2018

For God So Loved the World

John 13:1-17 Pastor Chris Tweitmann This week, our journey through The Story brings us to the moment God has been leading everything that has preceded it toward. It seems so long ago (way back in January), we were in Genesis, chapter 3 at the scene of the crime. Sin entered into our lives and embedded […]

What Say You?

Matthew 16:13-26 Pastor Chris Tweitmann With Act Two of “The Story” well underway, the tide now begins to turn. When Jesus first arrived on the scene teaching and revealing the Kingdom of God through signs and wonders, he became a real crowd pleaser. News traveled quickly about His ability to do things no one had […]

He Said What?

John 6 Pastor Jon Alexanian Hey everyone! This past month of learning to be a dad has been great but I am very much looking forward to being back with you this Sunday! I get to pick up where Pastor Chris left off as we continue our look at the life of Jesus. This week […]

There’s A Party Going On Right Here

Luke 4:14-22 Pastor Chris Tweitmann Last week we began our journey back into The Story – a condensed, chronological narrative of the Bible – by engaging Act Two – what is known as the New Testament. After prolonged waiting and hoping for the fulfillment of the promise of a coming Messiah – a Savior, God […]

The One Nobody Saw Coming

Pastor Chris Tweitmann | John 1:1-18 We’ve had a long, insightful and hopefully, encouraging, summer break journeying through the wisdom section of the biblical library. Now, it’s time to return to The Story – an abridged, chronological narrative of the scriptures. We ended the spring by finishing the first half of this narrative – what […]

The Ending We Don’t Believe, But God Gives Us Anyway

Pastor Chris Job 42 Sometimes we don’t get the ending that we want. We open ourselves up for a story. We get invested in what is happening. Carried along by the suspense of the narrative, we eagerly anticipate – maybe even try to predict – the resolution of the ending. Then we turn the final […]

There is a God, and I’m not Him

Job 38-41 We’ve been spending the last few weeks going through a very difficult book in the Bible, Job. If you have been with us each week, or have caught up with the podcast, you know that we’ve been trying to discern what wisdom the book has when referring to how we deal with suffering. […]

Learning the Hard Way

Job 32-37 When we last left Job, three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who had come to comfort him in his great suffering, became a cruel extension of his agonizing pain. Initially, they had let their presence – their solidarity in sitting with Job in his grief for a week – do all the talking. […]

When Words Fail

Job 3 – 31 Suffering is a part of life. At some point in our lives and usually more often than once, we all experience pain. When we do, the immediate question most of us ask is “Why?” The more we have suffered or the more acutely we feel the pain of our loss, the […]

The Question of Motive

Job 1-2 There is almost nothing more certain in life than suffering. We all encounter it. It can show up anytime, anywhere, with anybody. Suffering comes in all sizes and varieties – big and small. You stub your toe. You come down with the flu. You lose your job. Someone steals your car. You are […]

Everlasting Love

Song of Songs 8:4-7 Sparks were flying last week as we engaged in the first half of our exploration of one of the most unread, rarely taught and typically overlooked or ignored parts of the Bible: the Song of Songs. Belonging to the wisdom section of the Bible, sometimes this book is referred to as […]

For Mature Audiences

Song of Songs Our summer vacation from “The Story” – a condensed narrative presentation of the scriptures – and into the Wisdom literature – the more poetic, reflective and less story-driven section of the Bible – leads us this Sunday into the Song of Songs. This book is a unique and distinctive member of the […]

Sermon Titles are as Meaningless as Life

Ecclesiastes Hey church! This week we are diving into one of those books most people try to avoid – the book of Ecclesiastes. For centuries this has been one of those books that Christians and Jews alike have all struggled to understand. It is not like the other books of scripture: there is no direct […]

God is With Me Wherever I Go

Genesis 28:15 This was such a good week and we are so excited to share it with you here! For the past week, our children’s ministry was throwing a Summer Bible Camp on the church campus. Each day the kids got to sing praise songs, play games, make a craft, and hear the Good News […]

Wise Up

Proverbs 1: 1-7 Just a few weeks ago we began our shared furlong from our engagement of “The Story” – a narrative arrangement of the stories of both the Old and New Testament on Sundays and Wednesdays. But just because the sun is out and the surf is calling, we have not abandoned all together […]

Praying the Psalms

Want to Make God Chuckle?

Psalm 2 Hey church! This time we are continuing our look at the introduction to the book of Psalms. If you remember the previous sermon from Pastor Chris described Psalms 1 and 2 as the key to unlocking all of the psalms. He looked at Psalm 1 and in doing so, showed us the personal […]

Make Like A Tree

Psalm 1 Last time, as we concluded our reading of the narrative of the Old Testament, we ended the first part of “The Story.” We are at the halfway point of our yearlong goal to read through the Bible together. Kudos to all of you who have made it this far reading, studying and reflecting […]

When The Ending Isn’t The One You Hoped For

Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi In the beginning, God created a majestic and beautiful universe – forming and breathing into life at the center of it all – the very reflection of the image of His glory, humankind. All was very good until humanity chose to disobey God – to go their own way rather than […]

For Such A Time As This

Esther 4:1-17 We are so close to the end of the Old Testament! Many of the Jews have returned to Jerusalem, they have rebuilt the temple, and they have begun to settle into life again. Some Jews however, still remain in exile – they chose not to return, but to continue their lives in the […]

Making The House Into A Home

Ezra 1-6 There’s an expression: “You can’t go home again.” The thought behind this saying is the perception that you truly can’t go back to the place you once lived because so much will have changed since you left and therefore, it will not be the same place anymore. As we turn to the next […]

Living In The Place God Has Already Prepared For Us

Daniel 9:4-19 Previously in our journey through “The Story” (a thirty one chapter narrative summary of the Bible), we witnessed the people of the Southern Kingdom of Judah lose all that was near and dear to them. A little over a century before, their rival, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the other half of their […]

Understanding Hope

Jeremiah 29:1-14 As we continue our journey through “The Story”, we come to the total collapse of the people of God. Over the last few weeks we’ve seen their moral and spiritual decay lead first to the Northern Kingdom’s sacking by the Assyrian Empire, and here we will see the final blow to the kingdom […]

It Doesn’t Have To End This Way

2 Kings 17-20 2 Chronicles 29-32 Sometimes we repeatedly can find ourselves in the same situation. Everything goes down the same way every time. What happens can become so predictable; we just expect it rather than question what’s happening or asking if things could be different. Maybe we call it bad luck. Perhaps, we tell […]

Getting the Message

1 Kings 18 We’ve entered the third part of “The Story” – a thirty-one chapter narrative summary of the Bible and things are quickly turning from bad to worse. In just two chapters we moved from the height of Israel’s prominence and preeminence to the beginning of the end as civil war has broken out […]

When Left to Our Own Devices

1 Kings 12:1-25 Hi church! Here we jump back into our journey through “The Story”, and as we will see, from here on out, things get pretty pitiful for Israel. This is the part of Israel’s history few are familiar with. As we will see, Solomon’s son had as much stupidity as his father had […]

An Open Ended Gospel – Easter Sunday

Dying to Live – Holy Saturday

The Giving Tree – Good Friday

Three Gardens – Maundy Thursday

Where are you on the road through Jerusalem? Are your eyes still on Jesus? Are you following him closely? Or has this been just another week for you? Have the busyness and the routine of your schedule left you on the side of the road—too preoccupied to notice what is going on? Have the demands […]

The Son of David

Mark 11:1-11 Here, we are taking a short detour in our journey through the Story as we turn to celebrate Holy Week, Jesus’ journey to the cross and from the grave. As we do, however, we will be reflecting on what we have learned from the Story thus far. For instance, as we celebrate Palm […]

The Heart of the Matter

1 Kings 1-11 1 Chronicles 28 – 2 Chronicles 9 Throughout 2017 we’ve been going through a book called The Story – which is the Bible put into story-form from start to finish. In chapter 13, we focused on King Solomon. I think typically in the church when we think of Solomon, we often think […]

Dealing With Heart Failure

2 Samuel 12:1-9 Previously, we looked at the first half of David’s life. When he was only a teenager, David went from tending his father’s flock as a shepherd to being anointed by his Heavenly Father to care for the people of Israel as their next king. His fulfillment of this calling did not come […]

A Person After God’s Own Heart

1 Samuel 16:1-13 Poet. Warrior. Musician. Shepherd. King. Sinner. Few people can be accurately described using all of these adjectives, but we find one such person in the Old Testament — David. No human being is mentioned more in the Old Testament than David. Not Moses, Jacob or even Abraham. In fact, David’s story is […]

It’s Not How You Look, It’s How You Live

1 Samuel 8:1-9 We entered into the season of Lent by engaging the book of Judges. After the passing of Joshua, Israel was governed by a series of judges – regional political and military chieftains. For nearly three centuries, the people were caught in a vicious cycle of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance. Things progressively […]

Weaving Redemption

Ruth 1:1-14 This Sunday, we are going to be entering into the Book of Ruth. Though only four chapters long, the Book of Ruth has a very engaging narrative. For one, it has the story arch of a modern day dramatic novel. There’s tragedy, there’s controversy, there’s a touch of romance, and it all culminates […]

Who’s To Judge

Judges 21:24-25 Meditation from Ash Wednesday 2017

Breaking The Cycle

Judges 3:12-30 If you have ever read the book of Judges you have probably asked yourself a series of questions like: Didn’t this just happen? How stupid are these people? And, when does this stop? Now, you typically don’t ask these questions because the book is boring, quite the opposite! It’s one of the most […]

The God Who Fights For Us

Joshua 1:1-9 This Sunday, we turn to chapter 7 of “The Story” – a condensed, chronological and narrative presentation of the Bible. When we last left the people of God, they were still in the wilderness, on the other side of a whole lot of wandering. Two decades earlier, at about the halfway point of […]

Life In Transition

Numbers & Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 8:1-11 This Sunday, as we continue our year-long journey through the Bible by way of the condensed, thirty one chapter narrative called “The Story,” we come to the book of Numbers and Deuteronomy. The book of Numbers recounts the traveling of God’s people from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land called […]

Rules of Engagement

Exodus 19-40 One of the challenges in engaging the Bible is the temptation to skip over sections of it that we don’t want to read. So we skip exhaustive instructions about rules that no longer apply in our day. We jump past design specifications, measurements and the décor of furniture, clothes and building projects that […]

This God Is On Fire

Exodus 6:1-11, 15:1-18 This Sunday we continue looking at the Story of God by turning from the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) to the time of Moses. Of all the Old Testament stories this is typically the most familiar. The stories of the burning bush, the ten plagues and the crossing of […]

Living The Dream While Facing The Nightmare

Genesis 37:3-13;17-20 This Sunday we begin week three of our year-long study of the entire Bible using a book called The Story. The Story is a condensed version of the Bible organized in 31 chapters—or stories. It’s Scripture arranged chronologically with a few editorial comments to tie all the stories together. We’re reading one chapter […]

Ordinary People, Extraordinary God

Genesis 12:1-20 Do you like jigsaw puzzles? When our kids were younger, our family went through a jigsaw puzzle phase. At its height, we were attempting the challenging 1000 piece puzzles – together spending an afternoon or evening trying to put all the pieces together. One thing we learned early on about assembling a jigsaw […]

It All Starts With A Bang

Genesis 1-11 This Sunday, we begin our yearlong journey through the scriptures – from Genesis to Revelation. For those of you who have never read the Bible cover to cover, this promises to be a life-changing year for you. For the first time you will read and experience God’s word not as a collection of […]

Resolving Resolutions

Isaiah 55 Merry Christmas and happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a great time with family and friends, and are recovering from the craziness of the season. As we now approach the New Year many of us turn our minds to hopes for the next year, goals, and eventually resolutions which most of […]

Glory To God!

Luke 2:8-14

Christ, Be Born In Me

John 3:16-21 Christmas is almost here! Have you gotten the message yet? I’m not talking about all the advertising for the last minute shopping deals. I’m not even referring to the well-intentioned but ultimately generic sentiment of spreading a little holiday cheer. I am speaking of THE message of Christmas. The existence of this worldwide […]

What To Expect When You’re Expecting Jesus

John 1:9-14 There are now exactly ten days until Christmas. Does this news fill you with tidings of comfort and joy? Or does this announcement, in the face of what you still have left to accomplish leave you with a pit in your stomach wrapped around a bundle of stress? Has your childlike anticipation of […]

Believe

John 3:9-15 Tis’ the season to believe. “Believe” is a word that is thrown around a bunch during these weeks of Advent. It’s plastered in big letters on festive banners decorating shopping mall parking lots in December. It’s the focal word captioning Christmas cards and ornaments. This singular word often stands alone on holiday coffee […]