River of Life Church - St Joseph

This week is a standalone sermon based off of the declaration of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. When faced with possible death at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the three of them refused to compromise their faith by bowing to a false idol; instead, they declared that "even if" God did not rescue them, they would stay faithful to him! This is a strong reminder that God has called us to have "Even If" Faith that says, "No matter what, I will serve the Lord." Pastor Tyler discusses this idea and how to avoid living with "Only If" Faith that puts false stipulations on our relationship with God. 

This week we hear from a guest speaker: Sterling Steen. Sterling is the Next Steps Pastor at Bridgeview Church in Big Lake, MN. Part of his role at the church is to be the head of their discipleship systems and in this sermon, Sterling brings a great framework for understanding discipleship. The call of Christian discipleship is truly become like Christ rather than seeming good on the outside. He offers in-depth understanding of the topic as well as practical advice for engaging in discipleship. 

This week was Family Sunday at our location, so we took a week off from our Story of the Bible series and instead got to hear from Sephra our Kids Pastor! She brings a great word about how kids are a vital part of the mission of God because they were vital to Jesus. She challenges all of us to consider our mindsets when it comes to children and how we are all called to help bring kids closer to Jesus. 

Our series about the story of the Bible continues on going over the major theme of the entire New Testament: what is the Church and what does it mean to be the Church in belief and practice? This is vitally important to us today because this it the age of history that we are living in today. Followers of Jesus all around the world ARE the Church, so we should all understand what that means and what it entails. We cover that idea for a bit, and then move to why being a part of the Church is vital for your faith. 

This week we move our series to the New Testament and talk about how Jesus is the answer to the entire story of the Bible. Before Jesus, the Old Testament ends with a hopeful look towards the future but everything is left unfinished. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus comes and fulfills the incredible promises of God. Everything Jesus does heals, fixes, and restores the story of history so that all of creation is ready when Jesus moves to defeat sin. We end with the idea that Jesus can also renew our stories. 

Have you ever wondered what in the world was going on in the Old Testament prophetic books? Then this sermon is for you. This week we continue our series, Story of the Bible, and we finish out the story of the Old Testament by covering the prophetic books. These books have beautiful truths about who God is, what he wants to do in our world, and how he relates to us, but they can be notoriously difficult to read. We spend this sermon talking about how to read the prophetic books and what we can learn from them today. *We also use the audio from a video made by the Bible Project. You can find that original video here: youtube.com/watch?v=edcqUu_BtN0&pp=ygUdYmlibGUgcHJvamVjdCBwcm9waGV0aWMgYm9va3M%3D 

This week we continue our Story of the Bible series by jumping into the poetic Wisdom Literature of the Bible. These books show us God’s good plan for how to live in every area of life and show that we have a God that cares about every part of our lives, not just “spiritual” things. He wants us to experience his goodness in every area. 

This week we continue our series talking about the Old Testament era where Israel was ruled by judges and then kings. This era covers the books of the Bible from Joshua - 2 Chronicles. Israel repeatedly goes through cycles of unfaithfulness to God, but he remains faithful to them. We talk about how we can learn from these cycles and how to avoid them in our spiritual lives. 

This week we continue in our series talking about the era of Moses in the Old Testament and focusing on the major themes: the Exodus and the Law. These are important biblical themes that help us understand what God does in our lives and what he is doing in throughout scripture. These can be notoriously difficult passages to read, so we also cover how to understand what you are reading when you are reading about Old Testament laws. 

This week we continue in our Story of the Bible series talking about the conflict in the story: sin. We cover chapters 3-11 in Genesis as they lay out how humanity chooses to let sin into the story and how sin then gets out of control with humanity powerless to stop it. Only God can step into the story to fix it at this point. While that may seem like an ancient story, the truths of this still affect our lives today. We all struggle with sin and the desire to choose for ourselves what is right and wrong. The Bible shows us that whenever we choose to rebel against God, it ends in disaster for us. Thankfully we have a God who still enters the story to offer us a different way.