Watts in the Word

Jesus taught in many parables over the course of his earthly ministry; it is one of the most striking aspects of his teaching. What is a parables, how should we read them, and why are they such an powerful part of his message? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This sermon … Continue reading The Parables of Jesus

By the seventh chapter of Luke, Jesus had already done more than enough to prove himself worthy of believing in and following, so it is worth considering how people started responding to him. What influenced people to reject or accept him, and how does this compare to our situation today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching … Continue reading Responding to Jesus

Jesus’s sermon in Luke 6 is very similar to another, more famous sermon of his, the sermon on the mount. What message was Jesus trying to convey to his audience, and how should this sermon affect our hearts today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This sermon was preached at the … Continue reading The Sermon on the Plain

After the “return” from exile, Israel began looking for a new king, the Messiah who would fulfill the promises of the prophets of old. Jesus was that king. But when he came, basically everything he said and did was the exact opposite of what Israel expected from their savior. What did Jesus teach about his … Continue reading A New King in Babylon

The Rabbi system in first century Israel is an important piece of background information for contextualizing the story of Jesus. What was a Rabbi, and how did Jesus fit into this system? What does this mean for the modern reader? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through Luke. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church … Continue reading Jesus the Rabbi

(Note: This audio sounds very different because it is livestreamed from home in a snow storm.) The first few stories of Jesus’s ministry in Luke’s Gospel serve to introduce the purpose of his earthly ministry and reinforce some of the ways that Jesus might have been tempted to alter or change his purpose from the … Continue reading The Purpose of His Ministry

When Israel failed to live as the Called-Out Kingdom God desired, he sent them back into the world, via the exiles. But God still expected holiness in their exile. What can we learn from God’s expectations for exiled Israel, and from Israel’s example of living in a nation that did not know or love Yahweh? … Continue reading Living in Babylon

Luke chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 is the last bit of set-up before the ministry of Jesus begins in earnest. What can we learn from the teaching of John the Baptist, Luke’s version of Jesus’s genealogy, and the temptation of Jesus? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This … Continue reading Preparing the Way

In contrast to Matthew and John, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus and his early life emphasizes Jesus’s humble origins and submissive attitude, from the circumstances of his birth, to his parents’ obedience to the Law of Moses, to his own submission to Mary and Joseph. What should we learn from this emphasis of … Continue reading Humble Beginnings

This is the first lesson in a series on how the church can or should interact with the world around it, in politics, culture, social pressures, communities, etc. In this first sermon we consider the way God has always called his people out of the world to be something special or different, and lay the … Continue reading The Called-Out Kingdom

Over the course of this year, I will be preaching through the Gospel of Luke, mostly at a pace of one chapter per week. We will do the first half over the first three months of the year, take a break, and then finish out the year by covering the second half of Luke in … Continue reading The Coming Savior

In the book of Revelation, we learn how God’s story of redemption, restoration, and reconciliation will end. We only get glimpses of what comes after, but the story of God’s plan to restore fallen creation to himself finds its climax and resolution. What will the end of the story look like, and when will the … Continue reading The End of the Story

“The dark triad” is technically a term from modern psychology, but I am co-opting it as a label for John’s categorization of temptation. Throughout the Bible, in important stories of temptation, you see the same triad. What is this “dark triad” of temptation? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on temptation. This sermon was preached at … Continue reading The Dark Triad

There is an emotional, relational connection behind all the epistles that can be easy to overlook 2,000 years later. 1-3 John and 1-2 Thessalonians do a good job of foregrounding this connection between the writer and the reader, and inform us how church workers today should feel about the church. Click Here to Listen. (Preaching … Continue reading A Preacher’s Prayer

There are a lot of things that distract us from what really, eternally matters. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus emphasize this distinction over and over, in a variety of ways. What was Paul worried would distract the church, and how do we refocus on what really matters? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through 1-2 … Continue reading What Really Matters

We are coming to the end of our year-long journey through the Bible story, but the end of the Bible is not the end of God’s story. As we read 1-2 Timothy and Titus, we see that Jesus’s apostles clearly intended his story to continue in the church. How did they intend for us to … Continue reading Continuing the Story

2 Peter and Jude are the most similar of any two books in the Bible (yes even possibly including the Gospels). What were Peter and Jude so concerned about in the early church, and how do their warnings matter for Christians today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on 2 Peter and Jude. This sermon was … Continue reading Don’t Repeat History!

This sermon is a bit of a preview of a series of lessons we will start in the new year. 1 Peter is a book addressed to “the elect exiles of the dispersion.” What does this title mean, who does it apply to, and why does it matter for the modern Christian? Click Here to … Continue reading Living in Exile

One of the things that should become quickly apparent as one reads through the letters of the New Testament is that the new life in Christ should not look like the old life before Christ. What does it mean to “put on the new self” and how does one go about doing that? Click Here … Continue reading The New Self

While there are a lot of different topics addressed in the letters to the Corinthians, a lot of the letters come back to the same idea; how should Christians think about each other, and their place in the body of Christ, both universally and more locally? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the New Testament. … Continue reading Discerning the Body

The middle section of Romans is a masterful treatise on the hope God gives us in the broken, fallen world we live in. Why is the world so broken, and how does God expect us to persevere in it? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on Romans. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of … Continue reading Hope in a Fallen World

Paul’s letter to the Romans is the most “technical” of the epistles, in a sense. In it, Paul lays out a very detailed argument about righteousness, salvation, and faith that is just as applicable today as it ever was. Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on Romans. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of … Continue reading Saved by Faith

The importance of being “led by the Spirit” as a Christian cannot be understated, but the exact means by which He leads us can be confusing to many Christians. Using several stories from the latter part of Paul’s mission work in Acts, let’s consider what exactly it means to be led by the Spirit. Click … Continue reading Led by the Spirit

One of the benefits of reading through the story in Acts relatively quickly is repeated themes and events become more obvious, specifically in regards to evangelism and how people responded. What were the essential, elementary components of the Gospel message, and how did people typically respond to its truth? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on … Continue reading The Elementary Doctrine of Christ

How we think about the form, structure, and purpose of the New Testament will inevitably affect the way we approach, read, and interpret it. What did Jesus have to say about it, and what did its writers say about why and how it was written? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on the new covenant of … Continue reading What is the New Testament?

One of the main points of conflict in the early Church was the question of how to handle or relate to the Law of Moses. This is still a question many people wonder about today. How did Jesus and his apostles intend for Christians to think about the Law of Moses? Click Here to Listen. … Continue reading The End of the Law

The first part of Acts is the first stage in the growth and the expansion of Jesus’s church, first in Jerusalem but then to the surrounding regions of Judea and Samaria. What kinds of struggles did the early church face, how did they overcome, and which of their attitudes and characteristics should we be emulating? … Continue reading The Early Church

A basic apologetic consideration of the historical reliability of the Gospels (and indeed the broader New Testament) breaks down into two main lines of reasoning: arguments based on history and how we know things, and arguments based on psychology and human nature. This is a very brief overview of a defense of the Gospel accounts, … Continue reading Are the Gospels Reliable?

Mark’s Gospel is a good one to use as a base for digging down to the core Gospel story; the part of the good news of Jesus’s life that all four Gospel writers included in their accounts. The list is surprisingly short, and while everything each writer wrote is essential for all Christians, considering the … Continue reading The Common Gospel

The “kingdom” is an especially important theme in Matthew’s version of the Gospel story. Jesus’s work was not disconnected from the story of Israel in the Old Testament; it was a fulfillment and continuation of God’s plan to establish his eternal kingdom, promised to David and Daniel. How does Matthew explore the importance of the … Continue reading The Kingdom of Heaven

Matthew’s gospel is the most closely connected to the Israelite story in the Old Testament. He connects these stories in two main ways: the fulfillment of prophecy, and the continuation of the kingdom. First, we will consider how Matthew addresses prophecy in the life of Jesus. How does Jesus fulfill all the promises of God … Continue reading The Culmination of Prophecy

We begin our foray into the New Testament with the Gospel of John; not the first gospel in most English Bibles, but the one that most closely parallels the beginning of the Bible in Genesis. What is different about John’s version of Jesus’s story, and what does he emphasize more than the other authors? Click … Continue reading God With Us

For a word that carries such importance in modern Christianity, the word “Messiah” appears astonishingly little in the Bible. Why is that? Aside from the quirks of translations and transliterations, why is this such an important prophetic title, and how did the intertestamental Israelites begin to think about it, leading to the arrival of Jesus? … Continue reading The Coming Messiah

While there are no narrative parts of the Bible that describe the 400 years between Nehemiah and Jesus, the Bible is not silent about that era of history; Daniel had a string of visions describing that time. How do Daniel’s visions guide us through this era and bring us to the arrival of the “Son … Continue reading Intertestamental Prophecy

As we wrap up our reading through the Old Testament with 2 Chronicles, it is important to consider if God still interacts with the world, nations, and geopolitics today in the same way that the Chronicler emphasizes. Even though God isn’t as explicit or clear with us today in how he is working, how can … Continue reading God is in Control!

The turn from 1 to 2 Chronicles focuses on David’s and Solomon’s efforts in building the temple, but during this process both David and Solomon recognize a puzzling aspect to their work; God doesn’t actually need a temple, everything that they used to build it came from him, and a temple can’t contain him anyway. … Continue reading The Purpose of Existence

A simple way to study a book of the Bible is to make note of repeated words or phrases; this is often the easiest way to identify the theme of a book! In Malachi, that phrase is “but you say”, which appears frequently in just four chapters. Why does the prophet use this phrase so … Continue reading “But You Say”

The return from exile involved a lot of rebuilding; the temple in the book of Ezra, the wall in the book of Nehemiah, and generally they would have had to rebuild homes, farms, roads, etc. But perhaps the most important rebuilding was the people’s relationship with God’s word. How did Nehemiah help restore Israel’s knowledge … Continue reading Valuing God’s Word

Zechariah, like most of the post-exilic prophets, urged Israel to return and repent by reminding them exactly why they had been sent into exile in the first place. What can we learn about God’s desire for repentance by considering how God dealt with people in times past? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on the return … Continue reading A Call to Repent

Israel’s return from exile was a long process of rebuilding and restoring what had been lost, starting with the temple in the book of Ezra. But beyond rebuilding the physical buildings and towns, Israel needed to restore their relationship and obedience to God, a task that Ezra was well suited for. What can we learn … Continue reading Returning, Rebuilding, Restoring

This post contains a sermon, but the subject of artificial intelligence deserves more than can be said in one 35 minute sermon. And, honestly, the sermon came across a bit more pessimistic and a bit less nuanced than I would have liked. I have included below some much longer thoughts on the nature of artificial … Continue reading Christianity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 epitomizes one of the main themes of the Bible: God’s power to bring life from death, through his Spirit. Using Ezekiel 37 as a launching point, how does this power of God manifest in his promises through Jesus and his apostles? Click Here to … Continue reading From Death to Life

This sermon is only tangentially related to our journey through the story of the Bible together this year, but it is a topic I get asked about a lot. How should Christians think about Israel today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on the promises made to Israel. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church … Continue reading A New Israel

The book of Ezekiel has a lot to say about how the failure of Israel’s leaders led Israel into destruction. The book still has much to teach modern readers about the importance of righteous leadership today. Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on the exile of Israel. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of … Continue reading Failed Leadership, Failed Nation

The stories of Daniel and Esther take place outside of Israel, a hundred years apart. What can we learn from God’s people as they continued to live faithfully in the midst of ungodly people? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on the exile of Israel. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on … Continue reading Stories of Exile (Sermon)

The Babylonian exile is one of the most complicated narrative backdrops in the Old Testament, spanning many prophetic and historical books in Scripture. Understanding the scope of the exile and the return will inform our reading of dozens of Old Testament books, and help us gain a better understanding of the story of God’s people … Continue reading Overview of the Exile (Sermon)

Lamentations might be the hardest book to read in the Bible; not because it’s obscure or overly intellectual, or because it is simply a compilation of census data, but because it’s extremely heavy and emotional. Why was it written, and why is still just as valuable for modern readers? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through … Continue reading A Lament for the Lost

Jeremiah is a hard book for modern readers to understand (like many of the Israelite prophetic books). What are some of the factors that contribute to this difficulty, and how can modern readers understand the book in its own context while also making application for ourselves? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the prophets of … Continue reading Overview of Jeremiah (Sermon)

The book of Jeremiah is not arranged chronologically, so in our reading through the Bible our text for this week comes a little out of historical order. Jeremiah 29 is addressed to people living in exile after Babylon had come against Israel and carried many of them away. What did Jeremiah have to say to … Continue reading Letter to the Exiles

Most of the prophetic books of Israel simply record the oracles of the prophets, without revealing much about the prophets themselves. However, the books of Jeremiah and Isaiah begin with the call of the prophet and God’s intent for their ministries. What can we learn from the call of these two men, their responses, and … Continue reading The Prophet’s Call

Where the first half of Isaiah is mostly judgment punctuated by promises of restoration, the second half is primarily hopeful promises with occasional reminders of judgment. What kind of hope does Isaiah offer to Israel, and how does he expect the hope to be accomplished for God’s people? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the … Continue reading Hope in Isaiah