Suburban Church Corvallis

It’s common today to see people take Bible verses out of context, twisting them and misapplying them to support all sorts of ideas that aren’t true. If we as a church want to base everything we do on the Bible, then it is critical that we know how to study and apply the Bible to our lives correctly. We can best do that when we pay attention to the context of a verse, let the Bible help us interpre...

It’s common today to see people take Bible verses out of context, twisting them and misapplying them to support all sorts of ideas that aren’t true. If we as a church want to base everything we do on the Bible, then it is critical that we know how to study and apply the Bible to our lives correctly. We can best do that when we pay attention to the context of a verse, let the Bible help us interpre...

While the Beatitudes talk about the character of Jesus’ disciples, in the verses that follow Jesus uses images of salt and light to describe the impact His followers can have on the world. Salt reminds us that we are called to live differently, to be distinct from the world in order to have a potent and preserving impact on it. Light reminds us that we are called to go into the world and share the...

One of the hardest pills to swallow in the Beatitudes is when Jesus says that we are blessed when we are persecuted. When we follow Jesus we shouldn’t be surprised if we face persecution or resistance, because the Beatitudes are an invitation to live against the grain of our culture—and that always generates push back. While Christians in American rarely face physical violence, we are often insult...

When Jesus said “Blessed are the pure in heart” he was tapping into two important things—his culture’s focus on ritual religious purity and the idea that one’s heart is the center of your very being. In calling for purity of heart he was calling his followers to go beyond the letter of the law, choosing instead to allow God’s spirit to transform them internally so they became the kind of people wh...

In the Beatitudes Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Mercy is a major theme in the Bible, and it can be used in a number of ways. But all of those uses have an idea in common: mercy involves choosing to give people something they don’t deserve. As followers of Jesus we are called to show mercy to others because God has shown mercy to us when we didn’t deserve it....

God promises to bless and satisfy those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Scripture shows that Biblical righteousness has both a vertical component (about being in a right relationship with God) and a horizontal component (about our relationships with others and making things right in the world). God is calling the church to be a prophetic critique of an alternative community for the world,...

Meek is a hard thing to define, as we tend to think of it as weakness. But the Biblical idea of meekness is strength under control, it is choosing to lay your own strength aside as you trust that God—in his strength—will help and vindicate you. In this Beatitude Jesus quotes directly from Psalm 37, using his listener’s knowledge of that Psalm to reinforce the idea that those who receive an inherit...

One of the hardest attitudes to understand is how it can be possible that those “who mourn” are actually blessed. It turns out the already/not yet nature of the kingdom speaks to that issue. Because the kingdom is already here, the Holy Spirit is currently available to comfort those who mourn. But because the kingdom is not yet fully here, we realize that it is only in the future that those who mo...

In the Beatitudes Jesus gives a surprising list of who is invited into the kingdom of God and what it looks like to live as citizens of God’s kingdom. The list begins by saying “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Someone is poor in spirit when they recognize their state of true spiritual bankruptcy before God. Nothing we have and nothing we do can save us, so it i...

For thousands of years people have been asking the question “what is the good life and how can I live it?” Most world religions try to answer that question as well. Jesus answered it in a surprising way, by talking about how the good life can only truly be found by living in the Kingdom of God. In Jesus’ day there were widely different views (held by groups like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes,...

John 11 is a critical story in the Gospel of John because it serves as the hinge between the two parts of the book. The response of the religious leaders to Lazarus’ resurrection is to set in motion a plan that leads to the execution of Jesus. But this story, from the perspective of Lazarus’ sisters, is really about waiting. And it teaches us important lessons about who Jesus is. Jesus loves us an...

In the first half of his Gospel, John gives us four different stories where Jesus interacts with different Jewish holy days or festivals. In each of these instances Jesus takes the imagery associated with that day and applies it to Himself, making incredible claims about His relationship with God and what God was doing in and through Him. It reminds us of something that Jesus knew to be true—that...

In pair of back to back stories in John 4 and 5 we see Jesus interact with two people—both of whom were outcasts in their society—in remarkable ways. As we compare the stories of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well and the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda we see that Jesus loves people so much that he is willing to break barriers and reach out to them just as they are. But...

Join us as we kick off our reading plan in the book of John.

Join us today as we continue through the book of John. 

The first chapter of John beautifully begins the disciple's gospel that Jesus is not just a good teacher or prophet, but God dwelt in bodily form.  John has written specific details about Jesus so that everyone who reads and engages in the book of John would see that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, and the Son of God. John is likely writing both to call unbelievers to faith in...

Join us as Mike walks us through Daniel 6. 

Mike walks us through the 5th chapter of Daniel.  

Mike walks us through the 4th chapter of Daniel.

Mike King leads us through Daniel chapter 3.