Roseville Covenant Sermons

In recent years there's been a shift in the objections people have against Christian faith. In an earlier time, skeptics would ask, "Is the Bible true?" More often these days people ask, "Is the Bible good?" The problem of religious violence has become a bigger objection than the plausibility of miracles. For believers and skeptics alike, one of the most challenging books of the Bible is Joshua. Its description of the conquest of Canaan has sometimes been described as genocidal, barbaric, confusing, and occasionally boring (about a 1/3rd of the book is devoted to ancient land surveys), but if a...

When we’re young, we imagine adulthood as a place where confusion evaporates and answers become clear. As adults, we discover the truth: everyone is still learning as they go. The growing pains don't stop when you reach a certain age. When the Bible commends "spiritual maturity", it paints a similar picture. Christian maturity doesn't necessarily mean we're finished products, but that we've committed to the work of growing Christlike in ways that come with aches and pains and sprains.

In the final week of our September sermon series on "The Body of Christ", we’re looking at how...

There are all kinds of institutions and organizations that have local chapters of a common mission (think of things like the Kiwanis Club, Alcoholics Anonymous, or the YMCA). They often have a charismatic founder and a set of guiding values and documents that create an enduring mission and culture in diverse settings. You might be tempted to think of the Christian church in a similar way, but let me suggest the local church is actually something quite different. The local church is not a historical society, an affinity group, a book club, or a philanthropic organization. We call it "The...

In 1949 about 76% of Americans held "membership" in a church congregation. In 2025 just 45% of Americans belong to a congregation. Yet despite this precipitous decline in church membership, 65% of Americans still identify as "Christian." Belonging to a church and being a Christian no longer seem synonymous. A lot of people who are interested in Jesus are nonetheless asking, "What's the point of church?"

The Bible's favorite metaphor to describe the church was to say it was like a human body: an interdependent network of parts like shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears, mouths, and nose combined to make a singular human...

As summer comes to a close I am always grateful for the ways this season allows me to enjoy the outdoors and marvel at God's creation. Whether it's taking in the stars under the milky way, watching thunderclouds roll across the prairie, or feeling the wind as it blows through the trees; time in nature is a prime opportunity to consider the majesty of God and the humility I should have before him. An ancient Hebrew poet put it well, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers... what is humanity that you are mindful of them, human...

Most of the Ten Commandments speak to behaviors that are observable and measurable (e.g. there are ways to tell when a person is stealing or working on the sabbath). The final commandment of the ten forbidds something much more internal to our minds and hearts: we should not covet neighbor's "house or spouse" (Exodus 20:17). This command puts restraints on our most secret thoughts and inner desires: our envy, jealousy, lust, and bitterness. These are wrongs that would be hard to convict in a court of law, but resisting them would be essential for living life in God. Without the...

It's been said that trust takes years to build and seconds to break. What's more, since so much of life depends on trust, a broken promise creates suspicion and resentment that afflicts more than individual relationships. Communities run on trust like an engine runs on oil. When there's a leak, it doesn't take long for the whole engine to seize.

As we continue in our summer sermon series on the Ten Commandments, the 7th, 8th, and 9th commandments share a common thread (Exodus 20:14-16). Adultery, theft, and false witness are fundamentally acts that break trust. In a world...

We often describe a brand new baby as, "the miracle of life." It's an appropriate phrase because scripture tells us in a variety of ways that life is not an accident nor is it a given, but life is a precious gift from God. In the same way, there are few things that shock our sense of goodness more than when a life is taken by violence. It is the ultimate act of disorientation and desecration. "Bloodshed pollutes the land" (Numbers 35:33), and just like toxic chemicals that seep into groundwater, the act of murder poisons the bonds of human community...

There are words that have fallen from the lips of parents at least once in their life, "Because I said so!" Even the most patient moms and dads sometimes just want kids to follow instructions without stopping to explain why. It would be tempting to appeal to the fifth commandment as justification, "Honor thy father and mother." (Exodus 20:12). There are Bible verses that commend a child's obedience to a parent, but what if I told you the fifth commandment is more for adults than it is for children?

Because the nature of aging and parenting in the modern...

Early in his ministry, Mark’s gospel records these words from Jesus:“The Sabbath was made for humankind (man), not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mk 2:27). Sometimes it can feel like Jesus is speaking in riddles. What does Jesus mean? 

In our journey through the 10 commandments, scholars and theologians suggest that the third command about Sabbath is a cornerstone to the other nine. It isn’t all that radical to tell someone not to steal or kill or commit adultery. Many other law codes in ancient near eastern traditions such as the Sumerian or Hammurabi have parallel teachings about these thing...

Do you ever get a word or phrase stuck in your head and it drives you a little batty? Or maybe there's a word or a name that "triggers" you because you associate it so closely to a bad memory. The Bible frequently warns us that words can be dangerous and that names are important. This is why the story of Exodus includes a story about God's name (Exodus 3:13-15) and a warning that this name carries serious weight (Exodus 20:7).

This week we turn to the third commandment, traditionally translated, "Do not take the LORD's name in vain", b...

One of the major shifts that took place in the human mind during the age of enlightenment and the rise of democracy is the idea that religion was simply one "part" of your life among many. It has resulted in the idea that "worship" is simply what we do on Sunday mornings, and is related to the very specific spiritual activities like saying a prayer, singing a song, or attending a service. This was a departure from the pre-modern worldview that had no distinct categories of religious and secular: everything was spiritual! Worship is more than just a set of...

Historians sometimes observe a kind of see-saw in the life of societies and nations. In one era, a culture may become permissive and libertine. Once this gives way to anarchy, the pendulum swings back towards the rule of law in response. In some ways, we might be seeing this in our moment. An increasing number of people who have grown up with lawlessness are growing curious about tradition, religion, and moral order. There are signs that "rules" are coming back in fashion, and a good number of these people are growing curious about what the Bible teaches about morality.
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To wrap up our Bridgebuilders series, we will return to the Old Testament prophets, where we started, to consider Isaiah’s words to the people of Israel post-exile. In Isaiah 58, they ask the question: “Why have we fasted and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?” But, they seem to lack self-awareness as it turns out that when they “fast” their workers are exploited and violence breaks out. God replies, “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.”

God continues: “Is not this the kind of...

One of the fun things about the Bible is that it is full of little sayings we throw around in everyday conversation without even realizing where they came from. This week, we will spend some time in Luke 10 which has not one - but two! - of these sayings. If you've ever referred to "a wolf in sheep's clothing" or "shaking the dust off your feet", you're squarely in Luke 10 territory.

We find Jesus sending out the disciples in pairs with specific instructions. The mission at hand is urgent, so Jesus tells them to pack light - not...

Who has told you the good news of Jesus? I can list a whole slew of people who turned my heart toward Jesus in small and big ways. Their influence moved me to consider God in deeper, truer, and more personal ways. They ‘evangelized’ me (evangel = good news). Sometimes when we think of evangelism we think of street preachers or formulaic gospel presentations and we get the ‘ick.’ And, because we don’t want to do that, we excuse ourselves from any form of sharing God that involves words. We decide we’ll stick with sharing God through our actions — which early chur...

In a world with increasing global conflicts that seem harder and harder to resolve, it can feel like diplomacy is a lost art. Across the history of civilization, tribes, nations, and empires have called upon individuals to cross boundaries with wisdom and skill to negotiate peace and friendly relations. When describing the work of an apostle, Paul uses this image of a diplomat, telling the Corinthians, "We are Christ's ambassadors." We may not be tasked to negotiate international treaties, but our calling is to announce reconciliation between God and a world that has turned from Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

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Divided. Isolated. Fractured. Atomized. These are the words we often hear used to describe our current cultural moment. There is discontent and a hurt in the world that creates estrangement, injustice, and violence (we call it sin). Yet in the face of these forces, God's people have been called to be peacemakers, rebuilders, and repairers (Isaiah 58:6-12). That's a huge task! What power makes it possible? For the Christian, we believe it comes from the hope of the gospel. When human beings are reconciled to God, reconciliation among people often seems to follow.

This week we begin a...

"It is to your advantage that I go away" (John 16:7). I think a great number of us come to worship because we want to become closer to Jesus, so how then is it advantageous that Jesus "goes away"? Without some understanding of who the Holy Spirit is, you might get the sense that the point of the Christian life is to suffer in God's absence until one day we might be reunited, but the Bible tells a different story. Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit (in Greek, "the Paraclete") follows him and does all that he does (16:14). God is never...

Confirmation is a long tradition in many Christian churches in which our youth commit to study, reflect, and practice their faith in the hope and preparation that they will continue to be life-long followers of Jesus. It culminates on Confirmation Sunday, which includes our students sharing their faith stories. The traditions, rites, and celebrations of Confirmation Sunday spotlight our youth as individuals and rightfully honor the steps of faith they are taking.

Yet at the same time, there is something almost ironic about some of our Confirmation traditions: while we publically celebrate and honor our students' faith, the...

Over the last 5 weeks we've surveyed ancient cultural customs, re-examined the stories of Hebrew patriarchs, considered the context of Israelite law, looked at historic heresies, and had plenty of time to reflect on historic doctrine. The book of Galatians is indeed "a crash course" of the gospel and would be an excellent textbook for "Christianity 101." Yet all these challenging thoughts and ideas and beliefs are not just for pondering in the mind, but putting into action.

On the final page of Paul's letter to the Galatians he offers some practical application for how the good news of grace...

Many political scientists and statesmen have observed that while freedom is the bedrock of democracy, freedom requires exercises of responsibility to keep from collapsing on itself. It's sometimes described as the difference between "liberty" and "license". License thinks freedom is for your own self-satisfaction. Liberty is freedom that we extend to others for the sake of common good.

In the first 2/3rds of Paul's letter to the Galatians, he makes an impassioned case against legalism and moralism. Grace through faith is what saves the Christian, while overconfidence in "works of the law" is a kind of slavery. Yet...

Some decades ago, a sociologist suggested that one of the major sources of increasing depression in our world comes from the pressures we put on ourselves to create and manage an image or an "identity." He called it, "the weariness of self." The effort to fit in, stand out, or rise above can be exhausting. We have phrases in our parlance that capture this (eg "we're slaves to fashion").

Biblical wisdom points us a different direction. Paul's letter to the Galatians includes warnings of a "slavery" not enforced by a master's whip, but by our own obsession with...

We may think the days of succumbing to peer pressure are long gone; that saying what we think others want us to say or doing what they want us to do or wearing what they want us to wear was for the high school lunch table. But, when we’re honest with ourselves, we know that people pleasing doesn’t just go away with adolescence. We are much too fickle for that.

As we move into the second chapter of Galatians this Sunday we will see that these very human temptations existed centuries before us as well. In his...

An old proverb says, "a leopard can't change its spots." We assume that people are largely predictable and personalities are largely fixed. We make certain judgments about a person who drives a large pickup truck and shops at Fleet Farm, and make another set of judgement about someone who drives an EV and shops at the organic co-op. Our culture has excelled at believing that certain things about us will never change and it's better to look for existing allies than win over a new convert. We are skeptical of change.

The gospel tells us something different. When...

When you piece together the stories of the first Easter from the four gospels, you may notice that essentially no one that morning was instantly able to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. They experience bewilderment, curiosity, confusion, and fear... but not many immediately understood or even celebrated that Christ was risen. Each of the four gospels give us some unique details about the events of that day, and Luke is the one who tells us that late in the afternoon the risen Jesus goes on a hike with a couple of disciples and spends perhaps hours chatting...

Historians have long wondered how Jesus showed up to Israel's capital one Sunday morning welcomed as a hero, only 5 days later to be crucified like a criminal. What happened in between Palm Sunday and Good Friday? To answer the question we'll need to dig into a complex religious-political situation of a raging culture war within 1st century Judea, provoked by the crisis of Roman occupation, that created no less than four major Jewish political parties and a whole lot of controversies (Luke 19:45-20:26). What has any of that to do with us? It's not just historical curiosity. Jesus refuses to...

Throughout our series in Luke for Lent, story after story has invited us to reflect on our theme: "change of heart." Whether it's a man who feels the need to build bigger barns to deal with the "problem" of his abundance, an upstanding religious man whose ability to part with his wealth stands between him and his own question of righteousness, or a "small" man who, though he is despised, rises to the top as the least likely to repent. Each of these characters presents us with startling contrasts and unsettling convictions that leave us asking: how is our relationship...

We all like a good redemption story, and followers of Christ are told to rejoice when a sinner repents (Luke 15:7), but sometimes it's hard not to be skeptical when a nasty scoundrel makes a sudden conversion to Jesus. We can probably think of more than a few examples where it seems a public conversion feels little more than a publicity stunt and doesn't seem to lead to meaningful transformation. Sometimes when it comes to redemption stories, we'd like to "see the receipts."

Our scripture this week tells the story of a notorious sinner who does bring the receipts t...

In one of the most provocative and difficult passages in the gospels, we meet a man who is both very wealthy and very righteous. He is generous, just, self-controlled, friendly, and honest. Yet when he asks if all this is enough to "inherit eternal life", Jesus tells him to sell every last thing he owns, give it to the poor, and follow him. The man's face falls, and he walks away disappointed at Jesus' answer (Luke 18:18-23).

The story of the "Rich Young Ruler" forces us to consider that even if we use our money with great integrity...

This Lenten season we are examining Jesus' teachings about wealth, poverty, generosity and the behaviors of the Christian around their money and possessions. But behavior does not arise out of nowhere. Behavior stems from belief. What we believe about God and God's provision impacts how we give and save; how we spend and share. When Jesus was asked a question about dividing an inheritance, he started telling stories about birds and barns (Luke 12:13-34). It seems worry leads to greed, but one can "sell your possessions and give to the poor" when you believe your life means more than a...

Repentance is a Biblical word that you'll find all across the scriptures and is central to the Good News of Jesus. It's the word the prophets use to invite change and transformation in God's people. The word in the New Testament is metanoia, which literally means "afterthought" or "changed mind." Repentance involves sorrow over our sins and errors, but it also invites us to look ahead to consider how our conduct should be different.

Our sermon series for the season of Lent will look at the Gospel of Luke and the ways Jesus speaks about money and how th...

When I hear the word "rule," my mind often goes to the classroom, courtroom, or ball field. I tend to think of legal restrictions imposed upon us not to be broken without penalty. Yet the ancient meaning of the word "rule" isn't so much about restriction, but support. The old Latin word "regula" literally means "straight stick." A regula could be a cane you lean on to help you walk, or it could be a trellis to help your plants grow tall. There is an ancient Christian practice sometimes called "A Rule of Life" that prescribes sets of spiritual disciplines...

One of the foundations of the gospel is that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection ensures a union to the life of God and no person or institution needs to stand in between you and your maker except Jesus Christ himself (1 Timothy 2:5). We sometimes call this our "personal relationship with Christ". But even though our faith is deeply personal, scripture simultaneously tells us our faith is not private. A personal relationship with Jesus is also a mutual participation in the Christian community we call church. The New Testament never commends "lone wolf" Christianity, but is persistently calling us to share our...

When I was young, I remember learning a song in Sunday School that went like this: "The B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me! I stand alone on the word of God - the B-I-B-L-E!"  The tune was catchy and I suppose it could be credited for planting a seed in my young mind that reading the Bible was an important thing to do. What I didn't know is that cultivating rhythms of reading my Bible along with a relationship to and understanding of the words on the page would be a lifelong pursuit. An NIV Children's Bible with a p...

We live with all kinds of biological necessities and forces of nature that impact how we live our lives and how we plan our days (think of sleep schedules, bathroom breaks, shelter from weather). Perhaps the necessity we order our lives around most is food. When will you eat? What will you eat? With whom will you eat? For most of us, this physical necessity anchors at least three points in our day because it is essential for survival. So it makes sense that the Bible speaks often about food and diet, and one of its commendations is to sometimes n...

Most of us know that the work of artists and craftsmen involves creativity, but equally important to arts and science is the practice of design. A creative idea alone doesn't always make for something beautiful to appreciate. The elements of design are careful decisions a crafter makes to serve the subject of the piece. A photographer uses focus and framing to emphasize the face of a model. A tailor will adjust the cut and fit of a suit to accentuate a good look. A good architect designs a building to fit well in the larger landscape. Design is the set...

I don't like to be a pessimist, but I can't help feeling that more often than not there is a great "let down" in the days following Christmas. All the energy and excitement our culture puts into the anticipation of Christmas morning only sometimes lives up to the enormous expectations of happiness. Perhaps this is because we overly fixate on the event of the nativity but overlook the eternal reality of the incarnation of Christ.

This is why it is important not to let the warmth and splendor of Christmas Eve cease once the candles are blown out...

From the RCC 2025 Christmas Eve candlelight Lessons & Carols

In today’s world, women are pushed up against two realities. The first is that they still often exist in the shadows of men. The other is that they are bombarded by messages of all kinds about how to live: messages about power and rights and bodies. Secular voices on these matters stand in stark contrast to how scripture invites women to be in the world. Yes, there are power scales to be balanced, but we don’t fight with the world’s weapons (2 Cor. 10:3-4). The God we worship does battle differently.This week we will wrap up our Advent...