Sermon text: Jeremiah 31:31-34
This passage introduces what’s known as the New Covenant, and understanding it starts with recognizing that the old covenant—the one God made with Israel at Mount Sinai—didn’t work. Not because God failed but because people did. Back in Exodus 19, God offered Israel a conditional relationship: obey, and you’ll be my treasured people. They agreed readily, having personally witnessed the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. But over time, that covenant curdled into legalism—Israelites believed that keeping the letter of the law made them righteous, going through the external motions while their hearts drifted elsewhere. God’s frustration with empty sacrifice throughout the Old Testament wasn’t about the sacrifices themselves; it was that the hearts behind them weren’t engaged.
Month: May 2026
The Worst Mother’s Day Sermon Ever
Sermon text: Matthew 20:20-28
This passage sits at a pivotal point in Matthew’s Gospel—Jesus and his disciples are on the road to Jerusalem, heading toward his arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. Into that solemn journey walks the mother of James and John, kneeling before Jesus to ask that her sons be seated at his right and left hand in his kingdom.
Philip and the Eunuch
Sermon text: Acts 8:26-40; Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Philip first appears in Acts 6 as one of the seven men chosen to oversee food distribution in the early Jerusalem church—widely considered the first deacons, selected specifically for being “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” He resurfaces after Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7, when persecution scattered believers out of Jerusalem. Rather than retreating, Philip went to Samaria and became the first to preach the gospel outside Israel’s Jewish population—a significant step, given the deep animosity between Jews and Samaritans dating back to the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom centuries earlier.