Woodland Hills Church - High Quality Audio

This weekend, we started our 6 week church-wide adventure entitled "The Beautiful Mess." The title may seem a little different, but it's very representative of how the Kingdom of God interacts with our lives. When a new way of living begins to reveal itself, it can bring beauty into our "normal" messes of life by actually "messing up" our so-called ordinary ways of thinking. It is just this idea that grounds Jesus' "Sermon on the Plain". With this Sermon, Jesus not only presented the very blueprint of Kingdom life, but he also did so by telling shocking truths that seemed somewhat upside-down from what may have been thought of as "normal" living.

During this beautiful Easter season, the most important question arises: Did Jesus really rise from the dead? The Christian faith and all its transformative power depends upon the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Greg shared the top 5 arguments about believing in Jesus' resurrection along with some responses.

Jesus of Nazareth started a movement the likes of which the world has never seen. The Kingdom of God that was lived out in Jesus’ life and ministry has touched millions of people all over the world. What’s impressive is that Jesus began with just 12 chosen people.

Jesus has historically been seen as a powerful presence who bravely challenged the religious inconsistency and subtle oppression of his day. He sometimes broke serious religious rules that made some deeply question his actions. Some believed him to be just a troublemaker who had a disregard for God's rules for living. In reality, Jesus the Messiah was expanding the view of what God's life rules were really about.

The Lord Jesus was truly a Master Teacher to his disciples. Using his unique wisdom in the midst of tense and controversial situations brought on by the Pharisees, he was able to teach people deep truths about God...even without them knowing it. In Luke 6:1-5, we have an account where Jesus is doing just this very thing. Jesus and his disciples were being confronted by some of the Pharisaic religious leaders for picking grain on a Sabbath day, a religious offense that warranted serious punishment. He responded to them by mentioning how King David once did the same thing. Jesus further went on to say that he was, in fact, the Lord of the Sabbath.

To say that Jesus was a radical, “thinking-outside-of-the-box” person may well be the understatement of understatements! In living out his call as God's Messiah, he went against a lot of the expectations and categories of his Jewish contemporaries, especially the religious leaders. It appeared that everywhere he went he was turning social convention on its head with his Holy Spirit-empowered deep wisdom and amazing love. Jesus' incredibly loving, accepting behavior towards social outcasts and “sinners” made him the constant target of attention, scorn, and many questions from people.

Messiness often bothers people. Life is messy, and many things are ambiguous or undefined. There are no clear categories into which certain events can be placed. It can be too chaotic, and unsettling for some to endure. Because of this dislike of messiness, it is pretty understandable how we would like to make things clean and unambiguous as we can...including our relationship with God and His Kingdom. We learn from Jesus' ministry, however, that God's Kingdom is not as clean-and-nice as we might like for it to be.

There are a number of popular songs that mention the importance and need for a caring community. Songs like “Stand by Me” or “You've Got a Friend” mention relying upon each other in a time of need. They also demonstrate how good things can happen to individuals who “get a little help from their friends.” In the Luke 5:17-26 passage, we see an account of Jesus healing someone, and a clear example of a caring community that desired to help bring healing and wholeness to their friend.

Lepers in Jesus’ day were considered to be completely “untouchable” by mainstream society. They were excluded from the company of other “healthy people” and were forced to live alone or in leprous communities. Jesus, however, had no such limitations. When the leprous man came to Him to be healed, Jesus reached out to the man, touched him and made him well. In doing this, Jesus shows us how we are to minister to others.

Jesus desires to be a part of every area in our lives. Following God is not a spiritual exercise or ritual that is relegated only to church. Rather, it is a relationship that consists of giving to God everything about us, and being obedient to God's calling and direction in our lives.

As Christians we can sometimes lose sight of our true identity in Christ and become distracted by our lives, our interests, and our worries. We can begin to feel that God is a convenient "genie" who can fix what goes wrong in our lives or to bless our plans and ambitions. However, the truth of living in the Kingdom of God is that only when we give up our agendas and our ambitions can we actually begin to understand how we fit into what God is already doing. God does not fit into our plans; instead we are invited into His.

The Good News Jesus came to proclaim to humanity was for all people and for all areas of our lives. He came to heal and set free the poor, the oppressed, the blind, the captives and prisoners of judgment. Jesus applied Kingdom liberation to every form of oppression. Jesus sets a pattern of speaking the truth in love and then following through with action. He does not just talk about the Kingdom. He acts upon it.

The terms "blessing" and "blessed" are spoken of in many different church settings. However, there seem to be many differences of opinion on what the concept actually means. One thing that appears to occur across the board is that we do not usually think about pain and suffering in connection with blessing.

Jesus' ministry did not just focus on one aspect of human existence (ie. the need for forgiveness). It was holistic, ministering also to the physical, social and relational needs of the people he came in contact with. As followers of Christ, we are also called to live a life that reflects this love.

The Kingdom of God is incredibly different from any kingdom of this world. One of the major ways this is so is in the way that God's Kingdom includes everyone in its benefits. When it comes to God's love, no one is left as an outsider!

All humanity faces temptation. Part of being completely human is to deal with times of strong temptations. Jesus was fully man and fully God, therefore, His humanity allowed Him to face these temptations and to overcome them with the same tools He has given us-God’s word. Jesus was “led into the desert by the Spirit”, but once there he found that part of this wilderness experience was to be a time of testing and temptation for Him.

Christmas is a time of both celebration and reflection on the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Through the use of Christmas hymns and carols, we are reminded of just how amazing God’s love for us is, and of the sacrifice Christ made for us all by dying for our sins and redeeming us.

God’s love is perfect. As disciples of Christ, it is important to know and accept that God loves us. It is from His love that we are able to return love to God, ourselves, and then others. However, we have an enemy that wants to keep us from understanding and receiving this love.

We are constantly tempted to focus our time and energy meeting the expectations of other people instead of meeting God's expectations for our lives. This is an extremely strong temptation! Even Jesus, as Messiah, was expected by others to act and be a certain way. But God has given every one of us a unique identity to receive. The goal of our Christian life is to grow into and manifest this God-given identity, so that we can reflect His love to others.

Every human being faces temptations. Even our Lord Jesus was tempted. After being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, Jesus was tempted by the Devil. There are a number of reasons to suggest that the scenes of Jesus' temptation played out within his mind. That does not mean that the temptations were not real. In fact, all temptation begins within the thoughts and emotions of the mind.