Roseville Covenant Sermons

To wrap up our Bridgebuilders series, we will return to the Old Testament prophets, where we started, to consider Isaiah’s words to the people of Israel post-exile. In Isaiah 58, they ask the question: “Why have we fasted and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” But, they seem to lack self-awareness as it turns out that when they “fast” their workers are...

One of the fun things about the Bible is that it is full of little sayings we throw around in everyday conversation without even realizing where they came from. This week, we will spend some time in Luke 10 which has not one - but two! - of these sayings. If you've ever referred to "a wolf in sheep's clothing" or "shaking the dust off your feet", you're squarely in Luke 10 territory. We find Jesus...

Who has told you the good news of Jesus? I can list a whole slew of people who turned my heart toward Jesus in small and big ways. Their influence moved me to consider God in deeper, truer, and more personal ways. They ‘evangelized’ me (evangel = good news). Sometimes when we think of evangelism we think of street preachers or formulaic gospel presentations and we get the ‘ick.’ And, because we do...

In a world with increasing global conflicts that seem harder and harder to resolve, it can feel like diplomacy is a lost art. Across the history of civilization, tribes, nations, and empires have called upon individuals to cross boundaries with wisdom and skill to negotiate peace and friendly relations. When describing the work of an apostle, Paul uses this image of a diplomat, telling the Corinth...

Divided. Isolated. Fractured. Atomized. These are the words we often hear used to describe our current cultural moment. There is discontent and a hurt in the world that creates estrangement, injustice, and violence (we call it sin). Yet in the face of these forces, God's people have been called to be peacemakers, rebuilders, and repairers (Isaiah 58:6-12). That's a huge task! What power makes it p...

"It is to your advantage that I go away" (John 16:7). I think a great number of us come to worship because we want to become closer to Jesus, so how then is it advantageous that Jesus "goes away"? Without some understanding of who the Holy Spirit is, you might get the sense that the point of the Christian life is to suffer in God's absence until one day we might be reunited, but the Bible tells a...

Confirmation is a long tradition in many Christian churches in which our youth commit to study, reflect, and practice their faith in the hope and preparation that they will continue to be life-long followers of Jesus. It culminates on Confirmation Sunday, which includes our students sharing their faith stories. The traditions, rites, and celebrations of Confirmation Sunday spotlight our youth as i...

Over the last 5 weeks we've surveyed ancient cultural customs, re-examined the stories of Hebrew patriarchs, considered the context of Israelite law, looked at historic heresies, and had plenty of time to reflect on historic doctrine. The book of Galatians is indeed "a crash course" of the gospel and would be an excellent textbook for "Christianity 101." Yet all these challenging thoughts and idea...

Many political scientists and statesmen have observed that while freedom is the bedrock of democracy, freedom requires exercises of responsibility to keep from collapsing on itself. It's sometimes described as the difference between "liberty" and "license". License thinks freedom is for your own self-satisfaction. Liberty is freedom that we extend to others for the sake of common good. In the firs...

Some decades ago, a sociologist suggested that one of the major sources of increasing depression in our world comes from the pressures we put on ourselves to create and manage an image or an "identity." He called it, "the weariness of self." The effort to fit in, stand out, or rise above can be exhausting. We have phrases in our parlance that capture this (eg "we're slaves to fashion"). Biblical w...

We may think the days of succumbing to peer pressure are long gone; that saying what we think others want us to say or doing what they want us to do or wearing what they want us to wear was for the high school lunch table. But, when we’re honest with ourselves, we know that people pleasing doesn’t just go away with adolescence. We are much too fickle for that. As we move into the second chapter of...

An old proverb says, "a leopard can't change its spots." We assume that people are largely predictable and personalities are largely fixed. We make certain judgments about a person who drives a large pickup truck and shops at Fleet Farm, and make another set of judgement about someone who drives an EV and shops at the organic co-op. Our culture has excelled at believing that certain things about u...

When you piece together the stories of the first Easter from the four gospels, you may notice that essentially no one that morning was instantly able to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. They experience bewilderment, curiosity, confusion, and fear... but not many immediately understood or even celebrated that Christ was risen. Each of the four gospels give us some unique details about th...

Historians have long wondered how Jesus showed up to Israel's capital one Sunday morning welcomed as a hero, only 5 days later to be crucified like a criminal. What happened in between Palm Sunday and Good Friday? To answer the question we'll need to dig into a complex religious-political situation of a raging culture war within 1st century Judea, provoked by the crisis of Roman occupation, that c...

Throughout our series in Luke for Lent, story after story has invited us to reflect on our theme: "change of heart." Whether it's a man who feels the need to build bigger barns to deal with the "problem" of his abundance, an upstanding religious man whose ability to part with his wealth stands between him and his own question of righteousness, or a "small" man who, though he is despised, rises to...

We all like a good redemption story, and followers of Christ are told to rejoice when a sinner repents (Luke 15:7), but sometimes it's hard not to be skeptical when a nasty scoundrel makes a sudden conversion to Jesus. We can probably think of more than a few examples where it seems a public conversion feels little more than a publicity stunt and doesn't seem to lead to meaningful transformation....

In one of the most provocative and difficult passages in the gospels, we meet a man who is both very wealthy and very righteous. He is generous, just, self-controlled, friendly, and honest. Yet when he asks if all this is enough to "inherit eternal life", Jesus tells him to sell every last thing he owns, give it to the poor, and follow him. The man's face falls, and he walks away disappointed at J...

This Lenten season we are examining Jesus' teachings about wealth, poverty, generosity and the behaviors of the Christian around their money and possessions. But behavior does not arise out of nowhere. Behavior stems from belief. What we believe about God and God's provision impacts how we give and save; how we spend and share. When Jesus was asked a question about dividing an inheritance, he star...

Repentance is a Biblical word that you'll find all across the scriptures and is central to the Good News of Jesus. It's the word the prophets use to invite change and transformation in God's people. The word in the New Testament is metanoia, which literally means "afterthought" or "changed mind." Repentance involves sorrow over our sins and errors, but it also invites us to look ahead to consider...

When I hear the word "rule," my mind often goes to the classroom, courtroom, or ball field. I tend to think of legal restrictions imposed upon us not to be broken without penalty. Yet the ancient meaning of the word "rule" isn't so much about restriction, but support. The old Latin word "regula" literally means "straight stick." A regula could be a cane you lean on to help you walk, or it could be...

One of the foundations of the gospel is that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection ensures a union to the life of God and no person or institution needs to stand in between you and your maker except Jesus Christ himself (1 Timothy 2:5). We sometimes call this our "personal relationship with Christ". But even though our faith is deeply personal, scripture simultaneously tells us our faith is not pri...

When I was young, I remember learning a song in Sunday School that went like this: "The B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me! I stand alone on the word of God - the B-I-B-L-E!"  The tune was catchy and I suppose it could be credited for planting a seed in my young mind that reading the Bible was an important thing to do. What I didn't know is that cultivating rhythms of reading my Bible along wit...

We live with all kinds of biological necessities and forces of nature that impact how we live our lives and how we plan our days (think of sleep schedules, bathroom breaks, shelter from weather). Perhaps the necessity we order our lives around most is food. When will you eat? What will you eat? With whom will you eat? For most of us, this physical necessity anchors at least three points in our day...

Most of us know that the work of artists and craftsmen involves creativity, but equally important to arts and science is the practice of design. A creative idea alone doesn't always make for something beautiful to appreciate. The elements of design are careful decisions a crafter makes to serve the subject of the piece. A photographer uses focus and framing to emphasize the face of a model. A tail...

I don't like to be a pessimist, but I can't help feeling that more often than not there is a great "let down" in the days following Christmas. All the energy and excitement our culture puts into the anticipation of Christmas morning only sometimes lives up to the enormous expectations of happiness. Perhaps this is because we overly fixate on the event of the nativity but overlook the eternal reali...