Mercy Hill

Where does our confidence come from and why? Let's wrap up our series through Galatians in this last, powerful section.

What does it mean to have a gospel community? This week, we dive into Paul's discussion of culture.

After chapters and chapters of helping the Galatians (and us) understand the difference between the law and the gospel, Paul now turns his attention to asking the next obvious question. How do we change? Before Christ, we tried to do what was right so that God would be happy with us and we wouldn't face his punishment. With this fear why would we change? Why would we obey.  The answ...

Have you ever experienced inner conflict? One of those times when you knew what was right, but felt yourself being pulled to do the exact opposite. So far in Galatians we've been presented with amazing truth after amazing truth: we're forgiven, justified, adopted in God's family, free from self-justification, and much more. Yet, if you're like me, you still feel the pull to sin. It's like we're ca...

We've all been there. Taken in by a slick salesman who has convinced us that the life changing product we've been waiting for our entire lives can be ours. In Galatians 4:8-31, Paul says that the false teachers in Galatia are like this slick salesman. They have convinced the church that they have the new and improved version of the message of Jesus and so, it's time to move on from that second rat...

Belonging is a powerful force. We all long to belong, to have people. In Galatians 4:1-7, Paul explains an implication of the good news of Jesus that we often miss. God not only forgives us, redeems us, and justifies us through Jesus, but He also adopts us. The God of the universe brings us into his family as sons and daughters so that we will not just be in the right with God, but also enjoy know...

It's easy to forget. I'm a fairly forgetful person, often forgetting items on the shopping list, when my son's soccer practice starts, when I have a meeting, and much more. As followers of Jesus, we find that it is also easy to somehow forget the good news of Jesus. In Galatians 3, Paul powerfully begins with a series of rhetorical questions to help his readers remember when they first h...

Join us as Pastor Brandon talks about the Heart of the Gospel

This Sunday is the second message of our study of Paul's letter to the Galatian churches. In chapter 2, Paul outlines two conflicts from his past. One conflict involved a group of people whose teaching was leading people astray and the other was with a high profile church leader whose behavior was obscuring the truth about Jesus. Think about it. We can misreprese...

This Sunday we started part one of a new series,  Galatians . Galatians is letter written by Paul to a network of churches that he started (Acts 13-14), but those churches are now confused on the central message of Jesus, the gospel message. That confusion has resulted in all sorts of cultural and relational issues, but most importantly, is it pointing people away from Jesus to a false h...

We've covered a lot of ground over the past five weeks in our series,  The Scripture: A Guide to Understanding the Bible.  At this point, perhaps, your head is spinning. You loved the four principles for reading the Bible we learned last week, but you're asking, "How can I practically put all this together when I read the Bible?" That's the question we're tackling this Sunday....

The Scriptures can be confusing at times, especially because they were written in languages we don't know and in cultural contexts that are different from our own. This week we're going to continue our series,  The Scripture: A Guide to Understanding the Bible , by learning four simple rules that will help you make sense of the Bible as you read. If you're struggling with crazy thin...

Most of us in our lives have questioned if we can trust the Bible. We've asked, "How can I be sure what I'm reading in my Bible is what was written over 2000 years ago?" Or, "Is trusting the Bible only a matter of faith or are there good reasons to believe it is trustworthy?" As we continue our summer series,  The Scripture: A Guide To Understanding the Bible,  Jason Sampl...

This week we're kicking off our summer series,  The Scripture: A Guide To Understanding the Bible.  Most of us have some sort of exposure to the Bible, but we don't often stop and think about what the Bible actually is. Then, if we do, we head to google and find that the loudest voices online are either hyper-fundamentalists who weaponize the Bible or skeptics who are trying to...

The past two weeks have been full of sorrow for our country, our community, our denomination, and our church. It has been heartbreaking to watch the news reports of the shootings in Buffalo and then, this week, in Uvalde, TX. Also, this week, the Sexual Abuse Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention released report detailing the findings of a eight month third party investigation. T...

We live in a busy and stressful time. Along with the pressures of balancing work, family, and fun, we're bombarded with the allure of the false promise that we can do and have it all. This Sunday we're talking about the spiritual practice of observing the Sabbath, which is designed to combat believing that we can do and have it all. Join us as Drew McCarty breaks down what Sabbath i...

One of the most consistent practices of the church throughout church history is gathering together for worship. At Mercy Hill, every Sunday we get together to sing, pray, and learn from the Scriptures. Why? In our modern world, we can get all the Bible content when need from podcasts or YouTube. We have access to more worship songs on Spotify than we could ever possibly listen to. We don...

On Sunday, Pastor Brandon mentioned a note you might see in your Bible after Mark 16:8 that should say something about these verses not being in the early manuscripts. In today's bonus episode, Pastor Brandon is joined by Dr. Jason Sampler, a dear friend and long-time member of Mercy Hill. Together, Brandon & Jason discuss where these verses came from, how we should read them, and what implica...

After Jesus's death, Joseph of Arimathea requested Jesus's body, took him off the cross and buried him in a tomb. It was getting late on Friday afternoon, so he had to act quickly so that Jesus could be laid in the tomb before the Sabbath began. The disciples scattered, believing that the movement Jesus started was over. On Sunday morning, a few women went to finish properly anointing Jesus's body...

John Knox, the 16th century Scottish reformer, said, "To remember Jesus is to remember first of all his Cross." His Cross? Not his teachings or the miracles he performed, but when we think of Jesus, first and foremost, we think of his cross. The cross has become a symbol of love and sacrifice, of mercy and grace. Strangely, it is Jesus's death on the cross that we, as followers of Jesus, celebrate...

After the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples that they all will abandon him. Peter, with unbelievable bravado, responds that while the others may, he will never fall away. Then, Jesus, famously, tells Peter that actually he will deny Jesus three times that very night. And, of course, the story unfolds in precisely that way - Peter does deny knowing Jesus three times that night. It wrecks Peter...

In Mark 14:32-50, Mark recounts to us the events leading right up to Jesus's arrest. We see the full humanity of Jesus as he expresses sorrow and anxiousness in prayer. He knows his death on the cross is imminent and he is feeling the weight of the task before him. Why does he persist in the face of such difficulty? Let's find out together.

In Mark 14, Jesus is having dinner at a friend's house, when a woman unexpectedly interrupts the meal to anoint Jesus with perfume. Sounds awkward, right? This is not one of those events that makes sense if you know and understand 1st century Jewish culture. It would have been just as socially awkward then as it would be now. Yet, Jesus calls her actions "beautiful." Listen to this...

Pastor Brandon continues our series on the Crucified King. This week, we read Mark 12:1-12 and learned about Jesus' parable of the tenants.

In Mark 10, two of Jesus's disciples come to him and ask him for a preferred place of honor in the new kingdom that Jesus is going to set up. On one hand, you have to admire these guys. They are confident that Jesus is the true king and is going to usher in a new kingdom. On the other hand, they seemed to still be missing on the sort of king is Jesus and the sort of kingdom that Jesus came to...