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The gospel is the story of the rightful King, Jesus, who has come, won the victory, and invites us into his kingdom rather than leaving us to make our own stories the center of everything. Apart from God, we are trapped in the “domain of darkness,” shaped by the world’s desires and our self-centeredness, but God, rich in mercy and love, makes us alive with Christ. By grace, we are God’s workmanship—little poems within his great story—raised and seated with Christ so that our lives can participate in his kingdom and display the immeasurable riches of his grace.

What happens after Christ ascends? Paul's answer in Ephesians 4: we live — together, joined like bones by joints, energized like a flashlight with fresh batteries. Ephesians 4 reframes church for us: teaching as coaching, attending as participation, and equipping as skill-building — a body of people growing together rather than sitting apart. Austin Pfeiffer unpacks the passage's call to speak truth in love, to grow strong through resistance rather than rigidity, and to stop mistaking the warmth of community for the fire of Christ himself. Small Group Questions: 1. Where do you see yourself outsourcing your faith, perhaps treating a pastor, counselor, or program as the one who should do your wrestling with God for you, instead of Christ? 2. Ephesians 4 opens with Christ descending to the lowest parts of the earth and ascending again to minister to us. Where do we see Jesus in this passage after his ascension? 3. Verse 16 describes the body "working properly" as each part is joined and held together. What might this passage reveal about the Spirit's work of growing you through connection to others, rather than in isolation?

Why does a church need a mission statement? We don't, but it can help us stay on the trail of Jesus' final words in Matthew's Gospel—the Great Commission. They're a call to "go to the people," wherever you already are. Austin Pfeiffer walks through two of Jesus' commands for the church now: (1) moving out toward people who don't yet know Christ, and (2) discipling them by doing the Christian life together. Small Group Questions: 1. Where does this passage challenge a false belief you or our culture holds about what following Jesus requires — going far away vs. going to the people already around you? 2. What did you learn about God's character from Jesus' claim to total authority, total reach, and total presence (Matt 28:18-20)? 3. What might this passage reveal about the Spirit's sanctifying work in you — specifically your hesitancy to invite people past "watching" into actual discipleship?

Malachi closes with Israel's small view of God and inflated view of themselves exposed. That is until God flips it in their remembering his faithfulness. He promises the joyful coming of the Messiah and his steady faithfulness through all time. This sermon walks through what it means to set down the ledger of what we think we're owed and instead receive the healing future of the Messiah, like calves leaping from the stall. Small Group Questions: Where do you find yourself keeping a private ledger (tracking what God or others owe you) instead of focusing on his faithfulness? What does this passage reveal about God's character in his patience with Israel's accusations, and his declaration that they are his "treasured possession"? How does this passage point forward to Christ, from the law and prophets at the transfiguration to the healing described in Malachi 4:2?

We are prone to thinking we provide for ourselves, and prone to focusing on what we don't have. In Malachi 3, God calls out his people for robbing him through their withheld tithes, but the deeper issue is a heart that's forgotten his mercy in the past and lost trust in his provision for the future. Austin Pfeiffer walks through why the tithe was never about a quid pro quo with God, but an exercise in remembering what's already been given. Small Group Questions: 1. Where do you see yourself keeping a grip on what God has given you rather than trusting it was never yours to begin with? 2. What did this passage teach you about God's character in his patient, waiting posture toward his people ("I am waiting" / "the Lord does not change")? 3. How can this passage, God's call to test him with the tithe, prompt prayer requests around trust and generosity in your group?

Humans often inflate our own capacity to fix ourselves while also shrinking God down to a coach we call in when self-help stalls out. Malachi calls that out. And challenges us to identify ourselves on a list of sinners in 3:5 we'd rather not claim. In this sermon Austin Pfeiffer traces how a holy God who could rightly consume us instead sends his Son as both the refining fire and the sacrificial lamb, so that in Christ we're not just spared the heat — we're brought inside it. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: 1. Malachi's list of sinners in 3:5 can catch us off guard. Do you find yourself insisting "I think I will endure" instead of admitting you're on the list? 2. Jesus answers both Israel's cry for justice and God's charge against them. How do you see him doing both at once in this passage? 3. Are we able to admit our impurity and if so, how are we to make sense of Christ's covering us with his righteousness?

"Have we not all one Father?" Malachi's third dispute isn't really about worship rules or marriage ethics. It's about Israel forgetting who God is and the character of his love — and how that rot shows up in their worship and their marriages. This sermon walks through what it looks like to bring God our leftovers while insisting we still love him. And despite that, God doesn't fix our half-hearted faith by asking us to try harder. He fixes it himself in Christ. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: 1. Where does this passage challenge a false belief you hold about God or what he calls us to in scripture? 2. What did you learn about God's character in this passage — specifically in how he responds to Israel's half-hearted worship and broken marriages? 3. What might this passage reveal about the Spirit's sanctifying work in you — turning self-justification ("do I owe an explanation?") into confession ("I have failed you")?

Malachi opens with God saying "I have loved you," and Israel firing back, "How have you loved us?" It's the question we ask too. When the evening doesn't go how we pictured it, when scrolling makes everyone else look more loved than us. Austin Pfeiffer looks at our spiritual distress coming from measuring God's love by present circumstances instead of remembering His record. God chose Jacob before he'd earned or lost a single point and he has done the same for all those in Christ. Malachi underscores that the love holding us was never ours to win or lose. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS: Where do you catch yourself asking God "how have you loved me?" — and what circumstance are you using to measure his love? Malachi points to God's covenant choice of Jacob "before he'd done anything." How does election change the way you keep score of your own failures? Where in your own history has God already shown up — one concrete thing you can name when the "how have you loved me?" question returns this week?

The human heart is constantly revising its own narratives for self-preservation. What feels safe, staying inside our own stories, is actually what hides us from the truth. 1 John 1 argues that we cannot diagnose darkness in darkness. John insists God is light: outside us, moving toward us, hitting us from the outside like sunlight we sense and feel. Confession is how we let the outside in. Out of the cold of our sin, confession moves us into the warm light of Christ.

A feedback loop amplifies whatever is fed into it. In Galatians 6, Paul describes a community where the Spirit dwells and grace is produced, ever increasing — but only when the self gets out of the way. Austin Pfeiffer looks at specific ways the self breaks the loop: through self-righteous wish dreams of community, through a la carte theology, and through expecting to be served rather than to serve. The answer isn’t a program or a principle. It’s the cross — where Christ let go of his throne, poured out his blood, and adopted us as sons and daughters of the King. Small Group Questions: Where do you find yourself curating your faith — taking what feels comfortable from scripture and leaving the rest — and what might it look like to surrender that to sound teaching and community? What did this passage reveal about God’s character that challenges the version of Jesus you may have quietly assembled from your own preferences and experiences? How does this passage demonstrate that the feedback loop of grace is only possible because of justification by faith alone, not because of our own effort or spiritual performance?

Paul tells the Galatians to "walk around in the Spirit" but his point is that the Spirit is more than a means to something better. The Spirit is the source itself. Walking through Galatians 5 we see a life where believers walk about unshackled, out of chaos we receive one fruit, and we are walking toward Eden. Along the way we see the sin we rarely admit: trying to "program our way out of our flesh" through accountability and discipline. But because of Christ's finished work, we don't live in chaos, fear, and self-destruction. We do not need our own self-will. We are free and even better, we are not alone. SMALL GROUP QUESTIONS Where do you, or the culture around you, hold the belief that growth is mainly self-improvement and restraint, rather than walking toward the Spirit as the source? What is your "concrete block" like Kiki the Gorilla? What is it you hold onto in anger, but in the freedom of the Spirit can lay down as a new creation? How do we see Christ's finished work walking us past Eden into a garden city, the New Heavens and New Earth--to a world being remade?