York Alliance Church Sermons

Learning to depend on God is the first and primary lesson of the wilderness. Until we learn that, we cannot move toward maturity. Often, anxiety and lack of control are key components of our journey, just as they were for Israel. However, God meets us in the wilderness to show us that we can depend on Him.

Developing a rule of life is foundational to life as an apprentice of Jesus. However, it's still a means, not an end. We are called to be a community of love and move toward maturity, which is measured by loving as Jesus does. A rule of life that doesn't lead us toward love is a lot of effort with no real reward. Jesus is still the goal.

Conspicuous by its absence in many of the lives of followers of Jesus is the presence of joy. Yet it was one of the things that Jesus said would mark those who abide in Him, and it is chief among the fruit of those who are walking in step with the Spirit. How do we enter into the joy of Jesus? Or maybe better said, how do we not miss out on the joy that is rightfully ours in Christ? The answer is found in engaging the ancient rhythm of celebration.

Part of a healthy rule of life is an honest wrestling with the brokenness of the world around us. Those we love get hurt, people and situations disappoint us, and much of life does not go as we have planned. Lament is a vitally important action that allows the fullness of joy in our lives. Lament has a beginning and an end and, when accomplished, gives way to real joy.

As created beings, we must learn to embrace the fact that we have limits. Jesus left many things undone, and yet, He accomplished all that the Father sent Him to do. We must do the same. This can only happen when we come to grips with the fact that God has created us with limits, even though we live in the midst of a world that seems limitless.

It's not just the hurry of the modern world that pulls us away from the life of Jesus… it's the sheer noise. While the noises in our modern world are admittedly different, this isn't a new problem. Jesus modeled for us a rhythm of retreat into silence that allowed Him to regain the Father's perspective for His life and world. We are called to do the same.

The pull of hurry is possibly the greatest enemy of the spiritual life, and the digital world stokes this fire of hurry while sabotaging attentiveness to the way of Jesus. When we learn to take refuge in God and allow firm lines to be drawn, we find that true fulfillment comes from Him alone.

Using the metaphor of a vine, the call of Jesus is that we abide in Him. In the midst of a world filled with smartphones, hurry, and all forms of digital and tangible distraction, how can we obey this call? The answer comes in the form of another metaphor: a trellis, or as the ancients called it, a "rule of life." By establishing a rule of life, personally and communally, we establish a framework to abide in Christ.

Developing a rule of life is less about the activities that we do than it is about the loves and desires that act as the foundation of our lives. The world around us often teaches us that we're at the mercy of our desires and that our loves are just animalistic urges. However, both the Bible and the history of the church teach us that we are able to curate our desires through the way that we live.

The vitally important reminder as we engage formation is that we are called to stand in faith, but that God is the one who does the heavy lifting. Formation starts and ends with the work of God but must necessarily include our action. This mysterious tension is at the heart of true discipleship.

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? In a world that is upside down regarding gender, what does the Bible actually have to say to us? How do we love the world around us well?

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? In a world that is upside down regarding gender, what does the Bible actually have to say to us? How do we love the world around us well?

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? In a world that is upside down regarding gender, what does the Bible actually have to say to us? How do we love the world around us well?

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? In a world that is upside down regarding gender, what does the Bible actually have to say to us? How do we love the world around us well?

The vitally important reminder as we engage formation is that we are called to stand in faith, but that God is the one who does the heavy lifting. Formation starts and ends with the work of God but must necessarily include our action. This mysterious tension is at the heart of true discipleship.

Freedom from is only part of true freedom; it must give way to freedom for something as well. In God's message to Moses we find out that deliverance is the precursor to formation, and that formation is necessary for us to truly inhabit the Promised Land.

The Passover story is a clear precursor to the atoning work of Jesus. Through layers of symbolism, the deliverance story is told right before it happens, and the story of leaving Egypt is layered with signs of the goodness of God. In the same way, we tell the story over and over as we remember the power of Jesus' sacrifice and the true place of our hope.

There is a line that gets crossed when it becomes evident that God is at work. In those instances, we can either embrace the forward movement of the Kingdom of God or harden our heart against His rule and reign. The love of God confronts our idols and brings us into freedom.

We are comfortable with the love of God, but tend to recoil a bit at the judgment of God. However, true love requires real judgment. The plagues are a reminder of the futility of worshiping false gods, past and present, and of the extent to which God will go to deliver His people from oppression.

The promise of the new covenant not only provides forgiveness from sin but also the transformation of our whole person. Ezekiel prophesied that the new covenant would bring with it a new heart that replaces our former heart of stone. This means that we need to change and that progressive change will make us become like Jesus from the inside out.

The breadth of the beauty of the person and work of Jesus is beyond our ability to comprehend. Our vision is to engage the totality of Jesus while learning to engage His beauty progressively. This calls us to be with Jesus, abide in His presence, meditate on His work, and listen for His voice. As we experience all of Jesus, we will impact all the world.

As we approach the end of another challenging year, it's appropriate as the people of God for us to look back at the faithfulness of God and dream forward into the future into which He is calling us. The church is often commanded to remember His faithfulness as well as expect His goodness and grace in the future. This is a personal discipline, a corporate exercise and a way of life for the church.

Jesus came among us in the midst of both obscurity and scandal, not backing away from the most difficult aspects of our humanity. It's in His coming among us that Jesus creates a pathway for us to come to Him, inviting us all to be children of God.

From Genesis to Revelation, the desire of God is to be with His people. Consciously or subconsciously, we often perceive the desire of God to be over us or under us. When we understand that God's desire is to be with us, we are sustained through the joys and sorrows of our journey and we are able to carry His presence to the world around us.

The celebration of the first Advent points us to the second. The glorious image of eternity reminds us that Jesus came to be with us and that we will be with Him forever. Until that time, we are called to reveal His presence, be recaptured by urgency, and reach the world around us.

Before we can understand the full message of the Christmas season, we need to gaze at the beauty of God Himself. It is only when we understand who God is that we are able to respond to His coming with true joy.

Lost to most of us across culture and language is the powerful truth of Exodus 6: God proposes to Israel, His bride, and commits Himself to her and, by extension, to us as well. The promise of deliverance is the forerunner to the anticipation of intimacy and inheritance for the people of God.

Suffering and disappointment are part of the human experience, and Christians are not exempt from this reality. In fact, it's in the midst of the most powerful work of God that we often experience the formational work of suffering and pain in our lives. While we can't avoid suffering and disappointment, we can prepare ourselves for the inevitability of it and learn to sustain, and even grow, during those difficult seasons.

Our hesitation is no match for the plan of God. He works through imperfect people like us to accomplish profound things in our world. However, He also takes our response to His work seriously and asks us to submit to His Lordship. He can't be Savior unless He's also Lord.

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? What does the Bible actually have to say about sexuality, and what does it look like for us to live faithfully and lovingly in the modern world? These 4 Crossroads classes had a mix between instruction and Q&A.

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? What does the Bible actually have to say about sexuality, and what does it look like for us to live faithfully and lovingly in the modern world? This is the last of 4 Crossroads classes and has a mix between instruction and Q&A.

In an LGBTQ+ world, how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus? What does the Bible actually have to say about sexuality, and what does it look like for us to live faithfully and lovingly in the modern world? These 4 Crossroads classes had a mix between instruction and Q&A.

When God appears to Moses in the burning bush, He declares one of the most powerful truths about Himself to us as His covenant people: He sees and hears us. There are times when it seems that God is far away and disengaged, and times when our prayers seem to disappear into the air. But the promise of the Bible is that God sees us, hears us, and is acting on our behalf, even when His timing doesn't match ours.

God is both transcendant and imminent. He is holy and yet close. He is the God in whose presence we must take off our sandals, but He also the God who invites us to come near. When we come to grips with this paradox, we begin to see the majesty of the salvation story and God's ongoing work of reconciliation in the world.

: Of the three 40-year periods into which Moses' life can be divided, we have the least amount of information on the center period of time. However, we know that the man who went to Midian was not the same man who emerged 40 years later. The wilderness is a place where God desires to shape us. All too often, we run away from the wilderness and miss the formational work of Jesus in our lives.

Through a series of acts of civil disobedience, the line of Israel is sustained and a deliverer is born. In a season when our rights, or the violation of those rights, are a central conversation, the opening sequence of Exodus reminds us of when we are called to disobey the authorities so that we might obey God. While these times are more seldom than one might think, they are powerful examples of courage as God's plan unfolds.

The book of Exodus is a powerful foretelling of the work of salvation and restoration that God has done through Jesus. From a macro perspective, Exodus is one part in the five-volume epic that begins the Hebrew Bible. From the micro perspective, slavery in Egypt is a type for bondage of sin. Only when we see our helplessness and God's covenant love are we able to truly see the power of God's deliverance.

If we're honest, there are many times when community just isn't convenient, enjoyable or even desirable. However, our call to be an apprentice is to follow the model of Jesus and set aside our own preferences in order to love those in our community. By committing to journey with one another in a way that prioritizes the lives of others above our own, we model Jesus to one another and to a watching world.

God exists eternally in relationship and has invited us into that relationship. This means that we must learn to live authentically with one another, being loved just as we are. We receive and model the love of God as a steady flow to those around us. Like God Himself, we live lives that invite others to experience the love and grace of Jesus.

The predominate New Testament metaphor for the community of Jesus is that of family. This is rooted in Jesus' teaching and modeled throughout the history of the early church. The community of Jesus is called to be a counter-cultural expression of strong bonds developed with one another. We are saved not just into forgiveness and eternity—we are saved into a family.

Honor is a concept that is foreign to many of us as Westerners. We live in a culture of sarcasm, shaming, entitlement and disregard--a culture of contempt. However, the way of Jesus is honoring one another, even above ourselves. When we take this call seriously, we enter into a life-bringing and life-changing practice for our community and for the world around us.

Community was an intentional practice of Jesus that formed Him and those around Him. His community was diverse, committed to one another, and far from idealistic. Jesus' model was that of a servant, willingly setting aside His own rights to care for those around Him. This call is central to what it means to be an apprentice of Jesus and is powerfully formational for us as we follow after Him.

When we recognize the sovereign power of God, we can truly enter into the rest to which we are called. The invitation of Jesus is into a present and future rest that allows us to fully live into the Kingdom of God. When our culture directs us and we work for blessing, our souls are crushed. When Jesus blesses us, our souls are restored.

Justice is a vital and important topic in our world. However, too often the terms of justice are defined through worldly ideologies instead of Kingdom opportunities. As we engage the personal Gospel of Jesus, we are also called to embrace the cultural and social implications of that gospel for ourselves and for the church. Jesus modeled setting aside His ultimate privilege for our sake, and He calls us to do the same for those around us.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that we are "too easily satisfied." Our hunger for the power of God, the fullness of life, and revival in our community is often less than our desire for lunch. Triviality has replaced substance, and we have been lulled to sleep, not by the enemy of sin, but by apathy. The call of Jesus is to cultivate a deep hunger for that will not easily be satisfied and to relentlessly pursue His heart for the world.

Worship is counter-formation. We will always be worshiping something, and that something forms us. The deepest longings of our heart can only be met through the transcendent glory of God and, when we fail to recognize His glory, we shift glory to the created things which can never satisfy and will even destroy us. True worship orients us to the soul-satisfying power of God.

The world is shrinking. We live in a community that is increasingly diverse in every way as God brings the nations to us and sends us out to the nations as well. Unfortunately, fear of "the other" and of the increasing diversity of our world often blocks our ability to love and learn in this incredible landscape. The practice of hospitality makes the stranger a friend and allows us to see others as people, not as ideas.

The singular thing that we all agree on is that the world is broken. For those of us who are following Jesus, we recognize that He alone is the answer. However, what will it take for others to have the freedom to ask the questions necessary in order to come to the same conclusions? We must be ready to do whatever it takes to bring all of Jesus to the whole person for the whole world.

Cynicism seems to seep out of every pore in our world, and that often includes the church. We can be cynical about the move of God because we've experienced a broken world and have a hard time imagining anything different. In this world of cyncism, we are called to be people of joy who reflect the hope of Jesus. Celebration is a posture of godly defiance in a culture of doubt. Jesus calls us not to a Year of Jubilee but to a culture of Jubilee.

Hate is a common theme throughout our world. In a world of increasing polarization, each side feels justified in their hatred of the other, claiming a defense of the common good. First-century Rome was no different. In the midst of that world, and in the midst of ours, Jesus calls us to enemy love. When we choose love in a world of hate, we are transformed, we transform others, and we follow the teaching and example of Jesus.