Christ Church

We were created for fellowship with a God whose presence we cannot endure. How can we — who are unholy because of sin — enter into the presence of a holy God? We’ll need a Mediator, who can represent God to us, and us to God; a Mediator who can make us fit for his presence.

Israel’s battle with Amalek shows that the Christian life is a real fight, where our enemy targets us in our weakness and isolation. But this passage also reveals the heart of God—He opposes those who prey on the weak and has decisively confronted our enemy in Christ. Like Israel, we must fight, but never in our own strength; our victory comes through prayerful dependence on the Lord. And our hope...

Ephesians 2 shows that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead—enslaved to sin and separated from God—but in his great mercy, God has made us alive together with Christ. Through union with the risen Jesus, his death becomes our death and his life becomes our life, restoring us to God and securing an eternal future of his love. This salvation is entirely by grace: not something we earn but a gift...

Because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, Christian hope is not wishful thinking but a present, powerful reality grounded in truth; like firstfruits guaranteeing the harvest, the resurrection assures us that what God has begun he will complete. This makes our hope reasonable (rooted in eyewitness history), powerful (freeing us from sin and giving us real ability to change through the risen Chr...

Holy Week begins with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, while being hailed by many as the King, the son of David. The questions would should be asking ourselves are: What kind of King is he? And what kind of welcome have we given him? In this week’s sermon, we’ll see that Jesus is meek, and Jesus is not just able to save — but he wants to. King Jesus delights in saving you. That’s a king we...

In Exodus 17, Israel’s thirst reveals sinful unbelief as they put the Lord to the test, questioning whether he is truly among them. Yet God responds with compassion, providing water from the rock and pointing forward to Christ—the true Rock who was struck so that we might be satisfied and know for certain that God is with us.

God led his people into the wilderness to test them, with the kind of test that reveals what is in their hearts. What was revealed was grumbling, yet God provided for their needs out of his grace. Through his testing and provision, God was teaching his people to trust him. Jesus Christ went through the wilderness test, too; and what was revealed was not grumbling, but perfect trust. Jesus is the b...

In Exodus 15:22–27, Israel’s quick turn from praise to grumbling in the wilderness reveals the deeper danger of the Christian life: not external enemies, but the sinful tendency of the heart to doubt God’s goodness when trials come. Their bitter waters at Marah expose both the reality of suffering and the temptation to respond with grumbling rather than lament. Yet God provides a remedy when he sh...

The song of Exodus 15 is the first congregational song in all of Scripture — and they had good reason to sing, having just beheld their salvation! We, as Christians, have the best possible reason to sing praise to God and the firmest hope. Singing together is a Christian privilege, as we follow our Worship Leader (Jesus) in joining heaven’s song.

From Israel’s desperate moment at the Red Sea, this sermon highlights that salvation is entirely God’s work from start to finish: he takes the initiative, he fights the battle, and he brings his people through from death to life. The crossing is portrayed as a new-creation event—dark waters divided, dry land appearing—showing that just as God created the world without help, so he saves sinners by...

Sometimes we think we can see the best path out ahead of us—the path that would get us to where we want to be quickly and directly. And then God throws us a curveball, and takes us on the path that seems more difficult. Why does God withhold certain things from us? Why does he lead us into trouble, suffering, and sorrow? Exodus 13:17–22 shows us that God has his reasons, and we have good reason to...

The Feast of Unleavened Bread teaches God’s people that they are both sustained by him and defined by him. Israel ate unleavened bread first because they left Egypt in haste and then because God was training them to depend daily on his provision as they journeyed with him. That pattern finds its fulfillment in Christ, the true Bread from heaven, on whom we must feed by faith for eternal life. At t...

This sermon argues that the Passover meal in Exodus 12 was not merely about the lamb’s death, but about restored fellowship with God, as Israel ate in his presence because judgment had been dealt with through substitution; that meal functioned as proclamation (confessing past deliverance, present identity, and future hope), participation (real communion with God and one another), and presence (saf...

God’s holy presence is a danger to people stained by sin and death, and no sincerity, effort, or moral improvement can make us fit to stand before Him. In the Passover, God teaches that only the blood of a substitute life can cleanse what death has defiled, so that judgment passes over and God can dwell without destroying. This same logic is fulfilled in Christ, whose blood both saves us once for...

In the first Passover, God did not save his people because they were good but because He is. Each household took a lamb, brought it into their home, and then watched as that lamb died in place of their firstborn. The blood on the door was a simple, visible confession: “The lamb died instead of me.” That night taught Israel — and now teaches us — that salvation is not earned, but received through s...

The firstborn stands as the representative of the whole, showing that all humanity is implicated in sin and justly under judgment, for God does not owe life to anyone. Yet the same God who judges also provides a substitute: his own Firstborn, Jesus Christ, who bears the judgment we deserve so that death might pass over us. The story of Egypt’s firstborn ultimately points us to the cross, where jus...

Christians should be the most joyful people on the planet — always! But we’re not always. This sermon explores why, from the book of Habakkuk. The prophet shows us how our joy can be as steady and sure as the promises of God in Christ, and we can (as Paul says) “rejoice always!”

A couple thousand years ago, a heavenly warrior stepped into a field full of shepherds to announce good news of cosmic proportions—news of great joy! The birth of Jesus, who is Christ the Lord, is the real answer that we, who are bone-weary, are waiting for. Pastor Barnabas Piper helps us cut through the tinsel and sparkle of Christmas to find the real Christ, who alone can give rest and joy to pe...

Simeon shows us that those who wait for the Lord never wait in vain; active, hopeful waiting positions us to see Christ, and when the Spirit opens our eyes to behold Him as the Christ, the Savior, and the Light, we discover that He is the satisfaction of all our deepest longings.

Mary’s song shows that God delights to lift the lowly and confront the self-exalted, and that his mercy is received only with empty hands. She praises God because he has looked on her nothingness, filled the hungry, and scattered the proud—revealing the very shape of the gospel. Our problem is that we choke on this good news, grasping for our own glory instead of receiving it from God. Yet in the...

Psalm 142 shows us how to pray when life feels like a cave—dark, lonely, and overwhelming. David models biblical lament: turning to God honestly in prayer, naming the real pain we carry, and deliberately choosing to trust God’s character and promises even when our emotions say otherwise. Lament is God’s gift for weary people; it moves us from despair toward confidence that the Lord will deal bount...

The Sermon on the Mount opens with a paradox: the truly “blessed” are not the powerful, the wealthy, or the self-sufficient, but the poor in spirit, the grieving, the meek, and the hungry. In the Beatitudes, Jesus unveils the values of His upside-down kingdom—a kingdom for those who bring nothing and yet inherit everything. The poor in spirit are those who know they contribute nothing to God but r...

This sermon traces the Exodus plagues as a cosmic “dragon-slaying” narrative: Pharaoh is portrayed as a chaos-dragon like the mythic Leviathan, humiliated when Aaron’s staff-dragon swallows his magicians’ staffs and finally vanquished when he is swallowed by the sea. The pattern prefigures Christ’s greater victory—Jesus, the true Dragon Slayer, humiliates the devil through his ministry, disarms hi...

The plagues were not random punishments but deliberate judgments revealing Yahweh’s supremacy over Egypt’s gods and over all spiritual powers. The plagues expose false order and false mercy by unraveling Egypt’s Ma’at and showing that only Yahweh brings true order, light, and life. Through the chaos He sends, God displays His grace—holding creation together by His word; His mercy—sparing His peopl...

In Exodus 7:1–7, we meet the God who hardens hearts—not as a cruel puppeteer or powerless bystander but as the sovereign Lord who strengthens the will already set against Him, so that His name might be known in all the earth. Pharaoh’s resistance becomes the stage for God’s revelation: that He alone is Yahweh, the covenant-keeper who liberates His people and humbles the proud. Every act of judgmen...