Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3ux18Yrhe8

You can stand shoulder to shoulder with a crowd around Jesus and still never truly connect. That’s the uncomfortable question raised by Mark 5, where people press in from every side, yet only one person reaches out in a way Jesus calls faith, and her life changes immediately. We start a new summer sermon series on biblical faith by getting specific: faith is not vague positivity or spiritual hype. It is active trust in what is true and reliable, even when you cannot see the outcome, grounded in Hebrews 11:1.

We break down how faith works in everyday life and then move into the woman with the issue of blood. Her story shows why proximity to Christian culture is not the same as trusting Christ. From there, we trace three clear pathways that often lead people to real Christian faith: desperation when our fixes fail, information about who Jesus is and what he has done, and identification where we stop trusting ourselves and name Jesus as the one true object of our faith. Along the way, we tackle a common misunderstanding: it’s not the strength of your faith that saves you, it’s the object of your faith.

Finally, we connect faith to the heart of the gospel: substitution. Jesus becomes weak so we can become strong, bearing sin and judgment like the true High Priest and fulfilling the promise echoed in Isaiah 53 and clarified in 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VllFriUUi-0

A city built on worship gets shaken when the gospel starts changing hearts and spending habits. We trace the explosive scene in Acts 19 where Demetrius the silversmith sparks a riot to protect Artemis, his trade, and an entire local economy. What looks like “religious outrage” quickly reveals something more familiar: when our ultimate source of security gets threatened, we get loud, defensive, and sometimes irrational.

From there, we turn the mirror toward modern life. We talk about idolatry not as ancient statue worship, but as anything we elevate above God for meaning, identity, comfort, or hope. Money, career, success, relationships, family, pleasure, prestige, even “my version of spirituality” can become functional gods. We also dig into a practical diagnostic: anger. Not all anger is idolatry, but when losing something makes us go ballistic, it can expose what we are truly living for.

The good news is that idols don’t get the final word. We follow the passage to its surprising ending and then press into the gospel’s power over every rival master: Jesus’ authority, his cross, his resurrection, and his call to repentance. The path out isn’t willpower alone, it’s re-ordering love: loving Jesus more until lesser loves take their proper place.

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57Ics_C7Ug