Sermons and Teaching
We are happy to offer these recordings and text of some of our recent teaching at Riverside Baptist Church under the free Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License version 2.5 or later. This means you can share these files as long as you don't change them nor make money from them and you acknowledge where you got them.
Please see the section About These Recordings for more information or help.
The Church: 5 Keys to Understanding
What is meant by "the church" has many times been a source of confusion. Is it a building? A body? An organization? Then there are many questions about where it came from, its purpose and even if there is any need for it.
To answer these questions, we turn once again to the Bible. The church of Jesus Christ is an organization, a body, a community, the bride of Christ as well as the body of Christ. It is dedicated to living out the will of God on Earth, which includes many different functions and operations.
This short series discusses five keys to understanding the church - its origin, purpose, leadership and membership.
| The Church: 5 Keys to Understanding | |
 The Nature of the Church (text) | downloads: 16 | type: pdf | size: 331 kB |
| The Beginning of the Church (text) | downloads: 4 | type: pdf | size: 326 kB |
| The Purpose of the Church (text) | downloads: 12 | type: pdf | size: 321 kB |
| The Leadership of the Church (text) | downloads: 8 | type: pdf | size: 323 kB |
Lord, Teach us to Pray: Praying as Jesus taught us
The great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon said that prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscles of omnipotence. Another said that prayer is helplessness casting itself upon power. Samual Chadwick said, "The church that multiplies committees and neglects prayer may be fussy, noisy, and enterpising, but it labours in vain and spends its strenght for naught. It is possible to excel in mechanics and fail in dynamics. There is abundance of machinery; what is wanting is power."
So as a church and believers in Jesus we must be a praying people. To help us over the next couple months our Sunday sermons will be on the Lord's Prayer, or as some call it, the Disciples' Prayer. Jesus spent much time in prayer. His disciples observed this and so asked Him to teach them to pray. We can be thankful that He did, giving us this model for our praying. Let's learn about it together and put it into practice.
Back to our Roots
Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do we come from? How did the world come to be? Why are 
there so many bad things in the world? Is it all just random chance, meaning nothing?
Everyone asks — and should ask — foundational questions like these. But where can we find a true and satisfying answer? The best way would be from someone who was there, right at the beginning, who saw everything. But how can we find someone like that?
The Bible starts with these four powerful words: "In the beginning, God..."
This study looks at how we and the world came to be in our current situation, and what God did about it.
| Back to our Roots: A Study in Genesis | |
 Genesis 1:1a - Looking Back, Going Forward | downloads: 176 | type: mp3 | size: 13 MB |
| Genesis 1:1b God's Creation and the Collapse of Evolution | downloads: 5 | type: mp3 | size: 13 MB |
| Genesis 1:1a - Looking Back, Going Forward (Text) | downloads: 262 | type: pdf | size: 246 kB |
| Genesis 1:1b God's Creation and the Collapse of Evolution (text) | downloads: 9 | type: pdf | size: 259 kB |
Contend for the Faith
The Book of Jude
Interest in 
"spirituality" seems to be on the rise these days. Most people however, seem to demand an easy religious experience and demand acceptance of any and all points of view -- except that of the Bible. There are many religious leaders who are more than happy to offer what people want to hear -- an easy way to be "spiritual" without worrying about what God actually wants.
This isn't new. Jude wrote to the early church, and warned there would be "false teachers" who would try to corrupt the Good News of Jesus and His sacrifice and lead many from safety into dangerous beliefs. He pleaded with them to stay true to the faith that they learned... and fight for the "truth, delivered once for all" whenever anyone tried to change it. Not as aggressors, but pleading for their souls, in love and truth.
The Songs of Ascents
Psalms 120-134: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
In the Bible, a disciple is a follower of Jesus. So, discipleship is about living as a follower of Jesus Christ.
What does that mean? How do we follow Christ? What will it cost us? How does God promise to help us?
This series is taken from the Songs of Ascents - psalms that the Jewish pilgrims sang on their yearly journey up the mountain to Jerusalem.
Following Jesus requires a long-term commitment as we follow God's call to follow Him, one step at a time: a long obedience in the same direction.
Each of the audio MP3 files are listed together, followed by the full text in PDF format.
About these Recordings
How to use these files
We typically record our Sunday Worship and special sermons and make them available for review online and on CD. If you click on the name of the file above, you can listen online (if your media player & browser are set to stream MP3 files), or your browser may prompt you to open, download or save the file for later listening on your computer or MP3 player.
We also try to make a text copy of the sermon available in PDF format. This is usually available only for regular Sunday services. If you cannot use PDF files for some reason, please let us know and we will try to get the file to you in another format.
Please note: In order to provide you with reasonable good sound quality, the MP3 files fairly large, usually at least 8-14 MB. The audio files are 30-40 minutes long, on average, ten times longer than a typical song but only a couple times as big, so that's pretty good!
However, if you are on a busy broadband (cable or DSL) or use a telephone dial-up Internet connection, the files will take a long time to transfer to your computer. If you are streaming online, you will likely have pauses (called "buffering") the first time you listen to a file.
Tips for those with frequent buffering issues:
- If you have a dial-up or slower broadband connection to the Internet, save the MP3 file to your computer hard drive, and then listen after it has finished downloading.
- Close as many other programs as possible, except your web browser of course, and stop any other web pages from downloading data
- If the media player opens immediately and you can't figure out how to save the file to your computer, click Pause on your media player and wait until the file completely downloads. (Most media players use a number or a coloured bar to show how much of the file remains to be downloaded.) You will then be able to restart playback from the beginning and listen without any pauses.
License
These sermons are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
This basically allows you to keep the documents forever, use them (as long as you're not making money from them and you identify riversidebaptistchurch.ca as the source), and even legally give complete unchanged copies to anyone you wish. You can host or link to our website as well. For the official license, please visit the Creative Commons website link above.
For the official granting of these rights, and the current license if any change in status should occur, please see the permanent page at http://riversidebaptistchurch.ca/usage.php