Sermons

The deadliest sins are the ones you've made peace with—the quiet dangers that slip beneath your moral radar. The grudge you nurse. The lust you feed. The secret habit you excuse. They slowly turn you into someone you'd hardly recognize. They never settle for being tolerated; they want control. Yet we remain largely blind to their power. That's why Genesis 4 demands our attention. It's the first time sin is described in detail—and God Himself issues the warning: “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” Sin, the menacing predator… waiting, watching, crouching.

We once lived in Paradise, basking in the very presence of God. Eden was our dwelling place and God was our delight. But we went rogue and lost them both. Now East of Eden is where we live—fighting to find our way home. But the entrance is blocked. Pain and sorrow overshadow our searches that end in death. Futility is our shared experience. But it won't have the last word. There's a way home--an entrance back into God's presence. 3

Remember the story of Esau? He made a terrible trade. He swapped his birthright for a bowl of stew. I'm sure Jacob was quite the cook and that the stew was next level. But the New Testament gives us a quick, tragic summary of that episode: “Esau sold his birthright for a single meal…and afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.” That's a tough word, but a good reminder for us who are faced every day with temptations to trade the promises of Jesus for cheap substitutes. Join us at GraceLife this Sunday for a quick word about bowls of stew and birthrights. “A Terrible Trade.”

One of the most common objections to God is this: If He's good, why does He allow evil, suffering, and injustice? That's a fair question—but it's the wrong starting point. A better one is: Where did evil, suffering, and injustice come from? The answer is harder to hear because the blame shifts from God to us. In Genesis 1–2, everything was good. But we disobeyed. We broke trust. We rebelled. And because of that, everything is broken—including us. Other worldviews can't adequately explain our condition—the relational complexities we face—or offer real hope. But Scripture does. It names the problem and reveals the remedy.

If God told you to ask Him for anything you wanted, what would you say? A chocolate chip donut? So much money that you could buy 200 things in a day? (Those were the answers my 3- and 5-year old sons gave.) Maybe you would ask for healing. Inner peace. Comfort. Relief. In 1 Kings 3, God tells King Solomon to ask for anything.

Guilt, shame, and fear—the fallout of sin. Guilt says, “I did something wrong.” Shame says, “I am something wrong.” Fear says, “I'm in danger.” We see all three of those emotions in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve cover themselves, hide from God, and deflect blame. But the story doesn't end there. God pursues them, provides true covering, and promises a Redeemer. That's “The Fall-Out.”

How did humanity fall into ruin? A forbidden fruit and a subtle serpent factor in—no doubt about it. But at the end of the day, it was a choice. Nobody forced Adam and Eve's hand. The devil did not “make them do it.” That excuse will never fly. So what happened? First, the serpent deceived Eve. But what happened next is often overlooked. Eve deceived herself. She took another look at the tree and its forbidden fruit. The lie was sown and it instantly bore fruit. Eve viewed the tree differently now. It was good for food. It was a delight to the eyes. It was desirable to make one wise. Do you see the process? She redefined the tree. And so do we—every time we face temptation.

Have you ever wondered why dogs bite, paint fades, or women carry pepper spray at night? Why are relationships hard, kids afraid of the dark, and our phones buzzing with Amber Alerts? Genesis 2 had no sirens, hospitals, or cemeteries. But now brokenness fills our world. What happened? My Bible labels Genesis 3 as “The Fall.” At the end of chapter 2, everything was very good—love, trust, peace, and joy with no death or disease. But in chapter 3, it all went terribly wrong. Humanity fell—hard. How did it happen? What does it mean? And what hope remains?

When the church was birthed on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, they had no strategy or technique for changing the world. They just wanted to worship Jesus—together. They prayed. They sang. They rejoiced. They grew. They ate. All together. They had a shared devotion, a shared life, and a shared mission. And revival broke out. That's not a formula for revival (God laughs at our formulas). But it is a beautiful life. It is a powerful life. It is a connected life. And as it turns out, it's also God's design for a healthy Christian Community. Are you connected—to God, to others, to His mission?

What is nostalgia? It's remembering when life was good—really good. It's remembering and longing to go back to better times. Or at least better moments. A snowy Christmas morning. A satisfying movie. A stirring book. A childhood song. The smell of home. C.S. Lewis called those longings “desires for our far-off country,” but warned not to misplace them. He wrote, “These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” Those longings are echoes from Eden, our first home. We all yearn for a time before sin, shame, guilt, and fear wrecked our world. Want to know why your heart can get homesick, even while living in a loving home?

No matter which way you slice it, Jesus' message while He was here on earth was all about one thing: the kingdom of heaven. He called for repentance and belief because "the kingdom of heaven is here." Jesus' declaration raises immediate questions: What is the kingdom of heaven? How do we know it's here? Can I join the kingdom? To teach His followers more about God's kingdom, Jesus used parables about a mustard seed and leaven. He explains what the kingdom will do and how it will do it.

Security. Identity. Liberty. Beauty. Community. Those all fall under the category of universal longings. In other words, human beings have yearned for and sought after those things since the beginning of time. Well, almost since the beginning of time. Once upon a time, we had them all--in abundance. But that time was short-lived. We lost them. And now, we look for them in all the wrong places. Why? Genesis 2 offers us answers.

Hear a powerful story of transformation as a student shares how he encountered God in a life-changing way during his camp experience.

God made us to bear His image—to reflect and represent Him in the world. That's our design and it includes capacities like affirming human dignity, worshiping our Creator, acknowledging our God-given biological sex, exercising careful stewardship, pursuing relational enrichment, finding meaningful work, and even multiplying the human race. That's how God designed us. And that's how life works best. But because of sin, that design is under siege. Whether from the world, the devil, or the flesh, our image-bearing design suffers a multi-front attack. Knowing is half the battle.

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve. He gave them His image. He gave them each other. He gave them a garden. And He gave them a task: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.” What does it mean to “have dominion”? The word means to rule. To take charge. To control. To exercise power. That sounds scary. We know what “power” does in the wrong hands. But before sin marred the image of God in us, we were entrusted as God's stewards. His caretakers over earth. We were given authority and responsibility. You know how that ended. The world has been under poor management since Genesis 3. But God never rescinded that charge to us. We are still to exercise dominion. How can we—and more importantly, how should we—go about that.

What does it mean to be a human? How do we know what a mature, healthy human looks like? The answer to those questions is found back at the beginning—in Genesis. God said something shocking and revolutionary before he created us. He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” God was essentially saying: “Let's make somebody that looks and functions like us; someone with our features.” He is using relational language. Let US. OUR image. Let THEM. Hear the theme? Human beings are relational creatures because they were made in the image of a relational being.

The Bible tells us how enslaving, corrupting, alienating, and defiling sin is. Over and over again, Scripture reminds us of the terrible consequences sin brings. But sometimes, God SHOWS us those truths in stories. The story of Naaman the leper from 2 Kings 5 is one of those graphic reminders of not just the destructive power of sin, but the redemptive power of God in the Gospel. Sin tears us apart, but God puts us back together again—better than before!

Civil Rights. Pregnancy Centers. Hospice Care. Social Services. Department of Justice. It's easy to take those for granted but impossible to account for them without the creation story in Genesis. Our image bearing privilege is the basis for many of the common grace benefits we enjoy. When God created us, he put his divine stamp upon us. He made us “in his image.” It's stunning to consider the implications (relational, vocational, cultural, political, and personal) and tragic to deny them.

Christians have a history of imbalance. We notice a distortion in a certain area of life and rush in to fix it. Then we discover that we over fixed it. We rode the pendulum. We overcorrected and therefore put ourselves out of balance again. One distortion with massive implications is our view of creation. How do we interact with the world in all its broken beauty? What perspective do we have on our bodies, the planet, food, drink, and marriage—just to name a few? Are they dangers to avoid? Gifts to indulge? Depending on which era of Christian history you land in, you could be impacted either way.

Humans need blueprints! In our more honest and frustrating moments, we acknowledge this. Who hasn't tasted the bitter experience of making things up as we go; throwing out the manufacturer's manual or ignoring it altogether? We need blueprints to assemble an Ikea bookshelf, to find the best route to a strange city, and to flourish as human beings in God's good world. If you look carefully, even before God created humans, he lays out a blueprint for how life works best. The extreme care God took in forming and filling the universe is instructive. God gave us a pattern—a blueprint. We see wisdom, goodness, beauty, and function. It's staggering to consider, and tragic to ignore—often yielding confusion and suffering. This week we're continuing our journey in Genesis.

People are beginning to reckon with the failures and inadequacies of worldviews they once hoped in. Those worldviews (philosophies, religions, political ideologies, technological progress) fell flat—really flat. The “centre did not hold.” They did not explain reality, provide meaning, or offer hope. They couldn't. So people are ditching them and exploring ideas that were once ridiculed and distrusted. Leaders have reported surges in Bible sales and downloaded Bible-reading apps. We see upticks in church attendance. Podcasts featuring interviews (and debates!) with scholars are going viral. People are reconsidering the claims of Christianity. They are asking questions. Christians are providing answers that are rational, reasonable, and compelling. Those answers begin in Genesis. It's a great time to participate corporately with what God is doing. We're launching a study through the early chapters of Genesis. I'm excited to explore the basic foundational storyline of the Bible with you. My prayer is that it both encourages you and equips you to “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” 1 Peter 3:15

What comes to mind when you hear the word wilderness? Maybe barrenness, or drought? Isolation, thirst, vulnerability, danger? All those could easily fit into the word—and more. David found himself in the wilderness often. Thank God he wrote about his journeys so we can learn from them. Are you finding yourself in the wilderness these days? Let David help you find your way to the Oasis.

https://www.youtube.com/live/KFfIYWjsVSk?si=aJcFAWxLc6G-wRO-

Every second Sunday of the month, we hear a testimony from one of our members. It could be a testimony of how they came to faith, or any other instance where they saw the goodness of God in their life.

Our God uses people to reach people. From the very beginning, He has chosen a group to go out and bless the world. But the Bible is full of humans failing to live up to this divine calling. One of the most iconic and ironic examples is the prophet Jonah. Join us this Sunday to see how even polytheistic, pagan sailors reflected God's heart more than Jonah did.

God is GENEROUS. The kingdom of heaven is funded by the generosity of the King as opposed to the earnings of its citizens. Citizens are rewarded in surprising, upside-down, last-shall-be-first kinds of ways in order to highlight the super-abundance of the King.

As Christians we are called to do everything to the glory of God. Every aspect of our lives should be glorifying to him and we should be worshipping the Lord in all that we do. If we are honest though, sometimes we forget that suffering is included in that. How can we suffer to the glory of God? How can we suffer well? Join us Sunday as we explore the beautiful truths of scripture that show us what it means to suffer well.

What's your definition of success? The way you answer that question will reveal a lot about what you value and how you see the world. In the story of Joseph, we get a very surprising snapshot of what true success looks like. Jospeh experiences back-stabbing betrayal and disgraceful injustice. So there's only one way his story be described as a success: God's favor is not fragile.

A few years ago, a little girl told me about the teacher at her school who kept scolding the class with these words, “Shame on you!” Shame is the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. It's the terrifying feeling that we don't measure up. We're unpresentable. Unwelcome and unwanted. The bad news? Shame sticks to us like a bad batch of slime. We can't wipe it off and we can't drive it away. The good news? Someone came who can take your shame away—someone who can say, not “Shame ON you!” but “Shame OFF you!”

God's sense of timing will probably never match ours. We want deliverance. And we want it now. We want change—yesterday. Whether that change involves spiritual growth, a relationship, a bank account, a career, or even our health, God doesn't operate on our time-scale. He's not bound to our rushed schedule. And that's good news. It's really good news. He's a wise, loving father. He always gives us what we need, but rarely when we think we need it. A strange and unsettling encounter with Jesus in the Gospel of Mark highlights that truth. I hope you can join us for, When God Takes His Time.

Reflect on all the teachers you've ever sat under. Two kinds probably emerge: those you obey because you had to, and those you obey because you want to. Harsh teachers can squeeze compliance out of you, but good teachers inspire us into change. You might even say they love us into change. For ten years we've modeled the ministry of GraceLife after the pattern we find in the new Testament: only a deep experience of God's grace can transform us. Paul says it like this in his letter to Titus, “God's grace…teaches us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.” That's some teacher! Have you ever sat under Grace? Join us for our ten year anniversary celebration this week as we explore the “School of Grace.”

Imagine this scenario: you're closing out a doctrinally instructive letter to a growing church in Rome. You've poured out chapter after chapter of rich theology, covering the depths of human sin and the heights of God's redemptive love in Christ. And now it's time to sign off. You've sent greetings to everyone you know and warned against false teaching that would contradict your instruction. Now it's time for your final thoughts. What do you leave the Christians in Rome with? Paul can't help himself. He goes for the gospel—again! What it is, who it's about, and what it does. It's a fitting end to his theological magnum opus. And it's a fitting end to our study of this tremendous letter. I hope you can join us for our final message on Romans this week at GraceLife, Before I Go…

In 1831, a French diplomat visited the United States to study the new democracy and prosperity the young nation was enjoying. Here was his main observation of the people: "Americans are restless in the midst of their well-being." The Frenchman was surprised that the success and comfort of the people did not lead to their rest. They couldn't sit still and enjoy what they had. Some 200 years later, I believe the observation still stands. Why are we so restless? Join us this Sunday at GraceLife as we trace the theme of Rest throughout the Bible.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together: “It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters.” The final chapter in Paul's letter to the church in Rome highlights that often forgotten truth. In just a few verses, Paul sends greetings and thanks to dozens of people he knew by name, family, and ministry alliance. He worked hard at building and enjoying community. That was one of the secrets to his fruitfulness and the means God used to bless his work. Join us this weekend for our final service of 2024 as we consider Building Community and how it can shape our lives in 2025.

Have you grown numb to the message of Christmas? Here's a test. Consider these words. GOD. WITH. US. Did your heart leap? Did your head spin? Did your soul rejoice? That truth of the incarnation should stop us in our tracks. But something tragic has happened: it has become pedestrian to us, just another decoration along with tinsel and mistletoe. We're numb to the miracle of Christmas. God with us. Not God above us. Not God against us. Not God apart from us. Those we get. Those we expect. Those we dread and suppress. No…the message is God has come down to save us. Join us at GraceLife this Sunday for our Christmas service: God With Us. 10am at the DHS Auditorium. Come early for some Christmas treats!