Immanuel Community Church

God forbids us from making images of him because the moment we do, we reduce him to something familiar and manageable within creation. But the God of the Bible is utterly holy, infinitely beyond comparison and far greater than anything our minds could ever fully comprehend.

This series explores the Ten Commandments as “Ten Words” spoken by a loving God who rescued his people and now invites them into a life of flourishing, fruitfulness, and communion with him rather than mere rule-keeping. The first commandment calls us to worship and trust God alone, because we inevitably become like whatever we give our ultimate love and allegiance to.

Like Jacob, we often exhaust ourselves trying to make life work in our favor, but God's agenda is often not to deliver us from hardship as quickly as possible, but to teach us through our struggles.

We want a new season to solve our deepest longings, but God in his grace will trouble that search and turn our gaze back to him.

The danger of leadership is that we can drift into many ulterior motives for serving God, but Jesus gives us the ultimate example of what it means to shepherd others out of genuine love for them.

God has blessed the ICC church family with a new home, and we will spend many years hearing the Word of God proclaimed in this house. But it is important to know that simply hearing the words is not what it means to hear the voice of God. We will explore Deuteronomy 6:1-9, one of the most foundational passages for the Jewish people, and consider what it truly means to hear God, and how that requires an embodied response to what He has spoken.

Jesus lovingly restored Peter after what must have felt like a disqualifying failure, revealing the depth of his mercy to welcome even the most broken people into his story.

In Jesus' death and resurrection, God enters our pain, reveals himself personally to us, and invites us to believe and find new life in him even in the midst of our unresolved questions.

By willingly submitting to an unfair trial and accepting a guilty verdict He did not deserve, Jesus' meekness exposes and shatters our desperate need for self-preservation, freeing us to a life of self-giving love towards others.

SUMMARY: When we face failure, guilt, or betrayal, it's easy to deny God or lose hope. But the story of Peter and Judas shows us that God's grace runs deeper than our greatest failure, and we can choose to respond with faith and hope in His love—or sink into our own despair.

In his darkest hour, Jesus' heart was turned toward us, praying that we would be protected, set apart as holy, and brought into the glory that he shares with the Father.

After the resurrection, Jesus returned to the Father, but he continues to speak to us through his Spirit and offers us a lasting peace and joy in the face of suffering because he has overcome the world and secured the victory for us.

The Spirit convicts the world of its sinful and hostile posture toward God through the witness of the church. It is an unwelcome message that will provoke the same resistance and hatred Jesus himself faced.

The hallmark of a true follower of Jesus is the fruit of love that grows from abiding in him.

In His parting words to the disciples, Jesus promised them that he would never leave them as orphans but that his advocacy for them would continue through the work of the Holy Spirit. 

In a culture that tries to maximize output with minimum input and avoid the costly way of real spiritual growth, Philippians 2 calls us to actively live out our salvation, for it is God who is already at work within us.

Jesus showed the limitless humility and depth of his love by washing his disciples' feet, then calling his followers to do the same for one another.

Jesus' restoration of Peter in John 21 shows us that God does not allow our past experiences of serving to have the final word, but heals and restores us for continued service in his name.

Summary: We often fail to experience true, biblical joy because we allow our circumstances, our fears, and our forgetfulness to rob us of the joy the gospel brings. But when we worship the God who sees and saves us, and trust that through our brokenness, He will bless the world -- we can experience the fullness of joy that can only be found in Christ in any situation of life.

True peace rests entirely on the promised arrival of the King, Jesus Christ, who enters our world as a child to grow, live, die, and resurrect to become our ultimate and eternal Shalom.

Because of sin, our pride and fear cause us to naturally divide into tribes. But God has called us into a unity under the lordship of Christ Jesus that destroys all the man-made barriers sin creates and brings the kingdom of heaven to earth.

Jesus calls us out of a life turned inward on ourselves and transforms us into people who pour ourselves out in self-giving love, joining him in acts of service, compassion, and reconciliation in our neighborhoods, our nation, and to the ends of the earth.

Real discipleship happens when every believer is both a giver and receiver of ministry--building one another up in love and practicing mutual edification in worship. We trust in the work of the Holy Spirit and the leaders that Jesus has gifted to the church to equip every saint for this work of ministry.

We value the power of opening our lives to one another through a spirit of both hospitality and vulnerability.

We value the Lord's Supper not only as a reminder of the reconciliation with God that Jesus secured for us through his death, but also as a call to extend friendship, forgiveness, and welcome to one another as brothers and sisters in God's family.

We value Scripture as the ultimate authority for our lives, trusting that only by applying God's wisdom and truth to every part of life can we experience the abundant living that Jesus promises.

​At ICC we value the inner transformation of our hearts through the work of the Spirit and the practice of spiritual disciplines which lead us into greater dependence on God.

We declare the worth and glory of God through our wholehearted worship.

By receiving the transformative gaze of Jesus, we are freed from our own blindness and empowered to become agents of healing who truly see others.

Sacred spaces shape the people who gather in them. Our new building can be that kind of place—forming us to live out the vision God has entrusted to us.

In raising Lazarus, Jesus offers the final sign in John's gospel, showing that death has no power over him and foreshadowing his own resurrection, which brings the hope of eternal life to the world.

As God leads us into roads unknown to us He calls us to remember that He goes ahead of us, works within us and walks beside us.

As our shepherd, Jesus offers us a place of total security and acceptance, leading us to paths of abundant life. As sheep our response is to put our total trust in his leadership.

What does it really mean to be citizens of God's Kingdom—not just enjoying the blessings, but living out the responsibilities of it? Let us explore Jesus' call to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and discover the promise that frees us from worry as we follow Him.

We often struggle to walk in the power of our new life in Christ, because we are prone to forget who we are in Jesus. But God invites every new believer to be baptized, so that we might live out the reality of our new identity in Christ, within the covenant community of Christ. 

This week, Pastor Praise speaks directly to our graduating seniors heading off to college—with a message from Hebrews 11:1 and a lesson from a crocus flower.

Jesus shines his light into those who acknowledge their blindness but withholds it to those who claim that they can see.

Jesus is the light of the world, shining his light into our hearts of darkness and setting us free from our enslavement to sin.

Speaker: Pastor Peter Cho Summary: We often see interruptions as unwelcome setbacks because we are so focused on our own plans and desire for control. But Jesus treated interruptions not as distractions but as divine appointments, and invites us to see unexpected disruptions in our own lives as opportunities for ministry and compassion.

The deepest, most authentic rest for our souls is found when we respond to Jesus' direct invitation to come to Him – and Him alone – where healing and restoration await.

When we encounter the sins and failures of others, our instinct is often to respond with judgment and condemnation. But Jesus responds with mercy—not because he takes sin lightly, but because his deepest desire is to restore what sin has broken in our lives.

The Christian life is not built on the illusion of perfection but on the truth of Jesus, who meets us in our brokenness. In Him, honesty is not weakness but worship. And as we confess our sins and live vulnerably with one another, we become a community where grace flows, healing begins, and the light of Christ overcomes all shame.

We often put Jesus on trial, scrutinizing whether he conforms to our expectations, but ultimately we are the ones who are being tested by how we respond to him.

Where we invest our precious resources is a reflection of what really matters in our lives.

A vibrant life, centered on God, flourishes through a genuine rest that can only be found in the presence and embrace of Jesus Christ.

Speaker: Pastor Peter Cho God calls us to not only sing to Him but to sing to one another so that we might be filled with the Spirit of unity and grow in Christ's love as a witness to the world and to the glory of God.