Keystone Church | Paradise Sermons

Joel Wood | August 6 2023 How does fearing God overcome the fear we all tend to have when it comes to suffering and dying? We know that we will suffer at times in this life and that we will all die. But the fear of these things happening in the future can keep us paralyzed in the present. A proper fear of God frees us from fearing what may lie in the future for us. We don’t need to fear suffering...

Joel Wood | July 30 2023 How does fearing God overcome the pervasive fear of man in our lives? Whether it’s wanting to please people, fearing rejection and criticism, or just being concerned with what other people think about us, fear of man tends to run deep. A proper fear of God can enable us to overcome our fear of man and obey God even when it may cost us people’s approval and rejection or opp...

Kyle Kauffman | July 23 2023 There are so many things in this life that are uncertain. It’s easy for our minds to dwell on the uncertainty and try to play out all the ‘what ifs.’ When we do that, we often imagine the worst and anxiously worry about the bad things that could happen to us and to our loved ones. We grasp for ways to control the outcome of the future, but the uncertainty still remains...

Kyle Kauffman | July 16 2023 We rarely speak of fearing God today and even when we do, we can still end up easily misunderstanding what it means to fear God. Though we all know what it feels like to fear something the idea of fearing God often remains unclear and fuzzy to us. We wonder if we should still fear God today. And if so, what should that fear look like? Does fear mean that we should be a...

Kyle Kauffman | July 9 2023 There are all sorts of things we may fear in this life. Sometimes fear can be a minor phobia and at other times it can be a crippling panic. Fears can be obvious and very clear. But fears can also remain hidden and be hard to identify. Fear in and of itself is not a bad thing. There are certain things we are right to be afraid of. But fear is a very powerful emotion and...

Joel Wood | July 2 2023 All nations, cultures, and peoples are meant to worship God. Yet in the Tower of Babel we find the exact opposite. The peoples band together to build a tower that will magnify humans and their efforts rather than God. God responds by coming down to disperse the peoples and confuse their languages. Yet even in God’s judgment we see a plan start to see more of his plan for re...

Kyle Kauffman | June 25 2023 God makes and keeps promises. That reality alone should amaze us. But here’s the even more amazing part: God makes and keeps promises to sinners. God shows us that a relationship with him is not built, earned, or enabled by our obedience and efforts. Rather the gift of his presence and blessing in our life is rooted in his promises. We see in Genesis 9-10 that the stor...

Kyle Kauffman | June 18 2023 God judges sin. This can leave us surprised and shocked. It’s hard for us to read stories like the flood in Genesis without walking away surprised by how seriously God takes sin. Yet if we want to recognize how great God’s mercy is in saving us, we must also come to grips with how great our sin is and the judgment we rightfully deserve. The story of the flood is a stor...

Kyle Kauffman | June 11 2023 We often skip over or cruise past the genealogy lists in the Bible. They have unfamiliar names that are hard to pronounce and seem overly repetitive. We might wonder, “Why in the world is this even in the Bible?” Even these lists have something important to teach us, especially this first list in the Bible. They point us to both the beauty and brokenness of life in thi...

Joel Wood | June 4, 2023 Sometimes things go from bad to worse. That’s the story of Genesis 4. We see how quickly sin spreads and multiplies and creates more pain and hurt in this world. This story shows us how powerful sin is in our lives and in this world. It corrupts, infects, multiplies, and leaves a path of destruction in its wake. This story shows us that all conflict begins in our own sinfu...

Kyle Kauffman | May 28th 2023 As one author says, Genesis 3 tells us of the “Second saddest day in history.” This chapter tells us the story of where things went wrong, not just in the initial story of the first humans, but in each of our own stories over and over again. In this story we find the entrance of sin into the world. We find an answer to our question, “What is wrong with the world?” We...

Kyle Kauffman | May 21 2023 Marriage is an incredible gift from God. We see marriage as a institution and relationship designed by God for our good and his glory. Yet there are all sorts of ways that marriage can become twisted and distorted. We can attempt to define marriage on our own terms according to our own desires. We can make marriage all about ourselves and our own fulfillment. We can tur...

Kyle Kauffman | May 14 2023 God gave people specific commands from the start “to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it.” And then he puts Adam and Eve in the garden to “Work it and Keep it” God intends for us to be people who cultivate the earth in order to make it better, and who use our gifts and abilities to work as an act of worship to Him and love and service to our neighb...

Kyle Kauffman | May 7 2023 Part of what it means to be human is have a body. God designed us not simply to be spirits but to have flesh and blood. Our bodies are an integral part of who we are and how God intends us to live. In the 21st century we have a tendency to either overemphasize or deemphasize our bodies. Sometimes we overemphasize our bodies by thinking that what’s on the outside is what...

Ben Armstrong | Apr. 30 2023 One of the most foundational and important parts of each of our stories is that we are made in God’s image. Every single human being who has ever existed is made stamped with God’s image and made to reflect God’s image. This is the foundation and reason for why every single human being regardless of how they look, how they act, or what they believe has equal dignity, v...

Kyle Kauffman | Apr. 23 2023 All that we see, touch, smell, hear, and taste (and all that we don’t) was made by God. He spoke everything into existence. God did not create the world because he needed anything, but rather the world was an overflow of the love, joy, and delight the Godhead has within itself. God created the world for his glory to be displayed and enjoyed. God creates the world with...

Kyle Kauffman | Apr. 16 2023 The story of the universe starts and ends with God. He is the one who writes and rules over the story. He is the one who is at the center of the story. He is the one who the story is all about. He has existed from all eternity and will exist for all eternity. God’s existence is the foundation of how we make sense of this world and our lives. God’s existence is the foun...

Kyle Kauffman | Apr. 9 2023 Trees in many ways are both a source of life for us. They provide oxygen and nourishment for us. If we were to remove all trees, we would quickly die. Trees in the bible are not only a source of life, but they are also a symbol of life and death. We find two trees in the very beginning that were meant to teach us what it meant to truly have life. Life was to be found in...

Joel Wood | Apr. 2 2023 There’s something within each of us that craves connection... companionship... relationship. Whether that’s in the form of friendship or marriage the feeling and desire is the same. It’s intrinsic within each of us and vividly points to the deepest and greatest need inside each of us. . .connection to and fellowship with God, which is what we were created to have. The Bible...

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 26 2023 Clothes are a daily part of our life. They keep us warm, make us look presentable, and can be a signal of our position/role in life. But clothes also tell a story. They tell a story of honor that was lost, and the shame that replaced it. They tell of story of a savior who bears our shame and clothes us with his honor. They tell a story of clothes we now seek to put on...

Kyle Kauffman | Mar. 19 2023 The gospel is never meant to be a treasure that we simply hang onto. It is meant to be the good news we also offer to the world. The gospel will not advance without people proclaiming the gospel. But we should be just as aware that the gospel will not advance without us praying for the advance of the gospel. (We want to see what God did at Keystone this week in us spil...

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 26 2023 We are constantly accumulating new information. Whether it is in reading, observing, talking, or just simply reflecting, we are people who live according to what we already know and make adjustments in our lives based on new knowledge. Sadly, knowledge has often come to simply be associated with knowing certain facts. Knowledge is meant to be so much more then knowing...

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 19 2023 As a parent, one of your great desires is to see your kids grow up and mature. As great as it is to have young kids, no one wants to see their kids remain young forever. We want to see kids grow into mature adults. In the same way, we should want to grow as Christians. We should want to mature and become more and more like Christ in how we think, in how we feel, in how...

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 12 2023 Prayer is an acknowledgment of our weakness and God’s power. It’s a recognition that we are dependent people and a recognition that God is capable of doing anything. While we tend to naturally know that, how often do we pray for God’s power to be at work in us and in others rather than simply for his power to be at work in changing circumstances? God has incredible pow...

Kyle Kauffman | Feb. 05 2023 Hope is an incredibly powerful thing in our lives. It has the ability to shape our outlook day-by-day. It can shape how we go through our lives. It can strengthen us to walk through the most difficult times. It can sustain us when we are tempted to give up. In short, hope has the ability to make a massive difference in your life. Yet how often do we pray for hope both...