The Well: Sermon Video

Flashing back to the traumatic death of John the Baptist, Matthew records the events leading up to the imprisonment and ultimate beheading of the forerunner of Christ. John the Baptist stands firm in his biblical convictions and confronts the Jewish ruler Herod over an immoral relationship with his brother’s wife.

The Well is positioned to significantly influence our city, and God has been preparing us for this moment for years. We are poised to reach an entire region with gospel-centered teaching, community engagement, worship, discipleship, equipping, recovery programs, and next generation initiatives. We invite you to be a part of the redemptive history of our great city.

It has been one year since we introduced Cultivate, our campaign to strengthen this generation and grow the next generation into a deep, abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. Learn more about what God has already been doing in our church and community, where He is leading us and how you can be part of it.

State of the Church 2019 features "A Week in the Life," where you will see what it looks like to be involved at The Well outside of a Sunday or Midweek gathering. We praise God for all He has done and is doing. Pray with us for Him to do even greater things in our city in the years to come.

Throughout the parables Jesus has been telling, He shows the people who will enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s not about being religious or following the law or being Jewish. It’s for those who believe in Him. Yet even after seeing everything He had done and hearing from Him directly, many people still refused to believe who He said He was. After everything you have heard and experienced, do you believe?

As Jesus continued to teach in parables, He gave the people a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven as well as what will happen to those who refuse to believe in Him.

In the Parable of the Sower, we are introduced to people in various heart stages. There are people whose hearts are so hard they immediately reject the Word of God, people whose hearts are receptive to the Lord and who authentically grow in their faith, and there are various gradations in between. Regardless of where you find yourself, are you willing to take that next step to entrust your heart to God so He can soften it and you can produce fruit and grow to be more like Christ?

After hearing about and witnessing several miracles He had done, the religious people asked for a sign from Jesus. Time after time, Jesus demonstrated authority and told them who He was, yet they still refused to believe. Jesus confronted both the religious leaders and the generation of people, who assumed their religious privilege gave them preference before God, and He admonished them that what actually mattered was that their hearts were obedient to the Lord.

The tension that started with the Pharisees continued to build as Jesus taught. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus completely dismantled their religious system and then performed miracles that authenticated who He said He was. By this point, they were running out of excuses, yet if they acknowledged Jesus was who He claimed to be, it would shatter their worldview and force them to change their lives, so despite the evidence in front of them, their hearts remained hardened and they continued to challenge Him.

The religious people were all about external behaviors and following the law. When Jesus arrived on the scene, He didn’t fit their expectation of the Messiah because He didn’t follow all the same rules. Jesus had a heart of compassion over religious traditions, caring for people enough to heal them on the Sabbath, but the religious people were so concerned with prescribed behaviors that they missed seeing Him for who He was.