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Guest preacher Rene Argueta from Primera Iglesia Evangelica Bautista joins to share this special message, taking us through the story of Jesus crossing barriers to touch the life of a woman that all of the rules of his day told him to leave along. The one who crossed the greatest barrier—the distance between us and God because of sin—shows us we’re to continue to cross barriers to show God’s love, too.

In this message, Pastor Julie takes us through the story of Jesus after the death of his good friend, Lazarus, whose sisters Mary and Martha were also close friends of Jesus. The story is well known because of the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead—a miracle that Jesus did for himself and will do for us one day, too. But there’s more to the story than meets the eye. How did Jesus care for them at this incredibly heavy moment? How do we do as Jesus did, the theme of this series? Pastor Julie explains it all in this sermon meant for broken hearts and those who tend to them.

Paul tells us in Romans 8:29 that, “God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Did you catch that? Our destiny is to become like Jesus. And we’re becoming like him in this present moment. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that a gap exists between this description of that identity and who we actually are. Just believing the gospel doesn’t change us into what our identity says we are, and where our destiny will one day be, at the snap of a finger. There are things we can do that God works through to close the gap, called spiritual disciplines. The problem is that discipline without direction is drudgery. This is why we have such a hard time undertaking new habits. If you’ve ever had a New Year’s resolution that failed, you know what this means. But maybe you’ve had some success stories, too. A routine that has become part of your daily life that you had to put some effort into at the start but now comes as natural to you as breathing. The reason is because you had direction for it. In this message, Pastor Joel talks about these ancient practices, about what they are and why we should do them.

Paul tells us in Romans 8:29 that, “God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Did you catch that? Our destiny is to become like Jesus. And we’re becoming like him in this present moment. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that a gap exists between this description of that identity and who we actually are. Just believing the gospel doesn’t change us into what our identity says we are, and where our destiny will one day be, at the snap of a finger. There are things we can do that God works through to close the gap, called spiritual disciplines. The problem is that discipline without direction is drudgery. This is why we have such a hard time undertaking new habits. If you’ve ever had a New Year’s resolution that failed, you know what this means. But maybe you’ve had some success stories, too. A routine that has become part of your daily life that you had to put some effort into at the start but now comes as natural to you as breathing. The reason is because you had direction for it. In this message, Pastor Joel talks about these ancient practices, about what they are and why we should do them.

Andrea Kidder, Res City missionary in Thailand, brings her experience of living in different cultures to bear on helping us understand how Jesus teaches us to think about how our own cultural values might differ from the values of the kingdom.

Some Christians have believed in Jesus and accepted his grace, but their lives don’t look much different than people around them. Did Jesus want us to just be Christians like that? Or did he hope to see us become more? There was a group of people who traveled everywhere with Jesus and whose lives were totally changed. They were called disciples, and that is Jesus’s goal for all Christians in this life. What does it look like to be a disciple? In the story of the first disciples Jesus ever invited to follow him, we get some important ideas. Disciples are simply those with Jesus, and no matter who you are or what life circumstance you’re in, you can be a disciple of Jesus. And Jesus is who makes us into disciples, those who can Know, Grow, Go, Together with other disciples. In this message, Pastor Joel explains how Jesus does this.

This summer we spent eight weeks in the book of Genesis, studying how things started out so beautifully but went so horribly wrong for humanity. The crucial moment came in Genesis 3, where the serpent (Satan) deceived the first humans, Adam and Eve, in the Garden with a lie. The lie said to distrust God and distance themselves from him and elevate themselves to God’s place in choosing what is good and right for themselves. Humans have been deceived and believing lies like Adam and Eve did ever since. Jesus, if he was going to be our savior, needed to go through what we did but not fail at it. So Jesus does a kind of rematch of the scene in the Garden, returning to the scene of the very first crime in human history to prove he could deliver us from sin. In this message, Pastor Joel looks at how Jesus did it and studies his methods for resistance, talking about how we might incorporate them into our own lives.

In John 15, Jesus outlines his vision for who we would become: Healthy vines, bearing much fruit and thriving. But he points out that this is only possible if we’re abiding in him. To abide means to be connected to him, in his presence. So far in Genesis we’ve been studying how, to put it in the language of Genesis 11, people are moving further and further away from God by moving further and further east from Eden. In this final story we’re studying in Genesis before taking a break we see a group of people engage in a great project, a tower, for their own fame, living apart from God and his purposes for humanity. This was possible only because of a technological innovation, we learn. Thus, the story invites us to ask a similar question: How are we using technology to live distanced from God, and not abiding in Jesus? In this message, Pastor Joel unpacks how our phones can help us to live as if we need nothing else, and how they can sometimes create a shallow faith when we try to use them as our primary portals for abiding in Jesus.

In this message, Pastor Julie concludes the story of the flood, looking at how the message of the rainbow that God places in the sky reminds us of the persistent grace of God despite our cycles of sin.

We all hate consequences and will sometimes go to drastic lengths to avoid them. In the story of Genesis we’ve seen humanity turn its back on God, choosing to trust the lie that God is holding out on them and we ought to do it their own way. So far, there haven’t been major consequences as God’s grace has continued to care for people and allow humanity to spread doing life as they see fit. In the flood story, however, we see that change. If you grew up in church there’s a decent chance you studied the story of Noah’s Ark in the way children’s bibles often portray it: an all-inclusive petting zoo boat cruise floating happily along in the sunshine. But when you really read the story it’s obvious that’s not what’s going on. The ark was a survival pod, where the small group of survivors of a cataclysmic natural disaster were crammed together for almost a year, simply hoping to preserve society after it had been totally wiped out. And the seriousness of the actual story is directly tied to the seriousness of what caused it: human wickedness and sin. The flood is the inescapable result of consequences. In this message, Pastor Joel explains how the story of Noah’s ark shows us that there’s always some flood that follows sin, and that in fact sin degrades even our literal material world, making it fall apart. The good news, however, is that we have an ark of our own, Jesus. And when we put ourselves in the safety of Jesus we find ourselves made new and invite floods of the Spirit’s power and blessing on ourselves.

The Bible assumes that Christians are part of a war. The pastor and writer Paul says things like:  “Fight the good fight of the faith.”  “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes”  “Fight the battle well.” “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but…against spiritual forces of evil”  “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world,”  “Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” The assumption is there is a conflict going on that is not always perceptible to our eyes but still very real, and that we’re swallowed up into it whether we like it or not. In Genesis we get some of the origins of this battle between God and spiritual beings who did what Adam and Eve did: they believed a lie and rebelled against God because of it. All of this leads to a strange story in Genesis 6 about sons of God, daughters of men, and some weird kids called Nephilim. In this message, Pastor Joel explains what’s going on and how it tells us more about our own involvement in the spiritual warfare of being a disciple of Jesus.

“A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can tie its shoes.” This old adage continues to show its truth in an age of misinformation and AI deepfakes. Ironically, the saying itself is attributed to Mark Twain, despite there being no evidence the famous American writer ever said it!  Something like this is what happens in the wake of Genesis 3 as the book of Genesis continues on from the story of humanity’s tragic fall. In Genesis 3, we see humans begin to believe a lie implanted into their minds by Satan. We saw what happened to the first couple of people who believed it, and it’s safe to say that it wasn’t pretty. But what does it look like when this lie goes viral? When it starts to be believed and lived at a large scale? When it becomes the default way of thinking and viewing the world for all people? It’s the question the next few chapters of Genesis seeks to answer, and in this study we’re going to see how the next generation of humans have some ugly consequences from the lie’s spread. While this is a grim story, it also is filled with signs of hope and comfort, too, because it foreshadows the gospel if we know where to look.

Do you have a moment where you felt like something important in your life all went wrong? Something that seemed like the right call in the moment but now in hindsight was a mistake, maybe a terrible one, and which can’t be undone? The story of the Bible has a moment like this, and it comes in Genesis 3. The first three chapters of Genesis, in fact, could be called something like “The Rise and Fall of Humanity.” It’s the story of a crisis, a tragedy. It might seem like something that happened a long time ago and which doesn’t have anything to do with us. But it’s all of our story. We all have “at the tree” moments, where we have a choice to make. Will we trust God with our happiness and future or will distrust him and choose to trust ourselves instead? It’s the story of a man who cheats on his wife. Of the city official who embezzles thousands of dollar. The teen who throws her friends under the bus to join the cool kids in school and stains her soul with guilt. The banker who thinks ethics don’t apply to them and breaks all the rules. Of the influencer who edits every photo and every moment until she can't remember who she is when the camera is off. Of the college student who posts what will get likes instead of what he actually believes. When we realize this the story comes alive and in this message Pastor Joel walks through Genesis 3 shedding light on how it’s all of our story. Like our own stories of sin, it’s a tragedy, but it also is a story of hope. Hope of a tender and forgiving God who says to us at our lowest, “It’ll be ok. I’ll fix what’s been broken. I’ll fix it all.”

Psalm 8 is a reflection on the beginning of Genesis, on our call to reign as God’s image bearers. But it also reflects on a major tension we feel as we try to live it out, too. Verses 4-6 goes like this: “ What are mere mortals that you (God) should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority…” It almost feels like the writer has imposter syndrome. How can people like me—filled with all the flaws and limits and quirks we all have—really do this? That kind of sentiment can keep us on the sidelines and from really becoming who God has made us to be. Genesis 2 reflects on this tension by explaining two ways God meets us in our limitations: Sabbath to meet our emotional, physical, and mental needs, and other people to help us in our aloneness. The truth is, the more we learn to depend on God and what he’s given us, the better we can be at being human and fulfilling the calling God made us all with. In this message, Pastor Joel explains it all.