Sermon Podcast

How do we get along with fellow Christians despite our differences? Ryan seeks to answer that question in this sermon on Romans 14:1–12.

In this sermon on Romans 13:8–14, Ryan preaches about loving our neighbors.

In this second of two talks on Christian funerals, Ryan discusses the nature and purposes of a funeral and provides a suggested pattern for a gospel-centered funeral service.

The Christian funeral has fallen on hard times. In this talk, Ryan discusses the ways funerals have changed over the past few generations and proposes a recovery of a more robustly Christian practice of marking death.

How do you deal with your anger, outrage, or hatred? Vent it? Suppress it? Ignore it? Most of us struggle with knowing how to handle these emotions. However, the Psalms teach us how to engage our anger faithfully. They invite us to pray our hate. In this talk, Ryan explains why and how to do it.

Advent is a four-week period of time in the Christian calendar that focuses our attention on the “advent,” or coming, of Jesus Christ. We look back to Jesus’s first coming and forward to his second coming. It’s a time of anticipation, longing, and waiting. Perhaps more than any other song, the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” signals the start of the Advent season.

If you could summarize the season of Advent with one word, it would be the word “waiting.” Advent is a season of waiting and longing for Jesus Christ to come again. It’s a microcosm of the Christian life. Christians are waiting people—people who yearn for and anticipate the day when Christ returns to make all things new.

Advent joy isn’t glib positivity. It’s something more, something deeper. One theologian described it as “an act of resistance against despair and its forces.” Advent joy doesn’t deny the pain of life in a broken world; it protests the pain. Advent joy refuses pain’s invitation to succumb to despair.