Redeemer West Side

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 18:15-17,21-22; 7:3-5, 5:23-24  Jesus instructs his followers to forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times, emphasizing the limitless and boundless nature of forgiveness within the Christian community. Jesus' teaching underscores the transformative power of forgiveness, encouraging his disciples to extend grace generously and continually, mirroring the...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Isaiah 55:7:Psalm 32:1-7 Isaiah calls for repentance and turning to the Lord, emphasizing God's abundant mercy and willingness to pardon those who forsake their wicked ways. Psalm 32 reflects the joy and freedom of those whose sins are forgiven. Together, these passages convey a message of divine mercy, forgiveness, and the transformative power of turning to God in repenta...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | 1 John 1:7-10; 2:1 John emphasizes the transformative power of walking in the light of God's truth. He underscores the cleansing nature of Christ's blood, highlighting the importance of acknowledging our sins and seeking forgiveness for a restored relationship with God. The passage also encourages Christians to live authentically, acknowledging their need for continua...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Romans 8:31-39 The high watermark of Romans 8 (and New Testament theology) is found in these verses, reminding the followers of Jesus that what protects and assures them is God’s love.  Here the trinitarian love of Father, Son and Spirit explodes in waves of assurance, joy and power.  The trials of life cannot overcome the victory of the Christian, for death has been defeated a...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Romans 8:18-30 Suffering and glory are linked in the Christian life, as they are linked in Christ’s life. Martyn Lloyd-Jones argues that glorification (v30) is God’s ultimate goal for his children. That is, that they would experience “full and complete deliverance from sin and evil…in body, soul and spirit.” So God is working “all things” to bring that about, including sufferin...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Romans 8:12-17 One of the main challenges of faithfully following Jesus is experiencing subjectively what is true of Christians objectively. Perhaps no greater experience is the Holy Spirit helping us experience that we are sons and daughters of God, adopted into his family with unlimited access to his care, wisdom, compassion and protection. The passage speaks to the fear face...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Romans 8:1-13 Romans 8 is a rich reservoir of the implications and assurances of following Jesus, and the Holy Spirit central to the chapter's richness.  We will spend four weeks working through the chapter finding assurance and hope to live out our vision in 2024.  This first sermon will explore how the Spirit sets us from sin and death, assuring Christians that “there is...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 The Holy Spirit reveals God’s wisdom to followers of Jesus and stands in opposition to what Scripture calls the wisdom of the world.   One seeks to find answers to life through God and his word, the other seeks those answers as if God doesn’t exist.  Our current cultural moment that conceives of truth as socially constructed asks the questions Paul puts for...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Ezekiel 37:1-3, 9-14 Ezekiel was a man whose theology was born in the pain and passion of his own and his people’s suffering.  It is out of that pain we find words of hope rooted in the Spirit’s power to bring life, a power that goes back to Genesis 1 where the Spirit of God was ‘hovering over the waters’.  The question facing Ezekiel’s generation is the one facing ours.  In th...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 2:1-12 The birth of Jesus was the arrival of a King whose presence in the world ‘disturbs’ us the way it did Herod; a word that means “acute emotional distress”. As Wright put it, this news is political dynamite. Jesus is the true king of the Jews, and Herod is the false one.” And the arrival of the Magi underscores that Jesus’ reign is not limited to one nation, but th...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | John 1:1-14 Unlike Matthew and Luke, John’s reflection on the birth of Jesus is more of a philosophical meditation than a historical retelling. He sets the birth of Jesus in the context of Genesis (In the beginning) and in a way that challenges the Greek view of reality. Jesus’ birth will bring light into darkness, just as we find in Genesis 1 and 2. But more remarkably we find...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Luke 1:39-56 Luke narrates the story of Jesus’ birth through the story of Mary, who in this passage breaks into what is one of the most famous songs in all of Christendom. For Mary the news that God had seen her and her people caused her to burst into song. Jesus’s birth, as we will see in Herod’s story, is a threat to those already in power and a source of joy to those longing...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 1:18-25 The story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s gospel is seen through the eyes of a troubled Joseph. While Luke narrates the story through an excited Mary. Matthew paints the sober picture of a man who just found out that his fiance is pregnant. Would Joseph follow the expected path and divorce Mary? Or would he exercise faith and overcome his fear of shame and believe...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Luke 3:1-10 John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, was the last of the “Old Testament” prophets. His words challenged those who heard him as he sought to prepare their hearts for Jesus’ arrival. Advent is a season, in the words of Fleming Rutledge, that “is designed to bring us face-to-face with reality—reality about sin and death, reality about the human race, reality about God. Som...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Hebrews 11:13-16; 12;22-29 Perhaps the most familiar chapter in Hebrews is chapter 11 which lists multiple spiritual biographies to demonstrate that the motivation for running the race is a longing for a better country (11:16).  The death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus assures us that our destiny is not a dark, foreboding mountain that measures our virtues against our vic...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Hebrews 11:39 - 12:12 Because the ‘world is no friend to grace’, faith becomes a long obedience in the same direction.  Or as the metaphor found here, a race that requires perseverance.  We are told that in order to run the race of faith we must fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.  What does that mean and how can we do it?  The sermon will seek to ans...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Hebrews 7:18-28 Jesus is not just our source of encouragement, but perfection, a frequent theme in Hebrews that NT Wright defines as “God is working at bringing his world to perfection and doing what is necessary to make it complete”.  We long to be whole and for the world to be whole.  Jesus as our eternal priest (7:21; 28) is holy, blameless, pure and exalted (26).  As such h...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Hebrews 3:12-13; 4:14 - 5:10 The writer of Hebrews is concerned that in ‘these last days’ (1:2) our hearts will harden just as the Israelites’ hearts did in their wilderness journey. A hard heart manifests itself in cynicism as well as indifference to God and others. Therefore we need encouragement from others and from Jesus, our High Priest, who learned obedience through suffe...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Hebrews 2:1-11 Having celebrated the glory of Jesus as the ‘radiance of God’s glory’(Hebrews 1:3) the writer issues a warning to pay attention to what has been heard (2:1).  Implicit in this text is the real danger of ignoring the salvation procured for us by Jesus, either through indifference or suffering.  We find in these verses a picture of God’s Kingdom as ‘already but not...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 7:15-29 Epistemology is a fancy word for how we know things. Jesus concludes the sermon challenging his listeners to reflect on the nature of truth and wisdom. The current cultural narrative surrounding truth and wisdom is relativistic and individualistic. Truth is what I/we define it to be, and that to suggest otherwise is seen as a hidden ploy to oppress (truth as a p...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 6:19 -24 The current cultural narrative is that to be on the right side of history is to believe that religion is on the wane and through science, technology and political ideology the history will increasingly bend towards justice. Jesus directly contradicts this narrative by challenging his followers to look beyond material treasures (earthly) and instead build up hea...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 5:38-48 Eugene Peterson wrote, “The world is no friend to grace.”  Jesus’ summary of the currency of love in his culture as selective and conditional (You have heard) stands in contrast to the love he has come to demonstrate and restore.  One of the ironies of our cultural moment is that the call for tolerance has coincided with a religious zeal to identify and excommun...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 5:17-20 The current cultural narrative (You have heard it said) with respect to ethics and morality, can be summarized as ‘everyone has the right to do what is right and wrong for themselves’.   Jesus roots the ethics and morality of his Kingdom in the objective law of God, which he has come to fulfill.  This sermon is an opportunity to demonstrate the flawed logic of m...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Matthew 5:13-16 The current cultural consensus concerning identity is that it is chosen not received.  In other words we are free to the extent we can choose who we are and how to live without external constraints.  The modern answer to the ancient question: “Who am I?” is:  be true to myself.  Jesus counters that answer with the first two worlds of this text: “You are”.  In ot...

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE | Luke 6:17-26 Jesus compares and contrasts two different visions of how to live in this world. Every individual and culture has basic beliefs about the nature of reality that is based on faith.  These are often defined as worldviews and are unconscious assumptions that inform our daily lives.  How we spend our time.  How we view our money.  How we define happiness and purpose an...