MARANATHA CHURCH
Sermons from Maranatha Gatherings.
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Sermons from Maranatha Gatherings.
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The disciples asked Jesus who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Instead of ranking them, Jesus placed a child among them and told them that unless they became like that child, they would not enter the kingdom at all. This week we walk through Matthew 18:1–14 and press on what Jesus actually asks of us. Cut off the sin you have been calling private, because it is not just yours. It is forming the little ones around you. And stop assuming that maturity is measured by how long you have been in the pew. Christian maturity is Christlikeness, and the mature Christian is the one who knows he
Most Bibles put a subheading between Matthew 17:23 and Matthew 17:24, as if the death Jesus predicts and the temple tax conversation are two different stories. They are not. Matthew placed them together on purpose. The cross interprets the tax. And when we read the passage as Matthew wrote it, we see something remarkable. Jesus, having just told His disciples that He is about to die, quietly pays a ransom into a temple sacrificial system He is about to fulfill and end. He was free from every obligation. He owed nothing. And He chose to pay it anyway, because a greater ransom was coming, one th
The disciples had authority, experience, and years of watching Jesus heal, cast out demons, and feed thousands. And yet when a father brought his suffering son, they could not do what they had been given authority to do. Jesus diagnosed their problem: little faith. Most Christians hear that and immediately conclude they need to build more of it, but Jesus is not telling His disciples to grow bigger faith. He is telling them that even the smallest faith, if it is placed on Him, moves mountains. This week we walk through Matthew 17:14-20 and discover the freedom of stopping the effort to hold ou
As we close the Recovering Context series, we walk into what Psalm 37 actually promises. Not the delivery of what you already want. The reshaping of what you want in the first place. God is working on the desires themselves, and the sign He is at work is not the arrival of the outcome. It is the slow, deep discovery that He is what you were always made to want.
We have all heard someone say, "God will not give you more than you can handle." That sentence has done real damage in the church, and it is not what 1 Corinthians 10:13 actually says. Paul is not writing about suffering. He is writing about temptation. And the promise he actually makes is one of the most freeing in the New Testament. This week we recover the context of the verse that has crushed people who were already crushed, and discover a God whose sufficiency reaches into the very places our capacity ends.
Jeremiah 29:11 is probably the most misused verse in modern Christianity. We have made it a personal promise about a pleasant future, even though Jeremiah wrote it as a rebuke of false prophets who were promising personal pleasant futures. The real verse is not smaller than the coffee mug version. It is far larger. It reveals a God whose covenant faithfulness endures even when His people break faith, and who does formative work in the exile that could not occur anywhere else. This week we recover the context of Jeremiah 29 and discover that the exile is not a season to survive on the way to so
Many people have used Philippians 4:13 to summon the strength to accomplish what they wanted. Paul wrote it from a prison cell about learning contentment in plenty and in hunger. The actual promise is not that Christ will help you win. It is that Christ will strengthen you to be at peace no matter what life throws at you.
Most of us are not refusing Jesus. We are filtering Him. We hear the parts that confirm what we already believed and quietly set aside the parts that would cost us something. We have made Him one voice among many in a life that is already crowded with louder voices. Matthew 17 is the day The Father settled who Jesus is and how He is to be heard. On the mountain, the Father did not say listen to them all and figure out the consensus. He said listen to Him. This sermon walks through the Transfiguration, the voice from the cloud, and the road down the mountain toward the cross, and asks the quest
Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. We reference the cross, we sing about it, we wear it, but we have not actually taken it up. Matthew 16:24-28 confronts the comfortable middle ground and asks what we are really telling Jesus about His worth when we refuse to carry what He has asked us to. The cross you carry should wound you, and the One who carried His first is worth everything it costs.
When Jesus announces His coming suffering, death, and resurrection, Peter pulls Him aside and rebukes Him, only to receive a startling rebuke in return. This sermon examines Jesus' confession of what lies ahead, the nature of Peter's correction, Jesus' counter-rebuke, and the diagnosis and remedy Peter needed to set his mind back on the things of God.
Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. The crowds in His day had their answers, and the world today has no shortage of its own. But Jesus doesn't ask what everyone else thinks. He turns and asks you directly: Who do you say that I am? That question has never been more loaded, and it has never mattered more to get right. What you believe about Jesus shapes everything about how you live, what you surrender, and what you're no longer ashamed of. Peter's answer changed the trajectory of history. Yours might change yours.
Most of us are living with a quiet dissatisfaction, the sense that what God has given us is somehow not enough. We pray for new signs, new clarity, new proof, as we walk past the cross, the empty tomb, and the long history of His faithfulness in our lives. Matthew 16:1-12 confronts two ways the human heart drifts away from Jesus and shows us that the cure for both is the same. Remember Him. He is sufficient.
Most of us are quietly hungry for more of God than we are currently experiencing, tired of trying harder and failing, and suspecting there has to be something more than this. At Sinai, God descended in fire on a mountain, and the people stood at a distance, terrified. Centuries later, in an upper room in Jerusalem, the same God descended in fire on ordinary people and made His home inside them. In this sermon, we are walking from Sinai to the upper room and into the kind of life with God we were actually made for.
The world tells us to stand tall, assert our worth, and never kneel. The world tells us to stand tall, assert our worth, and never kneel. Matthew 15:21-39 shows us a Canaanite woman who did the opposite and discovered that the lowly posture the world treats as weakness is actually the only posture that has ever been able to receive what God freely gives. This sermon walks through the King who crossed every line to reach the outsider, the bread He broke for the four thousand, the same way He would break it on the cross, and the invitation to behold Him the way she did.
Two groups of people meet Jesus in this passage. One reaches for the corner of His garment with the trembling dependence of people who know they are broken, and He is holy. The other travels nearly a hundred miles to ask Him about handwashing. Matthew 14:34-15:20 puts them side by side and asks us which one we actually are. Have we made Jesus common? Have we built traditions and preferences that we hold ourselves and others to, which are quietly keeping us from seeing Him the way He truly is? And what does it look like to come back to the posture that has always been the only thing that works.
This passage is not about Peter sinking. It is about the Creator walking on His own creation, speaking the name that belongs to God alone, and what happens to us when we take our eyes off Him and start taking inventory of the chaos around us. When we stop beholding the King, the wind gets louder. Matthew 14:22-33 ends, as it possibly can, with a boat full of men who have run out of every other category and are left with only one category that fits what they have seen: Jesus is God.
Most people don't think of themselves as people pleasers. But most people are making decisions every day based on an audience they may not even be able to name. Matthew 14 puts two kings side by side and asks you to see the difference between a king who rules for himself and a King who gives Himself away, and then asks the harder question: which one are you actually following?
Jesus returns to his hometown, and the people who watched him grow up can't get past what they already know about him. The wisdom is real. The works are real. But familiarity has already made up its mind. Matthew 13:53–58 is not just a story about Nazareth. It's a mirror for the towns we build inside ourselves, the places we've settled that are too small for what God wants to do. This sermon walks through four of them and how to leave.
At the end of seven parables, Jesus asks one question: " Have you understood all these things? They say yes. And he gives them one final image that reframes what understanding even means. The scribes of Jesus' day knew the Law, memorized vast portions of it, and taught it faithfully. But the word had passed through them without pressing into them or changing them. Jesus is after something different. Every scribe trained for the kingdom brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old, not someone who has studied the kingdom from a distance, but someone who has been discipled into it. The
The women who came to the tomb on Easter morning brought spices to honor someone they loved who was gone. The angel's first words were not comforting. They were a question: whom do you seek? In this Easter sermon from Mark 16, we ask the same question because it is possible to show up at church on Easter Sunday with genuine devotion and still be oriented toward a Jesus who is no longer in the tomb. He is risen. He cannot be commemorated. He can only be sought.
Gethsemane means oil press. In this Good Friday sermon from Luke 22, we move through three pressings, tracing Jesus from the garden to the trials to the cross, each stage applying more weight than the last until there was nothing left to give. The ancient olive press produced different qualities of oil at each pressing. So did the suffering of Christ. This is a service that moves slowly, pauses between each pressing, and ends in silence.
Palm Sunday looks like a triumph. But in the middle of the procession, while the crowd is shouting and the cloaks are on the road, Jesus is weeping. In this sermon from Luke 19, we slow down to ask why and what it means that the king who sees everything you have been avoiding is riding toward the cross anyway, because the grief is not going to stop Him.
The man who found the treasure sold everything, and he did it in his joy. In this sermon from Matthew 13, we ask the question these two parables will not let us avoid: what are you not willing to sell? Most of us believe the treasure is real. The problem is we keep finding reasons to hold something back. This sermon is for anyone who has been circling the field for a long time without buying it. The joy is on the other side of the surrender.
Why does genuine transformation feel so slow? In this sermon from Matthew 13, Jesus answers that question with two surprising parables: a mustard seed nobody wanted in their field, and leaven hidden in three measures of flour. Instead of the cedar tree and conquering king his audience expected, Jesus describes a kingdom that begins small, works secretly, and transforms everything it touches from the inside out. This sermon is for anyone in the hidden season who has genuinely turned to Christ but cannot yet see the fruit and is starting to wonder if anything is actually happening. The leaven is
We examine the core doctrinal differences between LDS theology and historic Christianity. While we use the same vocabulary, God, Jesus, salvation, etc, the meanings are fundamentally different. Topics covered: the nature of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, salvation, human destiny, and much more. Our goal: equip Christians to engage these critical differences with both truth and love.
