Little Hills Church

We all want our lives to mean something—to make a name for ourselves that people will actually remember. The builders at Babel in Genesis 11 wanted exactly that, and the choice they made raises an uncomfortable question for anyone who’s ever chased significance: is the tower you’re building any different from theirs?

Saying the right things about Jesus can feel like a low-risk move until He keeps walking and we have to follow. The next part of our journey in Matthew 9 leads us to face the uncomfortable junction of faith and faithfulness.

Babel feels counterintuitive: if God wants to bring people into peaceful unity, doesn’t the consequence He applies to the tower building effort actually work against what He intends? Not necessarily.

We see lots of details but miss the main point when we come to Jesus mainly to eliminate problems here and now. In Matthew 9:18–26, two people reach out to Jesus with needs very much like the ones we have and must wrestle with the deeper point of Jesus’s ministry — just like we do.

A tourist reads a mistranslated volcano warning about “mermaids” when it really means sirens—absurd until you realize it points to something humans do constantly. Genesis 11 shows people with genuine talent and ability choosing to build a tower not for survival, but for their own glory. How easily do we wrap our ambitions in a report cover and call it achievement?

We’ve all felt the pull to add one more pious act—fast a little longer, pray a little harder—convinced the right combination will finally make us right before God. In Matthew 9, John’s disciples bring that same assumption directly to Jesus, and his answer reframes not just the practice of fasting but the question of what season we’re actually living in.

Maybe you had a childhood toy that took your voice and sent it back distorted and amplified. Small choices work the same way in Proverbs 3:34-35 — God reciprocates what we put out into the world, amplifying our foolishness so we see it clearly, or honoring our wisdom in ways that matter eternally.

Most of us know our own dirt isn’t the curated kind—and suspect it may be too much to clean up. In Matthew 9, Jesus walks past everyone with the polished-for-consumption sob story and stops at a tax collector’s booth, a man whose sin was public knowledge, and says simply, “Follow me.”

When we try to live by “Don’t Be Evil,” we find that we end up being evil in the end. There’s a better way.

We scramble to fix what’s broken, certain we know the one restoration that matters most. But when friends lower a paralyzed man before Jesus in Matthew 9, desperate only to walk, the first words he hears are “Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.” Do we trust Jesus enough to receive what he says we actually need?

When we try to live by “Don’t Be Evil,” we find that we end up being evil in the end. There’s a better way.

We've all known someone's birthday was coming, kept it in the back of our minds, and then realized two weeks too late that we never said a word—recognized it, but never responded. In Matthew 8, the demons who meet Jesus call him “Son of God” with more clarity than almost anyone else in the Gospel, yet that recognition leads somewhere unexpected and deeply unsettling.

Most of us feel satisfied if we manage not to do evil—if we avoid the obvious wrongs, the cruelties we can see. But there’s a quieter failure Proverbs 3:27–28 names: the moment when you know exactly what good you could do, right now, and you choose not to do it. Google once promised not to be evil as it rose above other tech firms, yet the real challenge—for companies and individuals alike—comes in everyday decisions about whether to give good or hold it back. When does restraint from wrongdoing become complicity with harm?

Listening to Jesus is one thing; trusting him when the waves are coming over the sides of the boat is another—and most of us know the difference from the inside. In Matthew 8, seasoned fishermen who have already followed Jesus into the storm find their faith put to exactly that test.

We can gather up what feels like security, but are we actually secure? Proverbs challenges to make sure we have the right point of security.

It is easy to want Jesus for the healing, peace, and confidence he gives while keeping the rest of life safely under our control. In Matthew 8, however, the One who heals the sick also tells would-be disciples that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. What does it mean to follow him rather than merely watch?

Can we choose our own adventure wisdom? The Bible says “no” for a very important reason.

We think status, heritage, and credentials make us a somebody or a nobody, yet those are not what God values. In Matthew 8 a Gentile centurion—nobody by race—approaches Jesus with a suffering servant, forcing the question of what actually makes anyone able to approach God’s kingdom.

We have a lot of things we think are signs of the “blessed life”? Proverbs has a clear answer that challenges our assumptions.

We’ve sung it since childhood: He’s got the whole world in his hands. Yet when the personal “you and me” gets stripped away, what’s left is a distant abstraction. In Matthew 8 a leper kneels and forces the real question—does the Lord who can hold everything actually will to hold him?

God’s discipline isn’t a topic we like talking about or facing in any way. It feels intimidating and leaves us wondering if God is angry at us. But Proverbs gives us a different story.

Even as a Christian, you can feel the yips—that moment when shame from old sins creeps back in, making you wonder if you’re really free, if God’s forgiveness is truly yours. Romans 6:23 speaks directly into that weight: the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Most people instinctively know the difference between ordering at a restaurant and eating at a friend’s table—yet that same distinction somehow disappears in how they approach God. Proverbs 3:9 calls believers to honor the Lord with their wealth and the first fruits of all their produce, not as a business transaction or a path to guaranteed earthly blessing, but as an act of worship that reshapes what winning actually means.

We crave freedom, but Bob Dylan was right when he sang, “You Gotta Serve Somebody.” No matter how strong that craving, we’ll find ourselves serving either righteousness or unrighteousness.

We can say things like “In God We Trust,” but what do we mean? Do we really trust?

When the old broken software finally gives way to something that works, the last thing you'd do is press every button just to break the new one on purpose. Yet that same impulse faces us in the Christian life, and Paul confronts it head-on in Romans 6:14-15: since we are not under law but under grace, shall we sin?

God’s way doesn’t always look the most successful in the moment, but it is the path to true success.

Even good things we pursue can drift from their real meaning into empty gestures that change nothing. Sin whispers the same trade—“focus on me and I’ll give you what you want”—yet Paul answers it in Romans 6: do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, but present yourselves to God as those brought from death to life.

When it feels dark, we need the well trod paths of God’s Word to strengthen us so we don’t lose hope.

We think, “If only I had enough money, my life would change forever,” yet even a life-altering jackpot can't easily eliminate the old self. Romans 6:10 tells us the death Christ died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.

In a snowstorm, the signs showing miles to safety keep you moving even when relief feels hours away. You eat, you sleep, you feel better—so you believe that’s where strength comes from. But what happens when food runs out, rest doesn’t help, and the world keeps breaking? David pleads the same in Psalm 13, cutting to the real source of life: “Look at me, answer me, oh Lord, my God, revive me, or else I will die.” When personal storms and world chaos collide, what keeps hope alive?

We long for fresh starts, yet even after coming to Christ we can feel the pull to return to the same old sins and familiar ways. Romans 6:6–9 says our old self was crucified with Christ and that death no longer rules him—so what does that new standing mean for believers still facing temptation, failure, and the daily work of living for him?

You arrive early at the restaurant and order an iced tea while waiting for a friend whose advice you desperately need. One refill comes, then another, until the condensation has left the table damp and the agreed time is long past. An hour and a half later, you leave more dejected than when you arrived. Psalm 13 asks the same question that fills that silence: How long, O Lord?

When evil seems to be prospering, the temptation can be to find a backup plan instead of God’s way. Do we need one?

We know we're going to die—it's as inevitable as buttered toast landing face-down—but Romans 6:5 asks whether that death has to mean the same thing it did before Christ.

A voyage to the moon can feel finished once splashdown comes and the pictures stop, yet those who flew it insist it is only the start. Romans 6 challenges us to see the same of Easter: we're not at the end of our old debt, but the beginning of our new life in Jesus.

Easter is God’s profound statement that He not only listens, but He also saves.

We are good at recognizing what is wrong—and remarkably bad at fixing it. Isaiah 1 warns that the strong become tinder and their work a spark, exposing every human effort we trust to make life secure and lasting. What hope does Easter offer when the things we build, the solutions we devise, and even our own strength end in ash?

We begin a new series in the Psalms tonight, looking at David’s lament in Psalm 12. What happens when we feel like evil has triumphed and whatever good we do is fruitless?

We love to DIY it, and those efforts can look impressive on the surface—but surface polish gives false confidence. Isaiah 1:30 warns that a life cut off from God withers like an oak without water. The question is whether we are still building kingdoms that burn, or rooting ourselves in the One who lasts.

When a worthy cause demands everything, compromise feels reasonable—even necessary. As Paul delivers a charge to Timothy to continue the job, he gives an important qualification: fight the good fight while holding firmly to faith and a good conscience, because the good fight is lost not through open defeat but through the quiet erosion of integrity.

Whatever looks triumphant—the people and things we hold out as the absolute measure of concrete, dependable success—still meets death that tramples it. Isaiah warns that rebels and sinners will together be shattered, and those who forsake the Lord will perish. What then are we going to hold onto?

We too often forget that the source is joyful and accept the far more mundane or depressing secondhand source.

How does a people God has blessed so richly turn their backs on him? Isaiah 1 opens with God’s lament over Jerusalem—once full of justice, now a harlot filled with murderers—and brings the question home for Lent: when he looks at you, does he lament?

Two half-brothers leave for the same war; only one comes home. When rescue divides one person from another, “Why me?” can feel unanswerable—and salvation can raise the same uneasy question. In 1 Timothy 1:15–16, Paul refuses to ground his rescue in merit, calling himself the worst of sinners and pointing instead to Christ’s purpose and patience.

When we want vengeance, we want to get back—but Isaiah 1:24–25 shows a God who wants to get back to *good*, and that difference is harder to hold onto than it sounds when the anger is righteous and the wrong is real.

We tend to measure our worth by what we bring to the table, but Paul’s testimony in 1 Timothy 1:12 turns that calculus upside down. He could speak of his calling despite his failures because God’s strength doesn’t depend on ours.

How can those who have known God's rescue still chase worldly compromise that looks so much like success? That is the exasperated cry of Isaiah 1:21 as the faithful city becomes a harlot—once full of justice, now only murderers, its silver turned to dross.

We need to know what things are for and use them in the right way in life. That’s true of God’s law just like anything else.

We've all tried to manage our relationship with God on our own terms—keeping up appearances, going through the motions, assuming good effort is good enough. Isaiah 1:18 cuts through that with a direct invitation: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord”—and the question it presses is whether we'll actually stop and think about what he's offering.

There are two different charges vying for our attention: love and pride. Which one will we answer to?