St Marcus Mke Sermons

Pastor Dan Leyrer will be sharing a message from 2 Cor. 13 about What an Extraordinary God We Have.

This week is Pentecost Sunday. That’s the anniversary of the Christian Church – when Jesus sends his Spirit down. And so we’ll be looking at the work of the Spirit. Jesus teaches us in John 16:5-11 that there are 3 life-altering things the Spirit exposes to us.

“I pray. It doesn’t always seem to help. What am I doing wrong?”  This week we get to listen in on God speaking to himself and can learn some powerful truths from noting how Jesus prays to his Father. If you’d like to prep, we’re digging into John 17:1-5.

“Jesus died for my sins. So why am I still so sad?” Almost every careful thinking Christian I know has wondered this at some point. And the answer lies within something Jesus calls “Another Advocate.” We’ll find out more this week as we dig into John 14:15-21.

This Sunday we encounter the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. They have a very common, relatable problem – they don’t see the world through the lens of the Resurrection, and it’s making them terribly depressed. We’ll learn what gets them over that as we study Luke 24:13-35.

The Sunday after Easter is traditionally marked as a time to highlight “Doubting Thomas.” I’m not sure that name is super fair, but we certainly benefit from Thomas’ skepticism. But is our struggle of faith the same as that of Thomas. We’ll take a look this week (John 20:19-31) as we start up our new series, Jesus Always Shows up.

This weekend will be the first distinctly Palm Sunday sanctuary service LIVE IT has had in years. The message of Palm Sunday is very unique – the unorthodox kingship of Jesus. This week’s theme is “Rising Out of Earthly Glory” as we look at Matthew 21:1-11.

As we close in on Easter, we’re grasping what it means that God brings life out of death. This week we’ll take a look at John 11, where Jesus brings one of his best friends, Lazarus, back to life. But before he could do that, he allowed Lazarus, whom he loved to become sick. Much to learn about God’s allowance of pain and what he brings out of it.

I’ve been wrestling this week for many hours with our text. John 9 is a long, fascinating story about a blind man that Jesus gives sight to, and in the process it blows up his life. And I’m finding it’s a story that teaches us something about the inherent blindness of EVERY person, it teaches us about the way we falsely process the pain we face in life, it teaches us how naturally the world rejects Christ and how passionately Christ pursues us. This week, we’ll be worshiping under the theme Rising out of Blindness. John 9:1-7, 13-17, 35-39.

This week’s theme is “Rising Out of Arrogance.” If there’s one Christ-like attribute I’d like St. Marcus to be known for, it might be humility. Morality is good, but you can be moral and arrogant. There are lots of moral Mormons, Muslims, and non-religious people. But any performance-based religion will logically lead to a certain level of self-righteousness or self-loathing. On the other hand, the gospel leads to humility. And Christian humility also helps develop morality. This week we’ll see how the cross gives us humility of intellect, humility of power, and humble joy. Matthew 20:20-28.

As we enter the first week of Lent, we’ll be looking at the original temptation and the fallout, which was directly related to gender roles. The tension that exists in the world between men and women is the product of our designed wiring gone awry. But there’s still hope. An offspring of the woman comes to untangle the wires and empower us to carry out our design. We’ll look at Gen. 3:14-20.

This is our last week in Demonstrating the Divine. We’ll be looking at one of my personal favorite texts/Sundays of the year – Transfiguration. It’s arguably as essential to the Christian calendar as Christmas or Easter, but gets very little press. The story exposes our broken relationship with glory in this world and teaches us how to be healed. We’ll try to clear some of that up and explain its relevance when we look at Matt. 17:1-9.

This is our final week in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Here he comes up with this crazy “turn the other cheek” principle. It’s uniquely and distinctly Christian, difficult and totally unnatural, but extraordinarily beautiful. We’ll take a look at what “turn the other cheek” really means on Sunday night, Matt. 5:38-48.

We’re looking again at Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” this week and Jesus’ statements on morality. The world believes moral obedience to God is what earns salvation. The gospel teaches that salvation is a gift from God’s grace through Jesus. So why be moral? We’ll take a look on Sunday night, Matt. 5:21-37.

We’re looking again at Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” this week and Jesus’ famous comparison to Christians as Salt & Light. The brilliant analogy provides many interesting points of application for the Christian life. Matthew 5:13-16.

One of the most famous texts of Scripture is Jesus “Sermon on the Mount.” It’s also one of the most commonly misunderstood, especially the opening “blessed” statements, called the Beatitudes. We’re going to clear a lot of that up this week and see how Jesus conditions our hearts to enter the kingdom. I guarantee it will be a new understanding for many of you. Matthew 5:1-12.

This Sunday we’ll be taking a fairly deep look at discipleship, a continuation from our study last week. If Jesus is good, it makes sense that we’d push our chips to the center of the table and go all in on him. But what does that look like in our personal lives? What did that look like for the first disciples? How does that shape the direction of our church? We’ll find out as we examine Matthew 4:18-23.

Week 2 of “Demonstrating the Divine”. Followers of Christ are called Disciples. This week and next we’ll be zeroing in on the concept of what discipleship looks like. We follow because Jesus was the Lamb who sacrificed himself for our salvation. Somewhat frighteningly, discipleship means we’re also willing to follow him anywhere, wherever he leads us. Discipleship is a rich thought, and I hope you can join us for the study of it and worship tomorrow evening.

In our 3rd week of Advent, we continue in our series Listen. Don’t Look. This week we’ll be listening again to the voice of John the Baptist. This is honestly one of the most helpful texts I’ve found in the Bible for processing the inevitable doubts about God that we experience in life. The lesson provides incredible insights for overcoming doubt. Matthew 11:2-6.

In our 2nd week of Advent, we continue in our series Listen. Don’t Look. This week we’ll be listening to the advice of John the Baptist, whose ministry could be summarized in one word – REPENT. Repentance seems completely counterintuitive to our natural condition, but our premise this week is that it’s actually the key to all progress in life. Looking at Matthew 3:1-10.