Grace Church Indiana Sermons Grace Church

It is a very difficult time to be a parent. From the deeply powerful technologies monopolizing our kids’ attention to the vile and horrific content they are being exposed to at earlier and earlier ages to the growing isolation brought on by the breakdown of healthy community, the role of a parent has never been harder. Sometimes it seems that no matter how hard a parent works, they are always falling short. Because of this, it is appropriate to consider what God might be saying to the parents of Grace today. Psalm 127 is a passage which famously refers to children as “gifts from the Lord” and compares them to “arrows” in a warrior’s quiver. However, it also makes a provocative claim that “unless the Lord builds a house” (by extension, a family or household), the labor of the builders is in vain. Thus, the question is raised: are we attempting to build our families under our own power? Or are our families being built by God? What might it look like to surrender control and allow God to be the driving force behind the raising of our children?

For much of human history, marriages were guided by strict cultural norms rooted in patriarchal expectations of gender roles. Common beliefs, such as the inherent inferiority of women, led to deep inequalities (and often abuse) within marriages. Thus, when the Apostle Paul suggested in Ephesians 5 that husbands should practice self-sacrificing love for their wives, it was a shocking and provocative call. In this message, as we understand the true weightiness of this passage in its original context, we will discover that it continues to be a challenging invitation for husbands today, even in the vastly different context of modern marriage. It is an invitation for the husbands of Grace Church to demonstrate in their marriages a radically different way to live.

The final disciple of Jesus we will explore is one who may have never met him in person: Saul, later known as the Apostle Paul. Beginning his journey as a hater and persecutor of Christ-followers, Paul would go on to be a leading voice in the Church bringing the gospel of Jesus to the Gentiles and establishing Churches across the Roman world. What could have changed such a zealous Pharisee into an apostle zealous for the gospel? And what does the transformation of Paul’s life trajectory teach us about the grace God has for the broken?

After the crucifixion of Jesus, many of Jesus’ disciples were plunged into despair. However, upon his resurrection, Christ began to meet with these beleaguered followers to help them understand what had actually transpired. He appeared to two of these disciples on the road to Emmaus, explaining to them how his death and resurrection fulfilled what had been written in the Old Testament. In this message we will consider the grand story Jesus invites us into and what it means to follow him into his mission to heal the world.

Of all the disciples of Jesus, Mary Magdalene had one of the most troubled pasts. The gospels of Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her when he called her to follow him. It is little wonder she become one of the most devoted of his disciples. Upon the death of Jesus, it is Mary Magdalene, weeping at the tomb, who first encounters the risen Lord. It is Mary who is first sent out by Jesus with the good news that he has risen from the grave. What can we learn from this remarkable woman about what it means to follow Christ? And what is God’s invitation to us this Easter as we consider not just what God has done for us in the past, but who he longs for us to become in the future?

A week before his crucifixion, Jesus enters Jerusalem to great fanfare, riding on a donkey just as the prophet Zechariah had predicted (Zechariah 9:9). Was it possible that the coming of this Messiah was exactly what everyone had been waiting for? Was Jesus going to lead Israel to military victory over the Roman occupiers? These questions must have been ringing in the disciples’ ears as they wrestled with Jesus’ earlier predictions of his own imminent death at the hands of Rome. Which was it going to be? Victory or death? This moment of cognitive dissonance is a wonderful invitation for us to consider what kind of Messiah we are following. Is the Jesus we follow victorious by human standards, trampling down everyone we disagree with? Or is he the one whose victory lies in his self-sacrifice and surrender, and the grace he offers even to the despised?