Redemption Hill Church

A.W. Tozer said in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Matthew 7:7-12 draws our attention to our relationship with God Himself. We will explore what it means to ask, seek, and knock. We will wrestle with the question of why we pray, or whether it is even worth it to pray. We will see that Tozer’s observation is true. What we think about God shapes our perspectives and our lives, and impacts how we understand justice and how we relate to others around us. 

When I think about the most well-known Bible verse, I can’t help but wonder if it is “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” It’s kind of a way to say that no one has the right to question anything about us or anything we think, say, or do. It’s a kind of proverbial biblical way to tell others to leave us alone. That happens to be in our passage for this Sunday, Matthew 7:1-6.
On Sunday we will look at the context of these six words and the others around them in the Sermon on the Mount. As Jesus announced the inbreaking of His Upside-Down Kingdom, He pressed into the way we relate to God and others. Is judgment the same as discernment? What is Jesus trying to help us understand?

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We live in a city that is known for its ambition. People in DC from all walks of life have a level of hustle and an uncommon pace. It’s important to step back at times and take stock of our lives. What is your ambition? What is it that drives you? What keeps you up at night, or consumes your thoughts in quiet moments? All of these are symptoms to get at the reality of our hearts.

This Sunday we will get back into our series on the Sermon on the Mount, The Upside-Down Kingdom. Matthew 6:19-34 turns our attention to ambition. As with all things, Jesus turns the common wisdom of our world upside-down.  

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This Sunday, we get to hear from a very good friend of mine, Gentry Morris. Gentry is the Lead Pastor at Reston Community Church in Northern Virginia where he serves the RCC family through preaching, teaching, and helping people find deep hope in the gospel of Jesus. Before coming to RCC, Gentry served as a pastor in Washington state and in church planting ministry in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He also has been involved in worship ministry and writing songs for the local church. Gentry plans to preach from Philippians 1:1-11 on finding joy and contentment in our lives, rooted in the gospel, and extending through us in generosity.  

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Fasting is having a resurgence in popularity in fitness circles right now, particularly intermittent fasting. In Scripture, we see Jesus warn us to beware of practicing our righteousness before people. The central section of the Sermon on the Mount focuses on Christian Piety and our religious practices: giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting. All of this is the proclamation of the inbreaking of Christ’s Kingdom that he established in the incarnation. It is present, and yet will come in fullness. This is what it means to live as citizens of that greater kingdom. This Sunday, we will be in Matthew 6:16-18 as we focus on fasting and what it looks like to fast in Christ's Kingdom.
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This Sunday, as we continue our summer mini-series in the book of James, we're challenged to think about our own attitude toward the poor. God identifies himself with those who have no value in the eyes of the world (Isaiah 41). He commands Israel to care for the poor and the powerless (Deuteronomy 24), Jesus himself identifies with the poor and marginalized. Love for our neighbor includes compassion for the poor and the work of justice. Do we share God’s special concern for the poor?     
But then, James challenges all of us to think about our own attitude toward the rich. Do we envy them? Do we favor them, hoping to become one of them? On the other hand, for some of us, it can be a challenge to care about rich people. Love for our neighbor includes rich people too. At the heart of this week's scripture passage is a question about our attitude toward money and toward God. Does he have our highest allegiance? Do we believe he has the very best for us? Do we trust in his kingdom's abundance or do we fear scarcity? 

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This week in the book of James, we will explore the gaps between who we think we are, who we really are and who we are becoming. God is on a mission to heal us from our sin addiction, but detox is painful and new habits don't form overnight. Having been pardoned and adopted, we are learning what it means to live in a close relationship with God. It's going to take some work. God is with us in the work. It's a work of grace accomplished with wisdom and the Word.

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Over the next few weeks, we are going to dive into a 3-part miniseries in the book of James, and what we will discover is the heart of a lead pastor who is concerned about his broken, desperate, and persecution-scattered brothers and sisters who are drifting toward fragmented lives rather than lives that are becoming more and more complete in Christ. He believes deeply in what his half-brother Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, and he cries out in a clear, prophetic voice for their eager participation in God's sanctifying work of grace.

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The center point of the Sermon on the Mount focuses on personal spiritual practices – giving, prayer, and fasting. At the very center of it all is prayer. Prayer can feel mysterious and hard to grab ahold of. It’s hard to know sometimes if God sees us, hears us, or if the promises we read in the Bible could possibly be true. Our prayer life reveals a lot about us as well, and what we actually believe. Jesus taught His disciples how to pray and gave warnings about how not to pray. I’m eager to dig in together this Sunday we see His teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:5-15. Jesus gave us a model prayer that we know as The Lord’s Prayer. This Sunday, I hope to show the importance of what Jesus taught us through His example, and the depth and richness of the prayer He gave us.

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This Sunday we begin a new section of the Sermon on the Mount, the center point of the Sermon. After showing a re-interpretation of 6 different commandments in the Law, Jesus turned toward personal piety and righteousness by speaking to bring clarity to almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Each of the next few weeks we will spend time working to understand the practices Jesus described, while paying special attention to His repeated warnings that our religious practices be focused on a heavenly reward from our Father God rather than in the recognition and applause of people who see us. This Sunday we will look at the first of those three, almsgiving. teaching about these three religious practices