Resurrection City Church exists to minister to St Paul, MN. Our vision is to glorify God by seeing people, our city, and the world made new in Jesus, our Savior and King.
Episodes
Sunday Aug 16, 2020
Sunday Aug 16, 2020
Jesus invites his disciples, and us, into the intimate setting of the last supper, his final words before his death and resurrection. He washes his disciples’ feet, symbolizing his cleansing, servant love, and gives his disciples a new command: love each other and others as he loves them.
If we’re honest, though, this presents two problems for us as modern Christians. First, Christians aren’t always the most loving people. Second, we are so confused as to what the word love even means in our society. What does Jesus mean when he says we are to love one another? Both of these questions actually find satisfying fulfillment in this passage. Pastor Joel breaks it all down.
Sunday Aug 09, 2020
Sunday Aug 09, 2020
Some people micromanage. Some people are “control freaks.” Some people have darker inclinations for domination and manipulation. In reality, many worship power or control. Because of this, when Jesus is presented as the true King of the world and the one who holds all power, it can be a stumbling block.
It’s a stumbling block because of the scandalous way he uses his power—not meticulously controlling everything for his own self-benefit or comfort, but in emptying himself for us because this is how true power brings life. And he does something more scandalous still: calling us to follow him in seeing power this way. Join Pastor Joel as he preaches this last sermon in the Devil’s Advocate miniseries.
Monday Aug 03, 2020
Monday Aug 03, 2020
Looking for purpose in this life? Wondering if anything happens when you die?
Pastor Julie talks through John 11 and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and shares about the spiritual significance that this story has for us. In Christ, we find new life and purpose in the present and look forward to resurrection and eternal life after death.
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Jesus is the Good Shepherd. We've heard this a million times if we've spent enough time in churches. But what does that mean? And why do we even need a good shepherd in the first place? Is there a problem of leadership in the world? Why not be your own shepherd?
John 10 opens up a lot of intriguing lines of thought when applied to today's world. Pastor Joel explores them in depth in this sermon.
Sunday Jul 19, 2020
Sunday Jul 19, 2020
A major opposition today for belief is what is sometimes called 'the problem of evil', which asks this question: "If God is good and all powerful, why is there evil and suffering in the world?" In this sermon, Pastor Joel unpacks in what way Jesus reframes our view of God and his purpose in evil when we find ourselves asking this question.
We must first challenge our assumptions, and ask why Christianity thrived in the past when people faced arguably greater suffering than they do today. We find three things have changed: (1) Our view of God has changed, (2) Our view of pain has changed, and (3) we have divorced the story of the Bible from suffering we face. Jesus brings these three things back together again.
When we look at the Bible and the gospel story, we see the whole narrative is God's answer to the problem of evil. As the gospel recreates us into new creation, God works good from evil. We see that God is indeed all powerful, showcasing a power that is greater than just stopping bad things from happening in the first place by putting broken things back together together into something better than they were before. And we see God is indeed good, because he doesn't just throw things that have been broken by evil into the trash, but lovingly takes them and makes them more beautiful than they were before.
Sunday Jul 12, 2020
Sunday Jul 12, 2020
Jesus said a lot of things that angered the elites of his day, including the crazy idea that all people are slaves to sin. Being Abraham's family members, the ones who had been freed from Egypt, didn't keep the Jews from being free from slavery to sin.
What does this slavery look like? And how can the church model true freedom by embracing the multiethnic family of Abraham they now belong to? We talk about all of this in a sermon bursting with biblical truth.
*Note: several parts of this message are missing from the back third of the recording due to technical difficulties. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
Sunday Jul 05, 2020
Sunday Jul 05, 2020
In John 7:53-8:11, a group called the Pharisees tries to trap Jesus into condemning a woman who was caught committing adultery. Jesus chooses a third way and instead of condemning or acquitting this woman, he restores her.
Pastor Julie reflects on how we can rest in Jesus' restoration and restore one another, even in our current "cancel culture" that doesn't like to give second chances.
Sunday Jun 28, 2020
Sunday Jun 28, 2020
At various times in his ministry, Jesus encounters the Pharisees, a strict sect of Jews that looked similar to a modern day grassroots political pressure group. They butted heads with Jesus because the kingdom he was bringing conflicted with their moral vision for Israel.
Jesus has harsh rebukes for the Pharisees, and they remain potent for moralism today, whatever form it takes. In this message, Pastor Joel examines how Christians can find righteousness that doesn't come from the "look at how righteous I am" mentality many have on social media, but in the faithfulness of the Righteous One, Jesus.
Sunday Jun 21, 2020
Sunday Jun 21, 2020
The kingdom of God coming to earth is not coming into a vacuum; it comes into a space that is occupied territory. So naturally, there is opposition. Jesus encounters this in the book of John, and we will talk about what that opposition looks like for him and how it applies to us as well.
In this sermon, Pastor Joel talks through how we should respond when the gospel offends people, which is a big reason people are turned off to the message of Jesus today. Did that deter Jesus? How can we respond faithfully when we as Christians are offended?
Monday Jun 15, 2020
Monday Jun 15, 2020
Jesus brings both literal bread to those in need, but he offers a deeper and more necessary sustenance: himself. What is the relationship between the two? How does partaking in Christ empower and strengthen us to work to correct injustice and help those in need? Why is it so important that we don't separate the two, as Christians often do?
Pastor Joel dives into these very important and timely questions in this sermon from John.