The preaching of God’s Word is a high priority at Stonebridge. We make available our sermons for those unable to attend on Sundays. We hope we are all helped as we listen to the Word of God preached.
Recent Sermons
Mark 3:7-12
This account shows Jesus at a high point in his popularity. His ministry reaches beyond Israel to Gentile areas, revealing further evidence of the new exodus ushered in by Jesus. The multitudes hungry for His message of hope bear down on Him in crowds that nearly crush Him. Is our hope in Christ as theirs? Do we pursue Him and His words with their fervor? Are we as eager to tell what He has done for us as they were?
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Mark 3:1-6
This episode in Mark’s gospel traces a sobering encounter between Jesus and the increasingly hostile Jewish leaders. When He heals the man with the withered hand, He reveals the Pharisees hard hearts about God, and exposes their contempt for Him and His authority even to the point of seeking His death. They were not willing to repent of their sin and believe Jesus. And what of us? Have we walked with Jesus, trusted Him, and rejoiced in Him with our whole heart, even if it costs us our life?
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Mark 2:23-28
Is worship on the Lord’s day your supreme delight? For the pharisees in Jesus day it was not. They defined the fourth commandment too narrowly. They could not see the day as a day to enjoy God even when God Himself was present with them. Is our love for Jesus and our yearning to be near Him satisfied in the day each week which has been set aside for us by our Creator?
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Mark 2:18-22
What does our piety indicate about our worldview? The object and motives for our fasting differ from those of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. For the disciples after Jesus ascended, and all believers since, Jesus is the object of our attention in our fast, as we seek His face, His forgiveness, and His guidance in our grief over our continued unfaithfulness. With Jesus present, the disciples’ focus was still on Him, but uniquely, as they enjoyed a time of feasting not fasting, a foretaste of the day when all His bride will gather with Him in glory face to face.
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Mark 2:13-17
When Jesus calls us to repent and believe, it is a command to follow Him. He calls us to trade a life lived for ourselves for a life lived for Him, just as he did Levi the tax collector. But his call is not only to live for Him but to live with Him. When Jesus sat at table with Levi and other reviled tax collector acquaintances, His mercy to the sinner was revealed. Jesus allowed His own reputation to suffer just so He could continue to support Levi in his new life and any who would join in following Him.
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Mark 2:1-12
Mark’s gospel continues to reveal more of the authority of Jesus, this time as He forgives the sins of the paralytic. Israel’s prophets announced forgiveness but only as third parties speaking for the God that could forgive. Jesus was not only offering the forgiveness of sins, but was the agent of forgiveness itself by the divine authority he claimed. In granting forgiveness to the paralytic then or anyone here and now who believes He has that authority and will, he also gave the assurance that such forgiveness would be received as righteousness.
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Mark 1:40-45
In this passage we continue see the Jesus Mark has introduced, with authority to heal disease, and with compassion to heal the sick and despised. By healing this leper He cleanses the unclean and gives him new life. But this passage also prepares us for a greater revelation about Jesus: Our sin is more shameful than any disease. It makes us unclean, worthy of outcast from the kingdom of God. Yet Jesus can and will rescue us from our destiny with death by taking on our sin and becoming the Despised One in our place and for our sakes.
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Mark 1:35-39
Jesus came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God. The gracious mercy of God is what Jesus’ hearers received once they believed this good news preached to them and placed their trust in Him. But Jesus was unable to preach effectively without first seeking His Father’s will through persistent, fervent prayer. So it is with us. Our lives and ministries will be most fruitful when our compulsion to pray is as great as His.
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Mark 1:29-34
Mark’s gospel continues to reveal the inbreaking of the kingdom of God through his account of the earthly ministry of Jesus. Here Jesus’ power and authority over the effects of sin were revealed as He alleviated the suffering of the sick and demon-possessed. But His compassion was revealed as well through his longsuffering attention all who came to him in need. Herein we also learn that we love because of His love applied to us—when he heals us, he renders us strong for service.
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Mark 1:21-28
When Jesus began teaching in the synagogues His words were like no others. They bore an authority not attributed to the scribes, the revered arbiters of Jewish doctrine in that day. The strength of His teaching evoked astonishment, even fear in His hearers. His command over demons demonstrated His unique power to subjugate sin and its effects, and His compassion for those beset by them. The event recorded here by Mark, compelled those present, as it does every generation thereafter, to decide if this Jesus is worthy to be heard, believed, and trusted.
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Titus 2:11–14
In his letter to Titus, Paul continues to shed light on why Jesus came. Jesus came to redeem us, to purify us, to make us his treasured possession so we are predisposed to serve Him and our neighbor with good works. What a bright outlook this is for us as we begin a new year.
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1 Timothy 1:12-17
In asking “Why did Jesus come?”, we have looked primarily to the gospel accounts. But Paul’s epistle to Timothy also adds this explicit declaration “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”. We may often agree that we sin, but we shrink from the painful truth of our entire identity as sinners. Paul, in noting the depth of his own sin, exclaims that God’s great mercy to the likes of him reveals His magnanimous grace. And so it is for us–God’s mercy is so vast that He came in person to save even us, to save us from our deserved death penalty, and for a life of gratitude and praise to Him.
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1 John 3:5,8
In this text, the apostle John continues to answer our question, “Why did Jesus come?” Here he declares that Jesus came to take way sins and destroy the devil’s work. We are incapable of cleaning out the accumulated guilt from the sin of our lives, no matter how hard we try. Only Jesus can exchange our sin for His righteousness by bearing our guilt at the cross and then adopting us as His own. Only Jesus can change us by conquering our the devil and the sin within by waging war.
John 9:39
Jesus came into the world to make the Father known. He also came to bring sight to the blind. In this text an incident in Jesus’ ministry reveals who He is, the Light that illuminates both our sin and the path to eternal life. Blindness was found in both the man who could not see and the Pharisees who would not see. The man healed of physical blindness received a greater insight by his subsequent faith in Jesus. The Pharisees who were themselves sighted remained spiritually blind. Each of us fits into one category or the other.
John 17:4
When we enter the Advent season, we are reminded of that profound moment in human history when the Second Person of the trinity took on human flesh. Jesus was God incarnate, God with us. The scriptures teach that this was not one of God’s afterthoughts, or a reaction to events on earth, but the outcome of a plan formed before creation between Father and Son entering into the Covenant of Redemption before time began. But why? What purpose, and whose purpose, was served by Christ’s coming? The first answers appear in John’s gospel, the text for the day.
Mark 1:16-20
Like a Caesar or an Alexander the Great, Jesus sets out to take over the world. But He doesn’t use money or political power or sword. He fulfills the prophetic announcement of John the Baptist, receives the blessing of His Father and the Holy Spirit at His baptism, repels Satan in the desert, and begins preaching. In our text today, Mark records the next move in His strategy to establish His kingdom. And that move involves us.
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