Soma Spokane Sermons

Informações:

Synopsis

Our vision is Gospel Saturation: that every person in our region would have a regular encounter with the good news of Jesus Christ in both word and deed.

Episodes

  • Stories of Motherhood and the Sufficiency of Jesus

    14/05/2023 Duration: 43min

    This Mother's Day, we'll share stories of motherhood and the sufficiency of Jesus. We’ve got a handful of mommas who are sharing their mess and challenge, revealing their need for Jesus, and talking about how He has met them in the journey. This won’t be perfect moms sharing their tips for being better moms; this will be real moms sharing their real need for a Real Savior, and all the ways that Real Savior has been gracious, present, and empowering through the good, bad, and ugly of mom life. Regardless of your experience, you'll be encouraged to hear what Jesus can and is doing among us!

  • The People of Jesus

    30/04/2023 Duration: 47min

    We're ending our series in Luke's Gospel by looking at the first chapters of Acts, which is the continuation of Luke's telling of the Jesus Story. In Acts 1 Jesus promises to send the Spirit to empower his disciples to be his witnesses. In Acts 2, the Spirit arrives, the church is born, and the mission of Jesus continues in and through his people. From the very beginning, the church is marked by Spirit-wrought unity, Jesus-centered humility, and Family-like community. This week, Rodney McAuley joins us to talk about his ministry of racial justice and reconciliation in the church.

  • The Promise of Jesus

    23/04/2023 Duration: 37min

    In Acts, Luke continues the narrative of the work of Jesus. The tomb is empty, Jesus is alive, and as he ascends to his throne in heaven, he gives clear direction about how his followers are to continue his work. His ongoing mission in the world depends on this community of failures. Everything Jesus came to do is now being entrusted to his Church. But, here’s the catch, the disciples can’t seem to get it right. They don’t have what it takes. They are confused, scared, and prone to give up easily. We are sent to bear witness to the Story - his life, death, resurrection; the forgiveness of sins; repentance and baptism; a new kind of human life together - but we can’t make it very far past the resurrection before we start flopping again; missing what Jesus is really saying. This is why the work of the Holy Spirit is so important. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will empower them (and us!) to live out the mission. All they are to do is wait, expect, pray, and depend. Not on their own strength, but on the pow

  • The Commission of Jesus

    16/04/2023 Duration: 36min

    The gospel according to Luke ends with the Risen King Jesus showing up among his perplexed, fearful, and anxious community of disciples. In Acts - which is Luke's Volume 2 of the Jesus Story! - Luke tells us Jesus spent 40 days with this community, teaching them about the Kingdom of God. In this week's text we get a sample of what Jesus taught. First, he wanted them to know him in all his resurrection glory, and to trust his work on their behalf. Second, he wanted them to understand what he had accomplished and made possible. Third, he wanted to prepare them to be his witnesses, proclaiming and demonstrating the Good News to the ends of the earth. And finally, he wanted to know the power of the Spirit who would accomplish all of this through them. All of this sets up the movement of the gospel that unfolds in the book of Acts, eventually reaching all the way to us!

  • The Resurrection of Jesus

    09/04/2023 Duration: 20min

    "He is not here, but has risen." With those words, the world shifts. Jesus is the center of history, and his resurrection is the hinge point. Yet, when the angels announce the resurrection, nobody understands it, and nobody believes it! But by the end of the story, the whole community of disciples is saying together, "He is risen, indeed!" That’s what Easter is all about: The facts of the resurrection (He is Risen!) become the energizing reality of a disciple’s life (He is Risen, Indeed!). The facts tell us why we can believe it, and the second tells us why we should!

  • The End of Jesus

    02/04/2023 Duration: 21min

    None of the Gospel writers spend much time describing the actual crucifixion of Jesus. There are very few gory details, though crucifixion was brutal, shameful, and excruciating. Two details almost all the writers include are the darkening of the day and the tearing of the temple curtain. Both carry a great deal of theological weight, helping us to understand exactly what is happening in the final moments before Jesus lets go of his life. The darkness symbolizes that God's judgement against evil is falling on Jesus - the great and terrible day of the Lord has come, but to God's Son and not to us. The torn curtain symbolizes the end of all that has separated us from God and opening of access to his presence - we are no longer separated from God, but welcomed to draw near.

  • The Heart of Jesus

    26/03/2023 Duration: 23min

    As Jesus appears before the last person who can spare him from being tormented on the cross, he refuses to plead for his life. Why? Because he WANTS to go to the cross. And when they nail him to the beam and hang him up to die, and they hurl insults at him, he holds no grudge. Instead he prays "Father, forgive them." The sins of mankind (including yours and mine) meant that the cross was necessary - so while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 

  • The Body & Blood of Jesus

    19/03/2023 Duration: 26min

    The story of Judas' betrayal is infamous: One of Jesus' closes companions conspires with the Religious power brokers to destroy Jesus, working in conjunction with Satan himself. For Judas, Jesus was a means to an end, and in this moment he sells Jesus out for a bit of cash. Loyalty, the opposite of betrayal, is being true to someone despite attractive alternatives. While it is easy to point fingers at Judas, the story is meant to lead us to reflect on our own attractive alternatives and the places for which Jesus is a means to an end in our own lives. And yet - thru the very means of Judas' betrayal! - Jesus displays his self-giving loyalty, giving his body and blood for us, accomplishing redemption on our behalf.

  • The Glory of Jesus

    12/03/2023 Duration: 22min

    We throw the word glory around but really, what does it mean? A glow, a radiance, or the Holiness of God? We may typically think of being in awe while looking at His image. The Bible seems to give a much fuller picture of the glory of God. One of his character, His benevolent rule, and of the goodness and blessing He spreads. And on top of a fuller picture, the Bible again and again gives examples of Him sharing His glory with man as He commissions us to go and spread his reweaving, shalomic glory across mankind. As we spend our days aching alongside all of creation and working towards the blessing of the earth, we eagerly look towards the day that Jesus, the author of Glory returns and makes all things right and new.

  • The Authority of Jesus

    05/03/2023 Duration: 23min

    In ch. 20, Luke gives us 6 stories illustrating the rising tension between Jesus and his religious enemies. At the center of the debate is the authority of Jesus -- who he is and how he can claim to speak and act in the name of God. This is the central question of the gospels and the whole reason Luke has written: What will we do with Jesus? Resistance to Jesus' authority isn't a 1st Century problem but a universal problem, rooted in hearts that resist submission to anyone. In this season of Lent, we're invited to consider ways we still resist Jesus and his reign in our lives, believing that greater joy can be found outside of his lordship over our lives.

  • The Tears of Jesus

    26/02/2023 Duration: 21min

    As Jesus finally arrives in Jerusalem, he deliberately fulfills Zechariah's prophecy regarding God's anointed King arriving on a colt. His disciples rejoice and the religious leaders grumble (again). But Jesus? He weeps. The tears of the King. What makes the Lord weep is human hard-heartedness, the refusal to welcome Jesus and his reign of grace into our broken hearts, broken lives, and broken world. Thankfully, our rejection of Jesus doesn't lead to his rejection of us - he continues his mission by entering the Temple to make a way for sinners to come in! As we begin our journey in Lent, we're asking the Spirit of Jesus to search us, reveal our blind hard-heartedness, and lead us to fullness of joy in his determination to give himself in love for the world.

  • Rejecting Self-Righteousness

    19/02/2023 Duration: 39min

    When Jesus said in Luke 18 that "no one is good except God alone", he meant it! But for all of human history, people like the Pharisees and the Rich Ruler (and you and me!) have tried to find peace with God through their own good deeds and self-righteous acts. While the world applauds those who "try harder and do better", the truth is that self-righteousness is just another way of rejecting Jesus and denying his finished work on our behalf. How can we be freed from this insidious self-sabotage? Like Jesus said, "What is impossible with man is possible with God."

  • Receiving Community

    12/02/2023 Duration: 43min

    Jesus calls us and saves us personally as individuals, but his aim is to form a new kind of community built on faith in His mercy. In Luke 17.1-10, he describes a handful of key aspects of his community, offering a vision for life together as disciples. The community of Jesus is not immune from sin, so it requires a sober self-awareness and an eagerness to confess sin and find forgiveness. It also requires an abundance of mercy, as we live together under Jesus' mercy. We also need a ton of humility, learning to do what Jesus has asked - love one another! - with a healthy level of self-forgetfulness. Living this way requires a great deal of faith, which means returning to Jesus again and again, laying ourselves at his feet, and receiving again his mercy to us.

  • Rejecting Affluence

    05/02/2023 Duration: 41min

    In our parable of the gracious and giving land owner and the manager who finds grace, there are two primary characters. One is the gracious and generous landowner who holds the kingdom. The other is the manager who is found out to be wasting and stealing the resources of the master. The manager is about to be kicked out but instead makes a move that trusts all in the character and honor of the generous gracious master. It puts the good master’s character on display and the scoundrel manager is welcomed back because of the lavish graciousness and generosity of the good master. 

  • Receiving Delight

    29/01/2023 Duration: 34min

    Do you ever feel like you’re on the outside? Like you just don’t fit the religious mold? Or perhaps you’re quite comfortable in the church. What you’re concerned about is the culture, the economy, politics. Wherever you are Jesus wants to show you how to approach him. Whether you feel like you’re on the outside or the inside, like the younger or older brother, God has something profound he wants to give you today - Himself!

  • Receiving the Banquet

    22/01/2023 Duration: 43min

    As Jesus continues his journey toward Jerusalem, he is shaping in his disciples a true vision of the Kingdom of God and how to live in it now. One of the biblical images for the Kingdom of God was the Feast, and Jesus tells a parable about who will be wanted and welcomed at the feast. Shockingly, those who are invited to the feast reject it, and the master of the Feast sends his Servant to collect the busted and broken, compelling even those outside the city to come to the Feast. This is the ministry of Jesus, a wide-open invitation to the least and the lowest to draw near. At the same time, Jesus tells those who are coming after him to be sure they know what they’re getting into, because while becoming a disciple of Jesus is totally free, it will cost you everything! Only those who are able to count the cost are ready to become his disciples. Christianity is both a wide-open invitation of grace and a line-in-the-sand call to death — and both are good news!

  • Receiving Repentance

    15/01/2023 Duration: 43min

    As Jesus travels to Jerusalem, with a clear vision of what the next part of his mission is, his confrontation with the religious elites increases. He frequently comes toe-to-toe with them, maneuvering through their traps with wisdom, calling out their hypocrisy with boldness, and avoiding their distractions with clarity. The Gospel of Luke uses the word “repent” nine times, and all of those times are in this travel narrative, while Jesus’ focus is on Jerusalem. The pride, arrogance, exclusivity, and entitlement of the religious warrants God’s judgment. Although Jesus would rather accept and welcome Jerusalem and her leaders - as a hen cares for her chicks - he can not. He can not turn a blind eye toward their relentless sin while they cling to their assumption that they are good with God. They are not! And in this section, Jesus calls them to repentance and weeps because he knows they will ultimately reject his offer. Repentance shows up as a warning (to those that may reject it), but to those that receive it

  • Receiving the Kingdom

    08/01/2023 Duration: 45min

    In Part 3 of our study in the Gospel according to Luke, we're going to explore a handful of key practices that help us live into the Way of Jesus. Jesus is intent on forming his way of thinking, believing, and living into those who follow him, expecting that everyone who wants to be his disciple must "take up their cross daily" and learn from him how to live the upside down nature of life in his kingdom. In chapters 12-18, Jesus is training his disciples in his Way, confronting, challenging, and comforting them as he does. This week we look at Jesus' teaching on greed and how to live free of anxious striving or boastful amassing. Our relationship to money and possessions has everything to do with who we are and whose we are: Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!

  • Shepherds | Salvation

    18/12/2022 Duration: 38min

    We wrap up our three-part Advent series this week with the arrival of Jesus in the little town of Bethlehem. In chapter 1 of Luke, we saw God come near to Elizabeth & Zechariah with generosity. In their barrenness, God came to the unable. Last week, we looked at Mary’s story and saw that God came to the unexpectant and invited partnership. This week, in Luke 2, we’ll see how God came to the undeserving. A group of lowly shepherds gets in on the marvelous news of Jesus’ birth. These unseen vagabonds, these outcasts of society, are seen by God and experience undeserved equality! These rejects are the ones who get to experience previously unseen wonders as the heavens are opened up and a choir of heavenly hosts proclaims God’s glory. The people that were always on the outside are some of the first to meet Jesus, as he lay in a manger. The community of the manger is the fellowship of rejects, and it is not just his birth that is set in the margins. Jesus spends his life among the least of all people, among the si

  • Mary & Joseph | Partnership

    11/12/2022 Duration: 37min

    JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and their friends coined the phrase, “Jesus is the true myth”. He is the better, truer story. He is the author of all other stories. Whether we recognize his penmanship or not, he is carefully crafting a far better narrative than we could ever come up with on our own. That is why he chooses to disrupt the story of humanity. In our text this week, we see God surprisingly visit Mary and completely change her plans. Any hope she had for life to move in a certain direction would be completely altered because of Gabriel’s announcement. Although she was a virgin, she would become pregnant with the Son of God. He would be great, would bring peace to the world, would assume the throne of David, and rule forever. Oh, the possibilities! The life-changing declaration and miracle! This interruption brought with it the unexpected, but deeply longed-for, salvation of the world. And on top of all that, God would choose to partner with humanity to unfold this new story. God put on flesh as a desperatel

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