Redeemer Downtown Sermons

In this sermon from the series, "Encountering the Kingdom," Pete Nicholas explores Luke 8:40-56, where Jesus heals a woman who has suffered for twelve years and raises a young girl from the dead. Through these encounters, we see a kingdom that promises the restoration of all things, even as we wrestle with the pain of waiting for that restoration to come.

Why does God allow suffering to continue? And what can we hold onto when His timing makes little sense? Jesus offers no easy answers to every question, but He does offer His presence in the midst of our uncertainty. At the heart of this hope is a costly grace: Jesus willingly bore the cost of our restoration so that we might find healing, forgiveness, and life in Him.

Faith doesn’t ask you to leave your brain at the door.

In this sermon, Pete Nicholas explores what Christian faith actually means through John 14:1-14. Thomas represents the demand for absolute certainty, while Philip looks for a powerful spiritual experience. Both approaches reveal something important, but neither is enough on its own. Instead, Jesus offers something deeper: faith rooted in experiencing truth through relationship with Him.

Rather than blind belief or a purely subjective spiritual experience, biblical faith is grounded in a trustworthy object: Jesus Himself.

In this sermon from the series, "Encountering the Kingdom," Pete Nicholas unpacks Jesus’ encounter with a demon-possessed man in Luke 8:26-39. Through this disturbing account, we see the devastating effects of evil: how it fractures our relationships, distorts our humanity, and enslaves us to patterns we cannot break through willpower alone.

But the forces that overwhelm us are not beyond Jesus’ power. As He restores the man, we see a glimpse of the freedom and restoration He came to bring. Through His death on the cross, Jesus bears the cost of sin and evil so that we can be set free.

The storms of life have a way of revealing what we really trust.

In this sermon from the series, “Encountering the Kingdom,” Pete Nicholas explores Jesus’ calming of the storm in Luke 8:22-25 and the question He asks His disciples: “Where is your faith?”

Following Jesus does not mean being protected from difficulty. Sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of a storm while faithfully following God. It's in the midst of those storms that Jesus offers a deep hope: the assurance that He is with us. Through the cross, we see just how far Christ has gone to be with us and why we can trust Him when everything around us feels uncertain.

In this sermon from the series, “Encountering the Kingdom,” Pete Nicholas explores Jesus’ parable of the sower in Luke 8:1-21 and what it reveals about the forces shaping our response to God. We often assume our choices are determined by what we know or by the circumstances we face. But Jesus points to something deeper: the condition and desires of the heart.

The question, then, is not simply whether we hear God’s Word, but whether we are truly receiving it. Jesus invites us to consider what is happening beneath the surface of our lives and how the gospel can soften a hardened heart, sustain us through suffering, and transform the kind of people we become.

The world tells us to build a life around ourselves. Yet Jesus invites us into something bigger.

In this sermon from the series, "The Last Words of Jesus," Jeff White explores Acts 1:1-11, where Jesus promises His disciples the power of the Holy Spirit and calls them to be His witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” While the disciples try to understand when God’s kingdom will come, Jesus redirects their attention from knowing the timeline to participating in the story.

For Christians, this means recognizing that Jesus is already at work and that our lives are meant to bear witness to His reign. Through ordinary acts of love, generosity, forgiveness, and care for others, we offer a glimpse of the kingdom that is already here and yet still to come.

Sometimes our confidence in ourselves is much greater than our strength.

In this sermon from the series, "The Last Words of Jesus," Graham Girard walks through Mark 14:32-42, where Jesus faces the agony of the cross, submits himself to the Father’s will, and calls his disciples to “watch and pray.” As the disciples repeatedly fall asleep, we see the limits of our own strength, and the extraordinary depth of Jesus’ love. Gethsemane reveals a Savior who willingly takes our place, bears our sin, and remains faithful when we cannot.

Regrets can have the power of shaping who we become.

In this sermon from the series, "The Last Words of Jesus," Jeff White explores John 21:15-25, where the risen Jesus meets Peter face-to-face with his failure. Peter’s denial had left him carrying guilt, shame, and the weight of not becoming the person he thought he would be. But Jesus doesn’t leave Peter trapped in regret. He meets him with grace, restores him through love, and gives him purpose.

Jesus meets Peter not at the height of his confidence, but in the aftermath of his failure. That same Jesus meets us in the places where we feel most uncertain, disappointed, or aware of our limitations. We don’t have to have everything figured out before we come to Him. His grace is patient enough to meet us where we are and strong enough to lead us forward.

The cross wasn’t God’s backup plan.

In this sermon from the series, "The Last Words of Jesus," Will Anderson explores Luke 24:44-49, where the risen Jesus opens the disciples’ minds to understand how all of Scripture points to Him. His suffering, resurrection, and the forgiveness of sins were not unexpected turns in God’s plan, but the fulfillment of His promises.

Yet understanding the gospel also means confronting our need for it. Jesus meets us with both the weight of our sin and the greater reality of His love and grace. As we receive that grace, we’re called to stay rooted in Christian community and go outward with the hope of the gospel, trusting not in our own strength, but in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Even in our uncertainty, Jesus invites us to draw near to Him.

In this sermon from the series, “The Last Words of Jesus,” Jeff White explores Jesus’ encounter with Thomas in John 20:24-29. Thomas refuses to believe the resurrection without seeing Jesus for himself, yet Jesus does not shame him for his questions. Instead, He meets Thomas in the middle of his doubt and invites him into personal encounter.