from the Father.” We often called Jesus the Son of God, but we can easily miss that the phrase is packed with meaning. Join us Sunday as we discover what it means when we say that Jesus is the only Son of God.

This Sunday we’re celebrating the second week of Advent, by examining John 1:4-13. Last Sunday, Jason did a masterful job explaining that John is stretching the human language as far as it can go to teach us that “the Word” is a person, Jesus, who was born to a Galilean virgin in Bethlehem.  

This week we’ll see that Jesus came as the light of men, or he came to illuminate for us who God is and who we are.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “It’s just another Christmas.” Lights, trees, toy commercials, and planning for family travel can be such a focus that we miss the wonder of what happened in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judea over 2000 years ago. We’ll take a fresh look at Christmas through the words of John, Jesus’ best friend, to see something we don’t often think about in our Santa-centric time.

I’d love for you to join us this week as Jason Keel, our Director of Discipleship kicks off our Advent series.

Having turn by turn directions on our phones is an amazing blessing - no more pulling out the Rand McNally map in the middle of traffic to figure out where you are! But, have you ever had the experience of following the turn by turn directions and thinking, “I’m not really sure where I am?”

In Matthew 7:13-23, Jesus address the importance of knowing what path we are on and where we are heading. There is an easy way, simply following the turn by turn directions of those around us, but that way he says leads to destruction. There is another way, the way of Jesus! His way is harder, but leads to life.

Jesus begins Matthew 7 with the emphatic statement, “Judge not, that you be not judged.”  In Jesus’ day, there was a lot of self-righteousness, one-upsmanship, and finger-pointing going on.  Today it’s no different.  This week we will be exploring how the Gospel informs our interpersonal relationships.  The way we navigate these relationships says a great deal about our core beliefs.  In light of the good news of Jesus, what should our posture be toward those around us?  What do we do when worldviews collide? 

This week, Mitchell Bagley will be leading us through this section of Scripture.

In 1987, the world famous rock band, U2, released “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The song continues to resonate with people in part because being a human is searching. We strive for goals, and when we reach them we find they aren’t enough. We look for love, and when we find it, we realize it doesn’t solve all of our problems. The problem is that our endless seeking can easily turn into greed, self-centeredness, and anxiety.

In Matthew 6:19-34, Jesus address how our searching leads us to accumulating stuff we don’t need, not seeing the world clearly, and even being consumed by worry. He says the answer isn’t to stop seeking, but to change the object of our search.

What motivates you? Could it be family, money, success, or maybe just attention? We seem to live in a culture where increasingly more and more value is placed on how much attention you can garner. The dangers of this type of living can also spill over into our religious life. If we are not careful the motives behind our faith can become more about being seen and less about God.

This week, Pastor Mike led us through Matthew  6:1-6 and 6:16-18.  In our text this week we will see Jesus take three common Christian practices and show us how useless they are with the wrong motives.

Our friends from Comunidad de Fe are joining us this Sunday for a joint service. I love when our churches get together to make much of Jesus in English and Spanish. It is a beautiful picture of how Jesus unites all sorts of people from all sorts of places into one multiethnic family of faith. You don’t want to miss it!

We are continuing studying the Sermon on the Mount this week by examining Matthew 5:38-48. Jesus challenges our natural response to get even and to hate our enemies by commanding his followers to meet opposition with generosity and love. Again, he is asking us to be ‘whole’ disciples, who don’t focus only on our external behaviors, but who long to live according to God’s design with all our heart, mind, and strength.

I was a terrible student in high school. I made decent grades, but I had the tendency to only do the minimum that was required. Perhaps you’ve had times in your life when you were just looking to ‘skate by.’

In Matthew 5:27-32, Jesus continues to show us that just ‘skating by’ is not what God had in mind when He gave us His commandments. The purpose of knowing what God requires isn’t so we can do the bare minimum. We’re good at trying to justify ourselves by appealing to the bare minimum - “It’s not like I’ve killed someone!” Or in the case of our text this week, “Of course I’m good, I’m not sleeping with someone' else’s wife!” But, as we will see this week, God wants us to grow in goodness so that our hearts, not just our actions, look more and more like Jesus.

I love a good origin story movie, don’t you? There is something fascinating about understanding why and how famous characters became who they are. How did Captain America become so incredibly strong? Why did Anakin become Darth Vadar? What lead Bruce Wayne to become Batman?

In Matthew 5:21-26, begins reframing God’s commandments for his listeners. He asks us to consider the origin of one of the most heinous of sins, murder. Where does murder come from? What is it’s origin? He teaches us that murder actually originates with anger in our hearts.