Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

The Lord's Prayer is not just something that we pray in church some Sunday mornings. It's a gift from Jesus to give us a model on how we can pray. For this reason, we ought to be praying this prayer on a regular basis. But before we can pray it, we have to understand what it says. This sermon series will go through the Lord's Prayer, line by line, and break down what is happening so that we we pra...

We wrap up the Why Church series by asking how we do church well. The church is a part of Gods work in reconciling the world back to himself and there are things the church can do to help make that happen. Pastor Joel walks through five things that all churches are called to, but are also things we want to to be known for. Those things are Justice and service, Community and imitation of each other...

The author of the book of Hebrews tells us the church is a gathering of the redeemed who enter Gods presence because Jesus has made a way. Specifically there are three "Let us" exhortations that constitute this author's vision to how we are to live as a community. The three Let us exhortations or lettuces are 1 Let us draw near to God, 2 Let us hold onto our hope, and 3 Let us challenge and encour...

To grow is to stay at the beginning. What does this mean? That we must consistently draw our Christian life from the essentials of our faith. And one of the primary essentials to our faith is the church. But why is this? And what are the reasons we attend each week? This series aims to get us thinking about the answer to this question. In this sermon Pastor Joel kicks us off by walking us through...

Every culture tells stories which point to the values struggles and ethics it holds. Naturally this happens with Christmas and the stories we tell ourselves both have overlap with and divergence from the true Christmas story told by Christians each year. In most other Christmas stories we are told we must have Christmas spirit or we will suffer some consequence. To start we look at A Christmas Car...

Mary's Song, The Magnificat is known as a revolutionary song. But what makes it so revolutionary? What made it get banned in some countries in history because it could cause trouble for those in power? Why does it cast down the mighty and lift high the lowly? In this sermon Pastor Julie walks through the powerful message of the song and what it says to both those who are mighty and those who are l...

A young teenage girl is suddenly awakened by a messenger from God who tells her she will be of central importance in Gods plan to redeem the world. Her response: A fearless and revolutionary song. For Advent season we are going to look at Mary's Song long revered in Christian history for the way it magnifies the God who it refers to. Specifically, Pastor Julie digs into how it helps us to find tru...

Daniel wraps up with a long vision of what will happen in the unfolding centuries and what God will do to vindicate his people. The big idea of the passage is that God rules history and it is all faithful to accomplish his purposes. Pastor Joel preaches on two bad ways and two good ways taken from the passage to respond to Gods rule of history. His rule works towards his purpose of entering into h...

Before Daniel can receive the final vision of the book, he learns that the angel delivering the vision has been detained by another spiritual being. This is a perplexing passage that deserves a full look at the realm of God and the sons of God. We learn about a parallel spiritual conflict to the one Daniel is revealing to us. As we study the topic of spiritual warfare we find out that the response...

In Daniel 9 we find a disappointed and frustrated Daniel one who had an expectation of God that is currently unmet. Daniel reflects on his people's relationship with God and there are so many takeaways for us in this jewel of a passage. As Pastor Joel digs into it, we find great encouragement for our own relationship with God as we examine it in depth, learning how we can rest firm in it because G...

Daniel 8 details major conflict in the world that will unfold and affect Gods people. Despite parts of the vision that terrify Daniel into making him want to take a nap, we've all been there, Daniel. The big picture is that God is in control and we can rest firm in that. This is great news but it shouldn't be enough for us to just know that and then do nothing with it. Its important that we pause...

In Daniel 7, a strange figure is central to Gods purposes in judging the beasts. That figure is revealed as Jesus where he confesses to being him on a trial before the Jewish religious authorities. In both cases God reveals or unmasks the situation as it is from heaven. In order for us to get the glory of the passage we have to reveal or unmask our own situations over and over in our own hearts. I...

In Daniel 7, Daniel has a vision of four beasts who cause havoc on the earth. In it, we find a picture that resonates with our own crazy times. Daniel 7 is a lot of things and the imagery in the passage is tough to understand but when we get a grasp of it we see that it is a goldmine for leading us to understand what God is doing in the world about evil and chaos. Pastor Joel illustrates how to un...

Daniel is thrown into a pit of hungry lions looking for something to devour. We may not ever get thrown into a lions den but we have all felt like we were in a pit surrounded by lions who are licking their lips. In this sermon on Daniel 6, Pastor Joel explains that it's important that we view the lions den well like Daniel does. Only when we reframe the experience and quit assuming we know what is...

In Daniel 5 King Belshazzar is confronted with the word of God and it terrifies him It is a picture of us when we read Scripture We can find ourselves confused by it like when the history of the text doesnt align perfectly with other history as happens in this passage offended by it or frustrated that it doesnt give us what we want We need to be ready to let Scripture achieve its purpose and we ne...

One of the main differences between the people of God and the world around them is the humility with which they are called to live with. Our worship of God is what sets us apart and one of the primary ways to live that worship out is in redefining success giving credit where it is due and repenting and looking to God. Pastor Julie walks through the back half of Daniel 4 to break down how Nebuchadn...

The book of Daniel along with many other books in Scripture offers a critique of power gone wrong calling those in authority to acknowledge that they cannot fulfill the role of God. In this passage, King Nebuchadnezzar finds himself called to repent and turn to God. It is hard for us to understand the role of someone like Nebuchadnezzar or Caesar or other emperors in the ancient world both because...

Daniel has shown us how we can follow Jesus and still find excellence, but this doesn't mean we wont sometimes face opposition. On top of that, we are faced with the sometimes confusing question of how we should act in a pluralistic society. In this sermon on Daniel 3, we find out how we are called to follow Jesus when we are pressured to bow to some idol. Find out more about Resurrection City Chu...

When the apostle Paul walks into Athens in Acts 17, he observes and is distressed by many idols all relating to different aspects of peoples lives. His response is a disruptive gospel that takes the system of life of the people of Athens and turns it on its head. In this Fall Kick Off sermon, Pastor Joel tells why this disruptive gospel is one we need to retune ourselves and why its good to be mad...

In Daniel 2, Daniel grows up learning the dominant trades of the culture which in Babylon means he is trained in astrology and divination. He excels in it but we find he only excels because of his reliance on God. In doing so he shows us how to be salt in our world, to worship Jesus, and to make the culture flourish as a result. This is what Christian excellence looks like. Pastor Joel describes w...

As we finish the first chapter of the book of Daniel, Pastor Joel walks through what Daniel teaches us about how the people of God are to relate to their culture. Instead of rejecting culture or receiving culture, we are to redeem it through respecting distinction. We talk about how to do it in our workplaces in particular, just as Daniel does at the highest echelons of Babylon.

In the introduction to the new sermon series on Daniel, Pastor Joel breaks down how the plight of Israel in exile in the book of Daniel makes it a quintessential book for us to explore in our own exile as Christians today. And the answer is that it is a matter of staying distinct through worship of Jesus alone in all areas of our lives that leads us to bless the culture we are in.

In this standalone sermon, Pastor Julie walks through how a story about a group of people who would stop at nothing to get their paralyzed friend in front of Jesus correlates to the vision of Res City Church.

In the final sermon in the Ruth series, Pastor Julie brings the story of Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi to a conclusion. We find that God's hesed towards Ruth and Naomi is fulfilled in amazing ways both in the present and in the larger story the Bible is telling. We find out what Gods hesed for them means for us as readers of this story now.

On this Baptism Sunday, Pastor Joel walks through Romans 6:1-7 and how baptism is a symbol that points us to the gospel of Jesus our unity with him our death to old things and life to new.