The River Church Sermons

Do you remember the story of the Count of Monte Cristo? A young man, falsely imprisoned by his jealous friend, escapes and uses a hidden treasure to exact his revenge? Dantes and Fernand were best of friends. Whenever one would act in a heroic way or win the upper hand, the other would throw the king piece of a chess board to the other and say, "Kings to you" while the other says, "Kings to me". T...

"Hopefully." It's one of the most misused terms in our English vocabulary. For those betting on God's faithfulness in the dark forests, rocky trials, and plummeting cliffs of life, this modifier captures our audacious posture of heart. Join us this Sunday as we gather, sing Christmas carols, and open Isaiah 11 to celebrate afresh the reason why this adverb is truly ours this season. Hopefully we'l...

New research on mental health and the church indicates one of the main causes of depression and anxiety is lack of hope. When we have no hope in something that is more powerful than our current existential angst, we become fearful, depressed, anxious. This Christmas season. It's supposed to be the season of joy. It's the season of being close with family and friends. Yet what I often personally ex...

You're only young once. When you hear those words, what do you think of? Live it up. Right? Go for it! Make the most of your youthfulness. Get what you can out of life. Travel the world. Come skydiving with us. Let's go cave diving. Peter was a young man. He had the rest of his life ahead of him when he met the Resurrected Lord in John 21. He could have gone back to his fishing business. He could...

What if this weekend you came to one of the River worship gatherings only to discover that this Sunday's main teacher is Jesus?! That's right, what if Jesus of Nazareth himself is speaking at the River Church? It's not the second coming, but sort of like the first-and-a-half coming. On what topic would you want him to teach? Think about it. You could have Jesus's perspective on anything this Sunda...

After scaling the fifty-foot rock face in Joshua Tree, I had to get back down. My guide up top instructed me to step back and lean perpendicular to the rock face, trusting my future to the climbing rope and my 15-year-old belayer. The coaching, the safety of the belay, and the inspiring shouts of encouragement from the crowd below made the journey up and down a thrill and super satisfying. This is...

What could Jesus do that is so scandalous, so wrought with the possibility of being misinterpreted that the gospel writers would be hesitant to include it in the gospel narratives? Oh, I don't know. How about John 7:53-8:11? It's the passage where Jesus tells the Pharisees who have brought a woman caught in adultery, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."...

Distracted? Disconnected? Discouraged? Experiencing any of these? The three D’s of a broken relationship. It happens to the best of us, to even the best marriages, the best of friends, the best of partnerships. Life happens. Things go awry. How do we go back to the way it was at the beginning? Remember when...? Remember that commitment, that vitality, that love, that respect, that honor you once h...

The greatest command is to love God, with all our heart, and our soul, and our mind. I'll be honest ... sometimes I bottle up this impulse inside my head, turning love of God into an idea easily evaporating into private feelings. I need a guide, someone tangible who can show me, even apprentice me into what love looks like with skin on. This weekend, we continue our Conversations with Jesus series...

The highly anticipated fall series has arrived: Conversations with Jesus. This is no insta pot recipe. We've been stewing this one for a long time. Remember Walter Cronkite - CBS anchor man who was legendary for his human interest pieces and signing off with "And that's the way it is"? Google him. He was known as the most trusted man in America. What he said stuck. That's Jesus. What he said stuck...

Ever preached a sermon and as soon as you finished realized, Oh my, there's more to that than I thought? Of course not. You're not a preacher. What am I thinking? I have. Just the other week. I'm seriously thinking of re-preaching my last message- Thoughts on a Garden, a well, and a Table, from Genesis 1-2, John 4, and Matthew 9. It's a new way of looking at the church. I think God was speaking to...

When doing for Jesus eclipses being with Jesus, we have a problem called religion; Jesus wants to reveal it and call us back to relationship with him. This is a game changer. Karl Martin

I love trees. On one of our first dates, Cynthia and I spent it talking and enjoying an evening up in a tall tree on the campus of U. C. Davis. I knew that if a girl could climb a tree better than me, and wanted to share laughter from the top branches, it might be smart on my part to pursue her more. We still like climbing trees. God loves trees too, and uses them to teach me all kinds of life-sha...

It's something Tom Nelson said that has stuck with me, pulled at me, challenged me, and changed the way I think. "In the church, we often spend the majority of our time teaching people how to live the minority of their lives." What does he mean and why is that even significant? I think it gets at what we do most of our days. What do we do? We work, we spend time with family and friends, we fix thi...

Our 21st century U.S. historical moment serenades us with two unmistakable songs. One is named "Division," and the other, "Superficial Spectacle." These songs have been playing on repeat in human communities for millennia, but in the last decade a confluence of complicated and not-so-complicated realities have colluded to crank up the volume. Today we hear their chorus echoing in everything from o...

Have you ever thought about what happens and where you go after you die? If you've buried a loved one you probably have. Older people do; youngsters often don't bother. The popular belief includes: death is a wrap, done, end of you; or a kind of ethereal disembodied eternity in a faraway heaven up there. Stephen Colbert quipped he was planning on "a harp, a mint Julep, and asking Ronald Reagan que...

"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" Do you know this quote? George and I were in Las Vegas this weekend for a wedding and that was the messaging all around us. "LIVE IT UP! Don't give any thought to tomorrow-what do you want RIGHT NOW? What do you feel like IN THIS MOMENT? Let's eat and drink for tomorrow we DIE!" Believe it or not, this is a quote from the passage we're going to be studyi...

Go for broke! Terrible advice in personal finance, exactly the point of 1 Corinthians 11-14. Denise (one of my ministry and life heroes) absolutely nailed it two weeks ago in her sermon on love in 1 Cor. 13. In it, she reminded us of a C.S. Lewis quote that I can't stop thinking about: "Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours." It sounds so contradictory, so paradoxical, and for...

It's wedding season and this weekend I get to attend the wedding of a dear couple from our River community! Weddings bring out all the "feels" for me. The beautiful couple standing up in front, surrounded by people they love, dreaming about a life full of love and happiness. This Sunday we are going to look at I Corinthians 13, traditionally known as the LOVE chapter, often read at weddings descri...

I was hanging with a group of guys that meet on Friday mornings for a little connection time and a short reflection on God's word. We have several of these kinds of groups and need more to be started. Back to my point. We were talking about accountability for men. My first thought was about my message this weekend from I Cor. 12 - Spiritual Gifts. I thought, oh my, how many things are we missing o...

If only we could go back and redo some things.... key words- "some things". Yeah, some times I cringe at the poor choices of my past. However, I also could have avoided some of them had I simply learned from the mistakes of others before me. Now, the best thing I can do is grow from my mistakes and others and ask the lord to help me respond differently when faced with the situation in the future....

During his sermon on 1 Corinthians 8 a few weeks ago, Todd mentioned 'planned obsolescence'. What is this, you ask? According to a 2009 article in The Economist, "Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete-that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in th...

During his sermon on 1 Corinthians 8 a few weeks ago, Todd mentioned 'planned obsolescence'. What is this, you ask? According to a 2009 article in The Economist, "Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete-that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in th...

This has been a horrific week for our church family and community. So much pain and hardship. Life altering events. How do we, as the church family in the South Bay, respond? What can we do for those who have and are suffering greatly? How far should we go to help those suffering greatly? Paul says in I Cor. 9:19-27 that he was willing to go all the way. All the way. Care without limits. This mess...

One of my favorite movie scenes is from Rudy, the story that documents the dream of a boy to play football for Notre Dame. The scene comes right after Rudy, the main character, did not make the dress roster for the final game of the season thus failing to achieve his dream of getting to play for the Fighting Irish. The scene unfolds as the team captain walks into the head coach's office and lays h...