God Rock Ministry

In this text, Jesus is continuing his journey to Jerusalem where he will eventually be tried, punished, and be crucified. In this interaction between Jesus and his disciples, here are 5 things to be thankful for:   Thankful that we are not the only ones who doesn't get it sometimes - we can learn from the misunderstandings of the disciples  Thankful that we have a God that loves us and cares about the things we want, even though we don't know what we want most times Thankful that Jesus flips things right side up for us so that we can have the right perspective   Thankful that Jesus wants us to pursue greatness in our lives through Jesus' definition of greatness Thankful that Jesus paid our ransom for us.  

In this text, Jesus is with his disciples on his way to Jerusalem for the last time. He goes on to foretell his death and resurrection for the 3rd time. This 3rd time is even more specific than the previous two times. Jesus reveals that He will be condemned to death, delivered over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. But on the 3rd day, Jesus will be raised to life. All of this is connected to Jesus' love for all of us, that he would humble himself, endure suffering and death, so that we may have eternal life. 

In this parable, Jesus describes the interaction between the master of the house and the laborers. This is not a parable about business, but it's about eternal life. The reality is, there will be people that will enter the kingdom of heaven through various circumstances. As Christians, we need to rejoice and praise God when that happens. If you don't know Jesus, don't harden your heart to the Gospel, receive Jesus into your life and experience the love of God. 

In this second part of Jesus' interaction with the rich young ruler, we saw the rich young ruler leave with sorrow after Jesus told him to sell everything he possessed, give to the poor, and follow Jesus.  Jesus takes this opportunity to gather his disciples to teach them about eternal life. He teaches that it is both very difficult and impossible for people to enter heaven. BUT, he goes on to say, with man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.  This is why we talk about Jesus. It is only through Jesus that we can inherit eternal life. There is nothing we can ever do to earn it. It requires faith and it is through faith that we are born again as children of God. 

What good deed must you do to enter eternal life? To be good enough to enter heaven, you need to live a life that is sinless and perfect. Only 1 person has ever done that and his name is Jesus. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are, it's not good enough to be able to enter the Kingdom of God. But there's hope. If we choose to follow Jesus, we'll inherit eternal life. 

In this sermon, we see Jesus wanting the little children to come to him. Jesus wants little children to come to him because he loves them. And with all children, they are made in the image of God, knit together in the mother's womb. But this passage also have significant meaning in how God wants us to live. To be fully dependent on God, like children are fully dependent on their parents. 

We face issues on a daily basis. When we encounter these issues, it's easy for us to focus on the surface issue and miss the underlying root issue. In Matthew 19, the surface issue is the topic of divorce. But in this sermon, we discover that divorce is not "the issue" and is something that is much deeper. 

We learn from previous weeks that the vision God gives us is a people that are divided into 2 groups: those who love and accept Jesus and will live with Him in eternity, and those who reject Jesus and spend eternity separated from Jesus.  With that vision, our mission is to make disciples of Jesus. In this final sermon of our series Mission + Vision, we go over how we are to make disciples.     

A disciple, by definition, is a follower or a student of a teacher or leader. Since Christians are followers of Jesus Christ, our call in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all nations is a call to make Christians of all nations.    For us, we need to recognize that this isn't any ordinary task. Becoming a Christian is a supernatural event where a person is spiritually born again. This means that it is impossible for us humans to do this alone. We need the resurrecting power and grace of God to do this.    In this sermon, we go in depth on what a disciple is, the challenges that come with making disciples, and how do we make disciples? 

This week, we continue our sermon series on Mission + Vision. Last we we talked about the desire for God's vision for our life. This week we talk about what God's vision is for our lives as it pertains to Heaven and Hell. God see's our life perfectly, so what does He see? There is a future and eternal reality when we reach the end of our lives on Earth. In this sermon, we are going to go over God's vision for all of humanity as it relates to Heaven and Hell and what this means for you. 

We kick off a new sermon series on Mission and Vision. Mission and Vision in simple form is essentially getting from Point A (our current position) to Point B and the journey in between.  In the church context this is important for the life of the church. It provides a perspective to assess where the church is currently at today, the Vision that God has set forth and what God requires of us as a church to get to where that Vision is .      

In this sermon, we go over how being bullied can cause anxiety for many of us. However, if we fix our eyes on Jesus, all of a sudden our problems become significantly smaller.

Last week, we examined that God sometimes allows us to be in a season of being overwhelmed. In this week's sermon, we look at how we can minimize and erase unnecessary burdens in our lives. These are overwhelming situations that we don't have to be in and we want it completely gone.  There are two reasons we can be the source of our own anxiety:  Obvious reasons, such as unrepentant sin; Hidden reasons, sin of worry and fear. 

As Christians, we believe in the freedom as a result of the Gospel. We believe that God is all powerful and has proven that time and time again in scriptures and in our lives. So then why do we still experience seasons of being overwhelmed? In this sermon, we do a bit of troubleshooting as to why we go through seasons of being overwhelmed.

When it comes to how God operates and how we operate, it's like saying God is playing chess while we are playing checkers. When we are overwhelmed and experiencing anxiety, we tend to see what is in the moment - but God is many moves ahead of us. God wants us to experience freedom from the things that overwhelm us. He desires us to experience freedom so that we can freely worship God. But it doesn't stop there. He wants us to experience freedom to worship so that we have a testimony so that others can see the goodness and the power of God through our transformed lives. He saves us not only for our good but the good of others as well.     

In previous weeks, we talked about how God cares deeply about our anxieties and that when we "give it to God" we have the opportunity to be yoked to Jesus, which is easy and his burden is light. This week we ask the questions, what happens when Jesus is faithful to his own words? What happens when Jesus takes away your burdens? 

Anxiety is often triggered by lingering fear in our minds and the feeling of not being in control. Often times we can build up anxiety when we are expected to perform to a certain level or to achieve perfection. This is a heavy burden either laid on by ourselves or put on our shoulders by the world. But Jesus says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

We begin a new sermon series over the next few weeks tackling the issues of anxiety and fear. We will focus on understanding what these issues are, and how to effectively deal with them when they come up in our life. Everyone deals with fear and anxiety in some shape or form - this is a message that everyone need to hear.  

In this sermon, we have the pleasure of having Pastor Alex Lomangino as our guest preacher. In this text in Matthew, we go into the topic of personal forgiveness. Extending personal forgiveness towards others is essential in the life of a Christian. Join us as we dive into the topic and how it is an important component of the gospel. 

This is the final part of our mini-sermon series titled "Family Matters" where we talk about the Church Family as we dive into Matthew 18. In this sermon, we are going to take a closer look at what love looks like between siblings in the family of God. We are going to go deeper into the granular details about love and answer the following question: - What does love between children of God in the family of God actually look like? - How are we to actually love one another in the church? - How do we do it?