God isn’t simply authoritative in a place-holding, power-holding sense. God’s authority is performative in nature. To a people surrounded by the empty promises of idolatry, he asks, “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?” (Isaiah 46:5) Idols can only hold a symbolic power that makes you carry them--they are images of our disoriented desire that we project on them and carry out in their name. The God of Israel, however, has real authority that he exerts on behalf of his people for his own glory.

Though we possess the context surrounding the suffering of Job— Job, does not. Suffering without explanation leads Job to repeatedly ask the question: “What kind of God allows this kind of world?!” In response to our own attempts to answer this question, God gives us Job — a forty-two chapter book of poetry.

After a series of lengthy conversations with well intended, but profoundly unhelpful, friends, Job encounters God himself. God draws near to Job and, through a series of rhetorical questions, helps Job understand that there are things about the world he simply doesn’t understand. God takes Job outside the boundaries of his own life, inviting him to consider elements of God’s character amidst the vast and undomesticated realms of creation.

Within this conversation, God invites Job to consider Leviathan. Whether an actual animal or a well known storybook creature from Job’s culture, Leviathan represented Job’s deepest fears. To quote the Old Testament scholar Christopher Ash, “As Job suffers, his greatest and deepest fear is that the monster who attacks him is unrestrained, that the attacks will go on forever, with unrelieved ferocity, and that the monster has been given a free hand, unlimited access to Job and to his live. He is afraid that there is no sovereign God who has evil on a leash. But there is. And when Job grasps that, he is filled with awe (42.2).”

In this sermon, Pastor Kevin invites us to consider the character of God and the ways in which poetry requires us to engage God’s Word differently.

John's gospel powerfully and beautifully displays the majesty of Jesus as the Son of God. From the opening verses, John makes it clear that Jesus is no ordinary man. As people encounter Jesus, there is both powerful allure as well as powerful challenge. This results in some drawing near to Jesus, and others plotting his arrest and demise.

Our passage provides a window into Jesus' teaching a group of "Jews who had believed him" (John 8.31). Immediately the Jews take offense at Jesus' suggestion that they need the freedom he offers. This leads Jesus to lovingly correct their cultural misconceptions concerning the nature of freedom.

In this sermon, Pastor Kevin poses the question: If Jesus' original audience was misled by cultural misconceptions concerning freedom, in what similar ways might we be misled? Kevin outlines three current cultural misconceptions concerning freedom and shows the ways in which Jesus' correction of his original audience provides correction for us as well.

True freedom is God's gift to us. True freedom lasts forever. True freedom requires obedience and submission. And true freedom, like truth itself, is relational, and found ultimately in the person of Jesus.

In a world where we pursue power due to selfish ambition, or reject authority and power because we only see its abuse, Jesus shows us that properly stewarded power leads to flourishing. Power used wrongly always produces exploitation by those who grasp for power. And the result is always suffering for the people on the other end of it. But the way of the way of Christ--the way of the lamb--is willing self-sacrifice and service for the sake of others.

At the core of our hearts, we want all of our families here at Redeemer Fellowship to be shaped and transformed by the person and finished work of Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 6 tells us about the great responsibility we have to Teach and Embody the things of the Lord for the next generation.

Teach things of the Lord to the next generation at your dinner table, through devotions, through story telling, and through rehearsing the gospel.

Embody the things of the Lord for the next generation in your speech, through your love for God’s Word, through identity, and through repenting.

The point of Advent and all of life is to be drawn up into humble, joyful, worship of the God who came down to us for our salvation, and to be transformed by His personal presence in our lives.

But it is so easy for us to be carried along by an avalanche of anxiety and distraction, losing focus on what God has done in the earth-shattering reality of the Incarnation of Jesus, and missing out on the joy he offers us. As we try to enchant the world with lights, decorations, and gifts, God enchants the world with His presence. So how do we not drown in this riptide of counterfeit Christmas? We need a humble perspective of ourselves and a posture of worship toward the living God.

In the most crucial part of the story God chooses a teenaged virgin peasant woman to be the first key player in fulfilling his great plan of redemption through Christ. That’s a clue to his preferred ways or working. God uses people who see themselves as needy and weak, as they delight in God being their defender and rescuer. It is this dazzling use of frail people that shows off his glory and grace.

In Mary's song we see what it looks like to live a life of joyful, obedient worship to the living God.

This brief account in Matthew's gospel provides us with an acute window into our own lives. On the heels of Jesus' declaration that he will be betrayed, condemned and crucified upon their arrival in Jerusalem, the disciples can't get beyond their own self-obsession and quest for fame.

Responding to the request for power and celebrity, Jesus takes the opportunity to teach us about the nature of true power — and to offer himself as a sacrifice to deliver us from the prison of our sinful distortions of power.

1 Samuel 8 gives account of a significant moment in the history of the people of Israel as they transition from the leadership structure of judgeship that God had established towards a monarchy in their pursuit of an earthly king. This pursuit was a result of Israel succumbing to the temptation they often felt to turn away from their God, and chase after idols in their life. In this account we see them demand to be given an earthly king despite God warning them against it as they grow inpatient in their waiting for the promise that He made to provide them with a true King to rule them with pure love & justice. As we step into the Advent season this passage invites us to consider the ways we who have received the promise of His coming, and are awaiting the fulfillment of the promise of His return tend to grow inpatient in our waiting as we chase after idols & earthly kings for protection and power. The invitation of the father this Advent season and everyone to follow is to come and adore the newborn King. He is power in its truest form. The form of a poor and lowly child who is the evidence of a God who keeps His promises, and the only King we need.