Mosaic Boston • Jamaica Plain

This week we remind ourselves why God has us in Boston. There are always two temptations. If you've lived here for a while, you can become complacent and forget that God brought you to Boston for a reason. Life can become mundane, unfocused, and monotonous as we lose the adventure of living on purpose with Christ. If you're new to the city, and you know you'll only be here for a few years, it's tempting to treat it like a layover and not invest where God has you. This week pastor Ivey shows how God has called long-term citizens and even those passing through to give, invest, and contribute to this city.

Much of life seems to be lived in-between where we are and where we want to be. This week we look at keeping the faith in-between. Faith between the prayer and God's answer. Between pain and healing. Between the beginning and finishing. Habakkuk is a powerful example of faith in-between God's work. Habakkuk lived between God's judgment and God's redemption, and he teaches us how to have hope while we wait on God to work.

This week Joel Richards is our guest speaker. He brings us through, Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament... And one that, at first glance, is pretty difficult to understand. We may feel like we can skip or ignore Obadiah, but if we do we're missing out on a treasure of God's grace. This week Joel Richards helps us make Obadiah practical by showing us the implications of having our success be from God.

This week we jump into Amos. Amos is a fascinating book about God's desire for justice and righteousness among his people. To get this message out, God contracts a poor shepherd from a nowhere mountain town to speak to the immoral privileged and wealthy. These people were crushing the vulnerable and weak while all the while trying to act religious. For this reason, Amos has a lot to say to American Christianity. Listen in and be transformed by God's Word through this ancient poet.

We continue our series in the Minor Prophets this week by looking at the book of Joel. The main antagonist in Joel's book is a swarm of locusts that illustrates and warns Israel about the danger of their sin and how the Lord is drawing them back. As we look at Joel we will see how God uses our pain to bring us to himself and shape us into the people he desires us to be.

This week we begin a brand new series in the Minor Prophets. They aren't minor because they're unimportant. They're called minor because they're small. In our first message, pastor Ivey looks at the fascinating story of Hosea and his bride. Hosea becomes the stand-in for God. Through Hosea, we'll see how God chases, loves, and has sacrificed himself so that we can have a relationship with him.

It's no secret that the church is weird about sex and that our culture is obsessed with it. This causes a lot of tension and disagreement between the church and the rest of the culture. This tension is not a new phenomenon. Christians have been weird about sex for about 2000 years. This week pastor Ivey examines the history and future of this belief by looking at the bigger and better story of sex and marriage.

For Western cultures, judgment, hell, and damnation is one of Christianity's most controversial beliefs. Maybe you've been asked, "How can a loving God send people to hell?" It can be a difficult question to answer. So, in our third week of X-Ray, Pastor Ivey examines the doctrine of hell. This message is difficult and sobering but needed. We'll begin by exploring what Christians actually believe about hell, then examine how a loving God can judge us, and finish by celebrating the one hope in hell humanity has.

You may have heard someone say that all religions are equally true, and while it sounds nice, there are some major issues with that idea. This week Pastor Ivey x-rays the Christian belief that Jesus is the only way to God. First, we see that elephants are nothing like religions, then we seek to understand from the Scriptures why Christians believe that Jesus the only way to God, and finish by examining if Jesus really is able to forgive our sins and be our way to God.

There are some difficult beliefs in Christianity. Some are hard to understand. Others are just hard to accept. Some seem immoral and others seem ridiculous. Our backgrounds and culture greatly affect our acceptance of certain beliefs, but that doesn't change the historically orthodox beliefs of Christianity. In this new series, we're going to look under the surface and x-ray Christian beliefs to see why Christians believe what we believe. If you're a Christian, there will be information here that strengthens your faith. If you're not a Christian, this will be challenging, but enlightening. Join us this first week as we ask the foundational question, "Is the Bible God's Word?"