06/30/2019

Who is God? What is He like? What does He want? And why is there something rather than nothing? It’s been said that you can never really understand who God is apart from knowing His Word. There is no better place to find answers to our deepest questions, and start our investigation of the Bible, than in the beginning.

07/07/2019

It’s impossible to wrap our minds around the grand story of the Bible without first understanding God’s dealings with Israel. They were a nation without a home, a people enslaved to Egypt. Without God, Israel would have been nothing more than a footnote in the pages of history. Their humble origins and unimpressive resume begs the question: Why did God choose them in the first place? Not surprising, the answer tells us very little about Israel and a lot about God.

07/14/2019

The God who reveals Himself through the Bible does so as One who makes and keeps covenant promises. Nowhere is this more apparent than the story of Israel, which began as nothing more than a promise to a childless, old man named Abraham. God may not always make sense and the way forward may not always seem clear, but that’s okay because God always keeps His promises.

07/21/2019

If all we had was the Old Testament, we would reach the end of the story with a feeling that something was missing. We would anticipate something exciting and new, even if we weren’t quite sure what it should be. Fortunately, the story of Israel wasn’t the end of the story. All that God had been doing and promised to do reaches its unexpected climax in the story of Jesus.

07/28/2019

The introduction of Jesus into the grand narrative of the Bible demands nothing less than a complete reimagining of the whole story past, present, and future. The exclusivity of Israel becomes the inclusion of the whole world. Commitment to a nation transforms as people from every tribe, tongue, and nation commit themselves to a Kingdom beyond geographical borders. That is what it means to be the Church, a movement of Spirit-filled people living and working as representatives of Jesus in and for the world.

08/04/2019

Jesus launched the Church as a movement in the world, for the world. Over 2000 years later, most people know about the Church, but are increasingly confused about what the Church is there for. Too often, the Church is famous for the things it stands against, instead of the people it exists for. Over the next four weeks, we will return to our the words and vision of our founder, Jesus, to recapture the spark that first made the Church a force that changed the world.