Christmas Is The Story of The Prince Who Battled The Dragon To Save His Bride

Of all the symbols of Christmas, you’ve probably never included dragons in your list. Yet, Revelation 12 tells a symbolic story of the birth of Christ through images including a prince, a bride and a dragon. It reminds us that even in His incarnation as a baby, Jesus’ birth was a declaration of war against Satan, sin and death. In our final installment of our 2019 Christmas series, we learn that Jesus satisfies our longing for peace through declaring war on that which destroys peace upon the earth.

Listen to this week’s sermon here.

Simeon Had Finally Seen What He Had Longed His Whole Life For

In the fourth installment of this year’s “Cast of Christmas” series, we met Simeon, a man who had longed for “The Consolation of Israel” - God’s promised Messiah. When he finally met him in the form of a baby, so satisfied was Simeon that he was ready “to depart in peace”. Simeon is perhaps the most vivid picture of “longing satisfied” in the narrative of the first Christmas. He longed for the comfort that God had promised to his people through His Anointed One and He experienced such deep satisfaction in his encounter with that very one that there was no longer anything better the earth could offer him. If you long for comfort and satisfaction of that kind, listen to last Sunday’s message.

Listen to this week’s sermon here.

Do You Long For Truth?

There weren’t necessarily three of them. They probably weren’t kings. They weren’t present at the birth of Jesus. The Magi are some of the most well-known members of the “Cast of Christmas”, but at the same time, their role in the story is shrouded in untruth. Curiously, the Magi were in fact those who spent their lives seeking for truth - in various religions, in natural phenomena and in the stars, yet what they found when the followed one particular star was Truth itself, Jesus Christ. When they found Him, they literally “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy”. Do you long to know truth? Do you long to know the answers to life’s deepest and most troubling questions? Do you long to know that your life has meaning, what true morality is, if there is a God, what He is like, how you should live and what this all means? Your journey for the answers to these questions, like the Magi, will not end until you encounter Jesus.

Listen to this week’s sermon here.

Herod, A Symbol of The End of The Reign of Sin

In week two of our 2019 Christmas series, the cast member of Christmas was a rather unlikely one - a man whose life and actions in the Christmas narrative defy sentimentality, peace and joy. The Biblical authors include Herod for a reason. He stands as a symbol of the end of an era as a new age dawns upon the earth and in our hearts. What becomes starkly evident, though, as we understand the story of the birth of Christ, is that Herod’s kingdom and Christ’s kingdom cannot coexist. Their respective priorities are diametrically opposed. This leads us to consider whether we’re trying to do what’s actually impossible - trying to live as Christians allowing multiple kingdoms to reign and have influence in our own hearts.

Listen to this week’s sermon here.

“Always Winter, But Never Christmas”

Yes, Thanksgiving is this week, but this past Sunday, we launched into our 2019 Christmas series. Last year, we met 4 very ordinary members of the “cast of Christmas” through whom God did extraordinary things. This year, we met 5 more members through whom God satisfies our longing. This theme should feel particularly poignant to use after spending months examining the prophets - if the prophets leave us with anything it’s a sense of longing for someone to come and break our cycle of sin - for God to send His promised Messiah. In the first message of the series, we met Gabriel, whom God sent to herald the coming of spring upon a land and a people that had endured a self-imposed long, cold harsh and “Christmas-less” winter”.

Listen to the sermon here.

The Message To Wrap Up Our Series In The Minor Prophets

After spending 5 months with the minor prophets, we turned forward in our Bibles to Romans 10, where the apostle Paul answers his critics who are upset to know that their Jewish ancestors failed to be made right with God. Paul’s answer to them paints a brilliant tapestry of what the prophets - and the entire Old Testament, in fact - were all about in the first place. Listen to this week’s message to discover what the prophets were ultimately trying to get across and how that applies to your life today.

Listen to this Sunday’s sermon here.

Serve from a Posture of Love

Pastor Ramon Flores from Legacy Church in Yuma, Arizona treated us to a feast of God’s Word - in 2 languages this past Sunday. He reminded us that 1 Corinthians 13 is not merely a sentimental passage to be read at weddings, but instead an affectionate correction from the Apostle Paul to a Corinthian church that had lost its way by losing its love. The message was a stirring reminder that without love, our week-in-week out serving is nothing; that our employment of spiritual gifts is nothing. Love is not a beneficial byproduct of our life together in the church, it’s the essential posture we must take if our Gospel labor is going to mean anything. Tall order, you say? By God’s grace, we have the love of His Son to compel us. The posture of love which God calls us to is a posture which Christ perfectly assumed in His cross.

Listen to this week’s bilingual service here.

Busyness Left Unchecked Is a Threat To Your Very Life

As our church gathered to celebrate our two year anniversary, we also paused to consider the future years, and, Lord willing, decades of the ministry of Sovereign Grace Church fo Santa Ana and what it will take to persevere into the future. We’re convinced from Scripture that one of the most important components to perseverance is the ability of the people who comprise the church to regularly rest. And while the kind of rest we’re talking about includes physical rest, it’s much deeper and more profound than mere bodily reprieve. We need to learn to develop habits of regularly resting in the finished work of Christ.

Listen to this to this week’s sermon here.

By Being A Person Who Shows Compassion To People

As we finished up the book of Jonah together, we finally learned what it was that caused Jonah to flee to Tarshish after hearing God’s command to go and prophecy to Nineveh. He suspected God would show them grace. And when God did show them grace, it made Jonah angry enough to die. In this picture lesson, God teaches us something significant about His unchangeableness and something deeply concerning about the contradiction in Jonah’s heart. You and I are prone to living, even unknowingly if we’re not careful, with the same contradiction.

Listen to the message to learn the lesson Jonah failed to learn

Who Would You Least Expect God To Save?

In the third message in our series in Jonah, Jeff Schlieder guided us through the third chapter, where the city of Nineveh unexpectedly repents and turns toward the God of Israel. Like Jonah, we expect those whose lives oppose God to either overcome us and lead us away from God or we often hope, like Jonah, that they would somehow be destroyed or “driven out”. But when the grace of God through Christ is entered into the equation, a third and better way is introduced. Jesus drew the world to Himself without being overcome by the world, thus making the third option of grace possible. We should have a confident hope in God to save even our most unlikely neighbors.

Listen to the message here.