Easton Bible Church - Messages

Depending on who you ask, there are some Christians who think that the church’s primary purpose is to serve believers. For them, church equates to bible studies, fellowship dinners, small groups, and programs designed exclusively for Christians. For other Christians, church is essentially an outreach event. What really matters is getting more people—especially non-believers—in the doors where they...

Have you ever wondered why churches exist? Or perhaps more specifically, why does our church exist? Is it because we needed someplace to go on Sunday mornings? A place to make friends or network? Someplace to learn about God and the Bible? At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus lays out a clear mandate for all believers and, by extension, all churches: that we are to go into all the world to make d...

Merry Christmas! Pastor Lucas concludes our Advent sermon series, "The Gift of a King," with a Christmas Eve encouragement for each of us to shine like stars in response to our Gift of a King, The Lord Jesus Christ.. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to cond...

Have you ever missed out on something amazing? Maybe you were too tired or forgot, or maybe you got stuck at work or got stuck in traffic. But it was a moment that people would be talking about for the rest of their lives. Perhaps a moment that would have changed the rest of your life. And you missed it. This week, we’re looking at a moment that is both uplifting and heart-breaking. People you wou...

Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth (Matt. 1:18-25) is unusual because it is written almost entirely from Joseph’s perspective. Other than these few verses, Joseph gets virtually zero airtime in Scripture. For all we know, Joseph was a wholly unremarkable person. He was a blue-collar worker, a carpenter, from a little nowhere village in the backwoods of Palestine. And yet, when asked to believe that...

Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong? Belonging is one of the most fundamental needs we feel as humans. To know that others accept you, welcome you, and care for you is vital for human flourishing. And yet, especially in our post-pandemic and increasingly virtual world, it’s so easy to feel alone. In the opening verses of his Gospel, Matthew gives what seems like an odd introduction to Jesus,...

Have you ever felt like you had no good options? That no matter what you tried, you couldn’t win for losing? In many ways, that’s the conundrum Solomon wants us to feel, that life is a puzzle you cannot solve, a mystery you cannot unravel. But this isn’t some brainteaser you read for fun and then toss aside. This is your life! As Solomon leaves us with his final thoughts, he offers us the solution...

When your time comes (I know we don’t like to think about that), what kind of person will you be? Right now, you’re laying the foundation for who you’ll be in your old age. Some people age gracefully, full of joy and happiness despite their growing infirmities. For others, old age only brings sorrow and anger. You might not realize it, but the decisions you make today will shape the kind of person...

Have you ever walked down the cereal aisles and felt paralyzed to decide what to buy? Or maybe it was scrolling through the endless movies on Netflix trying to decide on the perfect movie to watch. Which cereal is the right one? Which movie is the perfect movie? Sometimes life presents us with too many options with too many unknowns and it’s hard to know what to do. So, what should you do when you...

Here’s the inconvenient truth you don’t want to hear. You are going to die. Death is no respecter of persons and—barring Jesus’ return—death is coming for you. Which could be a depressing or hopeless thought for some. But for Solomon, the reality of death is the sharp wedge we need to dislodge our hearts from the meaninglessness of life and discover real meaning and purpose that comes through anti...

We are natural planners. We look to the future, we dream, we strategize, and we anticipate problems and plot solutions. And then life punches you in the face. You can plan your vacation, but you can’t do anything about the unforeseen sickness, or the car breaking down, or the flight canceled, or the weather. You can plan your retirement, but you can’t do anything about the disease you never saw co...

How much is enough? The general default for most people is that money is a key (if not, the key) to happiness. Sure, there are other things in life that matter, but money tends to dominate more of our lives than any other pursuit. We go to work to make money. We buy what we want and what we need with money. And money, like any other idol, promises to give us what we want and make us happy. This we...

How much is enough? (Did your heart just whisper, a little bit more?) We live in a dog-eat-dog world, where (we’re told) you have to take all you can, or else someone will take yours. Envy drives us to work more so that we’re not missing out, often with little or no concern for how our actions affect others. We’re in it to win it. But what Solomon wants us to discover is that chasing after more on...

Time is a strange thing. Sometimes it feels like it’s stopped, other moments it seems to be passing by at the speed of light. And within every moment of your life, the future becomes the present which becomes the past, never to come again. Being aware of time’s passage is one of the most poignant ways that we feel our mortality. This week we want to look at what the book of Ecclesiastes has to say...

Imagine for a moment that you were smarter, wiser, wealthier, and more powerful than anyone else in the world. Now, imagine that you used your wits, your money, and your power to make yourself happy. How could you fail, right? You’d have it all! Surely, you’d be the happiest and most fulfilled person in the world. This week, we’re looking at the next section in Ecclesiastes, in which Solomon takes...

This week, as we look at the opening to the book of Ecclesiastes, we want to dig into what Solomon calls hevel (“meaningless” or “vanity”), which Solomon spends several verses describing. What exactly does Solomon mean by hevel? In what ways is life characterized by hevel? And how does that truth point us towards the life that God wants for us? More info https://www.ebc.org or call (609.267.4755),...

Jesus is a catalyst, model, and ambassador for what was real. I don't mean that Jesus wasn't a big proponent for virtual reality in the first century AD. However, as we look at Jesus' interaction during his earthly ministry, we see beautiful pictures of authentic love, effective empathy, and perfect understanding leading to conversations and actions bringing about truth in an individual's life. As...

How far would you go to improve you? Taking vitamins? Healthy diet and exercise? Medical procedures or surgeries? What about technology that would keep you alive indefinitely? Or a hard drive that could contain your consciousness, even if your body gave out? Today, the idea of moving past our human limitations, in one way or another, is thought by many to be within our reach. Transhumanism, for ex...

Once upon a time, if you wanted to be famous, you had to be on T.V. (And there were only a handful of channels, which meant very few people ever made it big.) But today, everyone has a social media platform at their disposal, which has generated seemingly countless online celebrities who gain hundreds of thousands, even millions, of followers through clever pranks, crazy antics, song and dance rou...

Living in our technological ecosystem, our lives are shaped by a thousand mostly unconscious tech-driven urges every day, to check our email, post a selfie, or watch another YouTube video. As has been well documented, many technologies like social media, gaming apps, shopping apps, and streaming services are designed to feed addictive urges and appetites that keep us coming back for more. In his l...

Work. It’s not always our favorite thing in the world. In fact, it’s probably tempting to think of work as something to be avoided, even despised. After all, who would work if they didn’t have to? Who wouldn’t rather enjoy a life of ease instead of working for a living? One of the promises of technology is that it will make work easier—maybe even eliminate it altogether—so that we can enjoy not wo...

Never in the history of the world has humankind had more control over life. Technological advances have given us the ability to cure disease, grow crops, produce wealth, build cities, and ease suffering unlike anything the world has ever known. (For which we should be grateful!) But, buried underneath our use of technology is the myth that technology can give us ultimate control over reality itsel...

Do you think God has expectations for you? For your life? In this week's parable, Jesus describes two ways of living: leveraging everything to achieve greater possibilities for the sake of Jesus' kingdom versus playing it safe. Only one will yield the kind of return-the kind of life-that you were created to live. More info https://www.ebc.org or call (609.267.4755), email ( office@ebc.org ), DM us...

Forgiving someone who's hurt you may be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. Which is why it's much easier to theorize about forgiveness than to do it. But without forgiveness, we'll never be free to pursue a future that is unhindered by the past. The destructive power of unforgiveness is that it convinces us we're somehow punishing our offender by building up walls of resentment and b...

Do you ever feel like God is distant rather than up close and personal? In this week's passage, Jesus' disciples ask him to teach them how to pray. But rather than offering them a treatise or a lecture on the mechanics of prayer or the theological underpinnings of communication with an omniscient and all-powerful God, Jesus paints for them a picture of a caring Father who listens to us and provide...