Renew Communities Teaching Podcast

Often people say that God appears to be too judgmental and even harsh in the Old Testament while Jesus is often seen as loving and full of acceptance. In this week's sermon, we try and understand what judgment looks like in the Old Testament and make sense of what God's true intentions are when we encounter passages of judgment in the Old Testament.

One of the biggest questions people ask when they read the Bible is where does evil come from? There are some who blame God and wonder why He would allow evil to exist at all. In week 4 of our series, Sarah Knepper helps us understand the evil we see in the Old Testament and how God responds.

One of the craziest things about reading the Old Testament in 2018 is how different the culture is in relation to love, sex, and marriage. As we read we should have all sorts of questions about what is going on and how God views these things. As always as we work to understand what God is up to in the people in these stories we begin to understand what he may be up to in our lives.

The Old Testament is stocked full of laws and commandments that God's people were meant to follow. The question for most of us is what's up with all these laws and why is God so worried about every single little thing? In week 2 of our series, we look at what the Law really is, what it tells us about God and His people and what it means for our lives today.

When we read the Old Testament, it can get confusing because it feels like we are reading about life on another planet. It can be difficult, to be honest about how we really feel when we are reading it, but in order to understand it, we need to be honest. The Old Testament invites us to wrestle with its stories and meaning because that’s what Jesus did. It’s only when we wrestle with the Old Testa...

Through his resurrection, Jesus has given us victory over everything that threatens our identity, relationship, and future. The problem is most of us are not experiencing that kind of victory in our life. We either don’t know Jesus, we don’t believe he holds this kind of power or we have not given him authority in our lives in a way that we can share in His victory. This Easter we talk about how H...

Much of what we face in our world is upsetting. There’s fear of the future or our past. There are threats to our way of life and our health. There’s concern when we lack control. There’s even the turmoil of our own hearts and minds. We are often desperate for peace but we have nowhere to go. Jesus is the prince of peace and his ability to provide us with peace extends into every aspect of our live...

Shame is a strange motivator. It can cause us to run, hide or project falsehoods out of a desire to protect ourselves from letting the truth come out. We carry around shame in ways that form us and define our relationships. Jesus sets us free from shame by lavishing grace on us. The question is how do we allow grace to cover our shame and is it possible to live in a new way because of Jesus.

There’s a point for most of us where we don’t want to give in to sin any longer but we don’t know how to stop. We work on strategies and plans that may give us the power to overcome our struggle with our sin but it can be so hard to beat it. What if you could find freedom? What if Jesus could really set you free from something that you can’t beat on your own. What if that could happen not someday...

In the book of Revelation God gives His people a preview of what the final act of His story looks like. Too often we make the final act of His story about us and miss the whole point of how we are to live today. In week 6 of the Story of God, we try to understand the point of the final act of the Story of God and let that form us into people of the preview.

In week 5 of our Story of God series, we take a look at God's imagined future for the temple and we discover that we, the church, are the Temple. We then explore what would it look like if you let God’s imagined future shape the imagined future for your life.

In week 4 of the Story of God we start talking about redemption - and when you talk about redemption you're talking about Jesus! Jesus takes all that God has been doing in creation, the temple and Israel and opens up the opportunity for all people to engage with God whenever and wherever they are.

As the story of God continues we find that God’s desire is always about the relationship with humanity and as things continue throughout the Old Testament God builds a relationship with an entire people group - the Israelites. In week 3 we look at why God wants that relationship, what role the temple plays in that and humanities propensity to run the opposite direction of God.

If you look around the world you there's plenty that takes place that we know "isn't how it's supposed to be." The idea that there's something better that was meant to be, points us to a story bigger than ourselves and a standard that we all long for. In the second part of the Story of God, we take a close look at the impact that sin has had on our lives, creation and the connection we have with G...

The creation story is about God building his temple, the place where heaven and earth connect. God creates humans to take the raw potential of creation and use it in ways that bring glory to God in order to expand God’s temple presence and potential throughout all creation. The creation/temple account tells us what project we were created for and what project we should be apart of right now!

There are so many places throughout the Bible that God’s Word is described as something extraordinarily meaningful that can have a tremendous impact on our everyday life. The key is knowing what to do with the Bible so you can allow it to do it’s work on you too! In week 3 we talk about what it looks like to consume the Bible in 2018.

Some of the biggest problems we have with the Bible is our misunderstanding of what it really is. In week 2 of our "Year of the Bible" series, we’ll work to understand where the Bible came from, what it means to be both a human and divine book and why all this matters for us as we read it today.

We have a problem with the Bible. More and more followers of Jesus don’t read it, don’t know how to read it, don’t even like it, and frankly, take issue with it. So why do we follow the Bible? Because we follow Jesus. He is our authority, but he has mediated his authority through the Bible. And on its pages, we discover the map to the life that Jesus has on offer.

We have spent the whole year looking at the life and teachings of Jesus. Our encounters with Jesus have created movement and energy in our hearts. Now, what do we do with it? Jesus leaves us with the simple, yet all-encompassing invitation to "follow me." What life will we choose, our life or his?

On Christmas Eve we took one final look at the Christmas story to understand what it means for God to be with us. King Herod is informed by the Magi a new king has been born. What’s so interesting about Herod’s appearance is that the first invitation to leave behind wicked ways is extended to the most wicked man the Jewish people would have known. In week 4 we see how God is with us - even in our...

Joseph experiences the most shocking thing he could ever have thought possible when he finds out his wife is pregnant. There are so many thoughts and emotions that had to be running through his heart and mind from fear, to doubt to shame… maybe even anger. Even in the midst of all those thoughts and emotions, God is with Joseph. In week 3 of our God With Us series, we talk about how God is with us...

In week 1 of our series, we take a look at the generations of waiting that Israel went through waiting for Jesus to arrive. We’ll try and understand how God is with us as we wait and how our hope is in the promise more than the reality of the moment that we’re experiencing.

We all deal with temptation. It’s part of what it means to be human. Since Jesus was human just like you - he too dealt with temptation. What’s amazing is Jesus was tempted and did not sin. In our final week of Human Like Jesus, we look at how Jesus dealt with temptation and discover how we can deal with temptation just like Jesus.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus is regularly seen giving thanks. The question is why? Was this just a customary activity of the day or was it rooted in something more? In week 2 of Human Like Jesus we talk about what the gratitude of Jesus shows us about his connection to God the Father and how thankfulness can increase the amount of joy we experience in our daily lives.

It’s weird to admit this but Jesus got angry. It’s safe to assume that He still does. So what kind of things made Jesus angry and what does that tell us about what kind of things in our world might make Him angry today? In week 1 of our Human Like Jesus series we dig deep into the actions and reactions of Jesus and try and understand how we can learn how to be Angry like Jesus.