Covenant Grace Sermons: Recent Episodes
Covenant Grace Columbia
Jesus calls Matthew and we are reminded how we are formed by the mercy we have received.
Jesus heals a paralyzed man, but he does so in a way that shows he has come to heal and deliver us from something much greater.
When we misunderstand Jesus, we misunderstand discipleship. That what happens with the eager scribe and the reluctant disciple- and often with us as well. Thankfully, Jesus does not leave us there.
Matthew draws our attention to Jesus’ authority. How does he use His authority and what does it show us about the kingdom He is bringing?
Matthew 8:5-13 - Jesus' interaction with the centurion helps us understand the nature of true faith and its importance in the kingdom He is bringing.
When you touch something dirty, you get dirty too. But when Jesus touches what is unclean, he makes it clean.
The resurrection of Jesus is at the center of the Christian faith. Our resurrection, which it ensures, is the center of our hope.
If we use our experiences as the foundation for our understanding, we will misinterpret them and draw faulty conclusions about God. Instead, we need God to help us understand our experiences through his word.
Wisdom helps us live in a complicated, fallen world. But it can't fix our fallenness, which is our real problem, evidenced by the death that befalls each of us. The solution to that lies not our wisdom, but in the foolishness of the cross.
It can be difficult to understand and accept the way things play out in the world. Too often, bad things seem to happen to good people while the wicked prosper. But we see and understand it differently when we realize there has only ever been one righteous man.
God controls all things. We do not. As hard as that reality is for us to accept at times, it brings about our ultimate good.
We are tempted to look to material wealth for security and satisfaction – things it cannot ultimately deliver. When we find true security and satisfaction in Jesus, we are freed to enjoy our material blessings as gifts from God.
Our worship is not immune from the influence of sin and its curse. It tends to get disordered to bring glory to us rather that the God who deserves it. True worship does not parade our efforts before the Lord, it brings empty hands to Him in faith.
Relationships under the sun are flawed, yet we need what they offer. The perfect friendship of Jesus frees us to rejoice in loving and be loved by others imperfectly.
Sin fractured the way we relate to each other as fellow image bearers of God. Some our greatest pain is suffered at the hands of one another, and we do our share of inflicting it. Jesus stepped into the injustice of life under the sin to free us from its guilt and effects.
Peace and hope in the changing seasons of life do not come from control or understanding, but through trusting the God who ordains them all for the ultimate good of His people.
When sought to provide our identity and meaning, the things of this world fail. We need to be be reconciled to the only One who provides all those things through the work of Jesus.
In our first sermon from Ecclesiastes, we see that the nature of the world here and now drives us to find our hope elsewhere.
The Christian hope lies not in what we can make of this kingdom, but in the return of our King.
Jesus came to be our mediator. He stands between God and man, reconciling us to God by his perfect sacrifice and ever advocating for us before the Father's throne.
Moses brought temporal deliverance and God's law; Jesus came to bring freedom from sin and death through the Gospel.
Jesus became incarnate to be our new representative before God, absorbing the cost of our rebellion and winning for us eternal blessing.
In the 30 years following Paul's letter, the Ephesian church excelled in many respects – but had one potentially fatal flaw.
The way we exercise and respond to earthly authority reflects what we believe about our ultimate Authority.
Marriage is a picture of the relationship between Jesus and His church. This has profound implications for how we live in our marriages... and profound hope for when we fail.
In Christ, we are called to live with care and intentionality. Paul points us toward the wisdom and work of the Spirit we need to walk well through this life.
If we get sin wrong, we'll get the gospel wrong. Freedom from the deadly slavery of sin is only found in our union with Christ.
Jesus brings his people to maturity together through the work of His Spirit in the church.
God has provided his church with both unity and diversity for her good. The Holy Spirit equips each believer uniquely so that each person both needs and is needed by the church.
How does the suffering we experience and see fit with the hope of the gospel? Our future hope shapes our life now.
Jesus dealt with our sin and reconciled us to God. In doing so, he also reconciled us to each other and made us into one new people.
How is our effort related to the gospel? The way we understand this has major implications for our life and faith. Listen to hear about God's design for our works from Ephesians 2:8-10.
Due to sin, our natural state could not be more dire. But we are delivered out of it by God graciously uniting us with his son Jesus.
Paul rejoices in the faith in Jesus and love for each other God has produced in His church, and asks that He would allow them to grasp ever more work of Christ for them that will continue to fuel that faith and love.
The Christian life is not a relay race begun by Jesus and finished by us. From beginning to end, all of salvation is "in Christ", and we are kept in him by the Holy Spirit. He is our first taste of the glory that awaits us and the guarantee that we will get there.
Naturally, we are both guilty of sin and oppressed by it. Jesus Christ spent his life to buy us out of our slavery to sin and to make all things new. That price has already been paid, so we can rest even in the midst of the sufferings and struggles of this life.
We are secure as righteous children of God, not because of anything in us, but because God the Father planned to make us so from eternity past.
As a prelude to our upcoming series on Ephesians, we look at Paul's ministry in Ephesus from Acts 19:8-41. There we see the Word prevail over opposition from the world and the idolatry of sinful hearts – and take heart that it prevails still now.
Our first sermon at Covenant Grace Columbia explores who gets to come to Jesus and the rest that he offers to those who come weary.