Watts in the Word

Twice in Luke 9 the question of Jesus’ identity is asked. Who is this man? Is he Elijah, or one of the prophets of old come back to life? The answer culminates in one of the most interesting gospel stories: the transfiguration. What should we learn from this section of Luke’s gospel? Click Here to … Continue reading Who Is Jesus?

Jesus taught in many parables over the course of his earthly ministry; it is one of the most striking aspects of his teaching. What is a parables, how should we read them, and why are they such an powerful part of his message? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This sermon … Continue reading The Parables of Jesus

By the seventh chapter of Luke, Jesus had already done more than enough to prove himself worthy of believing in and following, so it is worth considering how people started responding to him. What influenced people to reject or accept him, and how does this compare to our situation today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching … Continue reading Responding to Jesus

Jesus’s sermon in Luke 6 is very similar to another, more famous sermon of his, the sermon on the mount. What message was Jesus trying to convey to his audience, and how should this sermon affect our hearts today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This sermon was preached at the … Continue reading The Sermon on the Plain

After the “return” from exile, Israel began looking for a new king, the Messiah who would fulfill the promises of the prophets of old. Jesus was that king. But when he came, basically everything he said and did was the exact opposite of what Israel expected from their savior. What did Jesus teach about his … Continue reading A New King in Babylon

The Rabbi system in first century Israel is an important piece of background information for contextualizing the story of Jesus. What was a Rabbi, and how did Jesus fit into this system? What does this mean for the modern reader? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through Luke. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church … Continue reading Jesus the Rabbi

(Note: This audio sounds very different because it is livestreamed from home in a snow storm.) The first few stories of Jesus’s ministry in Luke’s Gospel serve to introduce the purpose of his earthly ministry and reinforce some of the ways that Jesus might have been tempted to alter or change his purpose from the … Continue reading The Purpose of His Ministry

When Israel failed to live as the Called-Out Kingdom God desired, he sent them back into the world, via the exiles. But God still expected holiness in their exile. What can we learn from God’s expectations for exiled Israel, and from Israel’s example of living in a nation that did not know or love Yahweh? … Continue reading Living in Babylon

Luke chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 is the last bit of set-up before the ministry of Jesus begins in earnest. What can we learn from the teaching of John the Baptist, Luke’s version of Jesus’s genealogy, and the temptation of Jesus? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the Gospel of Luke. This … Continue reading Preparing the Way

In our study of how the church can or should interact with the world around it, a consideration of the holiness and special nature of Israel can be instructive. How did God instruct Israel to live and order society differently than the nations around them, and how do these differences matter or apply today? Click … Continue reading Israel’s Upside-Down Kingdom

In contrast to Matthew and John, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus and his early life emphasizes Jesus’s humble origins and submissive attitude, from the circumstances of his birth, to his parents’ obedience to the Law of Moses, to his own submission to Mary and Joseph. What should we learn from this emphasis of … Continue reading Humble Beginnings

This is the first lesson in a series on how the church can or should interact with the world around it, in politics, culture, social pressures, communities, etc. In this first sermon we consider the way God has always called his people out of the world to be something special or different, and lay the … Continue reading The Called-Out Kingdom

Over the course of this year, I will be preaching through the Gospel of Luke, mostly at a pace of one chapter per week. We will do the first half over the first three months of the year, take a break, and then finish out the year by covering the second half of Luke in … Continue reading The Coming Savior

In the book of Revelation, we learn how God’s story of redemption, restoration, and reconciliation will end. We only get glimpses of what comes after, but the story of God’s plan to restore fallen creation to himself finds its climax and resolution. What will the end of the story look like, and when will the … Continue reading The End of the Story

“The dark triad” is technically a term from modern psychology, but I am co-opting it as a label for John’s categorization of temptation. Throughout the Bible, in important stories of temptation, you see the same triad. What is this “dark triad” of temptation? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on temptation. This sermon was preached at … Continue reading The Dark...

There is an emotional, relational connection behind all the epistles that can be easy to overlook 2,000 years later. 1-3 John and 1-2 Thessalonians do a good job of foregrounding this connection between the writer and the reader, and inform us how church workers today should feel about the church. Click Here to Listen. (Preaching … Continue reading A Preacher’s Prayer

There are a lot of things that distract us from what really, eternally matters. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus emphasize this distinction over and over, in a variety of ways. What was Paul worried would distract the church, and how do we refocus on what really matters? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through 1-2 … Continue reading What Really Matters

We are coming to the end of our year-long journey through the Bible story, but the end of the Bible is not the end of God’s story. As we read 1-2 Timothy and Titus, we see that Jesus’s apostles clearly intended his story to continue in the church. How did they intend for us to … Continue reading Continuing the Story

2 Peter and Jude are the most similar of any two books in the Bible (yes even possibly including the Gospels). What were Peter and Jude so concerned about in the early church, and how do their warnings matter for Christians today? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on 2 Peter and Jude. This sermon was … Continue reading Don’t Repeat History!

This sermon is a bit of a preview of a series of lessons we will start in the new year. 1 Peter is a book addressed to “the elect exiles of the dispersion.” What does this title mean, who does it apply to, and why does it matter for the modern Christian? Click Here to … Continue reading Living in Exile

One of the things that should become quickly apparent as one reads through the letters of the New Testament is that the new life in Christ should not look like the old life before Christ. What does it mean to “put on the new self” and how does one go about doing that? Click Here … Continue reading The New Self

While there are a lot of different topics addressed in the letters to the Corinthians, a lot of the letters come back to the same idea; how should Christians think about each other, and their place in the body of Christ, both universally and more locally? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching through the New Testament. … Continue reading Discerning the Body

The middle section of Romans is a masterful treatise on the hope God gives us in the broken, fallen world we live in. Why is the world so broken, and how does God expect us to persevere in it? Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on Romans. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of … Continue reading Hope in a Fallen World

Paul’s letter to the Romans is the most “technical” of the epistles, in a sense. In it, Paul lays out a very detailed argument about righteousness, salvation, and faith that is just as applicable today as it ever was. Click Here to Listen. (Preaching on Romans. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of … Continue reading Saved by Faith

The importance of being “led by the Spirit” as a Christian cannot be understated, but the exact means by which He leads us can be confusing to many Christians. Using several stories from the latter part of Paul’s mission work in Acts, let’s consider what exactly it means to be led by the Spirit. Click … Continue reading Led by the Spirit