Controversial Faith: The Exclusivity of Jesus - Jon Tyson

This Sunday Pastor Suzy Silk continued our Controversial Faith series by asking the question: How can a good God allow evil and suffering in the world? The tension between the sovereignty of God and the realities of suffering often hold people back from experiencing and accepting the person of Jesus, or eventually drive people away from Him. In an effort to address this problem of pain, Pastor Suzy laid out five reasons not to turn away from Jesus when faced with evil and suffering.

This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our series on Controversial Faith with a message on how we, as Christians, should engage with politics. As people of God, we can participate in politics with eschatological hope and humble conviction instead of despair. Ultimately, we pray, vote, protest, and practice principled pluralism because we know the solution to the problem of politics in our modern world: declaring Jesus is Lord.

This Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk continued our series on Controversial Faith with a teaching on why we can trust the Bible. Translated into 698 languages, the Bible is the best-selling and most influential book in world history, and is worth reading based on these merits alone. Pastor Suzy then provided context on why the Bible is different from all other books through analyzing the genre and style, the authorship and preservation, and how we should respond to reading the text as followers of Jesus.

This Sunday, Pastor Jon kicked off our new series on Controversial Faith by addressing Jesus’ scandalous exclusivity. The claim, “Jesus is Lord”, has been highly contested throughout history, and it is no different today. However, as His followers, we must acknowledge our own sinfulness, lead with with gentleness and respect when sharing our beliefs, and be willing to be misunderstood as we publicly witness about Jesus Christ, the only name that can save.

This Easter Sunday, Pastor Jon taught about how we come to believe in the resurrection from the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus from Luke 24. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus is a key belief for salvation, and the Apostle Paul goes so far as to say that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is useless and futile. Pastor Jon laid out the three things it takes to believe in Jesus’ resurrection: evaluating the historical facts, gaining a theological understanding, and having a personal encounter with the person of Christ.

This Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk closed out our sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins with a teaching on envy. A prohibition against coveting, or envy, is included in the Ten Commandments, because it is a slippery slope that begins in our thoughts and quickly leads to death. Holy Week reminds us that Jesus Himself demonstrated costly trust and costly obedience in the Father’s plans for Him, and costly love towards even those who took part in His death. We can choose to turn away from envy because we have the better thing—the presence of Jesus, now and forever.

This Sunday, Pastor Ralph Castillo continued our Lenten series on the Seven Deadly Sins with a teaching on pride. Our current culture has a way of turning vices into virtues and praising disordered loves, making it difficult to identify pride, and can result in practicing righteousness as a way of being seen and honored by others. However, when we choose the way of humility, and practice our righteousness in secret, we recieve the better reward because the Father Himself is rewarding us.

This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our Lenten series over the Seven Deadly Sins by exploring the often unnoticed dangers of sloth. Originally, the Desert Father’s understanding of sloth was less akin to laziness and more in line with acedia: spiritual resistance to spiritual progress. As followers of Jesus, we must push back against the spirit of acedia through the power we have received in the Holy Spirit and make every effort to persevere in our faith.

This Sunday, Pastor Tim Brown unpacked the destructive power of wrath as part of our Lenten series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Anger often signals us to something that is wrong or unjust, but when we express our anger through violence or scorn, we lose God’s heart for ourselves and for others, and allow wrath to rage in our lives. However, Jesus calls us to confess anger like the sin that it is, and follow Him in the way of mercy, that freely forgives.

This week, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our sermons series on the Seven Deadly Sins with a teaching on the destructive power of lust, and how Jesus calls us to become people of love and integrity in Him. Although we can lust over things like money and power, in Matthew 5, Jesus addresses lust in the context of strong sexual desire. Pastor Jon urged us to consider that walking in the way of Jesus includes pursuing a counter-cultural sexual formation.