College Wesleyan Church Sermons

Ethan Linder:“Honor your father and mother” is the first commandment with a promise. But even if this commandment is good advice, how is it good news? How are we expected to follow this one when relationships are frayed? This sermon will explore this commandment, Jesus’ redefinition of the “family,” and paint a picture of what it means for us to live into our own families (and the family of God) a...

Lori Minor: The Sabbath is not a rule to keep. It is a response to our relationship with God.

Steve DeNeff:What does it mean to misuse the name of God? What does it mean to use the name properly? This sermon will explore how we can live into this commandment: only by revering the name YHWH (Law) can we treasure it, then be at home with it: “Father” (Gospels), and center our lives around the gravity of God’s life, doing “everything in the Name” of the one who called us (Epistles).

Steve DeNeff: God’s command against idols is not simply about statues or images; it is about the ordering of our loves. This sermon invites us to ask: What are we giving our hearts, bodies, habits, and imaginations to? The call of God is not merely to avoid false worship, but to become whole people whose lives are re-formed around him. We cast down idols not because worship is optional, but becaus...

Andrea Summers: God did not rescue Israel from slavery simply to give them rules. He rescued them to form them into a holy people whose hearts belonged wholly to Him. In Exodus 20, God frees His people externally. In Mark 12, Jesus reveals that the commandments are fundamentally relational, rooted in love of God and neighbor. In 1 Thessalonians 5, we see God’s final intention: not just outward obe...

Steve DeNeff: There are three levels of obedience. Most are stuck in the first. But freedom awaits us in the third.

Ethan Linder: On Pentecost, the Spirit forms the church as a people who confound the world’s categories of insider and outsider, near and far, clean and unclean. In Christ, those who were once far off are brought near, old hostilities are put to death, and strangers are made members of one household. This sermon invites us to see the church not merely as a place we attend, but as a Spirit-filled c...

Emily Vermilya: The Ascension teaches us to stop looking somewhere else for the fullness of life with God and begin recognizing the reign of Christ already present here, even in what remains unresolved.

Steve DeNeff: "Resurrection is a weapon. It is a shot that reignites a fiery engagement between forces claiming lordship over creation. It is not only about a man. It's about a war." And since our battle is not against flesh and blood, we cannot use conventional weapons nor engage in the adversary in the same way. These are the weapons, and this is how we fight.

Steve DeNeff: The power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power, not to overwhelm our adversaries but to endure them, to expose them, to convert them.

Nathan Metz: Jesus simply said, “Remember Lot’s wife.” What a loaded caution! When we consider the full context of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, what are the implications for our lives? This sermon explores three distinct relationships to our past and the hope we have in a great salvation.

Ethan Linder: Paul writes to the church in Ephesus connecting prayer with the power of the resurrection, leaving us to wonder: what does that mean for our prayers right now? What is the advantage of the resurrection (if any) for our everyday lives and experiences? In this sermon, we’ll overhear Paul’s prayers, exploring how prayer joins us with God’s mission of bringing new life, and how Jesus’ re...

Steve DeNeff: If salvation is like passing from death to life (Jn 5:24; 1 Jn 3:14), then discipleship is the practice of resurrection with the hope of one day being fully alive.

Steve DeNeff: On Easter, the future has come. It is here. We are on it. It is under us. Life has broken into death. This changes everything.

Emily Vermilya: “So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it, ‘The Lord is Peace’ and to this day it stands…” The altar is a point of departure where we swear allegiance to one God and part ways with another.

Steve DeNeff: “See! This has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” We have lost touch with the idea of atonement and settled for forgiveness instead, but you don’t need an altar for forgiveness.

Steve DeNeff: “David built an altar to the Lord there… (and) the Lord answered prayer on behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.’” When we intercede at an altar, things become possible that were not possible before.

Lori Minor: “There above it stood the Lord and He said . . . ‘I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’” This sermon will explore the results of an encounter with God!

Steve DeNeff: “Now that I know you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” The altar is a place where we lay down what we can least afford to lose.

Steve DeNeff: “They built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the Lord . . . (even) though the foundation of the Lord’s temple had not yet been laid.” There is a difference between a church with an altar, and an altar with a Church.

Ethan Linder: Our world is broken (that’s no surprise to us). In Revelation, John writes of a world made new; and if Revelation isn’t just a prediction about the end of the world, but a window into God’s work now, how do we make sense of the brokenness going on in the world? In this sermon, we’ll talk about what it means for God to make the world new, and how we (even amidst our brokenness) can jo...

Steve DeNeff: “Let us rejoice and be glad, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.” The single most compelling metaphor for salvation in the Bible is not a trial with God on the bench and humanity in the dock. It’s a wedding with Christ at the altar, awaiting the arrival of his bride, the Church. When we think of salvation in these terms, it changes almost everyt...

Emily Vermilya: “I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven and the Voice I heard speaking to me said, ‘Come up here…’”. Despite the controversy over worship in the Church today, there is no confusion in heaven. Here, in what some call the center of Revelation, is an open door with an invitation to join the worship already in progress. When we join the worship of heaven it red...

Steve DeNeff: “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” What would Jesus notice if he came to Church, to His people, and looked at their heart? For some it would be an unnerving visit from a familiar stranger, someone they knew who knows everything about them. The seven letters of Revelation are descriptions of seven different souls. Which one describes us? Which desc...

Steve DeNeff: “Don’t be afraid. I am the First and the Last… I am alive forever and I have the keys.” Revelation is the last word on Jesus and what makes it so relevant is that it’s spoken in a time when everything is coming apart. It’s a commentary on all that’s happening in John’s day and in ours. It’s a manifesto of sorts to the faithful, calling us to resist the pull of empire and to follow th...