Athens Church Podcast

In this week's message, Eric Fults, one of the elders at Athens, walks through Exodus 39 and shows how even the smallest details of the tabernacle point us to Jesus, our perfect High Priest. What may seem like a chapter about priestly garments becomes a beautiful reminder of God's holiness, His grace, and His desire to dwell with His people. Eric also explores how our obedience flows fro...

In Exodus 36:8-38:31, we see that the tabernacle was much more than a construction project. Every curtain, clasp, frame, and furnishing revealed the kind of life God was forming among His people. He was teaching them to live in obedience, to be joined together as His people, and to center their lives around His presence. The tabernacle was a reminder that God desired to dwell with His people, even...

In Exodus 35:30–36:7, we see God begin to reorder what sin had disordered. The same gold, skills, and creativity that were once used to build a golden calf are now being used to build the tabernacle, a place for God's presence to dwell. Through the story of Bezalel, we discover that God not only chooses and gifts His people, but fills them with His Spirit for faithful work. Whether our work h...

Psalm 122 reminds us that gathered worship is far more than a weekly habit; it is one of God's primary means of meeting us with His presence and peace. As the pilgrims journeyed to Jerusalem with gladness, they anticipated worshiping alongside God's people. In the same way, Christians today are invited into the joy of gathering with the church, where we are reminded that we were never me...

In Exodus 35, God invites His people to respond to His mercy with willing hearts. After Israel’s failure with the golden calf, God calls them back into relationship and invites them to help build the tabernacle. In this message given by Tyler Bushhorn, we're reminded that the same people who once used their gifts for idolatry now give generously and serve joyfully because they have encountere...

This Celebration Service was a joyful reminder that Jesus is building His church. Through child dedication, covenant membership, baptism, communion, and the installation of new elders, we celebrated God’s grace at work in the lives of His people. Each moment pointed back to the same truth: Jesus is faithful to save, form, and sustain His church.

This week’s message in Exodus 34 reminds us that God’s mercy does more than forgive failure. God's mercy actually rebuilds what’s been broken. After Israel’s rebellion with the golden calf, God meets His people again with compassion, grace, and covenant love, showing that their story was not over. Through Moses’ return up the mountain, we see a God who invites broken people back into relation...

In Exodus 33, we’re faced with a searching question: would the life we want still be enough if God wasn’t in it? Israel is offered blessing, provision, and a future, but without God’s presence. Their grief reveals what’s really at stake, and Moses gives voice to it. “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us.” It’s a gentle but honest reminder of how easily we can chase good things whil...

Exodus 32 shows how waiting can quietly unravel our trust. While Moses is on the mountain receiving instructions for God’s presence among His people, Israel grows impatient and turns to something they can see and control. Their idolatry doesn’t begin with outright rejection of God, but with fear, uncertainty, and the discomfort of waiting. In that space, they take a good gift, gold provided by God...

In Exodus 30–31, God isn’t just freeing Israel from Egypt. He’s reshaping how they live. Their lives, once driven by pressure and production, are now being reordered around His presence through rhythms of worship, holiness, and daily awareness of Him. What may seem like small or detailed instructions actually reveal a God who wants to dwell with His people and re-center their lives on relationship...

After rescuing Israel from slavery, God brings them to Mount Sinai not just to change their location, but to form a relationship with them. Though they are free, they still think like slaves, and when invited to draw near to God, they shrink back in fear. So God provides a way: appointing priests and establishing the tabernacle so His presence can dwell among them. Even the priestly garments show...

What do you do when your hopes about God, life, or the future don’t unfold the way you expected? In this Easter message from Luke 24, we step onto the quiet road to Emmaus with two disciples who are trying to make sense of disappointment, confusion, and loss. What they don’t realize is that the risen Jesus is already walking beside them and meeting them right in the middle of their questions. This...

Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, the most significant week in history. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds celebrate him as king and cry out for peace. Yet many misunderstand the kind of king he is. Jesus comes humbly, riding a donkey and moving deliberately toward the cross. The peace he brings is deeper than changed circumstances. The peace he brings is the peace that comes through reconciliation...

This message reminds us that even the detailed, easy-to-skip parts of Exodus are telling a beautiful story telling us about God’s desire to be with His people. The tabernacle wasn’t just a tent. The tabernacle was a sign that God was making a way to dwell among them again after sin had created distance. Every detail points to both His holiness and His mercy, showing that while we can’t come to God...

This sermon from Exodus 23:10–33 highlights how God was shaping Israel not only through rules but through rhythms. After rescuing them from Egypt’s relentless pace, God gave His people practices of rest, generosity, and remembrance: Sabbath, the sabbatical year for the land, and yearly festivals. These rhythms reminded Israel that life, provision, and identity come from God, not constant striving....

In Exodus 21:1–23:9, the story at Sinai moves from the Ten Commandments into everyday life. These case laws about servitude, violence, property, and justice are not random rules but instead, they are concrete applications of God’s heart. Having rescued Israel from Egypt, God now retrains them so they do not recreate Egypt in the wilderness. Power is limited, and harm is repaired. The vulnerable, t...

This Ash Wednesday message frames Lent as a holy interruption and an invitation to step out of the rhythms that quietly shape us and into the story of Jesus. Beginning with the words, “You are dust,” we are reminded that this truth is not meant to crush us but to ground us. Scripture reveals dust as something God personally formed and filled with divine breath, naming our dependence and reminding...

This sermon reframes the Ten Commandments as words of freedom spoken to a people who have already been rescued. Given at Mount Sinai, the “Ten Words” are not a checklist for earning God’s love but covenantal language meant to undo what slavery formed in Israel and to guard them from recreating Egypt in the wilderness. God speaks before they enter the land, reminding them who He is and what He has...

This sermon centers on Mount Sinai as the moment when rescue turns into formation. God has freed Israel from slavery, but freedom alone doesn’t change reflexes, fears, or identity. At the mountain, God encounters His people, reminds them of His grace and names who they are before asking anything of them. Obedience here is not perfection, but careful listening, or learning to attend to God’s voice...

This sermon reflects on Exodus 18 and the often-overlooked way God forms us in the wilderness, not through dramatic moments, but through ordinary, shared life. Moses’ reunion with Jethro shows how telling the whole story of God’s faithfulness, including hardship and weariness, helps reorient us. When Moses speaks his story out loud, he’s reminded that his life isn’t just a load to manage, but a st...

This week’s sermon walks us into Exodus 16 and the long, uncomfortable middle ground known as the wilderness. Just weeks after the miracle of the Red Sea, Israel is hungry, frustrated, and questioning whether God can be trusted to sustain them day by day. God responds not with scolding, but with provision.  He gives them manna, daily bread that can’t be stored, controlled, or explained. The story...

In Exodus 15, Israel stands on the far side of the Red Sea and responds to God’s deliverance not with a plan, but with a song. Before they know what comes next, they declare who God is. They sing songs that declare Him to be their strength, salvation, and Lord. Worship shapes their memory and identity, turning inherited faith into personal trust. In the face of every rival power, they proclaim a s...

This sermon opens the season of Epiphany by asking a simple but important question: what if God is already at work and we are just moving too fast to notice? Walking through the story of the Magi in Matthew 2, this message explores how faith often begins with questions, not certainty, and how wandering can actually be a sign of hope. We reflect on light in dark seasons, ordinary places where God c...

Christmas brings our deepest longings to the surface. In the middle of joy and exhaustion, celebration and grief, many of us are quietly asking the same question: am I really loved as I am right now? This Eve of Eve message reminds us that Christmas is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about God meeting us exactly where we are. Drawing from 1 John 4, we see that God's love is not...

Advent is a season of waiting, but it's not passive waiting. Scripture invites us to wait with anticipation, and that kind of waiting is meant to be marked by joy. In this message, we explore what biblical joy really is, why it’s more than a fleeting emotion, and how it can exist even in the midst of sorrow and frustration. We’ll consider why joy is both commanded and cultivated, and how Adve...