WestGate Church Teaching

Sermon Description: In the second part of Matthew 16, Jesus begins to reveal to His disciples a very difficult truth: His life’s mission is going to cost Him His life. Jesus is going to be killed. Obviously, the disciples, and Peter particularly, don’t have categories for this. Being the Messiah means Jesus will be a conquering King, right? But as Jesus explains, we discover that allegiance to Him...

In the Gospels, Jesus asks a number of questions to people, and it’s never because He needs information. Jesus’ questions are pointed and often force people to dig deep, take stock of their lives and (usually) make a clarifying decision about their lives. In Matthew 16, Jesus does this with Peter, one of his closest disciples, and says to him, “What are people saying about me?” And then, Jesus tur...

Speakers: Jay (SA) + Corinna (SH) Passage: Matthew 15:21-28 Blurb: In one of the strangest and disturbing texts in the Gospels, a Gentile woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter and Jesus responds by essentially calling her a "dog." So, is Jesus a cold-hearted, mean-spirited bigot? Or is there something profoundly and surprisingly beautiful happening here? Could it be that what seems on the surface...

"Looks can be deceiving." We know it's true but rarely believe it about ourselves. In Jesus' day, there were many who looked religious, pious, and devoted on the outside but in actuality were far from the people God wanted them to be. "Playing religion" is tempting—to look the part of a good and faithful Christian. But experiencing real change in our lives necessitates getting real, with God and o...

Matthew 14 takes a pretty dark turn, as we see the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this World come into violent conflict. The government kills Jesus’ close friend and cousin, John the Baptist in a particularly gruesome way. This sends shockwaves through the disciples, and Jesus. But Jesus’ response - and the ensuing story - teach us so much not only about God’s good rescue mission for this worl...

Hey kids! It’s Story Time with Jesus! In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a number of parables to illustrate to His followers what God and what the Kingdom of God is really like. But Jesus isn’t just providing insight or lecturing or sharing knowledge: He is telling these stories to provoke a response in people. These are stories told with intention. Steve and David talk about parables as a teaching form a...

Jesus’ parables are among the best-known and most influential stories in the world. Even if people know nothing of Jesus, they have probably heard terms like “prodigal” or “good Samaritan.” We examine the use of this unique form of teaching, and take some time to dive into some of Jesus’ parables and in the process, we see that Jesus is inviting us to not only see things in a different way, but to...

The conflict continues between the Pharisee leaders and Jesus, culminating here with the leaders asking for a “miraculous sign” to prove to them that Jesus was really from God. Other places in the Bible, people ask for signs to help their tremulous faith, and God (gladly) obliges. Abraham, Gideon, and Joshua come to mind. But Jesus knows this is not a request done in good faith, and He’s not a cir...

In a fight with the Pharisees in Matthew 12, Jesus refers to Himself as being like Jonah. He’s clearly talking about Jonah’s miraculous rescue from certain death (which authenticated his message as being from God Himself), and foreshadows His own rescue from certain death as well (authenticating Him as Divine, too). Finny Abraham stops by to talk about the Resurrection and shares a true story from...

Description: Let’s pretend for a second that you’re wrong about something. There’s something you are doing or a way you’re thinking that’s (and again, we’re just pretending!) wrong. And let’s say that God wants to get your attention. Could He? If so, how? Steve Clifford stops by to talk about how we can avoid spiritual “group think” or “echo chambers” that can serve to ratify bad thinking Speakers...

Sermon Description: Jesus continues His head-on confrontation with the religious leaders of Israel. In this episode, the Pharisee leaders, faced with miracle after miracle showing definitive proof of Jesus’ power and authority move to a smear campaign. They claim that Jesus is only able to do these things because He is aligned with the dark, evil spiritual forces of Satan. Jesus not only refutes t...

How are you at handling conflict? Do you avoid it? Tiptoe around it? Try to defuse it? Throw some gasoline on it and watch as it all burns? Hopefully not the last one. But more importantly, how does Jesus handle conflict? What can we learn from Him? In Matthew 12, Jesus walks headfirst into some gnarly conflict with the religious leaders, and it gets so intense, that when the episode is over, the...

For the first 10 chapters of Matthew, Matthew records the amazing things that Jesus does and says. But then, in chapters 11 and 12, he tells the stories of how people respond to Jesus. And sometimes it’s awe, wonder and worship, but sometimes, it’s dramatic conflict. In Matthew 12, the Pharisees pick a fight with Jesus about the proper interpretation of the Torah (what we’d call the Old Testament)...

Description: As the Messiah, Jesus was good at a lot of thing. But there was one thing Jesus was awful at and that was meeting everyone around Him’s expectations. Dana and Andy stop by to talk about how Jesus disappointed people, and what that’s a good thing. We also talk about how Jesus’s response back to John the Baptist is actually a hidden Scripture code in which Jesus is basically telling Joh...

Sermon Description: It’s a common temptation, when things go wrong in life, to get upset with God. Why did this happen? Why *didn’t* this happen? In Matthew 11, we see John the Baptist unfairly and wrong imprisoned, facing the death penalty at the hands of a crazy ruler. He sends a message to Jesus with a question: are you the Messiah, or what? John has some clear ideas about how Jesus is and shou...

This week, we have a whole bunch of questions about Jesus’ famous “mission discourse speech” in Matthew 10. Jesus famously said “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” What was He trying to say, back then, and how does that relate to us, today? Secondly, we believe that Jesus is actually beautifully compelling with both His life and His words. So how does that jive with His warning th...

It’s easy, as Christians, to get so focused on what God is doing in our lives (or what we need Him for in our lives) that we begin to think that God exists *for* us. Like, Jesus came to earth and died for *me*. Which, on one hand, is true, but in another way is entirely false. Jesus came to save humanity. In Matthew 10, we have the second big speech of Jesus in Matthew, and in it, Jesus outlines H...

Sometimes in the Gospels, one story is told multiple times in multiple Gospels. And while the stories are the same, the details that each author includes are *slightly* different. This week, we looked at the story of a bleeding woman and a man named Jairus’ daughter which is found in Matthew 9, and Luke and Mark. But while Matthew only devotes 8 verses to these stories, Luke doubles that with 16 a...

In Matthew 9, Matthew tells two stories of two different people in similar desperate circumstances. One is a woman with a medical condition she’s been suffering from for 12 years, and the other is a man whose young daughter is terribly sick - indeed, almost dead. Both are out of options. And both fall at Jesus’ feet asking for help. The response of Jesus (recorded not only in Matthew but also in t...

Description: Comparison, it’s been said, is the thief of joy. And our modern Instagram world, it’s easy to compare and feel less than. Resident sage Steve Clifford stops by to talk about a few of the most dangerous enemies of contentment in our modern world. We talk about how social media can fuel our insecurities, and how to get out of that trap. And we talk about another source of insecurity in...

To be human is to have inferiority feelings, but the digital universe of social media presents an almost limitless potential for people to compare themselves against others. And this easily leads to discontentment, with our place in the world. With our perceived success. With the amount of things we have, or don’t have. Jesus, in Luke 12, warns us against this spirit of discontent, where we believ...

Title: THE AFTERWORD | Work Hard, Rest Easy - Week 3 - Money Description: In His teachings on money, it’s pretty clear that Jesus (and historically, the leaders of the early church) viewed money as a dangerous spiritual threat to people. And in the Bay Area, money might be the most frequently worshipped god because it promises so many different things to different people. Steve and Jay stop by to...

Money is the topic of more than 25 percent of Jesus’ parables. One out of every 10 verses (288 total) in the Gospels are about money and resources, and there are more than 2,350 verses in the Bible are about money and resources. Why? Because money can easily, easily lead to greed, which is enslavement to money and all that it promises. And this isn’t just a risk for those with plenty. It’s a high...

YouTube playlists: Work Hard, Rest Easy Sermon Description: According to recent research, Americans spend more than 5 hours a day on leisure, with about 3 hours of that watching streaming content. That’s a lot of leisure time. And yet, 60 percent of Americans say they’re more tired than ever. We’re exhausted. We want to stop. We want to rest. But the things we’re doing don’t seem to be replenishin...

Title: THE AFTERWORD | Work Hard, Rest Easy - Week 2 - Questions about Sabbath Description: This week, David shares actual questions submitted by WestGate Church congregants about what it means for someone in the Bay Area to “practice keeping the Sabbath.” What does this look like, practically, in a region whose culture flows swiftly toward “overwork.” Does the Sabbath *have* to be on a Sunday? Ir...