Grace Road Church

This week, Reid Ferguson, former pastor of Evangelical Church of Fairport, shared with us from the book of Haggai. Haggai is structured on the prophet's four oracles given by God to the Israelites who were returned to the Promised Land from Babylon. Reid exposits the text and exhorts us to consider how the postures of our hearts might resemble those the Israelites are convicted of in this boo...

Throughout the Bible, the concept of marriage is used as an image of the relationship between Christ and His church. This week, we look at the parable of the wedding feat in Matthew 22:1-14, in which Jesus alludes to the wedding supper of the Lamb found in Revelation. Through this parable, Jesus demonstrates the consequences of apathy, the lavishness of God's call to us, and the importance of...

As we continue through Matthew 21, the Pharisees persist in challenging Jesus' authority. Now, Jesus gives them a second parable to demonstrate himself as God's son. This parable is a type of prophetic autobiography, in which Jesus foreshadows his own death. What is Jesus communicating to the pharisees about the nature of God's kingdom? How is Jesus the better prophet? Join us as Co...

Cody continues our journey through Matthew 21 this week as Jesus' authority is challenged in verses 23-32. Jesus answers this question posed by the Pharisees by giving them a parable of two sons: one who first denies his father's authority but then changes his mind and one who claims fealty but denies in action. Cody charges us to ask ourselves: which son are we most like? What does true...

This week, Cody walks us through a familiar Bible story: Jesus overturning the tables in the temple. Often, Jesus' anger in this scene can be misunderstood as a justification of our own anger towards others. Instead, Cody shows us that Jesus' anger is not like ours, and we are likely more similar to the Pharisees and money changers in this story than Jesus himself.

In honor of Mother's Day, Kevin Maloney skips ahead this week to Matthew 20:17-28 and unpacks the request made by the mother of the sons of Zebedee. She asks Jesus if He would assign her sons important positions in the kingdom, seated at His right and left hand. Jesus uses this request to demonstrate real greatness in the kingdom of God: a path antithetical to the way we view success in this...

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final days before Christ's death and resurrection. To commemorate, we are skipping ahead in our Matthew series to look at Matthew 20:29-21:17 and the depiction of Jesus' famous entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. What is the significance of this event in the life of Christ? What do Jesus' next actions in the passage tell us abo...

This week, Cody Wilbanks unpacks Jesus' words about marriage and divorce in Matthew 19:1-12.

This week, Kevin concluded our three-part deep dive in Matthew 18, exploring what the life lived in Christian community should look like for believers. In the final verses of Matthew 18, Jesus teaches about forgiveness through the parable of the unmerciful servant. Are Christians required to forgive? How can we grow to forgive those who have wronged us?

Our deep dive into Matthew 18 continues this week with a look at verses 12-20. This passage begins anchored in Jesus' self-description as the Good Shepherd of the sheep: as He shepherds us, so should we strive to be like him in shepherding each other with concern and care. As Jesus is eager to restore and reconcile sinners, so should we be eager to restore and reconcile with one another. How...

This week, we begin a three-week deep dive into Matthew 18, examining what life in Christian community looks like. Jesus' words in Matthew 18 are full of challenges to the defenses and expectations we bring to our interactions with others. Yet love calls us to be vulnerable, even as vulnerable as little children. How does humility drive us into the arms of Jesus? How does His relentless compa...

In Matthew 17:14-23, Jesus makes a surprising promise to his disciples: faith in God has real power. How do we get the kind of faith? Is it something we muster up, or is it simply an empty hand ready to receive? Kevin walks us through the three-fold dimensions of faith: knowledge, trust, and ascent.

This week, Cody Wilbanks walks us through the significance of the Transfiguration, a unique event in the life of Jesus. In Matthew 17:1-13, Jesus takes his disciples up a mountain and is transformed before them in the presence of God. What do the reactions of the disciples, especially Peter, show us about our own engagement with this event? How does the Transfiguration point us to the promise of C...

This week, Kevin takes us through Jesus' call for his followers to take up their cross and follow Him in Matthew 16:21-28. Like Peter, we are all challenged by the centrality of the cross. From church movements that decentralize the gospel to our own lack of trust in it, we often look to other things to be our main power source. Jesus' death on the cross is not only sufficient for us, bu...