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MARANATHA CHURCH

Sermons from Maranatha Gatherings.

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Wednesday · length unknown
Not To Be Served | Matthew 20:17-28
Most of us have been taught our whole lives that greatness means coming in first, getting noticed, and being served. In Matthew 20:17-28, Jesus walks toward Jerusalem knowing He will be mocked, flogged, and crucified, while James and John ask for the seats at His right and His left. We look at the cup they said they could drink, who actually ended up at His right and left on the day He was crowned, and what it looks like for His people to serve one another without keeping score. The Son of Man from Daniel 7, the One every nation should serve, chose a different kind of greatness: “even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28) Not To Be Served | Matthew 20:17-28 Pastor Brennan Johnson
October 27 · length unknown
The Fountain of Living Water | 1 John 2:15-17 & Jeremiah 2:13
Most of us try to love the Father and the world at the same time, usually because we haven’t yet tasted how deep His love goes. In 1 John 2:15-17, we go back six hundred years to Jeremiah 2:13, where God charges His people with two evils: they forsook Him, the fountain of living waters, and dug their own cisterns, broken ones that can hold no water. Judah never stopped worshiping God. They just added Baal and foreign alliances alongside Him. We look at the cisterns we still dig today and the woman at the well who left her water jar behind. The world is passing away, and the Father is still offering Himself to anyone who comes and drinks. The Fountain of Living Water | 1 John 2:15-17 & Jeremiah 2:13 Pastor Brennan Johnson
October 12 · length unknown
The Heart of Forgiveness | Matthew 18:21–35
Peter thought he was being generous. Seven times. More than double the rabbinic standard. Jesus’s answer blew the question apart. Seventy times seven. Stop counting. In Matthew 18:21-35, we walk through the parable of the unforgiving servant, where a man forgiven zillions refuses to release a hundred denarii. We press on what forgiveness is and what it is not, and we land on the Christ who felt the full weight of what He forgave and paid the debt anyway. Because the heart that has truly received the gospel cannot refuse to extend it. The Heart of Forgiveness | Matthew 18:21–35 Pastor Brennan Johnson
October 6 · length unknown
Recovering Confrontation | Matthew 18:15-20
Church discipline, confrontation, excommunication. These are words most of us would rather not hear from the pulpit. But they come straight from Jesus in Matthew 18:15-20, wrapped in love, not harshness. This week we press into what it actually means for the church to pursue a brother or sister caught in sin. We lean on Chrysostom and Augustine, we draw the line between sin and personal preference, and we land on the promise that when the church does this hard reconciling work, Christ Himself has promised to be present. Because the church that confronts does the very ministry of the Reconciler, and in doing so, we are conformed to His image. Recovering Confrontation | Matthew 18:15-20 Pastor Brennan Johnson
September 29 · length unknown
Ministers of Reconciliation | Keep the Fire Burning
A fire tended only for its own warmth eventually goes out. A fire carried outward keeps burning because it has purpose. This week we close the Keep the Fire Burning series with 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 and Matthew 5:14-16. God has not just reconciled us to Himself. He has entrusted us with the ministry of reconciliation. Every conversation with a neighbor about Jesus, every prayer for a coworker, every moment we choose to name Christ instead of staying silent is another piece of wood on the altar. The fire is meant to be seen. And we are the ones commissioned to carry it into the darkness. Ministers of Reconciliation | Keep the Fire Burning Alton Schultz
September 22 · length unknown
Authentic Community | Keep the Fire Burning
Most Christians who struggle with community are asking horizontal relationships to do vertical work. They are hungry for what only God can give and have been asking a spouse, a friend, or a small group to be their ultimate source. And when the horizontal cannot deliver, the relationships collapse under a weight they were never meant to carry. This week we press into authentic community as the overflow of a healthy vertical, not a substitute for it. Because when your relationship with God is right, the horizontal overflows into shared life, open homes, thick skin toward offense, and a love the world will recognize as the mark of Christ. Authentic Community | Keep the Fire Burning Pastor Brennan Johnson
September 14 · length unknown
Biblical Literacy | Keep the Fire Burning
Not all fire is God's fire. This week we press into biblical literacy as the fuel that keeps our fire authentic. Jesus met the wilderness with the Word. The Bereans tested even an apostle against the Scriptures. And every one of us is invited to pursue the One the whole Book is about. Because reading the Bible is not about knowing a Book. It is about knowing a Person. Biblical Literacy | Keep the Fire Burning Pastor Brennan Johnson
September 8 · length unknown
Intimate Pursuit of the Holy Spirit | Keep the Fire Burning
The fire on the altar was never something the people manufactured. God brought it. Their job was to keep it burning by bringing wood. This week we press into the intimate pursuit of the Holy Spirit and the two ditches that swallow most churches on this value. The Spirit is not just God's presence with us. He is God's power in us. Without Him, the Christian life is impossible. With Him, we bear fruit we could never produce on our own. Intimate Pursuit of the Holy Spirit | Keep the Fire Burning Pastor Brennan Johnson
September 3 · length unknown
Walking the Path of Jesus | 1 John 2:1-11
John writes so that we won't sin, but he doesn't leave us without hope when we do. Jesus is our Advocate before the Father, and He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. In this passage, John shows us what it actually looks like to know Him: obedience to His commands and love for the people around us. The command to love isn't new, but it takes on new weight in the light of Christ. Anyone who claims to walk in the light while hating a brother or sister is still in the dark. Walking the Path of Jesus | 1 John 2:1-11 Alton Schultz
August 24 · length unknown
Who Is the Greatest? | Matthew 18:1-14
The disciples asked Jesus who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Instead of ranking them, Jesus placed a child among them and told them that unless they became like that child, they would not enter the kingdom at all. This week we walk through Matthew 18:1–14 and press on what Jesus actually asks of us. Cut off the sin you have been calling private, because it is not just yours. It is forming the little ones around you. And stop assuming that maturity is measured by how long you have been in the pew. Christian maturity is Christlikeness, and the mature Christian is the one who knows he is still a little one who comes when Jesus calls. Who Is the Greatest? | Matthew 18:1-14 Pastor Brennan Johnson
August 17 · length unknown
The Great Ransom | Matthew 17:22-27
Most Bibles put a subheading between Matthew 17:23 and Matthew 17:24, as if the death Jesus predicts and the temple tax conversation are two different stories. They are not. Matthew placed them together on purpose. The cross interprets the tax. And when we read the passage as Matthew wrote it, we see something remarkable. Jesus, having just told His disciples that He is about to die, quietly pays a ransom into a temple sacrificial system He is about to fulfill and end. He was free from every obligation. He owed nothing. And He chose to pay it anyway, because a greater ransom was coming, one that would set us free forever. This week we walk through the two payments Christ makes, and the "so now, I" response that flows from a life bought at a price. The Great Ransom | Matthew 17:22-27 Pastor Brennan Johnson
August 10 · length unknown
Faith That Moves | Matthew 17:14-20
The disciples had authority, experience, and years of watching Jesus heal, cast out demons, and feed thousands. And yet when a father brought his suffering son, they could not do what they had been given authority to do. Jesus diagnosed their problem: little faith. Most Christians hear that and immediately conclude they need to build more of it, but Jesus is not telling His disciples to grow bigger faith. He is telling them that even the smallest faith, if it is placed on Him, moves mountains. This week we walk through Matthew 17:14-20 and discover the freedom of stopping the effort to hold ourselves up and leaning our whole weight on the One who holds. Faith That Moves | Matthew 17:14-20 Pastor Brennan Johnson
July 27 · length unknown
The Desires of Your Heart | Psalm 37:1–11
As we close the Recovering Context series, we walk into what Psalm 37 actually promises. Not the delivery of what you already want. The reshaping of what you want in the first place. God is working on the desires themselves, and the sign He is at work is not the arrival of the outcome. It is the slow, deep discovery that He is what you were always made to want. The Desires of Your Heart | Psalm 37:1–11 Pastor Brennan Johnson
July 20 · length unknown
More Than You Can Handle | 1 Corinthians 10:1-14
We have all heard someone say, "God will not give you more than you can handle." That sentence has done real damage in the church, and it is not what 1 Corinthians 10:13 actually says. Paul is not writing about suffering. He is writing about temptation. And the promise he actually makes is one of the most freeing in the New Testament. This week we recover the context of the verse that has crushed people who were already crushed, and discover a God whose sufficiency reaches into the very places our capacity ends. More Than You Can Handle | 1 Corinthians 10:1-14 Pastor Brennan Johnson
July 13 · length unknown
Faithful to the Unfaithful | Jeremiah 29-4-14
Jeremiah 29:11 is probably the most misused verse in modern Christianity. We have made it a personal promise about a pleasant future, even though Jeremiah wrote it as a rebuke of false prophets who were promising personal pleasant futures. The real verse is not smaller than the coffee mug version. It is far larger. It reveals a God whose covenant faithfulness endures even when His people break faith, and who does formative work in the exile that could not occur anywhere else. This week we recover the context of Jeremiah 29 and discover that the exile is not a season to survive on the way to somewhere better. It is where God is forming us into the people we could not have become anywhere else. Faithful to the Unfaithful | Jeremiah 29:4-14 Pastor Brennan Johnson
July 6 · length unknown
Content In Anything | Philippians 4:13 | Recover Context
Many people have used Philippians 4:13 to summon the strength to accomplish what they wanted. Paul wrote it from a prison cell about learning contentment in plenty and in hunger. The actual promise is not that Christ will help you win. It is that Christ will strengthen you to be at peace no matter what life throws at you. Content In Anything | Philippians 4:13 | Recovering Context Pastor Brennan Johnson
June 29 · length unknown
None But Jesus | Matthew 17:1-13
Most of us are not refusing Jesus. We are filtering Him. We hear the parts that confirm what we already believed and quietly set aside the parts that would cost us something. We have made Him one voice among many in a life that is already crowded with louder voices. Matthew 17 is the day The Father settled who Jesus is and how He is to be heard. On the mountain, the Father did not say listen to them all and figure out the consensus. He said listen to Him. This sermon walks through the Transfiguration, the voice from the cloud, and the road down the mountain toward the cross, and asks the question every Christian eventually has to answer. Which voice wins when Jesus contradicts another? None But Jesus | Matthew 17:1-13 Pastor Brennan Johnson
June 22 · length unknown
The Cross That Wounds You | Matthew 16:24-28
Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. We reference the cross, we sing about it, we wear it, but we have not actually taken it up. Matthew 16:24-28 confronts the comfortable middle ground and asks what we are really telling Jesus about His worth when we refuse to carry what He has asked us to. The cross you carry should wound you, and the One who carried His first is worth everything it costs. The Cross That Wounds you | Matthew 16:24-28 Pastor Brennan Johnson
June 15 · length unknown
Get Behind Me | Matthew 16:21-23
When Jesus announces His coming suffering, death, and resurrection, Peter pulls Him aside and rebukes Him, only to receive a startling rebuke in return. This sermon examines Jesus' confession of what lies ahead, the nature of Peter's correction, Jesus' counter-rebuke, and the diagnosis and remedy Peter needed to set his mind back on the things of God. Get Behind Me | Matthew 16:21-23 Alton Schultz
June 8 · length unknown
Who Do You Say That I Am? | Matthew 16:13-20
Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. The crowds in His day had their answers, and the world today has no shortage of its own. But Jesus doesn't ask what everyone else thinks. He turns and asks you directly: “Who do you say that I am? ” That question has never been more loaded, and it has never mattered more to get right. What you believe about Jesus shapes everything about how you live, what you surrender, and what you're no longer ashamed of. Peter's answer changed the trajectory of history. Yours might change yours. Who Do You Say That I Am? | Matthew 16:13-20 Alton Schultz

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