Ren Elder Mark Skillin preaches a Palm Sunday message, highlighting the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection for our lives. Jesus not only rode into Jerusalem on a colt, died for our sins and rose from the dead, but these also function as prophetic signs of God's future for His people and for the world.
Ephesians: Love for Church Community
Today's service includes worship led by the youth and youth directors, and the message is two-fold. You'll be hearing from some of the church about what they learned from the book they read together last summer called Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison, which is about God’s heart for racial reconciliation. (Watch the video of this section here.)
Secondly, Pastor Scott finishes up the book of Ephesians—finally! This message takes some of the ideas in the last verses of this epistle and relates them to the relational tensions we are seeing in the Church throughout the land regarding politics, race, the pandemic, theology, and many other things.
The Church is more divided than ever. Even groups that have enjoyed much unity around a system of theology have suffered terrible divisions. How can our church survive what is happening today? How can we be unified as brothers and sisters if we disagree about important things? This message shows how—despite the complex differences of opinion amongst Christians—we can find harmony by simply caring for one another.
Ephesians: Boldness
Ephesians 6:19-20
The world is becoming increasingly hostile to the message of the Gospel. This has been predicted from the beginning and we are seeing it unfold before our very eyes. The reason why persecution is mild in America is that there are still great numbers of Christians, and very few Christians speak the Gospel with boldness. The reason Christians have been silenced is primarily because of social fear. There exists in society such a collective frown upon anyone who would preach that their way is the right way, and other ways are the wrong way, that Christians fear being categorized as zealots, extremists, proselytizers, fundamentalists, and now, even evangelicals. Some Christians won’t even call themselves Christians anymore! The prayer request of Paul for boldness to proclaim the Gospel should be our desperate request. The glorious truth is that the Lord is willing to grant great boldness to His people to speak out His message without fear of consequences.
Ephesians: Supplication
This is a simple message encouraging the church to pray for one another in the Spirit. Prayer is the most powerful thing we can do for another human being because it activates the intervention of God Himself. We don’t always see the results right away but if we will pray and not give up until we get answers, our faith will grow. What would happen if we increased our prayers for one another by 3x or 10x or 100x? Imagine the measure of grace and power upon the church!
Ephesians: The Armor of God
Ephesians 6:13-17
In this message, Assistant Pastor John looks at the Apostle’s encouragement to take a stand against Satan’s forces using the armor of God that’s available to all followers of Jesus. We take an in-depth look at how Paul paints a picture of the spiritual weapons in our struggle as analogous to the armor worn by the Roman army soldiers of his time.
Ephesians: Spiritual Conflict
Invisible to our eyes—and yet very real—is the spiritual realm. It’s the place where God, angels and demons, and the spiritual part of humans, collide. Because it is invisible it is not easy to understand. The Bible gives us some insight but much remains a mystery. What we do know is that there are spiritual forces of darkness seeking to pull us away from God. These fallen angels have superior power and intelligence to us and their clever schemes are often effective. This message aims to give us a greater awareness of these unseen adversaries and to show us how to overcome.
Ephesians: Slaves + Masters
Ephesians 6: 5-9
Why does the Bible not condemn slavery? Why does the Paul Apostle not encourage slaves to run away or encourage slave owners to set their slaves free? Would God want anyone to be a slave? Why was Jesus so silent on this subject? These are questions that have caused much debate through the centuries of the Christian Church. This message seeks to address some of these complex questions.
Ephesians: Children + Parents
Ephesians 6:1-4
This message looks at God’s design for the relationship between children and parents.
Ephesians: Christ + the Church
Ephesians 5:22-33
In this message, I’ll be using Ephesians 5:22-33 but only focusing on the relationship of Christ to the Church. The passage has much to say regarding husbands and wives (explored in the previous message). But here we want to celebrate one of the most profound and glorious truths, namely, Christ’s vast love for His universal Church. There are seven specific elements the text unveils about Christ’s relationship to His Church. My prayer is that after listening to this message you would float away on a cloud knowing how deeply loved you are in Christ.
Ephesians: Marriage
Ephesians 5: 22-33
In American society, and especially a progressive city like Providence, the biblical ideas of husbands being the head of the wives and wives submitting to their husbands seems out of date. Society now boasts of a much better way of doing marriage. The old-fashioned Bible ideas have been tossed aside as the antithesis of female empowerment. Meanwhile, divorce rates have skyrocketed and fewer people even get married. Is the wisdom of the Bible really outdated? What is God’s design for marriage? What does marriage look like as God intends it to be? Why did God design it this way? How has the fall of man complicated His design? These are the questions explored in this teaching.