The doctrinal stability and spiritual maturity of Redeemer Church is the work of the whole church as together we "grow up into Christ."

In what specific ways do spiritually mature believers contribute to the stability and maturity of the church?

What are your expectations when you come into church on a Sunday? When you leave church, how would you describe your experience?

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah is going to the temple with the congregation to worship, something he would have routinely done. But there is nothing routine about the experience he describes in Isaiah 6. Even so, we can identify five elements of worship in Isaiah 6 that ought to be present in every gathering for worship.

On Thursday, February 13 we learned that 70 Christians were found beheaded in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As shocking as this news is, these 70 are only the most recent of the millions upon millions of followers of Jesus who have "loved not their lives unto death" throughout church history.

How are we to respond? "To die is gain."

At the end of a discourse on the cost of discipleship, Jesus makes a seemingly unrelated statement about salt, its flavor, and its usefulness. What does salt have to do with the radical discipleship our Lord has just described?

It is not possible to be a Christian unless you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. How does Jesus identify true disciples? Controversially:

1. A true disciple of Jesus hates father, mother, wife, children, and his own life.

2. A true disciple of Jesus bears his cross and comes after Jesus

3. A true disciple of Jesus renounces everything he has

In his Gospel, Luke records 7 meals where Jesus was either a guest, a host, or both guest and host. What has Jesus given us in each of these meals which are also present whenever we celebrate the Lord's Table?

On the evening of His resurrection, Jesus shared a meal with two of His disciples who lived in a village called Emmaus. What do we learn from this meal that informs the way we share the Lord's Supper together as God's family?

Even as we plan our way, the Lord orders our steps to bring us to the gospel. Each of us must ask, "Who do I worship and what do I do with my sins?"

The answer to those questions are found in stories of men and women in the Bible, some who experienced miraculous conversions and others who experienced mundane and ordinary conversions. Can you see your story in their stories?

The early Christians in the New Testament were not trying to imitate families. So far as they understood the gospel, they WERE a family. And in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus made the startling claim that God's family - the church - has priority over your biological family with the expectation that we will fold our families into the family of God, with the Church taking priority over every other sphere of our lives.

How do I fold my family into the family of God?

In this inaugural sermon in the series "Devoted to God's Church" we consider the nature of our relationship to the church as given to us in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: the prerequisites (believing and belonging) and the particulars (the body, the brood (family), the building, and the bride.