500 episodes listed below
Measured sermons for attentive Christian discipleship.
Church at the Cross : Sunday Messages is a sermon feed shaped around biblical exposition and pastoral application. Recent messages move from passages in 1 Timothy, John, Romans, Matthew, Proverbs, 2 Corinthians, and Psalm 73 into questions about desire, worship, attention, marriage, suffering, and hope.
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Church at the Cross : Sunday Messages is a sermon-centered feed from a church setting, shaped by Scripture reading, theological explanation, and pastoral application. It is measured rather than hurried. Recent episodes show a pattern: a biblical passage is placed before the congregation, its terms and contrasts are explained, and the message presses toward what people love, notice, worship, fear, and pursue. The teaching is warm, but it is not vague. Marriage is treated as more than romance or ceremony, with attention to covenant, holiness, sexual ethics, shared mission, and the way marriage points beyond itself. The series on attention gives the feed a particularly contemporary edge. Phones at dinner, infinite scroll, streaming habits, rapid media consumption, hot takes, and the urge to stay constantly entertained are named as spiritual formation issues, not merely lifestyle quirks. Short examples carry serious weight. A dashboard warning light becomes an image for the heart; a dinner table full of people on phones becomes a test of neighbor-love; the Milky Way becomes an entry point for creaturely limits and worship. The sermons often move by contrast. Seen and unseen. Law and gospel. False hope and durable promise. Self-expression and glory. Creature and Creator. Life now and life forever. Easter teaching in John 5 centers on Jesus as the giver of life and the one with authority over judgment, while messages from 2 Corinthians frame suffering, mortality, courage, and hope through the promise of resurrection. Proverbs 4 turns the heart into the central place of vigilance, where emotions, desires, motives, fears, and loves reveal what is really happening. Psalm 73, preached by Scotty Smith, adds a reflective treatment of envy, comparison, wandering, and the loss of gratitude when God is no longer functionally satisfying. The show is sermon-dominant, but there are more than one named voices in its episodes, and the mood can shift from grave to lightly humorous without losing its seriousness. It is best for listeners who want Christian biblical teaching that is plainspoken enough for ordinary life and structured enough to sustain theological argument. The distinctive strength is its diagnostic movement: cultural observations become spiritual questions, and spiritual questions return to the biblical text.
Made for: Best for Christians who want Sunday-message teaching with clear biblical exposition and direct application to habits, relationships, worship, marriage, and hope. It also suits listeners drawn to pastoral preaching that treats modern distractions as matters of the heart.
What sets it apart: Its strongest mark is the way ordinary scenes become theological diagnostics: phones at dinner, stock portfolios, wedding costs, streaming habits, and restless comparison all become ways to examine attention, desire, and worship. The sermons keep a controlled biblical structure while still sounding pastoral and conversational.
Welcome to the weekly podcast of Church at the Cross in Grapevine, TX, led by Pastor JR Vassar. Our mission is to help people and places encounter Jesus. Wherever you are today, our hope is that you would be encouraged, challenged, and inspired to take the next step in your relationship with Jesus. For more info, visit churchatthecross.com!
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Text-led sermons connect Christian doctrine to the habits, relationships, and divided attention of everyday life.
Church at the Cross : Sunday Messages records sermons that begin with a biblical passage and keep returning to it as doctrine meets ordinary life. Pastor J.R.
Proverbs 4:23 meets the infinite scroll, and your heart gets the dashboard warning light.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Marriage is pulled out of the aisle and back into Scripture.
The piece opens in 1 Timothy 4 and treats marriage as a subject shaped by false teaching, moving through Amazon, local bookstores, TV preachers, and Paul’s warning to the Ephesian church in Acts 20.
A sermon that treats the heart as the place where attention reveals what is really going on.
It opens with Proverbs 4:23 and stays fixed on the pressures of modern life, from infinite scroll and hot-take tweets to podcasts sped up to double or triple speed.
A pastoral reading of 2 Corinthians 3:4-18 that treats attention as spiritual formation.
Paying Attention to Jesus frames distraction through 2 Corinthians 3:4-18, tracing how the object of a person's attention shapes the fruit of a life.
A candid Psalm 73 sermon on envy, spiritual drift, and the God who restores joy.
Scotty Smith's Psalm 73 sermon treats Asaph's crisis as a familiar pattern of spiritual drift: noticing the prosperity, health, and ease of the wicked, then quietly resenting the life God has given.
A sermon on Ephesians 6:24 that tests rival loves and directs the heart toward Jesus.
This single-episode review frames a sermon on Ephesians 6:24 as preparation for prayer and Awaken, treating Paul's closing blessing as a serious word rather than a throwaway ending.
A Psalm 1 sermon that moves blessing away from self-improvement and toward life with God in Christ.
Psalm 1 is treated here as a portrait of the blessed life, set against Jesus' language of the narrow gate, the two foundations, and the two trees. The sermon is at its best when it refuses to turn blessing into a program of self-improvement.
A resurrection sermon that turns future judgment into a present question of whom to honor and how to live.
Pastor J.R.'s sermon treats John 5 as a direct reckoning with where human history is headed. Its account of resurrection moves quickly from the passage's promise to Jesus returning in power and glory, judging the living and the dead, and raising those in the tombs to life or…
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Live sermons with Easter-shaped urgency.
This episode explores how the Bible portrays flawed heroes like Abraham, emphasizing God's pursuit, forgiveness, and use of imperfect people to accomplish His purposes.
This episode explores the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18, questioning whether believers truly trust that God can do more than they can imagine.
Pastor JR Vassar preaches an Easter sermon from John 5:21-29 at Church at the Cross.
Pastor JR Vassar explores Psalm 1 to answer how to live a blessed life, framing it as a choice between two paths.
The message opens in 1 Timothy chapter 4.
A sermon on John 5:21-29 explaining how Jesus, as the Son of God, grants eternal life and executes judgment based on belief in him, delivered on Easter.
This sermon concludes an attention economy series by exploring 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10, focusing on maintaining hope and faith despite earthly struggles through the promise of eternal renewal.
A reading and brief reflection on Romans 1:18-25, discussing God's wrath against ungodliness, humanity's suppression of truth through idolatry, and a visual reference to the Milky Way galaxy.
This episode explores the biblical teaching from Matthew 22:34-39 about loving God and neighbor as the greatest commandments, connecting it to modern issues like phone distraction and relationship neglect.
It opens in Proverbs 4:23.
Psalm 73 begins with a confession of envy.
Church at the Cross's Sunday message, "Paying Attention to Jesus | 2 Corinthians 3:4-18," pairs a reading of 2 Corinthians 3 with a sermon on screen distraction.
Church at the Cross : Sunday Messages centers on Ephesians 6:24 and the claim that grace belongs to those who love Jesus Christ with an "incorruptible" love.
This episode explores the faith crisis of Abraham and Sarah as they wait 10 years for God's promise of a son, connecting it to biblical themes of waiting versus working.
This episode explores Psalm 1's teaching on achieving a blessed life through choosing between two spiritual paths, connecting it to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount about narrow gates and foundations.
This episode explores the biblical concept of receiving God's word with meekness, using the modern analogy of the unsend feature in text messages to illustrate the importance of careful communication and humility.