Sermons & Resources

SERMONS

After his miraculous, bodily resurrection from the grave, Jesus spent forty days on earth, mainly with His disciples. It must have been an incredible time for these men and women as they spent time with their resurrected Savior; because now, with a living breathing Jesus, all the hope, all the confidence, and all the dedication to the mission and message suddenly returned. What an amazing experience it must have been! Oh, how I would have loved to have been there to witness the reactions of those who went from the dark despair of a crucified Christ to the overwhelming joy of a risen Lord...all in a matter of days!

How do you respond to the resurrection of Jesus? What do we do with a resurrected Savior? What was unleashed when Jesus rose from the dead and walked out of the tomb?

We look back at arguably the most important week in human history..."Holy" or "Passion" Week. The climax of Jesus's messianic ministry began as he entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. He rode into the city on the back of a donkey as Israel's Messiah-King. While the journey between Bethany and the gates of Jerusalem was rather short, to the crowd that gathered along the road on that Sunday morning, it was a profoundly important journey that had the potential to seal their eternal destinies. Holy Week could not have begun on a bigger note!

There's only one right response to the One who has come to reign in our lives...total surrender. It's the one response that doesn't come naturally to any of us. And yet, with all of our heart, soul, and strength, we are called to join the loud chorus of eternal "Hosannas"! "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna, Hosanna to the King!"

Why do we give into temptation? Why do we keep making bad decisions? Join us as we take a closer look at the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness in order to identify the driving forces behind the temptations we face every day. Once we realize what is behind temptation, we can find the confidence to respond as Jesus did...with a right attitude, a right heart and the right desire.

Belief - Action - Heart

Join us this Sunday at 9:30am, as we take a closer look at our beliefs, our actions, and our heart. The story of King David will set the text so come ready with Bible, phone, or other mobile device in hand. Also, look up 1 & 2 Samuel so you can find it more quickly - those Old Testament books sometimes are more difficult to find.

Alive!

Join us this Sunday at 9:30am, as Larry Annes speaks on being Alive in God's Love. He will be sharing from I John 2, where the Apostle John reminds us how destructive and deadly sin can be. The good news is we have a God who is for us and sent us an advocate in Jesus to extract us from the penalty of sin and walk alongside us in our walk with God.

The Gospel: The Story of a Redeeming God. Our story of forgiveness and redemption, although personal to each of us, was never meant to be kept private. The vision behind this series is, as we take a deep-dive into the nature, character and love of God; the person of Jesus Christ; the scope of salvation; and the finality of eternity; that each of us will fall in love with our own place in the gospel story, that will fuel a passion to point others to the work of Christ in our own lives.

Rediscovering Christmas. The joy and promise of Christmas is that the miracle of Bethlehem still happens. God still enters into the reality of our messy lives to restore hope that is found in a relationship with God. We can experience peace from knowing that our sins have been forever forgiven through the love of God made visible in the birth of Jesus. And so on this day, we open wide our hearts to receive Jesus, who brings "Joy To The World".

The point of Christmas is that you and I need a Savior and because of Bethlehem we have one! Let's not keep this a secret. Invite someone to join you this Sunday morning at 9:30am for Christmas at Parkside!

Thanksgiving

Exodus: Seeing God in the Journey. To know the story of Exodus and God's people is to recognize it as our own. Through this series, we hope to learn more about how God leads us into certain situations, so that He can lead us out. Two questions for you to think about are: .
1. When faced with a difficult decision or choice, do you look back or look forward?
2. Do you walk with your eyes focused on your own steps or do you look for the footprints of Jesus, who is walking right beside you?

Has it ever occurred to you that Jesus launched the church, not while people were singing or while someone was preaching, but while people were praying? In the first two chapters of Acts, the disciples were doing nothing but waiting on God to move. As the late expositor Harry Ironside once stated, "When God is going to do some great thing He moves the hearts of people to pray. He stirs them up to pray in view of that which He is about to do so that they might be prepared for it." Just like these early disciples, I want to invite you to set aside time this next week for self-examination through prayer and supplication, so that we might be ready for the tremendous thing that God is going to do in our church.

"Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you...Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results."

FOCUSED. Our vision behind this series is to enter into a season where we intentionally regain our focus on who Jesus is and who He has called us to be as a church. When we focus on Jesus, transformation in our lives and the lives of those around us is inevitable. Focusing our attention on Jesus will ultimately lead to an intimacy with Him which in turn allows us to experience abundant life.

Focusing on Jesus also brings freedom in our lives and allows us to see His purposes for us. In any area that we are struggling, as we set our eyes on Jesus, we will receive power to overcome those areas of weakness. Now more than ever, we need to keep our focus on Jesus, so that He can bring clarity to what may seem chaotic and unclear.

The reason behind the title is we will be joining the early apostles on a wild, roller-coaster type ride through the book of Acts. Over the next several weeks, we will take a peek at how God used Gospel-Centered Multiplication to launch the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem. However, during our journey through Acts, we will also witness how the early followers of Jesus dealt with opposition so ferocious and so deadly that any other organization would have folded immediately...but not these bold, unhindered disciples! Come ready to "Fasten Your Seatbelts" and hang-on as God continues to transform us into the image of His Son, Jesus!

We are in a new series titled Gazing at Glory. Through the Gospel of John, we will learn about a loving God, who sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to die on a cross for our sins. Thankfully, Jesus rose from the grave and ascended into heaven where "God gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father". (Philippians 2:5-11). Don't miss this as we begin a journey towards a deeper relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Our ability to be surprised by Jesus has largely been shaped by the New Testament, and too an even greater degree, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Traditions and past experiences have also shaped our idea of how Jesus moves and works in our lives and in the world around us. I believe that because of these two factors, the Jesus of the Bible and our own experiences, our ability to be surprised by Jesus is limited. Not because of Jesus himself. Not because Jesus isn't doing some amazing things today; but rather, because of our own self-imposed limitations or beliefs in how we experience Jesus.

Surprise the World, by Michael Frost.
Join us as we explore 5 essential missional values: engagement with neighbors, connection with each other, a deeper experience of God's leading, a stronger understanding of the gospel, and a framework for identifying ourselves as missionaries

If I ask a person why they aren’t in church today, many may say it’s because of the hypocrisy of Christians. For Mary Jo Sharp, this objection is personal, painful, and forms the background of her latest book, Why I Still Believe. Though she’s an apologist and professor, her experiences in the church have driven her to question if Christianity is true…or even worth it. Having been drawn to God through the beauty of His creation, but seeing the ugliness of human failings, she’s heartbroken that what she found in church didn’t match what she longed for. Mary Jo calls her journey an “anti-deconversion” story about finding hope and answers in the grace of truth of Jesus.