All Sermons - City Church-Eastside: Recent Episodes
Scott Armstrong, Mike Boland, Justin Smith
The Established Heart | James 5:1-12 | James: Faith Alive David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Boasting in God’s Will | James 4:13-17 | James: Faith Alive Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
True Wisdom | James 3:13-18 | James: Faith Alive David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
True Religion | James 1:19-27 | James: Faith Alive Mike Boland | Pastor of Spiritual Formation
Faith Tested & Sustained | James 1:1-18 | James: Faith Alive Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
The Sacraments & Our Faith | 1 Corinthians 10:1-7, 14-21 | Sinai to Sunday Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
Why We Tithe | Genesis 4:1-7 | Sinai to Sunday David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Why We Gather | 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 | Sinai to Sunday David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Transformed: by Glory, for Glory | Exodus 34:10-35 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Resolving the Tension of Mercy & Judgement | Exodus 34:1-9 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Family Dynamics within the Family of God | Exodus 33 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Consecrating a Kingdom of Priests | Exodus 29 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Families & Discipleship
Forming a Freed People | Exodus 21:1-11 | EXODUS Mike Boland | Pastor of Spiritual Formation
Disappointment Following Great Expectation | Luke 24:13-35 | Epiphany David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
The Candle of Love | John 3:14-18 | Advent David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
The Candle of Peace | Isaiah 9:2-7, Philippians 4:4-9 | Advent Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
A Better Fear | Exodus 20:18-21, Hebrews 12:18-29 | EXODUS Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
The Promise of Contentment in an Anxious World | Exodus 20:17, Philippians 4:4-12 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Pursuing a Life of Truth | Exodus 20:16, Matthew 5:33-37 | EXODUS Brandon Dean | Associate Pastor at New City Church Lawrenceville
Pursue Generosity & Flourishing | Exodus 20:15, Mark 10:17-27 | EXODUS Scott Armstrong | Lead Pastor
Holy Sexuality | Exodus 20:14, Matthew 5:27-30 David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
Honor Your Elders | Exodus 20:12, Mark 7:1-13 | EXODUS Scott Armstrong Recording note: This recording starts in the middle of the sermon text reading. Please reference the passages below:
The sermon text reading was Exodus 20:1-2, 12 & Mark 7:1-13
Drop Your Nets: The Call, Life & Mission of John | Matthew 4:17-22 Ryan Johnson | Lead Pastor at New City Church Lawrenceville
Crossing the Red Sea for You & Me | Exodus 14 | EXODUS David Entrekin | Pastor of Family & Discipleship
The Feast of Unleavened Bread | Exodus 13:1-16 | EXODUS Mike Boland | Pastor of Spiritual Formation
*We experienced a technical difficulty at the beginning of the sermon, so the the bad audio has been cut from the recording.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is everything. It is the pivot in history that changed everything. The center of our faith is ultimately not the cross but the empty tomb. Paul doubles down on this in 1 Cor. 15 (55 verses!) and says without the Resurrection, your faith is in vain and collapses. In this passage, we will see that the Resurrection of Jesus changes what we believe about the Gospel and world and then changes how we actually live. It is the Resurrection that ultimately makes the Good News the Good News.
Gluttony is often thought as an overindulgence in food and drink. It is certainly that but it is much more. It is a vice of excess pleasure or pleasure whose aim is self-gratification. It is the pursuit of pleasure as a sort of self-mission, rather than as a gift from God. It creates a paradox: we fill ourselves up on emptiness, costing us our souls. Scripture’s response is twofold. First, there is a spirit of fasting that frees us from dependence on pleasure (food/drink or otherwise) so we might see our true need of God. And it is Jesus is truly fasted (“I thirst” at the Cross) to free us from sin. Second, there is a call to feasting. God is the Lord of the Feast throughout Scripture and as the psalmist shows us, he is what satisfies that then allows us to enjoy the pleasures of the world as part of His mission. So, in the end, we learn how to feast, which is not pleasure seeking and we learn to worship him through an enjoyment of God’s creation.
This kicks off our prayer series. The first sermon is a sort of general call to prayer showing its necessity for our lives. It’s our primary means of knowing God and experiencing intimacy with Him and it also aligns our hearts and lives with His and His world. It is because of Jesus and the power of God that not only can we pray but our prayers are heard and change us and the world.
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Learn more The message of Christmas has been sullied for many years. Often, it boils down to a saccharine sweet message of good tidings that delight for a day but, like the peppermint canes of Christmas, last but a day before dissolving into the harsh realities of life. But the actual message of Christmas is different. It moves us from the ethereal to the real and that is precisely what God did by becoming a man. It isn’t just that Jesus came with a message, Jesus IS the message. John’s prologue gives us a beautiful entry into this message. John intends for this to be the entry into the whole Gospel itself. And when we receive this message (v. 12), it changes our lives—our identities and our way of living.
In our Light From Darkness series, this is the only passage that doesn’t directly mention “light.” Instead, the glory of the Lord shines. Glory is the shining presence of God and this matters because Jesus has just been born—hence, the glory of God filling the nighttime sky. Jesus is the glory of God revealed. And of all the people in the world it is first revealed to, it is to ordinary shepherds. It is a picture of grace that God reveals Himself to the ordinary and lowly (can we see our own lowliness?) and the message of the manger is a picture of the very nature of God where dominion and power are wrapped in the swaddling cloths of humility. Christmas, then, shows us everything we really need to know about God: power and mercy, kingship and humility. In this paradox, we are confronted and called to follow Him and do what the shepherds did—to go find Him and then pour out praise and worship through our lives lived for Him.
Continuing our Advent series, we ask this week, “Are we preparing for Christmas Day or are we preparing for the Savior?” Zacharias, in his prophecy, describes an epic, cosmic event that shifts everything with the coming of Jesus. In this passage, we’re told what it means to know God and what He has mercifully done for us. Most importantly, the birth of Jesus is described as the dawning of the light—hope that the darkness will be chased away and we will be free.
We end our DNA series with a passage concerning joy and where it is found. In Scripture, wine is always associated with joy and God’s abundance. It is no coincidence, then, that the first miracle of Jesus is turning water into wine at a local wedding. John says it was a sign—it was pointing to something much bigger. It was pointing to the blood of Christ that would be poured out for our sins so that we would feast eternally with God at the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev. 21). All of this means we are to be the “Church of the Good Wine”—what we have to offer to he city is festal joy that comes from our salvation in Him.
Come, follow me.” Maybe the most iconic words in the Gospels and repeated many times by Jesus, including here. Discipleship into Christ is the whole purpose of the church and we had better understand exactly what it means and entails if we are to live as Christians. Jesus says it involves a whole renunciation of the self and our attachments as the center of our lives. It isn’t that those things and other people are valuable, just that Jesus must be more supreme than anything else. And far from “demoting” the value of everything else, we can actually love everything else more truly when our loves are rightly ordered.
Being the church should be synonymous with generosity. Whether an individual or a collective group like a body of believers, we recognize generosity when we see it but in this passage, Paul seeks to re-start a call to generosity that has been waylaid by distrust and perhaps other reasons. In doing so, he lays out a biblical vision for not only the benefits of generosity for ourselves and others but shows us how it is the Gospel alone that generates the desire and drive to be generous. When the church lives into this calling, we and the world experience more kingdom abundance and life!
“This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.” It’s what we say after each Scripture reading and we do it because we believe God’s word is a treasure worth celebrating. One of CCE’s commitments is to preach and teach God’s word faithfully. We believe it has authority in our lives because God is the designer of life and knows what we need. And, as the psalmist says, we can “delight” in it because when we grow in learning something that is good, delight naturally happens and because “delight” is another way to describe a healthy relationship. Ultimately, God’s word is more than instruction but is the very voice of a loving God towards His bride, the church, longing to be with us. And the best news of all is Jesus is the Living Word that transforms us by changing our hearts, the very thing the Psalmist says they long for.
This Sunday we start our “DNA" series. DNA are the fundamental building blocks of life. Our DNA ultimately expresses us into the world. The DNA of our faith does the same thing…or at least it should. In the series opener, we’ll unpack “Gospel,” the fundamental of our fundamentals. In this passage, Jesus tells us that the Gospel doesn’t just save us (through His mission to die for us and raise us up with him, v. 31) but cause us to truly live (through walking as disciples, 34-37). Later in the series, as we explore children’s ministry, generosity, worship and so much more—in each instance, the building blocks are the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
King David is in the Pit. It’s a place of stress, fear and anxiety. In the place, David chooses not to rely upon his own strength to get him out but his memory of God’s past faithfulness, coupled with the power of prayer in humility. Our great task is to remember the way of the Lord and how He has provided for us in the past, trusting He will do the same in the present. If we don’t, we’ll place our functional trust in something or someone else and never escape our pits. But what we know that even David didn’t know was the perfect obedience (v. 8) of Jesus who lived in perfect trust and makes it possible to know the Father, our place of trust.
Psalm 23 may be the best known passage in all of Scripture and is a main stay at funerals but familiarity may breed contempt. Why exactly is this Psalm so well loved? It’s because in the midst of hardship, David shows us what both comfort and confidence can look like. Neither are in our circumstances nor possessions in this world but are found in God alone. He is the shepherd who protects, provides and guides. But we have an even greater confidence than David because we have the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for the sheep (John 10.11). Because of Christ, we can live without fear despite the world around us.
As Jesus approaches the cross, he prepares his disciples for what is about to happen. All coming from his absolute love (v1) for them.
- How do you experience the love of Jesus towards you?
- What is your response to Jesus/God becoming like a slave, kneeling before us and washing your feet? What does your heart do with a Jesus/God that serves you instead of requiring you to serve him?
- What does it look like for you to go and live Jesus’ pattern out to those in our community? What happens for you as you consider becoming like Jesus to pursue and wash the “dirty feet” of those in our community?
“Jesus wept.” John 11.35 is the shortest verse in the Bible and yet it contains some of the most potent messaging. It’s part of the resurrection of Lazarus story we’ll look at and, in many ways, is at the heart of the whole story. You can’t build an accurate portrait of Jesus without engaging His tears. Those tears speak volumes of not only His humanity but ours. They confer to us a way of moving in a troubled, broken world that allows us to be not only be more fully human, but also more godly. And as we’ll see, it is through the tears of Jesus that we find salvation and, paradoxically, one day freedom from tears themselves.
- Where do you find yourself in sorrow today?
- Scott said the tears of Jesus represent both His humanity and His true presence with us—is it hard for you to “see” Jesus as one who weeps for you or is it easier to see Jesus as simply distant power who defeats sin and death? What difference does it make that He is the “God who weeps”?
- Scott said the revolution in this passage is knowing the meaning of His tears—the angry tears of determination and the His tears over His impending death. How does a better understanding of why Jesus weeps change your faith?
- Scott concluded by saying Jesus transforms our tears—away from grief without hope to hope within grief. We don’t dismiss our tears but neither do we get lost in them without hope. Are there places in your sorrow today that need to be informed by the hope of Jesus Christ?
- Besides the examples Bob talked about in the sermon, can you think of other examples where Jesus showed patience?
- In what ways do you believe that God is patient with you?
- Why are humility, patience and humble service counterintuitive regarding cultural transformation and kingdom advancement?
- In which area do you struggle most to be patient - Suffering? Service to others? Love? Prayer? Verbal witness?
- Bob said that living in union with Christ can bring His patience to transform our hearts. What do you think it means to live in union with Christ? Are there ways you can learn more about this?
SERMON DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Do you struggle with the idea of personal evil/Satan? If so, why do you think that is?
2. Scott said Jesus faced three types of temptation that cover the gamut of our lives: appetite, approval and ambition. Of those three, which do you find to be the most tempting?
3. Scott said that Jesus is our escape because He did (refuse to give in to sin) what we have not done and In the process secured our eternal life at the Cross. He is the Living Word that we can draw on in times of need through His Word. What practices do you need to start to be prepared for the battle for your heart? What practices do you need to stop for the same reason?
We begin our series, Portrait of Jesus, with an opening scene in the Gospels where Jesus declares that God’s kingdom has come with His arrival and immediately he begins to not only teach this—leading to proclamations of amazement among the people—but demonstrated the kingdom through casting out evil spirits. What’s the significance of it all? Jesus is saying, “The King has come and He comes with authority and power.” And what do we do before a true king? We bow. Jesus calls His discipled and He calls us to follow Him too—to bow down in submission—that we might discover the joy of becoming like Him. In discovering the true portrait of Jesus, we see ourselves as we were truly created to be.
- Have you ever met someone of great power, fame and worth? What was it like?
- Scott said Jesus comes to us as a king but an unexpected one, to be sure. He gives us a glimpse into His power over life itself in a cosmic showdown with evil but is determined to keep a low profile all the same. How do you make sense of this seeming paradox? What does it teach us for our own lives as His followers?
- Scott said we all have “kings” that we bow down to, pay homage too. What “kings” have you been following lately in the place of the true King?
- Scott concluded by noting we have been called to follow Him and this means to “repent and believe” but that is not a one time event as Christians but an ongoing reality. How is God speaking to you about this right now?
Due to technical difficulties, we do not have a podcast recording of the sermon from September 20th. However, you can watch the entire service on Youtube by clicking here. We had the pleasure of hearing from our friend Rev. David Kennebrew from Freedom Fellowship Church!
Check back soon for sermon audio!
Click here to download this week’s Devotion and Discussion Guide.
You can find the sermon and worship for August 9th on our Facebook page. Click here!
Click here to download this week’s Devotion and Discussion Guide.
Psalm 32 Sermon including Worship Music, Prayers of the People, and a Story of Grace. All worship songs reference CCLI License for Copyright (11109030) and S...
Click here to download this week’s Devotion and Discussion Guide.