God's Word preached.

Text: Ecclesiastes 4:4-6 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Work for most Christians is a snare that comes with many pitfalls (besides the common ones of being unsatisfied with our job and not making enough). Envy, for one, is a constant battle because we all feel the pressure of "keeping up with the Jones's." But close behind that are the internal struggles of procrastination and anxiety....

Text: Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- So much of the current public discourse centers on the matter of oppression. But what is oppression, and when does it happen? It's an important question, because true oppression is an unspeakable horror—much more so than most Americans can even imagine. In fact, oppression is so horrible that even God's Word acknowledges that death is pr...

Text: Romans 3:25-26 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- The central focus not only of the New Testament but of Scripture is Jesus' death. Why is that, and what does the resurrection have to do with the cross? On this Easter Sunday, while most Christians are focusing on Jesus' resurrection, we take a deeper look at the death of Christ and what Jesus actually accomplished on the cross, because it&#...

Text: 1 Corinthians 11:26 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- What is the Lord's Supper? Paul told the Corinthians that every time we observe communion, we are 'proclaiming the Lord's death.' But what is "the Lord's death," and what does it mean to "proclaim" it in this way? In this Good Friday message, we consider what it is that Christians are actually doing when...

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:22 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- What is God's will for my life? Christians frequently ask themselves that question. Should I take this job or that job? Should I marry Suzy or Sally? Unfortunately, this is usually accompanied by a fear of making the wrong choice and being outside of God's will. But here's the good news: God's will doesn't work like that. Inst...

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:16–21 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Human beings and animals are identical in this one respect: Both are going to die. While death may be an unpopular topic in our society today, it is nevertheless an inconvenient reality that every one of us must face. More than that, it's a fact that God wants us to take heart—so much so that he's testing us in order to impress it upon...

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:14–15 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- If God is so good, why is the world so bad? If God knew that evil was going to exist, why did he create the world to begin with? If God is in control, why is he governing the world the way he does? These are some of the questions that arise when we consider the biblical doctrines of the goodness and the sovereignty of God. But if those doctrin...

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:12–13 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Discontentment is a human default and is as natural to fallen humanity as flesh and blood. As Spurgeon observed, "You have no need to teach men to complain." Rockefeller touched on this reality when he said, “If your only goal is to become rich, you'll never achieve it.” One of humanity's biggest problems is that we fail to r...

Text: Ecclesiastes 3:1–11 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- In this mysterious of world of ours, there is good and bad, life and death, dancing and mourning, war and peace. Our secular world says this is all just molecules doing what molecules do, but the truth of God's Word is that it's all part of the sovereign plan of God, the One who is governing it all and ordaining whatsoever comes to pass...

Text: Zephaniah 3:14–20 Guest speaker: Pastor Ryan Wetzel of Grace Bible Church in Escondido, CA -- If you ask a theologian about the God of the Bible, they will probably rattle off a string of big words like omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Those words tell us true things about God, but they don't mean a whole lot to a lot of people. But if you ask an ancient Hebrew prophet the same t...

Text: Ecclesiastes 2:24–26 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- The whole duty of man is fearing the Lord and keeping his commandments (Eccl 12:13)—or, in New Covenant terms, trusting in Jesus and following him—and the best thing a person can do is be content with life (Eccl 2:24). Taken together, we learn that contentment is one of the surest expressions of saving faith and one of the great goals of the C...

Text: Ecclesiastes 2:18–23 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Why is work so hard? For most people, work is a constant pressure point. Studies show that nearly half of Americans say that their job is stressful, and a quarter say that it's the number one source of stress in their lives. Even as a king who lived in the eastern world 3,000 years ago, Solomon could relate: 'I hated my work,' he w...

Text: Ecclesiastes 2:12–17 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Wisdom is obviously preferable to foolishness. All of us will choose a wise man over a fool ten times out of ten. Yet, there are many kinds of wisdom that never reach full maturity, because they aren't attached in the mind and heart to faith in Christ. After all, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom' (Proverbs 9:10). --...

Text: Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- At the beginning of Ecclesiastes chapter 2, Solomon recounts his own pursuit of four specific types of pleasure—sensual indulgence, personal achievement, possessions, and fame, "the delights of the heart of man," as he calls them in verse 8. But what did he gain from a life lived in the pursuit of pleasure? What was his return on all...

Text: Ecclesiastes 1:12-18 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- Wise people recognize that the world is a hard, and often discouraging place. In fact, the wiser a person is—the more honest they are about reality, and the more clarity they have about the true nature of life—the more pessimistic they may very well be. But if someone is truly wise, they won't stay pessimistic. Because, while wisdom leads...

Text: Ecclesiastes 1:3-11 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- The world keeps doing what it’s always done, and time forgets every name and every development. Ages come and ages go. The sun rises and sets and rises again. The wind keeps blowing, the waters keep flowing to the sea, and human nature never changes from generation to generation. But if this is all there is like secular science tells us, it&#39...

Text: Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 Speaker: Tony de la Riva -- For all of human history, human beings have been incurably plagued with one towering question that they have never been able to answer: What is the meaning of life? The mind of Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, God has given us the answer: It depends. Either your life and everything that happens to you is meaningless, or everything has meanin...