Discovering Jesus

Hey everyone, it's been a minute! Just letting you all know what will be happening with the podcast and what I'll be doing in the future. For reference, here is the website mentioned in the recording: www.christandmind.com Also, should you want to access the backlog of sermons, you can download a zip file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GhFdSlYSugK5TEGD2v71HVFoLuSuPvPs/view?usp=share_link

This is the final sermon in our Minor Prophets series, and the final sermon that will be preached by Pastor Tyler at Tricity Chinese Christian Church before he pursues further education at seminary. Today we will be looking at the context and background of Malachi, how the author of Malachi points toward Jesus, how the whole Book of the Twelve points toward Jesus, and how the whole Old Testament points toward Jesus. Join us as we discover Jesus in the final book of the Christian Old...

We are approaching the end of the Minor prophets! Today we look at two of the more unique books, Haggai and Zechariah, two prophets active during the return from exile. Haggai and Zechariah both believed that reestablishing the monarchy through Zerubbabel was the best and only way to realize the utopian vision of Jerusalem becoming the centre of the world and the Kingdom of God coming to earth. However, as we'll see, this was not to be. When we dig into the background and context of...

This week we are jumping into the shortest of all the Minor Prophets: Obadiah. Obadiah has some very, very strong things to say about the kingdom of Edom, even though, as we'll see, Edom has not done anything particularly egregious when compared with the other nations. And yet, Obadiah, along with a couple other prophets and psalmists, have a special place in their heart for lobbing angry epithets at Edom. Why is that? Today we find out what was going on behind the scenes to cause such an...

This week we take a look at one of the last prophets to speak before the Babylonian exile, and whose name has garnered much controversy: Habakkuk. We will learn how to say his name properly, and more importantly, how history and biblical criticism work together to shed light on the beautiful gospel message that lies in the prophetic book.

This week we are turning our Bibles to the prophet Zephaniah, and we are turning our gaze toward one of the most difficult themes in all the prophetic books: the violence of God. Despite many denials to the contrary, the violence of the Old Testament God really is at odds with the self-sacrificing, enemy-loving Christ of the New Testament. Today we explore why that is, and why Yahweh sometimes looks more like a Canaanite warrior god (or Kratos from God of War) than he does Jesus. We'll...

This week we cover two books of the Bible! We are going to get into what exactly progressive revelation is, and how that helps us understand some of the anger in the prophetic books. Along the way we will see what Nahum and Jonah do and do not have in common, and how comparing the two books with the cross of Christ can help us learn how to pray for our enemies.

This Easter we explore exactly why Jesus had to be crucified, and why the resurrection matters. After all, if all we needed was a perfect sacrifice, isn't crucifixion a little over the top, and a little cruel? Wouldn't a nice, simple sacrificial ritual like in Leviticus have sufficed? Further, if all we needed was a perfect sacrifice, why the resurrection? There is much more going on in the Easter story than just Jesus offering his body as a perfect sacrifice, and it all starts in...

This week we move south to the Kingdom of Judah, with the first Minor Prophet to preach from there: Micah. Micah is supremely concerned with the social injustices that occurred under the reigns of Kings Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and indicts primarily the elites, politicians, and pastors/priests of Judah. But, within the fair and exciting calls for social justice, there is also a message of hope: hope for forgiveness for any and all, that we might be restored to God. So if you have ever...

Did you know that some parts of God's personality are stronger than others? This may come as a surprise (particularly for our Reformed friends), but the Bible is pretty clear that, when it comes to God's wrath, anger, and punishment, these are his weaker attributes. Join us to learn exactly why that is and what it means for Hosea's audience, and us today.

For the ancient Israelites, Yahweh was just one of many gods, and it was difficult for them to understand why they should worship him and no other gods. And even for us today, it may even seem a little narcissistic on Yahweh's part to jealously demand such loyalty and to punish infidelity so brutally as he threatens to do in the prophets. However, as we begin the book of Hosea, we will see that Yahweh actually has very good reason for acting this way, and if we just dig a little below the...

In only two weeks we're finishing the prophet Amos! This week Amos will continue to call Israel to repentance, as well as brutally trash-talk another wayward prophet. But our main focus will be on what Amos feels the Israelites' key sin was: a failure to worship properly. According to Amos, behind Israel's sin of social injustice is a failure to worship the way God wants. What does it mean to worship God, then? And why does God require basically say, "Worship me, or else!" Isn't that a...

We begin this year with a new series: The Minor Prophets. We will be starting with Amos, arguably the first of all the written prophets to preach, and his journey to Bethel, Israel, to condemn Jeroboam II and the elites for their abuse of the poor and oppressed. Amos has much to say about social justice, but for our purposes today, he also has much to say about how and why God uses punishment and discipline, how God can claim to love his people yet exact terrible curses on them, and how we...

We have reached the final week of our series on the Parables! While we have not covered every single parable, we have covered enough to give us a general feel for what messages Jesus intended his parables to convey and how to read them in their very Jewish context. This week we are going to look at the final three parables Jesus taught before he was betrayed and crucified. These particular parables were given specifically to his disciples as a warning against apostasy in the coming...

This week we take a look at another set of three parables. As Jesus nears the end of his life, his parables are becoming ever more explicit, and full of indictments on the current ruling class of priests and scribes, particularly on how they have oppressed and ignored the outcasts and rejects of society. However, as we'll see, simply being an outcast or reject does not give one automatic entry into the Kingdom. God still requires that we wear the right clothes to get in.

The Gospel writers always have a reason for why they arrange their parables the way they do, and Luke is no different. Join us as we discover the common thread Luke detects between Jesus' Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, and why he places them right after Jesus' "mini-apocalypse." *We apologize for the drop in audio quality.

Most Christians know Jesus had a thing or two to say about rich people, and we can sometimes think that Jesus thought all wealth was bad. This leads to an uneasy state of mind where we feel guilty for having wealth but also are told that God blesses his children. What did Jesus actually say about money? Was he entirely against it? Is money always a sign of God's favour? In our parable today Jesus is going to tell us about a rich man and a poor man whose fortunes are reversed after they...

This week we take a look at one of Jesus' most confusing parables, commonly known as The Parable of the Dishonest Manager. While this parable is often used to speak on wealth, the way Jesus uses it is quite a bit different than maybe our western, middle class, capitalistic sensibilities often understand it. In today's sermon, we will learn that the proper backdrop for this parable is the wrath of the Roman empire, and that one of the reasons Jesus believed Rome was going to descend on and...

Have you ever wondered why Jesus told Peter he needed to forgive 490 times, or why Peter even asked how many times he needed to forgive in the first place? It turns out Jesus is saying much more than that we just need to forgive a lot of times, or even an unlimited amount of times. And Peter might not be as unforgiving as we sometimes think. Jesus seems to believe that forgiveness isn't just a good thing to do, but is critical to our own salvation.

When Jesus said that we must become like little children, he wasn't talking about having a "child-like faith" unencumbered by "adult rationalism" or something like that. Jesus was talking about something entirely different, and way more radical. Matthew puts Jesus' parable of the Lost Sheep in a different context than Luke, and thus changes the meaning drastically, however it is by no means any less political or intense. Jesus is a brilliant, radical, almost crazy leader with completely...