Sermons from Grace City Church Hawaii

Along with the video content, it is important to review the water baptism handout for further insights and for FAQs.

Here's a new song we will begin singing in April. The lyrics are gospel-soaked and proclaim freedom and grace.

"The Bible is not a series of disconnected stories; it is a single narrative that points to one person - Jesus"

A tribute video to God's glory over Grace City's 16-year history.

At its core, the reason the Church exists is to display God’s glory. All that we do as a church has the primary goal to glorify God. This two-part series explores what it means for the gathered church, and for the scattered church, to fulfill its purpose to put God’s glory on display.

"Grace. City. Church." is a two-part series that unpacks the beautiful purpose of God's Church, as we process Grace City's merge with Harbor West. Understanding this purpose guides what we do as a church that gathers on Sundays, and as a church that scatters to our various callings and vocations during the week.

The Great Commission can sound intimidating because we don’t see ourselves as disciple-makers who baptize and teach. Isn’t that for the professionals anyway? This message unpacks the big story of the Bible and what compelled the first disciples to share the good news of God’s Kingdom, and how we too share in this mission to tell the good news and to compel others to follow Jesus.

Was all that Jesus declared and demonstrated about the Kingdom of God true, or was it a pipe dream? Will evil, and pain, and suffering really be purged from our existence, especially when evil and corruption seem to get the last word? This sermon looks at how we walk the tension between the fear that evil wins, and the joy that all the risen Christ said and did is true.

How does the Kingdom of God change your life? If we’re honest, our lives don’t seem to change much. Of course, there are significant life-events such as the birth of a child, marriage, moving, a new job, retirement, etc. But apart from these one-time events, life tends to drift into daily and mundane routines. So what is this change brought on by the Kingdom of God? This sermon unpacks one significant change that affects our entire lives.

How do you deal with guilt? How do you overcome regrets from your past? This sermon looks at ways we tend to deal with out guilt, and how Jesus is the one who deals with our guilt.

In his darkest moment, suffering an emotional and physical breakdown, Jesus turns to the Father because no one else is paying attention. In fact, Jesus’ closest allies abandon him. Yet, the upside-down Kingdom of God advances through weakness, and even through deserters.

At the Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus gives new meaning to the bread and to the cup: the bread is Jesus’ broken body and the cup is his blood of the new covenant. It’s here that Jesus institutes the Lord’s Table as a perpetual ceremony for all believers to experience God’s grace today.

Headed toward his Crucifixion, Jesus is surrounded by betrayal by the Jewish leaders, the Jewish crowd, and even his own disciples. In the midst of this we find a nameless woman who expresses extreme devotion to Jesus. What can we learn from this woman? What does this mean for our devotion to Jesus?

Judgment Day is the climactic point of human history when God executes his righteous justice over the whole earth. It’s the day when justice is served, and payback and amends are made for every wrong. For those in Christ, this won’t be a day of horror, it will be a day of rejoicing as we gain our reward of eternal life. Today’s sermon unpacks the role our good works have at Judgment Day, and we wrestle with the tension of a loving God “sending” people to eternal fire and punishment.

Jesus continues to teach what life looks like as we await his return. How do we stay alert and ready for his return when his return seems delayed and it seems like it’s taking forever?

The “last days” began with the first coming of Jesus. From the time of Jesus’s ascension to the closing of the New Testament canon, the apostles believed Jesus’s return would be “soon”. Now it’s been about two thousand years since, and the world has not passed away. As a result, many of us struggle to feel the urgency to live as the apostles instructed. How do we live in the last days that have lasted so long and may last for generations longer?

Jesus makes it clear that we don’t know the day or the hour of his Second Coming. However, we do know his return will be sudden, it will be obvious, and many will be caught unaware. Rather than speculate about the timing of his return, we are told to be alert and to be ready for that day.

Jesus’ prophetic prediction of the Temple’s destruction, the fall of Jerusalem, and the end of the world isn’t meant to cause fear or confusion. Rather, Jesus’ followers are told to stand firm, to be ready, and to find comfort that God is in control of all things.

Sometimes to learn what to do we need to learn what not to do. Today’s text is like that – it gives us a negative image, which should help us understand the positive image. This chapter tells us what life in the kingdom doesn’t look like, thereby, we learn what life in the kingdom does look like.

The resurrection that’s coming is more than a far off time and place. The resurrection bears down on our lives and determines how we live our lives today as new creations.

Jesus continues to teach about the importance of a fruitful life with a crazy story about inheritance-stealing, murder, and redemption.

Deep down, biblical fruitfulness is what we all strive for in this life. By killing the fig tree Jesus is demonstrating how serious he is about the fruitfulness of his people. Jesus also teaches the key to a fruitful life.

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem is his first public proclamation that he is the Messiah. After the celebration dies down, Jesus exerts his authority as the King by confronting the money changers in the Temple. So what do we do with Jesus’ authority? Do we submit to it, or do we ignore it? Is partial submission good enough? Is it worthwhile to keep re-submitting, and re-committing ourselves? The sermon unpacks what Jesus does with part-time submitters.

Using the disciples’ ambitious tendencies, Jesus directs our attention to what our new humanity looks like. The sermon looks at the goal of our new humanity, the pathway to our new humanity, and the source of our new humanity.

Often, how or why God does things do not make sense to us, especially when we experience pain and suffering. Today’s sermon doesn’t offer clean and easy answers, but it does offer guidelines to help us navigate times when God doesn’t make sense.

Eternal life is a nice idea, but in the face of war, pandemics, inflation, and personal problems, eternal life seems to have no immediate relevance. Today we continue to unpack the promise of eternal life and we explore the significance it has for our lives today.

Eternal life is a nice idea, but in the face of war, pandemics, inflation, and personal problems, eternal life seems to have no immediate relevance. Today, and next week, we unpack the promise of eternal life and we explore the significance it has for our lives today.

The sermon unpacks Jesus' teaching on divorce and marriage. Certainly, a difficult topic, but let's dig in to the redemptive beauty that surfaces from a subject that touches us all.

At the center of the Christian faith is forgiveness. What sets apart Christian forgiveness from other religions is the forgiveness we give is a response to the forgiveness we received.

Since the beginning, God has been forming a community of people for Himself -- first Israel, now the church. Critical to this community of newly-born humans is how we live and relate within this community. In this sermon we look at the steps to lovingly deal with sin in the community, and how this reflects the beautiful redemption and life we have in the Kingdom.

This sermon unpacks what is true greatness in the Kingdom of God, and how there can only one who is the greatest.

Matthew continues to put more focus on Jesus' identity as the Son of God. In this passage we see Jesus' discussion of death and taxes affirming his identity as the Son of God. And in a deeper way, he teaches a beautiful truth of how we all as "God's sons and daughters" are free to live a life so confident in our identity as one of God's kids, we actually exhibit the Kingdom of God in the here and now.

Really? All things? This sermon unpacks one of the most promising and most frustrating promises Jesus makes to his followers. It's promising because it removes limits and connects us with the extra-ordinary. But it's also frustrating. We all have been frustrated by unanswered prayer, and where the impossible remains impossible. Nevertheless, once we see what is truly impossible, we will see the beauty and good news what is truly possible.

All through out the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has been revealing God’s kingdom and himself as the King. He healed people, cast out demons, taught through parables and called people to repent and follow him. People regarded him as a prophet sent from God. In today’s account, Jesus reveals himself as more than a prophet, and he does it in an extraordinary way. It is a glimpse of who Jesus is and also a glimpse of what it will be like for us.

How do you follow Jesus in 2022, and beyond? Unfortunately, for all the type-A people, Jesus doesn't provide a checklist of how to follow him. However, he does tell us one thing that is necessary if we are to follow him -- we must die. In step with the counter-intuitive nature of the Kingdom of God, the way to victory is defeat, the way to gain is loss, the way to life is death.

What do you need to do in 2022 to better follow Jesus? Not a bad question, but following Jesus doesn’t start with do, but with Who. This sermon unpacks the starting point of following Jesus, and it all begins with how we answer Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?”

The Virgin birth isn’t simply a miraculous biological event. Rather, Christ’s birth is the fulfillment of God’s promise to send himself to his people so his people can be with him forever.

We exist to give glory to God. God is glorified when we find joy and satisfaction in Him. But did you know that God has joy in us as well? He doesn’t begrudgingly let us in the kingdom because His son paid the price for us. In fact, He is the one who sent Jesus for us. He loves you, likes you, and is fond of you. But many of us have a hard time believing this. Zephaniah gives us a series of good news that are meant to remove any obstacles that may prevent us from believing this glorious truth.

The coming of Jesus into the world is God keeping his promise to send a Savior. Salvation through Jesus has a two-fold purpose: Jesus saves us from our sins, and saves us for God. As we celebrate Christmas, we are reminded that Christ’s coming into the world not only gives us eternal life later, but gives us a new life marked by service to God now.

The Advent season is meant to awaken our anticipation of the coming days when the King Jesus will rule with justice and righteousness. As we celebrate Jesus' first Advent, he hopefully anticipate his second Advent when all that is wrong in the world will be made right.

This sermon unpacks the "signs of the times" and looks at how we can know the signs of the times, and how this impacts our lives today.

An encounter with a Canaanite woman illustrates the culture of the Kingdom of God that transcends race, gender, and socio-economic status. Kingdom culture is how all believers around the world live as we await the full realization of God's Kingdom on earth.

The Kingdom of God is an inside-out kingdom because it's more concerned with the internal condition of our hearts rather than our external appearances.

This sermon looks at how we can have an overcoming faith in the face of fear. However, what about when we have less than overcoming faith? This sermon proclaims good news, especially when our faith is weak and failing.

Many of the desires we have are by design. God created us with good desires. But sin perverts those desires, and causes us to seek fulfillment in the things of this world. However, we feel dissatisfied because the world can never fully satisfy our desires. It is only through Jesus, that we can experience a lasting satisfaction of our souls. We were created to know him and be satisfied in Him.

With the chaos of rejection, rampant immorality, and sin all around Him, Jesus continues to emerge as the truer and greater Prophet who doesn't shy away from chaos, but rather steps into it. It's in the chaos that Jesus prophetically proclaims the word of grace and truth. It's the same word of Christ we received in the chaos of our sin. This prophetic word transforms how we live in life's chaos as well.