Sovereign Grace Church Toronto

Scripture: Luke 9:18-27 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Sept 24, 2017

What does it mean to live “the good life”? Some say it’s career success. Others say it’s close relationships. One self-help guru summarizes it as “doing what I want, when I want”. Jesus, on the other hand, says that the good life involves suffering. It involves rejection. It involves giving up your dreams and ambitions, and embracing his instead. In this sermon, Pastor Josh explains how we only truly live when we have died to ourselves, and why paying this price to follow Jesus is worth it.

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Scripture: Luke 9:1-17 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Sept 17, 2017

We live in a burnout culture. People are routinely busy, stressed, and stretched beyond their limits. What’s the solution? Is it to simply life? Run from our responsibilities? Go on more vacations? Those may be the solutions offered by the world, but the Christian has a better one: look to Jesus, the limitless One! In this sermon, Pastor Josh looks at the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand and shows us how it encourages us to come to Jesus with confidence, knowing that he will provide everything we need to live worthy of the gospel.

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Scripture: Luke 8:40-56 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Aug 27, 2017

Too often, we don’t come to Jesus for help because we feel unworthy. We feel that our faith is too weak, and that we need to make it stronger before we can presume to ask Jesus for help. In this sermon, Pastor Josh takes us through the stories of a poor, disabled woman and an influential religious leader to show us that Jesus works in power even when we come to him with a faith that’s barely holding on. We don’t need to get our act together before we come to Jesus, because as the old hymn goes, “If you tarry ’till you’re better, you will never come at all.”

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Scripture: Luke 8:22-39 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Aug 20, 2017

Many people would say that they respect Jesus. Others would say that they love Jesus. Rarely will you find someone who says that they fear Jesus. In this sermon, Pastor Josh looks at two stories in the Gospel of Luke – the calming of the storm, and the healing of the demoniac – and shows us how these two stories reveal three different ways of fearing Jesus. While two of the ways are undesirable (and even dangerous), one actually has the effect of leading us closer to Jesus, as the fear of Jesus leads us to greater faith in Jesus.

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Scripture: Luke 8:4-21 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Aug 13, 2017

How do you prepare your heart to hear the Word of God? That’s the key question that Jesus answers in the parable of the sower. One could venture a variety of different answers. Spend more time in the Word and prayer. Get a good night’s sleep. Read the sermon text ahead of time. These are all good suggestions, but they don’t get to the core of the issue. In this sermon, Pastor Josh teaches about the three characteristics of a person that not only hears the Word, but becomes more like Jesus through it.

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Scripture: Luke 8:1-15 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: Aug 6, 2017

One of Jesus’ favourite sayings in the Gospels was, ‘He who has ears, let him hear.’ When it comes to the Word of God, there is a way that we can truly hear, and a way that we can fail to hear. The Word can either go in one ear and out the other, or it can plant itself deep into our hearts, bringing about the fruit of a changed life. In this sermon, Pastor Josh explores one of Jesus’ most famous parables – the parable of the sower, the seed, and the soils – and shows us that the key to right hearing is having a right heart.

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Scripture: Luke 7:36-50 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: July 30, 2017

What does love for Jesus look like? Does it look like a faith-filled commitment to believe in him and follow him for the rest of your life? Does it look like obedience to his commands? Yes and yes. But love for Jesus has another face as well, and it is shown in this powerful little story of a sinful woman who loved Jesus with an extravagance that is rarely seen in believers today. In this sermon, Pastor Josh shows us that the only way we can love Jesus like this is to confront the depths of our own sinfulness. Only then can we see the extravagant love that Jesus showed to us in forgiving our sins, so that we can respond to his love with an extravagant love of our own.

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Scripture: Luke 7:18-35 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: July 23, 2017

What is true greatness? Is it power? Is it influence? Is it net worth? These are the kinds of things the world exalts as the standards of greatness, and they have become so prominent in our thinking that many of us define ourselves by how we measure up to them. In this sermon, Pastor Josh teaches us how Jesus rewrites the rules of greatness, so that our identity isn’t rooted in who we are or what we have done, but in who Jesus is and what he has done.

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Scripture: Psalm 23 | Speaker: Tim Kerr | Date: July 9, 2017

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Scripture: Luke 7:1-17 | Speaker: Josh Tong | Date: July 2, 2017

The miracles of Jesus have rightly been described as ‘teaching in action’. They are visible signs of invisible realities performed in order to reveal the person and work of Christ more fully to us. In this sermon, Pastor Josh explains how two of these miracles reveal two key characteristics of Jesus that all must believe if they are to come to him with humble faith: the authority of Jesus, and the compassion of Jesus.

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