Kaleo Church Podcast

Waiting can be hard for us. The command to wait is the second most used command in the Bible. If God sees waiting as a good thing, why do we struggle to wait? Listen and hear how the first appearing of Jesus creates in us the ability to wait for his second appearing with eager expectation.

Have you ever found that your circumstances made it really hard to believe some of God’s promises? Well you certainly aren’t the first person to feel that way. Consider Joseph, his fiance is pregnant and all that he knows for certain that he is not the father. And then an angel comes and calls Joseph to trust God and take Mary as his wife anyway. That would be hard. In this sermon we will see that just like Joseph the hardest thing God is calling us to do this Christmas is to trust him. We will also see that because the Christmas story is true and God really did come in the flesh you and I have all that we need to trust God even against the most impossible odds.

In Matthew 1 Jesus shows that there is room in his family for outsiders. In a male dominated culture Jesus made room for women, in a Jewish culture Jesus included foreigners and in an honor/shame culture Jesus welcomed the sexually exploited. Matthew's genealogy is Jesus way of saying to each of these groups "I see you, I know your stories and you matter to me."

The crowds in Mark 11:1-11 declare Jesus to be the Messiah and worship him as their true king. Nevertheless, five days later when Jesus stood on trial before Pilate these people who once threw down their cloaks in front of him where nowhere to be found. What happened? Why was their loyalty so light and their faith so fickle? This is a question each of us needs to ask because the last thing we want to do is to follow in their footsteps.

We know that God is good to unworthy sinners but how does feel about being good to us? Does he like it? Is he just going through the motions? Is he biting his lip in order to get through it? Does God enjoy being good to people who don’t deserve it or is he just doing it because its right or because he made a promise? In Jeremiah 32 God confronts his people with how unworthy they are but then he tells them that he loves them anyway. In fact in verse 40 he promises not to turn away from doing good to his people. But then in verse 41 he tells us how he feels about being good to his people. I can assure you what he says in this verse will blow you away.

Jesus was on his way to do the most important work ever accomplished on this earth. He was headed to Jerusalem to give his life on the cross when a poor blind beggar began to call out his name. The crowds tried to silence him because they knew that Jesus was focused and that he had more important things on his mind. But they were wrong; Jesus stopped. On his way to Calvary the Son of God stopped to take care of a poor blind beggar along the way. Not only does Jesus heal this poor beggar but he uses him to show us things about the discipleship that neither the crowds nor the disciples have yet been able to grasp.

If your anything like me then you probably don’t enjoy people talking to you about money. There is just something inside me that assumes the other person is somehow trying to get something for themselves. But Jesus is different. Jesus is the one person that you can know for certain when he talks to you about money his heart is for you more than it is after your money. So, knowing that Jesus loves us deeply and he doesn’t need our money I think it would be good for us to take some time and listen to what he has to teach us about this often sensitive topic.

Have you ever felt like something is missing in your life? In Mark 10:17 a rich young man runs up to Jesus because he feels like something is missing in his life. Now you would think that Jesus would tell this young man that following him was the one thing that he was missing. And of course you would be right, but that isn’t all Jesus tells this man. We talk a lot about needing Jesus but in this passage Jesus makes it clear that it is not enough to simply know that you need Jesus. In this passage Jesus calls this man to trust that He is all that this man needs. Its not enough to know that you need Jesus, until you believe that Jesus is all that you need there will always be something missing from your life.

In Mark 10:13-16 Jesus is indignant at his disciples because they believe that some people are more worthy of His time and attention than others. He goes on to make it clear that our entitlment doesn't just hinder other people from heaven, it actually hinders us! You see there is actually a right and a wrong way to recieve Jesus's love! In verse 15 Jesus calls us to receive his kingdomn like a little baby. This message tries to understand what that would look like and the joy that it would bring.

Divorce is so common that it has affected nearly all of us in some way and yet it is also so painful that it never affects anyone without leaving scars. In Mark 10 Jesus discusses this painful and controversial topic by going back to Genesis and reminding us about the way God designed marriage in the first place. Ironically what we find is that built into the very fabric of marriage is grace to help those who are currently married as well as to offer healing to those who have been painfully affected by divorce. After talking about the way that marriage is meant to reflect Jesus love for his people we will seek to apply these truths to singles, to those who are currently married, to those who have been the victims of divorce, to those who have gotten divorced when they shouldn’t have, and we will conclude by addressing the scars that are left on children whose parents have gotten divorced and the healing that Jesus offers to them.

We often look back to the “glory days” of our past, or to the future with idealistic hope, leaving us unsure what to do in the present. In Haggai 2:1-9, God comes and speaks to a mixed community of people wondering what to do in the present. Listen and hear how the Gospel comforts us and drives us to be strong and work for the glory of God.

If someone were to ask you what your purpose in life is, what would you say? In Haggai 1, God's people are sent back home from exile but rather than fulfill their mission, they seek their own glory. Listen and hear how the Gospel changes our priorities to making God's glory our purpose in life.

We live in a world of ever-increasing anxiety. Psalm 27 shows us that David believes seeking the beauty of the Lord is a grace of God to quiet our anxiety. Listen and hear how the Gospel reveals the face of God that frees us to fix our eyes on the beauty of Christ rather than anxiety.