Redemption Church

Jesus despised traditions that had no genuine love for God at their root. In Matthew 15.1-9, Jesus calls out the hypocrisy of the elders of Israel by honoring God only with their lips or their outward shows of purity and not loving God with their hearts. Pastor Scott then highlights seven different ways religious people act and think over against a genuine love for God.

When Jesus invites Peter to walk out on the water, it is an invitation to walk with him over the chaos dragon of the sea. Our greatest enemies are not the ones we can see, but the ones behind the things we see. In this sermon, Pastor Scott points out how our faith in Jesus keeps us above the waves and storms of this life.

In Matthew 14:13-21 we explored Jesus feeding the 5000. We see that Jesus is much more than just a compassionate provider, as we see him call his disciples into participation with him but then also we see Jesus give a preview of where the provision for all of God’s people will ultimately come from. 

John the Baptizer sets an example for us to be faithful to Jesus even to death. However, he also foreshadows the Messiah who would be rejected by the leaders and murdered by their hands. We come to see that we can give our lives to Jesus like John when we first see that Jesus gave up his life for us.

The incarnation of Jesus does far more than we initially think. We are all aware that he came to deal with our sin, but he also came to liberate us from the power of the one who holds the power of death. In this sermon, Pastor Scott analyzes Hebrews 2 to demonstrate how we can be free from all of our greatest enemies through the incarnation.

In this sermon we examine the faith of Mary as she receives the announcement that she will give birth to the Son of God. Mary functions as an example of what true faith looks like, which doesn’t mean the absence of doubt but rather looking to the source of faith as its grounding. 

The message of Christmas often gets trivilalized into sentimentality and false, generic hope that somehow good will triumph over evil and darkness. But in the True story of Christmas, we are confronted with both the darkness of our world and our our own hearts, but then paradoxically with the extravagant grace of Jesus in breaking into our darkness. 

The reason for all of our conflicts, James tells us, is our own evil desires. In other words, all of our relational strife comes from not believing and appropriating the Gospel in our hearts. In this sermon, Pastor Scott deconstructs why we all struggle with relationships and then reconstructs how to apply the Good News of Jesus to our hearts to strengthen our relationships.

Since sin is fundamentally a failure to realize the implications of the Gospel, the New Testament writers seek to implant the Gospel to their hearers as the motivation to change. In this sermon, Pastor Scott analyzes the five graces of generosity, purity, humility, love, and kindness, showing how realizing the Gospel is the remedy. 

In this part 2 on Idolatry, we did a deeper dive into each of the 4 core idols: Power, Approval, Comfort, and Control. Since the gospel is for all of life, that means Jesus can both speak to and replace our idols, and actually empower us to speak the good news into each other as well.