Providence Church

Providence Church in Austin, Texas, releases its sermons as a podcast, and each title in the recent run names its text: Luke 24, Psalm 63, Philippians 3, 2 Peter 1. That habit tells a listener where a message stands in Scripture before it begins. The recent episodes cover Lent, Easter and the start of a new year. The Lenten material is a series on the seven deadly sins, listed from the pulpit as vainglory, envy, lust, wrath, gluttony, sloth and greed. Each sin is framed as a vice, a habit formed over time. It often starts as a desire for something good that grows excessive and begins to rule. Gluttony, in that telling, is the attempt to satisfy God-given longings with things that are not God. The speaker admits to never having heard a sermon on it before. Greed gets a blunter treatment. It is defined as a disordered desire for money and what money buys, with the caveat that wealth alone does not make someone greedy. Sloth may be the sharpest turn of the series. Speaking to a church described as full of entrepreneurs, students, engineers, doctors and lawyers, the sermon pushes against the idea that sloth simply means laziness. The series keeps the gospel in view throughout and calls the news that God saves sinners its great hope. The humor stays dry, and the run of sin sermons is jokingly called a barrel of laughs. Luke 24 gets two sermons. One opens with a joke about Easter as the Super Bowl of the faith, then walks through the Passion Week in hard detail before arriving at the resurrection. The other places the risen Jesus among doubting disciples, showing his wounds and eating with them, then follows Peter into Acts 10 and his meeting with Cornelius. Its point is that the joy of the resurrection reaches people when someone else passes the news along. A New Year sermon on Psalm 63 draws on HB Charles to describe David bringing a thirsty soul to the sanctuary. What happens when the church gathers, it argues, sustains people in the wilderness beyond the building. Scripture readers are thanked by first name, and some messages end in prayer.