Sanctuary Columbus Sermons

August 23, 2026

You finally get the job, the house, the healthy baby, the promotion you prayed for — and somehow you're still exhausted, still grieving, still bracing for the next thing to go wrong. What do you do when the blessing you asked God for shows up wearing the same clothes as your pain? Psalm 126 doesn't pretend those two feelings cancel each other out.

Dr. Seth Humphries opens Psalm 126 — Israel's song of return after 70 years of exile — and refuses to let the celebration erase the trauma underneath it. This message sits in the real tension between what God has done and what still hurts, and names three things you have to do with that tension instead of just pushing through it.

In this message you'll learn:

Why the Bible's picture of a "soul wound" explains how you can love Jesus and still need a therapist

This is for the person who feels guilty celebrating a blessing because of what it cost to get here. For the caregiver counting the days. For anyone who's been told to just be grateful when what you actually need is somewhere honest to put your grief. Your tears aren't wasted — they're seeds, and there's a harvest coming.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 126:1-6

August 16, 2026

Before you built your resume. Before you had your best year or your worst one. Before you knew what you believed. Somebody already answered the question you're still asking: do you know who you are?

On a baptism Sunday, Pastor Rich Johnson steps back from the waterline and asks what's actually happening underneath the surface. Reading from John 1, he traces three words that hold the answer together — and what happens when we try to build an identity on just one or two of them.

In this message you'll learn:

What the Greek word "baptizo" actually means — and what pickling a cucumber has to do with your baptism

This is for anyone who has believed all the right things about God and still doesn't feel like they belong to him. It's for anyone still trying to earn a love that was already spoken over them before they could do anything to deserve — or lose — it. Wherever you are in the water, the voice hasn't stopped speaking.

📖 Scripture: John 1:29-34, Galatians 2:20, Romans 6

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August 9, 2026

Obedience. Just reading that word might have made something tighten up inside you. And honestly? That reaction makes complete sense.

For too many of us, obedience has been weaponized. It has been used by legalistic churches, controlling homes, and abusive systems to silence, shrink, and manipulate. It has been collapsed into blind compliance. It has been stripped of love and replaced with fear. And so we have done what any reasonable person would do — we have quietly removed it from our vocabulary, our relationships, and our walk with God.

But what if we've been working with a broken definition this whole time?

In this final message of The Reason Why We Sing series, Pastor Rich Johnson takes us into Psalm 119 — the longest chapter in the entire Bible — and makes a case that obedience is not the fine print underneath worship. It is one of worship's native languages. And when it flows from trust instead of fear, from delight instead of duty, from Christ-focus instead of comparison, and from a praising heart instead of a performing one — it becomes something altogether different from what most of us have experienced.

In this message you'll learn:

Why obedience has been so deeply wounded in our cultural and religious experience — and why that wound deserves to be named honestly

Whether obedience is a word that fills you with dread, brings up old wounds, or simply feels like something you've drifted away from — this message is an invitation to approach it from a completely different angle. Not as a leash. Not as a chain of command. But as a love language between you and the God who already calls you his beloved.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 119:1-8 | Psalm 19:7-11 | John 14:15 | Galatians 4:19 | Romans 8

August 2, 2026

What if the way we worship has been missing something? Not the music. Not the passion. Not the sincerity. But something deeper — a whole dimension of worship that the American church has quietly edited out?

In this message, Pastor Rich Johnson returns from three weeks of teaching at North Park Theological Seminary to open one of the most challenging and convicting passages in the entire Psalms — Psalm 68. And he asks a question that reframes everything: what does it actually mean for our worship to move the heart of God?

Because worship, as Pastor Rich unpacks it here, was never meant to be transactional. It was never meant to be a jukebox — put in your coin, choose your song, get your needs filled. Worship is connection. And a justice-oriented worship has a motivation that goes far deeper than whether things are going well on any given Sunday.

In this message you'll learn:

Why worship is not a response to circumstances — and what happens when we make it conditional on things being okay visibly

This message will challenge the way you think about worship, justice, and what it means to follow a God who is described in Psalm 68 not in generic terms of power and holiness — but as a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, and the one who leads prisoners out with singing.

Because justice-oriented worship is not a work of drudgery. It is a work of joy. It is a work of delight. And it is the very heart of God.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 68:4-8 | Matthew 25 | Luke 4 | 1 Corinthians 11 | Isaiah 61

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

July 26, 2026

We don't usually think about idol worship and singing in the same conversation. But what if the things quietly stealing our worship are the very things we haven't named yet?

In this message, Dr. DJuana Drew takes us into Psalm 115 — and invites us to look honestly at one of the most misunderstood and overlooked realities of the Christian life. Because idols aren't just the carved images of the ancient world. They are anything — a job, a person, money, approval, comfort, a fantasy — that replaces God in the affections of your heart. And the most dangerous ones don't announce themselves. They creep in slowly, painlessly, and without warning.

But here's the good news that runs through every word of this message: God is always at work. He is relentless in his care for our souls. And one of the ways he forms us is by revealing the hidden things — the inward struggles we didn't even know were there — so that he can heal us inside and out.

In this message you'll learn:

Why the first commandment is still as relevant today as it was for the children of Israel — and what it reveals about the heart of God

Whether you've never thought of yourself as someone who struggles with idols, or you're beginning to sense that something has quietly taken up too much space in your heart — this message is an invitation to let God do what he does best. Not just form your outward life, but heal and align the desires of your heart.

Because God is not done with the work he is doing in you. And he never will be — until you leave this earth.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 115:1-8 | Exodus 20:1-4 | Proverbs 3:5-6

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

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July 19, 2026

When everything is going well, it's easy to sing about God's goodness. It's easy to talk about his faithfulness when the bills are paid, the diagnosis is clear, and the people we love are thriving.

But the moment the bottom drops out — the moment the phone rings at 2AM, the job disappears, or the relationship splinters — how quickly we forget everything God has ever done for us.

Here's the good news: forgetting isn't the end of the story. There's a way back.

In this message, Devin Schaffer takes us into Psalm 77 — one of the most honest, raw, and ultimately hopeful psalms in all of Scripture — written by Asaph, Israel's worship leader, a man whose job was to remind everyone else about God's faithfulness while privately drowning in his own despair. And through Asaph's journey from anguish to anchor, we discover that the way out of spiritual amnesia isn't waiting for the feeling of faith to return. It's making a defiant, deliberate choice to remember.

Asaph didn't feel his way to hope. He remembered his way there. And so can you.

In this message you'll learn:

Why remembering isn't automatically healing — and how memory can become another room in the house of despair if we're not careful

Whether you're in verses 1 through 10 — trapped in the question of whether God has forgotten to be merciful — or you're ready to make the turn of verse 11, this message is for you. Because Asaph looked back to the Red Sea. We get to look back to the cross. And if God didn't hold back his own Son to save you, he is not walking away from you now.

The story never ends at verse 10.

📖 Scripture: Psalm 77:1-15 | Isaiah 55:8-9 | Romans 8:32

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

July 12, 2026

We are the most informed generation in history — and we are rarely astonished by anything. In this message, Tammy Eckhart takes us into Psalm 8 and invites us to slow down long enough to be amazed again by the God whose glory fills the heavens and yet is personally, intimately mindful of you. Because awe has to go somewhere — and worship is where awe finds its voice.

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

July 5, 2026

Have you ever lost your voice cheering for something? Screamed until you couldn't speak? Felt something rise up inside you that you couldn't hold back?

That's worship. And it was happening long before you walked into a church.

In this message, Pastor Rich Johnson takes a break from the Gospel of John series to open a new summer series called "The Reason Why We Sing" — an exploration of the Psalms of Worship. And he starts with a question that cuts right to the heart: what were we actually made for?

Because worship, as Psalm 29 reveals it, is not just something you do on a Sunday morning. It is not a song you sing or a service you attend. It is a whole-person, lifelong response to the God who made you — and it begins with one Hebrew word that changes everything.

Ascribe.

Not just to notice. Not just to recognize. But to actively give back to God the weighty glory that already belongs to him.

In this message you'll learn:

What the Hebrew word "yehab" actually means — and why ascribing is so much more than praise or worship

📖 Scripture: Psalm 29 | Romans 8:19-23 | Luke 19:40

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

June 28, 2026

When suffering enters our lives, we instinctively ask who's to blame — but Jesus says that's the wrong question entirely. In this message, Pastor Rich Johnson takes us into John 9, where a man born blind becomes a picture of what happens when we stop living in the geography of the wound and start asking what God might want to do next. Because healing comes through trust before it comes through understanding — and Jesus never stops looking for the ones everyone else has left behind.

🏠 Visit us at sanctuarycolumbus.com

June 21, 2026