Calvary: the Hill Sermons

Jesus addresses anxiety head on in our passage today. As we seek to orient our lives around God and others, Jesus anticipates our "What about this?" and our "What about that?". Our anxiety creeps in and tell us that we should prioritize many things, not one.

Jesus dives into the practices of fasting and simplicity, and ultimately wants us to experience life as it was designed: simple and completely directed toward God and others.

When was the last time you really pondered the implications of these seemingly simple words? We're gonna dip our toes into the vast ocean of the Lord's Prayer.

It's not just the what of Jesus commands that are important. It's the how and the why. In our passage Jesus prescribes the spiritual discipline of secrecy, in which we "do not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing."

Last week we looked at the Greatest Commandment to love God with all of ourselves, and how our church walks in it. But what about the Second Greatest Commandment? Hear from Pastor Nick and other ministry leaders on how we walk this command out in the life of our church.

As Fall hits, we are looking at our Church rhythms. What is this church all about? Taking our cue from Jesus, we zoom out to rediscover that life is all about Love for God and others. You'll hear from Pastor Nick and several other ministry leaders.

The climax of Jesus' Old Testament precedent-busting commands is his command for Christians to love their enemies. The most beautiful part of this command is the motivation behind it. We love our enemies, because God is an enemy-loving God. We love our enemies to be close to him, and to be like him.

Jesus' show-stopping Sermon on the Mount continues with his most challenging command yet: His injunction against retaliation. As his followers, we are to illustrate God's missional heart by responding to evil, not with more evil, but with creative, surprising, and relational love.

Once again Jesus wades into a contemporary debate, this time on the making of oaths. Jesus sees through the practice as a loophole for truth-telling, and calls his disciples to a much simpler way of living: letting our Yes be a Yes, and our No be a No.

Jesus wades into a contemporary debate about the legitimacy and grounds for divorce. This is a challenging topic, and one that can feel distant from the grace of God. But what we see is that although King James' standard is high, his mercy is always standing ready.

Jesus has a high calling for us sexually. How can we possibly attain his intense standard? We both can't, and can. We can't, and therefore need his saving and empowering grace. We can with his Spirit's help.

Jesus dives into the deep end, calling out interpersonal conflict as an issue near and dear to God's heart. If we want to prioritize our vertical relationship with God, then Jesus prescribes making right our horizontal relationships as well.

Too often we get into this mindset that to have a better life, we must be a better person to please God such that he'll improve our circumstances. However, God is much more interested in simply being with us. Our Lord doesn't promise a life with no problems - he promises a life where he is always present. This is the very essence of the good news of the gospel.

The Apostle Peter makes clear that we are called to holiness, but what is it? Holiness requires three dimensions: that we act according to God's character, that we are different from the world we are part of, and that we are together as a loving community. Without all three, our view of holiness is deficient and deformed.

What was Jesus' opinion on the Old Testament? Does he stand over it? Does he sit under it? In his introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, he gives us his posture toward all of Scripture.

Jesus commissions his church to be both salt and light for the world. We are to be different from and yet exist for the world. How do we do this well?

At the outset of Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, he paints a portrait of a citizen of his kingdom using the Beatitudes.

Jesus begins his ministry with a BANG in Galilee, the rural area north of Jerusalem, which was prophesied by Isaiah long before Jesus' arrival.

Jesus's first act as the Anointed Messiah-King is to be led by the Spirit to be tested by the Devil. Ouch. But he aces the test, and shows us more deeply who he is in the process.

Jesus, in his baptism, is commissioned as the Messiah-Savior-King of humanity. What does that show us about him, and about us?

John the Baptist was the long awaited forerunner to the Messiah. His message was "The Kingdom of Heaven has arrived. Are you going to embrace it?"

We are all obedient ... to something, but what we are obedient to really matters. Is it the narrow path that leads to life, or the wide path that many will indeed follow that leads to death?

Surprisingly, the first worshipers of Jesus in Matthew are pagan astrologers from a distant land. We learn that from the start, God has a heart for the "outsiders", and longs to draw them to Jesus.

This is the moment - when the God of the universe invades humanity. What does it look like? How does he do it? What is our part in it? We'll see that God both sovereignly steps in and yet graciously partners with us in a scary invitation to participate. Will you?

What if Christian singleness were more than a curse of loneliness for the sake of the Gospel? Discover how Jesus invited his people to consider singless for the sake of those on the margins while also experiencing life-giving connection among the family of believers.