Show Notes
This week, Pastor Ralph Castillo continued the FREED series with a teaching on freedom from idolatry. Drawing from Jeremiah 2, Pastor Ralph traces God's grief over a people who abandoned Him for lesser things. The passage is startling in its intimacy. God isn't issuing a legal verdict, He's asking a relational question. "What happened between us?" He speaks in the language of a wounded covenant, the devotion of youth, the love of a bride. Idolatry, in God's framing, isn't just disobedience, it's betrayal. The quickest route into it is simply forgetting who God is and what He's done.
The text calls us to respond to idolatry the way God does, appalled, heartbroken, undone. Jeremiah 2:13 gives us the clearest picture of why. God is a fountain of living water, and our idols are cracked cisterns that can barely hold what they promise.
The sermon concludes by saying that in God's wrath, He remembers mercy. Like the father in Luke 15, He doesn't wait for us to close the whole distance, He runs.
More from Church of the City New York
This Sunday, Pastor Billy continued our Manifesto of Fruitfulness series by exploring the fruit of praise and asking who or what receives our worship. In Hebrews 13, we are called to offer God a sacrifice of praise, but praise is more than words spoken when life is going well. It is a choice to declare God's worth in the midst of uncertainty, to practice gratitude when complaint comes more naturally and to speak openly about what he has done. Through the stories of Scripture, Pastor Billy reminded us that praise does not deny our circumstances or depend on a particular outcome. It is a response to who God is and what he has already done for us. As our lives are shaped by gratitude and our own encounters with Jesus, praise moves beyond private worship and becomes a public witness to the goodness and faithfulness of God.
This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our Manifesto of Fruitfulness series by exploring the fruit of evangelism and what it means to share the good news of Jesus with the people around us. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul describes us as ambassadors for Christ, entrusted with the message of reconciliation. But how we share that message can look different from person to person. Whether through our own testimony, an invitation into community, honest conversations about faith or a prompting from the Holy Spirit, we are called to meet people where they are. Pastor Jon reminded us that evangelism begins with the heart of Jesus, who pursues those who are far from God and welcomes people in the midst of their brokenness. As we learn to share the hope we have found in him, we are called to do so with gentleness and respect, trusting that the work of bringing people to Jesus is not ours to accomplish alone.
New York disciples its people through ambition. Etched into the walls of Moynihan Train Hall, the newly renovated front door to the city, is a single word from the New York State seal: Excelsior. It's Latin for "ever upward," and while meant as civic pride showcasing New York's history of excellence, said honestly, in the context of most people's lives in the city, "ever upward" feels more like a mandate than a cheer.
This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued A Manifesto of Fruitfulness, teaching from Galatians 5:13–26 on the fruit of the Spirit.
This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our series, A Manifesto of Fruitfulness, teaching from Luke 8:4-15, the parable of the sower. Pastor Jon reminded us that Jesus describes one seed, scattered generously across every kind of ground. The variance wasn't the seed, but the soil. He named the four kinds soil could take: seed stolen before it can root, joy that springs up fast and withers under real pressure, a heart slowly choked by the decade-long apartment search, the co-op board interview, a city built to manufacture not-enough, until there's no margin left to notice God, and soil that receives the word, keeps it, and yields a hundred times what was sown, a harvest so disproportionate to the effort that it can only be received as gift. Jon closed with an invitation: not a program to complete, but a simple surrender of the soil itself. Lord, make us good soil.