A few years ago, I noticed that while we often teach the stories in Luke 15 together (the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, etc.), I hadn't heard anyone teach any of them with the connecting stories in chapter 16. But I think Luke is developing a theme we can easily miss. This weekend I...

Most of our bad theology could be fixed by recognizing that God has always looked like Jesus, even if they didn't know it yet. The rest could be fixed by realizing that Jesus modeled what it looked like for a person to be filled with the eternal Christ, and then invited us to do likewise.

Easier...

Last weekend I preached on a difficult passage from the Sermon on the Mount. While we often assume Jesus agrees with our views on most of our ideas, passages like Matthew 5:38-42 show us that we often don't agree with Jesus. 

Essentially, this is where Jesus tells us that when others...

This past weekend I preached a message on Jesus encountering a man possessed with an army of demons inside him (Mark 5). It was the perfect passage for Halloween week. I explored how Jesus put Himself in proximity with people in messy situations. Yet we tend to do exactly the...

This past weekend I preached on one of my favorite stories of Jesus. It's found in Luke 8. A synagogue leader named Jairus asks Jesus to heal his dying daughter, and Jesus is interrupted on the way there by a woman with a chronic disease. The story is a masterclass in being present and focused...

I finished my "Them vs. Us" series this past weekend with a message titled "Everybody Waves Back." I unpacked the story of Cain and Abel and pondered our responsibility to other people. When God asks Cain about the status of his brother Abel, I love how the Message paraphrase captures Cain's...

Last weekend I had the chance to preach on one of my favorite books in all of the Bible in week four of my "Them Vs. Us" series. The book of Jonah is so unbelievably relatable and borderline comedic in how the story plays out. Basically, Jonah has issues and baggage and I can relate.

Jonah gets...

I preached the third part of my "Them vs. Us" series this past weekend. I titled it "Natural Enemies" after this brilliant quote from the theologian Donald Carson:

“Ideally… the church itself is not made up of natural ‘friends.’ It is made up of natural enemies. What...

Some passages we come across in the Bible seem pretty obvious. But that doesn't make them any less troubling. Take for example a passage like Deuteronomy 23:6 "As long as you live, you must never promote the welfare and prosperity of the Ammonites or Moabites.” Wow, God really didn't like...

This past weekend I began a five-week sermon series at a church in Phoenix. I'm super excited to do this as I haven't had the chance to write a new series in a few years. The series is called "Them vs. Us" and is about how quickly we draw lines between ourselves and others. Yet as we see...