Doxa Church Sermons: Recent Episodes
Doxa Church: Bellevue, WA
Christmas always feels like such a special season, even to those who aren’t believers. We tend to get a sense of longing for purpose or fulfillment during the holidays, implicitly hoping that Christmas day will give us what we seek. Unfortunately, there is always this letdown after Christmas ends and regular life resumes. But that doesn’t mean Christmas can’t provide us answers to our deepest longings. It turns out, Christmas fulfillment will find us when we find the source of the Christmas season. If we discover Jesus, we discover an immeasurable fulfillment that gives us purpose for our everyday lives. Then we are free to live with peace and on mission, as God intended with a perfect eternity in mind.
The Christmas season reminds us that, as westerners, we do have a lot compared to other parts of the world. Even the poorest among us live incredibly well compared to people in other countries. It is difficult not to feel self-sufficient in a world where we feel all of our needs are met. However, our desire for purpose and meaning should demonstrate to us that there are things we need that we cannot provide ourselves. In John 6:1-14, we see Jesus providing for his people. His instinctual love for us provides for us in ways we don’t understand. His death and resurrection meet the truest needs we have, even if we don’t see them all of the time.
Hope does so much for the human spirit. It presses us forward in life, continuing with vision so that our desired hopes come to fruition. Hope allows us to experience hardship or despair and press on, knowing there's a future hope to be revealed. Hope also excites us, providing synergy for our future endeavors. Hope comes in many forms, but the ultimate hope comes in the form of a baby born in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago. In Baby Jesus, God presents us with a hope that the evil, injustice, brokenness, and hardship that plagues our world would finally be destroyed. This hope is not just temporal, it is eternal, giving us a spiritual future to look forward to.
Christmas is that time of year where family gets together and celebrities the holidays. For Christians, it is a time to come together and reflect on how Jesus coming into the world blesses us. Unfortunately, many of us are away from our families or don’t have much family to speak of. And some of us have contentious relationships with our families. At the heart of the Christmas story is a message of unity surrounding family. Jesus was adopted by Joseph and many in Jesus lineage have odd histories that complicate his family tree. Despite or brokenness, hard pasts, or tension-filled relationships, God still welcomes us into his family, bringing healing to those that need it and community to those that lack it. God is our eternal father, and his tender heart is on full display during Christmas.
Generosity isn’t simply a way to transfer wealth or possessions to others who have less than you. It turns out there is something inside you that instinctively wants to serve those who are in need. We are all people made in God’s image, and as a result, we want to do as our creator has done. Since our God is fundamentally a giver, we have a deep desire to give as well. God has given us his son Jesus to be the substitute for our sin. When we take Jesus as our Lord, we inherit a generous spirit, one that should desire to bless others. We may sometimes find ourselves not wanting to give our resources. Behind that mindset is a missed opportunity to live in sync with god’s created order for the world, which is rooted in radically, condition-less generosity.
Being the church requires doing what the church is created for. Nothing is more urgent than the mission Jesus gives the church to make disciples. We have been adopted in God’s wonderful family, and we should seek to extend that love to others so they too can join the family of the Father. Living out God’s mission slowly brings the Eternal Kingdom into fruition while granting us immeasurable purpose in the process.
Prayer is the life force of our spiritual lives that grows the church, individually and communally. When we pray we unleash the Holy Spirit to guide us through our daily lives and to move God’s will into existence. When we pray we get in touch with God’s overarching plans, and this brings us joy, peace, and contentment in our everyday lives. God is also capable of moving in powerful ways if we pray. But without prayer, we experience powerless lives, out of touch with our father and his love.
Community isn’t simply a fun addition to a great church that helps you find friends. Community is how the church solves our created instinct for love, affection, correction, and confidence in Jesus. When we miss out on the community a church provides we fill those needs in other ways or neglect them altogether. We need community, not because something is wrong with us, but because something is right with us. This also means that our neighbors and friends who don’t know Jesus need community as well, and the church can help them meet that deep, core need.
The church is a collection of people united for the common purpose of knowing Jesus ourselves and making Jesus known to the rest of the world. If that is our definition of Church then our church experience should be far different than what is common in the western world.
In years past it has been easy to take gathering together as the church for granted. In a Post-Covid world, many of us returned to gathering albeit in a modified way. However, for some, the importance of the gathering is lost on us as we have grown accustomed to Sundays alone, and for others, we’ve just gotten busy with life. The issue is Jesus called us to be church and to be church we have to be together. When we don’t gather we miss out on engaging God in the way he created to engage him: Together. We also miss the profound opportunity of experiencing the Holy Spirit move amongst us to convict us of sin, comfort us in hardship and confront the lost in love.
Jesus is the foundation on which we build our church. He is the highest authority in the church and he informs everything the church says and does. He himself claims that he is the WAY and the TRUTH. We are often very good at learning the truths of Jesus but are keen to forget the way of Jesus. We can’t fully know the truths of Jesus without knowing the way of life he calls us to. It is this important fact that helps us understand just what the church is created to be.
This first beatitude sets the pace for the entire sermon. Jesus is casting a vision for his Kingdom and for human flourishing in the midst of it and he begins with poverty of spirit for a reason. Before anything can be poured into the Christian, she must be emptied. The word that both Matthew and Luke use for “poor” describes the lowest levels of society, poverty so extreme that they have literally nothing. So whether Jesus is talking about real poverty (as Luke describes) or spiritual poverty (as in Matthew), the condition is the same, emptiness in complete need of filling. This is the essential posture of the Christian because it is the only posture that can turn wholly to Christ to be filled.
We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.
We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.
We are Family, Servants, and Missionaries who Gather, Go, Give, and Grow to be disciples of Jesus, making disciples together in the everyday stuff of life.
Pastor Jeff discusses where the Elders and Staff feel God is leading Doxa in 2018, our hopes for the year, and the call to our people.
The Christmas story, from one perspective, is the unlikely story of God becoming a child, given to an unwed mother and adopted by his earthly father. This adopted Son would go on to die on a cross so that all those who believe in him might be adopted into his heavenly family. This is a remarkable thing for a God to do and it expresses his loving and accepting heart in a truly unique way. This Christmas, let’s remember that have all been orphaned from our heavenly father and are remade into a family only through the tragic sacrifice of the firstborn son.
The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to save us. But in all cases, good news has to be preceded by bad news. The bad news of the gospel is that we are deeply in need of saving. When the Bible says that he came for the widows and orphans, the fatherless, sojourner, slave and poor, it means us. It’s easy for us to think of others as poor, powerless and in need but they are no more so than we are. Those with most material blessing, and therefore the least perceived need are also the most in danger of missing the good news of the gospel. John says in verse 11 that Jesus “came to his own, but his own did not receive him.” Why didn’t they receive him? Because they didn’t recognize the salvation he was offering. They didn’t recognize the need he came to meet. They didn’t recognize the need because they thought of themselves as sufficient, successful even, and to admit that Jesus was a Savior meant that they had to admit that there was some area in their lives that was failing. Jesus came to save us from our sins, but before doing that he has to save us from ourselves.
God entered into his creation to redeem it from the inside out, not to bestow redemption on it from the outside in. Every other faith or philosophy puts the burden of salvation in the laps of the devotees. Only Jesus came to his people to know, love and save them. The essential posture of our God is missional. In creation and re-creation, God enters in. Jesus not only enters into the world that he made but enters into the muck and the mire of the everyday lives of his people. In Philippians 2, Paul tells us that Jesus lowered himself to leave heaven and become a human, and lowered himself further to be killed on the cross for us. That’s the proactive love of God for his people.
God came himself. He didn’t send an envoy or a document. His desire isn’t primarily that we would know about him or simply obey him. He came himself so that we might know him. He is the focus of our faith and should be the focus of our discipleship. A disciple knows her teacher, not just his teachings. We know that this wasn’t incidental because later in Jesus’ ministry, he told a group of Pharisees that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. A love relationship with God is the most important thing a person can have. It is our purpose, our telos. Everything we learn and know about God is meant to reveal his essential loveliness, including (and climatically) in the appearance of his Son on the earth.
God sent Israel into exile in Babylon. How did this happen and why would he do such a thing to his people? How might we be following in the footsteps of Israel? What do we do now to prepare for what lies ahead? This week will explore some of the background behind the story of Israel’s exile to Babylon.
Watch this message from Doxa's "Question Everything" series, looking at the hardest questions in Christianity. This week we look at the reliability of the Bible and its inherent beauty. The beauty of the Bible is undeniable.
Watch this message from Doxa's "Question Everything" series, looking at the hardest questions in Christianity. This week we look at what hell is and why it exists. Only a loving God could send people to hell.
Here a special Mother's Day message from Jeff & Jayne Vanderstelt entitled 'The God Who Sees'.
Watch this message from Doxa's "Question Everything" series, looking at the hardest questions in Christianity. This week we look at why God allows suffering in the world. Suffering is God’s tool to alert people to their need for Him.
Watch this message from Doxa's "Question Everything" series, looking at the hardest questions in Christianity. This week we look at what sexuality within Christianity means. Sexuality is a great gift from our gracious God.
Watch this message from Doxa's "Question Everything" series, looking at the hardest questions in Christianity. This week we look at the exclusivity of Christ. Jesus is the only one way to God because he is the only one who MADE a way to God.
A look at the deceitfulness of riches and some warnings and enocuragements from the scripture on how we use what God has given us.
Two imminent threats exist against the church gathered: overvaluing and undervaluing the weekly gathering.
Mark 13:1-37 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 12:13-34 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 11:27-12:12 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 11:1-25 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 10:32-52 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 10:13-31 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 10:1-12 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 9:30-50 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 9:14-32 - Justin Anderson - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 9:2-13 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 8:27-9:1- Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 8:1-26- Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 7:24-37 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 7:1-23 - Justin Anderson - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 6:30-52 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
A look at the day death died, the day Jesus resurrected from the dead, victorious over sin and the power of death.
Mark 6:1-29 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 5:21-43 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 4:35-5:20 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 4:26-34 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 4:1-25 - Alex Ghioni - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Mark 3:7-35 - Jeff Vanderstelt - Join us as we walk through the book of Mark at Doxa Church.
Christmas promises to deliver joy more than any other holiday. Yet, many put on the happy face while lacking a deep sense of joy. Joy is the result of the celebration of grace – gifts undeserved. Any lack of joy is connected to lack of awareness of grace. The sure way to have joy this season is to remember and reflect on the grace of God in giving Jesus Christ to us. Joyfulness is connected to gratefulness for all you have received. If you receive Jesus and regularly remember His grace, you will experience fullness of joy. Expecting Joy this Season? Receive joy by reflecting on Jesus.
Christmas reminds many of us of love lost or love lacking. We hear that gifts go not to the naughty but to the nice, and we are compelled to give often not out of love but in order to receive love. We need to hear Mary's words that God is merciful and gracious to fill the hungry with good things. He loved us so much that he gave us his own Son regardless of how naughty or nice we've been. His love is undeserved, enduring, and sacrificial.
Christmas brings much anxiety for many as we contemplate the lack of peace (shalom) due to broken relationships. However, God promises a day of peace under the rule and reign of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Peace is possible, but only through Jesus as he restores us back to God, provides a means for reconciliation with each other and points us forward to a peaceful world restored through his work.
Many enter into this season with much hope, but end with hope deferred. This happens because we hope in things that are not always able to deliver on their promise. Mary put her hope in God to bring about salvation in her humble state. She put her hope in the one who holds the future. She had an expectant hope that would not be deferred for long. This is true for all who put their hope in God to bring about a hope-filled future through Jesus Christ.
Hospitality means loving the stranger. God calls his people to love the outsider like one who belongs, so that he or she might know what it is like to belong to God’s family and want to come home to God. Hospitality is about making space for people to be at home with us so that eventually they might be at home with God. As we close this series, let’s consider how we make space in all of life for people to belong so that they might come to believe.
Train up your child in the way to go (Proverbs 22:6). This requires discipline, which is one of the best expressions of parental love (Proverbs 13:24). Parents are the primary disciplers of their children and as such are called to train their children in the way they should go, which is to Jesus; along the way so they learn how to go to Jesus in the everyday stuff of life; and to go a-way, training them for a life of following Jesus.
There are many who believe in free love – free sex. But love is not free and sex isn’t cheap. There is a real cost to love and sex. All sexual activity outside of the covenant of marriage brings about destruction as you surrender your self and strength to an uncommitted other. Godly, life-giving, joy-filled sex is costly as well because it requires a life-long commitment to covenant love and fidelity. Ultimately, we need the life-giving love of Jesus to cleanse us from our infidelity and fill us with his self-sacrificial love so that we can love one another as he loves us.
Wisdom isn’t learned and developed in isolation. Wisdom is cultivated and practiced in the context of loving friendships. True friends stick close together for the long haul; are willing to speak loving truth that wounds and sharpens; and forgive one another to maintain a loving community together.
Whatever is coming out of your life started within your heart. That is why Proverbs 4:23 exhorts us to “above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (NIV). As Christians, we aren’t primarily concerned with behavior modification, but heart transformation. With that in mind, we need to keep watch over our hearts, examine them closely and regularly experience heart renewal through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The wisest thing we can do is pray because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and prayer is an experience of our great need for God. In prayer we acknowledge that we don’t have what we need so we turn to the one who does. We get wisdom for our lives by calling out for wisdom from God who gives generously to those who ask. Then, we apply wisdom to every aspect of our lives by acknowledging God in prayer in everything.
As we continue to consider how to make space for what matters most, we must ask, what guides us as we make decisions about where we put our energies, time and focus. Throughout the Proverbs we find there are two ways to walk
Last week we talked about the necessity of resting from our work so that we can also rest while we work all because we are resting in Jesus’ Work. Resting is our declaration that we are free from slavery to work. Work is good but work must not become our god. However, even when we try to rest, many of us don’t rest well because our lives are so full. We are preoccupied with many things…often things that, if we were to slow down, are shouting so loudly at us, we would prefer keeping busy so that we can ignore them. This is one of the greatest problems of humanity – we are broken, but we don’t want to slow down to find out what is broken and why.
Last week we spoke of wisdom at work. Wisdom works. Work is good…as long as it isn’t god in our lives. It becomes god in our lives when it become the primary source of our identity, provision and security. However, the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom keeps work in its proper place because we find our primary identity in God and look to Him for provision and security. And when we do, we also are able to rest.
This week we are looking at making space for work. My sense is that many in the room are making plenty of space for work. In fact, many may be working too much. For some, work may be crowding out space for other good things in life. Make sure you are back next week when we talk about making space for rest. Some in the room may need to see the value of work and how to become a better worker. Whether you work a lot, work little, love to work or find yourself saying TGIF regularly, we all likely need some wisdom applied so that our work is life-giving and effective. Proverbs has much to say about work. However, before we dive into wisdom for work, let’s remember the posture we must take to receive, understand and apply wisdom.
Before we jump into the topic of Money according to the Proverbs today, I want to remind all of us that if we want wisdom to make space for money, work, rest and so on, we must begin with the fear of the Lord.
In order to rightly order our lives and make space for what matters most, we must start where wisdom begins: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and wisdom will take us to Jesus.
Find your identity in the giver of life, not from your work. Here, Bill talks about two examples from Luke, Bartimaeus and Zaccheus, who changed their lives in response to their interaction with Jesus.
We are in the middle of a spiritual battle in which we need to watch out, but not freak out. The way to do this is to be sober-minded, aware and watchful of the devil’s schemes and resist the devil, trusting in Jesus. We are going to look at 1 Peter 5:8-11 today, but I want to start reading from verse 6.
The trials we walk through for following Jesus are to be expected and embraced. How then should we prepare ourselves for them and persevere in them? Don’t be surprised by suffering, rejoice in what it produces and entrust yourself to the one who purifies and preserve us.
Every family has some defining characteristics, qualities or attributes that the family is known for. 1 Peter describes the church as God's family, and 1 Peter 4:7-11 provides 3 key defining characteristics of that family: Loving one another, showing hospitality to one another, and serving one another. The link that Abe talks about in his message, http://www.somatacoma.org/teaching-audio/2014/11/19/jesus-relationships-how-do-we-resolve-conflict
There are two ways to live, for sinful human passions of for the will of God. Christ suffered so that we might be done with sin and it’s destruction and eager and able to obey God.
By faith we are saved by Jesus, the Ark of a New Covenant, who saves us from our sin, raises us up above the waters of suffering and has overcome every enemy we face. Last week we discussed that in order to bless when cursed, do good to those who do evil and be prepared to give an answer for why we do all of this, requires honoring Jesus as holy
God is building his family through Jesus to be blessed to be a blessing so that through us the world would both experience his blessing and demand an explanation for why we love like we do.
In the midst of cultural shifts that challenge our faith and practice, we have the opportunity to push people further away from Jesus in our response or to win them over to a hearing of the gospel. This requires living winsome lives that honor everyone, seek to truly understand others and in the midst of it all fear God above all else.
What do we do when we suffer injustice? Do we seek revenge, resign, feel self-pity or just grit our teeth and bear it? Go to Jesus. He offers a better way
Free to Submit & Serve When you know you belong to God and He is above all other rule and authority you are free to submit to authority and serve others knowing they all are under His authority as well.
Peter uses the metaphor of the temple to remind us how the glory of God answers three questions: 1)Who we are (identity), 2) Why we’re here Mission), and 3) What the future holds for us (Destiny).