Redeemer OC Podcast

If you could get a glimpse of the future what would you want to see? If you did how might that change what you do today? This Sunday we move into John chapter seven. Over the last weeks we walked through the first six chapters of John in a series called “Beauty and Belief”. We have seen that the apostle John wants to show us the beauty of Jesus and encourage us to believe, to entrust our lives to...

Have you ever seen a sunrise? The darkness of night chased away by explosions of color. Easter is a celebration where the darkness of death is chased away by the bursting forth of new life. If our Easter service is the sunrise, our Maundy Thursday service tonight is the darkness before the dawn. Maundy Thursday is a beautiful and solemn service that will focus your mind and grip your heart. After...

Jesus is a very odd sort of King. He is simple, yet complicated. His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 2,000 years ago reminds us that he is not the King we expected, but he is the King we needed. Jesus at times can be easily understood, and yet, at other times be easily misunderstood. This Sunday, Palm Sunday, we will study a passage where three different groups of people understand b...

God loves to be in the presence of his people, the church! This is all the more amazing when we realize that the church, every single one of us, is made up of God’s former enemies. Yet God pursued us in love and won us back. God knows us from top to bottom; nothing is hidden from his sight. But don’t try to run and hide. Rejoice! Psalm 87 show us that God delights to be with his people. He loves u...

The Lord’s Prayer, most of us have it memorized and recite it often. This prayer that Jesus taught his disciples is rich with meaning and sets forth a wonderful example and pattern for us to pray in weekly worship, as families, with friends, and by ourselves. However, from time to time it is worthwhile for us to pause and remind ourselves of the truths that are placed in the preface and each of th...

You are what you eat. Our bodies are constructed out of the nutrition we get from our food. Think of what you had for dinner last night. Right now your body is reducing that food into its essential components and absorbing it into your cells. You are built out of the food you eat. We will finish our look at John 6 this Sunday. Jesus is speaking to a crowd in a synagogue in Capernaum. He tells them...

No matter what your work might be, whether you are a stay at home mom, a professor, surgeon, or gardener, your work is more of a witness than you might realize. The Kingdom of God is on display in our work. Do you understand how the Spirit empowers you for this vital kingdom witness? Dr. Vincent Bacote is our men’s retreat speaker this weekend and will be preaching at Redeemer on Sunday. He is an...

Where does confidence come from? In the face of rejection, in the face of being misunderstood, questioned, and doubted how can we maintain true confidence? Last week in John 6 we focused on the first portion of Jesus’ dialogue with the crowds in Capernaum. It’s true, what Jesus offers them and us is bigger and better than we could imagine. Yet the crowd does not trust Jesus. They don’t believe him...

Hunger. Fortunately, most of us do not have direct experience with the fear and anxiety of not knowing where our next meal is coming from. However, many people today and throughout history have, and all of us can at the least begin to imagine it. Hunger is a powerful metaphor. Where do you feel like you are starving? Where do you feel like you don’t have the resources or energy to carry on? We all...

5,000 men, plus women and children…totalling 15,000 – 20,000 people. In John 6:1-15 we read about Jesus miraculously feeding a massive gathering of folks – all from 5 measly loaves and 2 fish. Pause and just imagine the size of that crowd! So far, we’ve seen that Jesus has been performing miracles and teaching about the kingdom of God. As he has gone from town to town, word has begun to spread abo...

38 years. Unable to move on his own for 38 years. Imagine. A day like any other. Begging. Hurting. Humiliated. Then Jesus walks by. Do you have anything like that in your life or the lives of those you love? What is broken in you that you have suffered for so long that you have lost hope of ever being healed? Read John 5. Read it aloud. Picture the story in your mind. Pray through the passage. Lis...

Awkward. Did they really just say that? Is this conversation really happening? The apostle John is on a mission to show us Jesus. To show us who he is and what he is doing. To show us his strength, wisdom and grace. To show us his beauty; to show us that he is better than anything else we could ever possibly imagine. To show us that we can indeed entrust our lives to him. We can put our lives in h...

This Sunday and next we meet two people and get to listen in on their conversations with Jesus. A man who thinks he knows and a woman who knows she doesn’t. A man respected for doing and believing all the right things, and woman notorious for her messy life and ridiculous religion. Both need Jesus more than they realize. In both interactions Jesus, with wisdom and grace, goes to the heart of the i...

Who doesn’t enjoy attending weddings? Weddings are rightfully some of the most joyous celebrations that we get to witness. To watch a father walk his daughter down the aisle, to listen to the marriage vows, to enjoy good food and wine, and to dance the night away… weddings are worth traveling across land and sea to attend. Our culture’s weddings & celebrations typically last a handful of hours, bu...

When you meet someone for the first time what kinds of questions do you ask them? This Sunday we will take a second look at the opening paragraphs of John’s Gospel. He is introducing us to Jesus. The apostle John want to show us the beauty of Jesus, so that we would believe and entrust our lives to him. Last week I asked you to find someone you trust and who knows you well, and to ask them to help...

Words fail us. There are just some areas, some topics, that cannot be described well in words. We can try and it is good and right for us to do our best, but we must live with the tension that our words just can’t quite get us there. This Sunday we begin a series on the Gospel of John. John opens with some of the most important words ever written; they change everything. They soar and penetrate an...

Listen to Sermon Audio Player 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. Download Files Download Sermon Audio (.mp3) Download Order of Worship (.pdf) Summary Happy New Year! 2014 has arrived, but Christmas is still here. Sunday is the 12th and last day of the Christmas season. To give Christmas one last celebratory hurrah, before we have to wait another 353 days, we will be...

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and are still able to celebrate the birth of Christ with family and friends during these 12 days of Christmas. One of the highlights of Christmas for me was the chance to savor the sweetness of great food and drink around the table with my family. For most of us, we have been blessed to acquire tastes for food and drink, as well as gain wisdom in our taste...

Listen to the message given at our annual Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols service.

Sing it with me, “All I want for Christmas is my… King to come!?! I don’t think that’s how it goes. In our final sermon on the Minor Prophets we will look at the promise God makes to his people to send them a King. I know that when we think of Kings we think of fantasy novels and global celebrities, but we really do want a King. Really. In all of our longings for a secure future, in all of our des...

Christmas morning with little kids, just hopping with excitement and joy. If you let them they would dive head first into the presents, and rip through the paper and packages in an instant. I also love the comedy of their honesty. Get them a present they don’t like or don’t know what to do with and they will tell you, maybe even just throwing it aside with a confused shrug to see what is next. The...

Here is a four letter word that you never want to hear… “wait”. The Advent Season, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, is about waiting. Waiting reveals us. Consider the last time you were forced to wait. What did that experience tell you about yourself? Waiting also reveals God. It is often through waiting that God shows himself to us. Are you using the season of Advent to learn how to wait f...

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, a season of waiting. Hopeful waiting. Expectancy. Longing. Things are not right within us nor in the world around us, so we wait. We wait for the arrival of King Jesus. The word “advent” comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming” or “arrival.” During Advent we remember the first coming of Jesus and we long for his second coming. Robert Webber ex...

This Sunday we will be hearing from the prophet Joel. In this short book we are informed of a terrible locust plague that has hit Israel. And by locust plague, Joel is describing a literal storm of locust, 80 million thick. Imagine dark clouds of flying insects that make the day seem like night. As an agrarian society, Israel is not just facing a bad weekend, they are experiencing an event that wi...

I love you. You’re a mess. But I am not done with you. The best is yet to come. The book of Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament, probably written around the mid-fifth century. Malachi is likely a contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the people of God are discouraged and dissatisfied. The wonderful promises of a restored temple and capital in Jerusalem, of restored prominence and prospe...