Four Oaks Midtown Podcast

Jesus challenges a young man to give up everything for the kingdom and challenges us to consider the cost of discipleship and the temptation of greed.

Jesus responds to the Pharisees' questions regarding marriage by describing God’s intention for marriage from the beginning.

Jesus responds to Peter’s question on how often we are to forgive by using the parable of the unforgiving servant to remind us we are to forgive as the Father forgives us. 

Jesus addresses the disciples regarding how to treat their brother or sister when they find them in sin. 

Do you ever skip reading the opening and closing sections of some of the letters in the New Testament? You know, the parts where we see lists of names, greetings, and other details that seem irrelevant to our lives? That’s a mistake because these opening and closing sections give us insight into the way the early church understood their life as a community. The institutional structure of the churc...

We often don’t think about the fact that Jesus exercised faith. He’s not just perfect in his divinity, but also his humanity. God created us as dependent creatures. Our dependence upon God manifests as faith or trust. Therefore, Christ the perfect man manifests trust perfectly. He demonstrates the perfection if our faith. He’s not just the source and object of our faith, but also the exemplar of f...

Through the parable of the wandering sheep, Jesus reveals the heart of the father and the spiritual reality of how we ought to care for others.

Well-meaning preachers emphasize that the characters in the Old Testament serve not as moral examples, but pointers to Christ. We’re not to see ourselves as David, but rather see David as merely a pointer to Christ. But Hebrews 11 rejects this either/or mentality. We view the Old Testament saints not only as pointers to Jesus, but also exemplars of faithful living. Furthermore, faith is not a New...

Jesus speaks to the disciples about how to correctly consider themselves and those around them.

Outdoor Easter Sunrise sermon on the hope of the resurrection for Christians.

There’s a famous clip of hall of fame NFL coach Bill Parcells telling his players during a game, “This is what you worked all off season for, this is why you lift all them weights.” He’s telling his players not to give up when the game gets tough. Don’t let all the blood, sweat, and tears in the weight room turn out for nothing. Coaches make it their goal to not let past accomplishments cause pres...

Paul reminds the Corinthian church that getting the resurrection right is of great importance as he invites them to ponder and cherish the hope that we have through the resurrection.

Jesus enters into Jerusalem and is welcomed and worshipped by those who were awaiting him.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” These opening lines of the Bible reveal an often overlooked truth: heaven and earth serve as two realms of God’s creation that interlock and mirror one another. Hebrews focuses on how Jesus brings about a new priesthood, sacrifice, and covenant that fulfills and makes obsolete the old. In response, non-Christian Jews accuse their Jewish Ch...

A few years ago I go to see the Colorado mountain ranges for the first time. It was amazing driving through the reality of what I had only seen in photographs. Photographs may capture the beauty of the mountains in amazing detail, but nothing beats the real thing. In Hebrews 7-8, we see that Jesus is the real thing to the photograph of the Old Covenant. In particular, the high priesthood of Jesus...

Jesus challenges the disciples to humble themselves.

Jesus uses an encounter with the temple tax collectors to teach Peter what it means to follow him.

Few things bring as much pain to our lives as seeing someone we care about “apostatize" or turn away from the faith. Perhaps that person served as a vital member of your local church leading Bible studies or evangelizing to the lost, but now he or she wants nothing to do with Christ or Christianity. Such moments rattle us with confusion and sadness. Yet Hebrews reminds us that apostasy existed in...

As Jesus heals a boy, his responses to the boy's father and to the disciples demonstrates the necessity of faith. 

We all face anxieties and fears in life. Those fears and anxieties get amplified in a world of social media which exposes us instantaneously to every horrible event. We feel the pressure of a post-Christian world that sees our faith as dangerous and bigoted. We fear the well-being of our children and the pressures they face in a world hostile to Christ. We know we should turn to prayer, but so oft...

Jesus takes three of his disciples up on a mountain and there, they see him transfigure.

Every single person lives their life in pursuit of something they believe will grant them rest. Rest means more than just the cessation of activity or a temporary respite from work. No, rest means complete fulfillment, when a human being attains the end for which God created him or her. The great theologian Augustine in his famous work Confessions writes, “Because you have made us for Yourself… ou...

As Jesus reveals to the disciples what will happen to him, he presses the point that both he, and his disciples, will be known through how they handle the cross.

When we look into the night sky we feel a sense of insignificance. We’re just a pale blue dot in a sea of darkness speckled with light. This makes us comfortable so we distract ourselves with pleasure, entertainment, and consumption, but the feeling never leaves. The Bible, on the other hand, does not distract from, but rather embraces our smallness as a means of magnifying the grace of God. The i...

Jesus questions his disciples regarding who the people are saying he is and then, who the disciples say he is.