Redeemer Church

Easter reminds us that we have put our faith in one who predicted his own death and resurrection and pull it off! Jesus Christ is in fact God incarnate who paid the price of our sin and then conquered death. All this means those who trust him will live forever with God and his people. In light of this good news—we have to tell others! We must live on mission. This morning we’ll learn from the life...

Who can you trust? The politicians and leaders of our day seem hardly the place to put our confidence. The entrepreneurs and marketers cleverly create and communicate that your needs and desires will be met in their products. But are you sure about that? There is a story, a true story, where promises were made and men and women wondered if and how they would be answered. It’s the grand story of th...

Jesus despised external religion. The Law of Moses was a shadow that pointed to the substance yet to come, and Jesus was the substance who had come. That the Jewish religious leaders continued to operate out of the law, and press it onto others, was the source of much of Jesus’ corrective teaching. Here, He upends the idea that we live by an outside-in mentality and describes the Gospel mentality...

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had used the Bible, and gone way beyond it with their traditions, to create a religion of scrupulous law-keeping. Jesus understood the Bible to be THE means of coming into and growing in a relationship with the living God. He also understood that to read it correctly, we need to see him at its very center.

What happens when we don’t get the rest that we need? Will we look to Jesus as our hope or will we miss Him?

While theories swirled about the identity of Jesus, Mark shows us His identity – The Shepherd of Israel. Jesus is the Good Shepherd (unlike Herod) who leads His people in the wilderness to green pastures and feeds them until they are satisfied. He alone provides the rest we need, always generous so that we lack no good thing.

The word had gotten out. As the disciples went about preaching repentance and making much of Jesus, His name had become even more known. So much so that even King Herod Antipas had heard about what was going on. He was haunted by this message of repentance that Jesus and the disciples preached. It was a message he had heard before. A message that had kept him up at night, but a message he failed t...

Jesus has power over creation, demons, disease and death, but still faces the rejection of those closest to him. Headed home to Nazareth, he is not welcomed with a hero’s parade, rather his lineage is questioned, his authority and wisdom dismissed, and unbelief runs as high as any time up to this point in ministry. He knows what rejection feels like, and the disciples soon will too.

Jesus doesn’t play favorites. He came to save sinners – young and old, rich and poor, marginalized and influential. From the woman suffering for twelve years to the twelve-year-old girl who had died. In coming to individuals, He always calls them away from fear and into faith. Our fears may keep us from bothering Jesus, but faith will lead us into real life and intimacy with Jesus.

Paul exhorts believers to live their lives sacrificially onto God in response to the merciful blessings they have received from Him. He encourages them to live a life of holiness in response to God's manifold blessings in their lives. He admonishes followers of Christ to refuse to live according to the philosophies of the world which are governed by Satan. Instead, he directs those of the fait...

King Jesus has power! He has demonstrated His decisive authority over creation, over the enemy kingdom, and now we will see His power over disease and death. Always the master teacher, Jesus never just coldly communicates His authority, but teaches real lessons of faith to real people in need. Come and meet Jesus as He brings healing to an unclean woman in need … a healing even deeper than she kne...

The accounts like we studied last week in Mark 5:1-20 where Jesus demonstrates His authority over the enemy kingdom raise numerous questions that we want to understand. The subject of Satan and demons is one that needs to be handled clearly, Biblically, and practically. We have no reason to fear the power of the enemy, but we have every reason to seek Biblical clarity, so we unmask the schemes of...

Jesus had powerfully demonstrated His authority over creation in the calming of the storm, even as He exposed the fears of the disciples’ heart and calmed the storm of their doubts. Now, He is demonstrating His authority over the demonic realm, even as He shows the great faith of the man now freed from bondage. Such power over the kingdom of darkness produces two clear responses begging two clear...

Jesus has taught the disciples the principles of the Kingdom through parables. Now the principles will be put on display through powerful miracles to demonstrate Jesus’ Kingdom identity. For as much as the disciples had been taught, they still had deep seated fears that blinded them from truly seeing and trusting Jesus. Here we see Jesus as having power and authority over creation. The storms of l...

God has an Extraordinary Mission, that he wants to accomplish thru Ordinary People, who Tell Their Story.

Each human life tells a story that proclaims what we believe about the biggest questions. As Christ followers we believe profound “truth claims” about God, creation, and eternity. God is powerful. Jesus is God. We are redeemed. In God’s sovereign wisdom he uses stories, your story, to proclaim these truths to the world around us. God is actively redeeming our stories for His glory, our good, and t...

We often study a few verses of scripture or a section at a time.  But, what about the big picture of the Bible?  What we call around Redeemer, “God’s story.”  How does the whole of the Bible cohere as one divine narrative of God’s plan for history?  This morning we will consider that as we trace the theme of the kingdom of God throughout the Bible.  We will see that from Genesis to Revelation, God...

Be the few who humbly rest in God’s extravagant salvation.

This morning, we celebrate the 4th Sunday of Advent and the heavenly declaration of God announcing the birth of His Son. This event was so glorious and incomprehensible that it took several angelic messages to bring clarity to just what was happening. As we visit with those the angels met, we find various responses. Responses not so different than we might find today … ones that you may even be wr...

In case you’re not yet convinced of the unconventional way God has of doing things, let’s just move on to the next piece of the Christmas story – the shepherds. God sent angels (a multitude of the heavenly host to be exact) to announce the birth of the Son of God, the Savior of the world to a group of shepherds. Shepherds, mind you, were not the upper class of society, not the news media of the da...

One of my favorite things about the birth of Christ is that just about nothing is how you or I would have orchestrated it. We wouldn’t have picked a cave for the labor and delivery, a bunch of cows as the observers, or a cold hard stone to lay the newborn in. We wouldn’t have picked stinky shepherds, and we wouldn’t have picked the small village of Bethlehem. But that’s just how the Father did it....

This first Sunday of Advent we start the story of the coming King way back in the words of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah’s words are a call and comfort to have a joyful anticipation of the light breaking through the darkness of the day. His was not a pie-in-the-sky kind of hope-it-happens anticipation in the way a child hopes he gets something good for Christmas. No, his was a have-no-doubt certainty...

Jesus delivers a crucial message to his disciples – Your life should bring the truth of the Kingdom to light. You now have the “secret to the Kingdom” (Mark 4:11) and you better not keep it a secret. You don’t have the power to grow the Kingdom, the Spirit of God does that. You don’t have to make excuses for the Kingdom, it will be great. You have only to proclaim the Kingdom, and you must do it d...

Jesus called out a committed core from the curious crowd. He called them disciples. His disciples, then and now, hear His voice and obey His heart. But those who are only following for what’s in it for them lack the ability to truly hear and obey His words. There are common obstacles that have kept people from trusting Jesus throughout all human history. Will you consider where these hold your hea...

The most important question someone can ask and answer is: who is Jesus Christ? Many in our day say about Jesus that he was a great moral teacher and then move on. C.S. Lewis ran into the same response in his day, but refused to let people off the hook. In his seminal work Mere Christianity, Lewis posed a trilemma concerning Jesus. He must be one of three things in light of his claim to be God: a...