July 24, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 7:24–29
We are each building a life. We're building on a foundation. We each get to choose what that foundation is and at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling us to choose him as that foundation. He is the one to build your life upon and the only foundation that will help you and I withstand the storms of life. To build your life on Jesus means that you trust him and that you not just appreciate what he says, you actually do it. Doers of the word, not just hearers.
Choose Jesus
July 17, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 7:12–21
In nearing the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is bringing home his message and making it personal. He’s indicating that his teaching is not to be merely praised but to be practiced. It’s not to be commended but to be carried out. He’s challenging his listeners then and now to move beyond mere admiration of him and to choose to follow Him and his ways.
Ask Seek Knock
July 10, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 7:7–12
Again Jesus returns to the invitation that prayer and connection with the Heavenly Father beckons us to discover. We’re to live with a desire to persistently ask, seek and knock in order to receive from His hand as He extends provision, wisdom and guidance. There are no supply chain issues in the Kingdom of God and His heart is more than ready to commune and connect with His children. He is always for our best.
Judgement According to Jesus
July 3, 2022 • Pastor Lyle Thompson • Matthew 7:1–6
Matthew 7:1-6 contains one of the most often quoted verses, yet it is one of the most misunderstood teachings of Jesus. How are followers of Jesus meant to use discernment in confronting sin in each other and ourselves? How are we to use discernment in confronting those outside the church? Jesus answers these questions for us in this short, but often mischaracterized, passage of The Sermon on the Mount.
Faith and Anxiety
June 26, 2022 • Pastor Lyle Thompson • Matthew 6:19–34
As Jesus continues His sermon, He makes several strong statements regarding the relationship His followers should have with their possessions. The whole-hearted follower of Jesus cannot pursue Him and material goods. Doing so creates an anxious heart that prevents His followers from seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness before all other things. How can Jesus’ followers overcome this anxiety and live with a single-minded devotion to Him?
Fasting and Reward
June 19, 2022 • Pastor Lyle Thompson • Matthew 6:16–18
As Jesus finishes this section of the Sermon on the Mount on practicing religion with Kingdom righteousness, He teaches His followers how to fast. In this week’s message we look at reasons to fast and benefits to fasting. In transitioning to the next part of the sermon Jesus calls us back to examine our motives. He calls us to seek the eternal rewards our Heavenly Father wants to give us.
Your Prayer Life
June 12, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 6:5–13
Prayer is all about our relational connection with God. Jesus unpacks some incredible truths about the reality of God and the power we are invited to experience through a vibrant prayer life connected with our Heavenly Father. The Lord’s Prayer lays out some insights and practices for us to utilize as we engage in prayer.
How To Give Rightly
June 5, 2022 • Pastor Lyle Thompson • Matthew 6:1–4
As we enter a new section of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, we see Jesus shift from explaining how to righteously fulfill the Law to how to righteously practice our faith. Jesus calls us to check our heart’s motivation when we give. Are we generous because we want to build our religious reputation, or do we give because we desire the rewards God has on offer for those whose generosity is an act of worship?
Love Your Enemy
May 29, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 5:43–48
Love and enemies are words that seem mutually exclusive. Putting the two together raises serious questions. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies it is as shocking and challenging in our generation as it was in the 1st century. Jesus is challenging us to grow and ground our reactions from a place of spiritual maturity more than emotional retaliations. We all were once enemies of God, but through Jesus, we’ve been made a friend of God. (Romans 5:8) We’re now invited to love like God does. We’re to live above the law of reciprocity - to do good, bless and pray for…
Live Sacrificially
May 22, 2022 • Pastor Lyle Thompson • Matthew 5:38–42
In Matthew 5:38-42 Jesus tells His followers they need to radically reorient their thoughts toward retaliation. Not only are His followers to not retaliate, they should not even resist the one who seeks to do evil toward them! How can we, as His followers today, become the type of Kingdom-oriented people who generously sacrifice our own wants and needs in order to actively live in and proclaim the Gospel to those around us?
Truthful
May 15, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 5:33–37
We are to be people unconditional about love and unapologetic about truth. People of integrity - which is not perfection, but of integration and wholeness. People able to admit our faults and learn from them, people committed to being truthful in all we do, just as Jesus is.
Mismanaged Heat
May 8, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 5:21–26
Heat can be a good thing in the right context - but mismanaged heat is a dangerous thing. Jesus challenges us to not let ourselves mismanage our heat - our anger. It can get us sideways and destroy relationships. We’re called as followers of Jesus to let our anger drive us to be helpful instead of hurtful.
Salt and Light
May 1, 2022 • Pastor Jack Schull • Matthew 5:13–16
As followers of Jesus we are invited into living with distinction and influence. We’re invited to live in the way of Jesus that marks us as different, but it also releases us to have godly influence upon the world and to invite others to discover the hope of God available to them. We're to be salt and light in our here and now moment of history. Today we examine 3 key ways to live into that influence.
