 |
Urban VineyardThis is the Sunday teaching from Urban Vineyard, in central Auckland, New Zealand Author: Urban Vineyard
The Sunday morning teaching from Urban Vineyard in central Auckland, New Zealand. Language: en-us Genres: Christianity, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Discerning the Dawn: The desert shall rejoice and blossom (Isaiah 35:1-10)
Saturday, 13 December, 2025
The third Sunday of advent is a time for reflecting on the joy of the gospel. In this sermon, James makes the point that joy cannot be established by any earthly power or agency; no human circumstances can secure our joy; it can only be brought by Jesus who draws people in to be freed from evil, transformed, renewed and shaped to be like him. In Jesus' earthly ministry we the seeds of God's Kingdom were laid in the ground. Through the faithfulness of God and the believers who dared to trust him, everywhere for 2000 years those seeds have been popping up in the form of little communities of faith where deserts have been transformed into places of rejoicing and where wastelands of the soul have blossomed into gardens. Our hope is not in our own ability to make life go well, it is in the God who raises what is dead back to life. That is why we are people of joy.
