Woodland Hills Church Sermons Audio Podcast

One of the core convictions of Woodland Hills is that God is indiscriminately loving and opposed to all violence. But many Christians since the 4th century have not wanted this to be true. It's more comfortable for us to hate our enemies and be justified in doing so. So some Christians have gone to great lengths to argue that Jesus was not actually opposed to violence. Debunking these arguments is what Greg focused on during this 'Turning the Tables' message.

It is common to hear objections about the differences between the God of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New, but what about the views some hold that Jesus wasn’t actually non-violent? How do we handle the Scriptures that seem to imply He engaged in occasional violent acts? In this second message in our series, Turning the Tables, David Morrow shows how Jesus cursing a fig tree had nothing to do with violence, and everything to do with liberation from that which enslaves His people, both individually and collectively.

In our new Turning Over Tables series, we examine how central Jesus (as well as other new testament authors) placed our call to non-violence. In fact at one point in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus pre-conditions being considered a child of God to our love toward enemies and refusal to return evil for evil. Many throughout history have tried to twist scripture to fit certain personal or other non-Kingdom nationalistic agendas, but Jesus’ call to us is that His Kingdom is not of this world. What makes His followers distinct is our refusal to engage in violence no matter the “just” circumstance.

In this final sermon in our Moving Pictures series, Greg looks at how the past can be redeemed and give way to a healing future. All people carry wounds and brokenness from their past and many of us continue to live those hurts in the present. Greg examines how through the love of Christ all people’s pasts can be transformed and integrated into God’s great story of redemption.

Each of us is unique. We each have our own story, our own calling, and our own distinct set of giftings, talents, and experiences that shape our uniqueness. However, many of us are stuck living in stories of all the reasons we are disqualified from having a life of purpose and impact in the kingdom. Shawna uses the unlikely heroes of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' to remind us that God can nullify any of the objections our minds present that keeps us from living out our identity in Christ.

Later this month Woodland Hills will be doing our annual baptism ceremony at Lake Phalen, and so in light of that Greg used this week's sermon to talk about baptism and contrasting it with the magical way of thinking about it that we see in the movie 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou'.

God’s Kingdom is breaking in upon this world in beautiful ways. Yet, many of us have a difficult time feeling on the inside of this movement, many of us struggle with feeling as though we are outsiders. In this message, Nikole Mitchell shows us through the movie “Hidden Figures” a central piece of the Gospel message that often gets neglected – that God has destroyed every wall that divides us as humans… He has taken every outsider, and made us insiders.

The word “repent” is often associated with fear based tactics like street side preachers shouting “turn or burn!” Though fear based attempts to motivate change rarely have lasting positive impact. The New Testament picture of repentance is instead displayed as a joyful invitation to acceptance of the grace and mercy poured out by a God of love.

This week in our Moving Pictures series we explore the film 'The Adjustment Bureau' to better understand the complexities of a world with free will. Every decision we make unfolds massive ripple effects, making it almost impossible to know why things happen as they do. Our hope in the midst of this beautifully complex world is found in God who is infinitely smarter than we can ever understand.

The story of the transforming power of love over shame is all around us. This past weekend Sandra showed us this theme in the movie 'The Beauty and the Beast', and we learn how powerful love can be to defeat even the most paralyzing shame.

This is our first week of the new sermon series, Moving Pictures. In this series we will look at different movies that show a particular theology. This week we were entertained with the film, Bruce Almighty, a film which highlights the question of free-will. Greg takes us through the illusion of fatalism. The foundation of fatalism (also understood as determinism and/or Calvinism) suggests the world and all its happenings are determined. All that unfolds, including all suffering, is a result of fate, a pre-determined destiny of events established by God. But, there is a different way of understanding the world and God’s relationship to the created order. God created a world with free-will; where humans have the capacity to freely choose life or choose death. God is a relational God and longs for relationship with humans who freely choose love. With the free-will understanding of the created order we discover God is not the author of all that unfolds in the world, but that humans play an integral role in what comes to pass.

Throughout the Old Testament we get clouded pictures of the character of God. Hebrews tells us that God gave our forefathers many glimpses of the truth. But through Jesus Christ, God gives us the full revelation of the truth. So what are we to do with the pictures that suggest God is an angry, wrathful, violent God? In this sermon, Greg points out various Old Testament stories that are glimpses of the truth of God’s character. With a careful reading that goes beyond the surface picture of the story we see that the greater revelation of the truth that God is a God who is rich in mercy, slow to anger, gracious and compassionate, that God is love.

The underlying theme behind our 'Glimpses of Truth' series is the idea that before we had the full revelation of God in Jesus, people only caught glimpses of him. He showed himself, but like the sun on a cloudy day, people's view was obscured by their culture, so what they saw was not the full revelation but one marred by their own expectations and fallenness. But despite this, there were still a few instances in the Old Testament where we can see glimpses of the Christ-like God that we know.

God gives us dreams for our future. Yet, the circumstances and demands of life have a way of causing us to put those dreams away or forget them all together. How do we allow God to awaken us to the dreams he offers us? In this powerful message, Nicole Bullock (Co-Pastor of Blue Oaks Church in Brooklyn Center, MN) shares the story of a Shunammite woman who makes room for God in the face of paralyzing discouragement. Nicole also shares her own story of keeping faith in God through the uncertainty of seemingly-hopeless circumstances.

In week three of our 'Glimpses of Truth' sermon series we continue to look for portraits of God in the Old Testament that look like Jesus. This week we look at rules. The first five books of the Old Testament alone contain 613 different rules. Using Hebrews 1:1-3 as our springboard we can see that God gave rules to accommodate Israel’s needs as well as to protect and bless. In fact, in Jesus we see the ultimate expression of God’s desire, not for rule following, but for hearts given to Him in love.