Grace Church Elk Grove

This week we consider the "ambition" of Paul. Ambition is a concept that has fallen on hard times in the church. That's because we are wary of it going wrong. But the Bible is very clear: ambition is a good thing. It only goes bad when it is aimed at the wrong things. Verbs are defined not by themselves but by their objects. If our greatest ambition is for self-glory, self-satisfaction and self-preservation, there'...

This week will be our final look at Christ in the Old Testament. We will finish on the most important passage, the famous Isaiah 53. I hope it is known to you. If not, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with it before Sunday. There are too many riches for us to consider all of them in one sitting. This is why many people consider this section of Isaiah the "New Testament in the Old Testament" - where God's work i...

This week our nation learned about two monumental deaths: the horrific, unprovoked murder of Iryna Zarutska and then just yesterday, the assassination of Christian apologist Charlie Kirk. As the president said, these are dark times. What we do in such times is dependent on *what story we think we are living in.* For instance, if we think we are living in a nihilistic J.G. Ballard story with no good ending, we will become fatalistic...

We will consider another way that Christ is in the Old Testament.It begins mysteriously, with the story of Melchizedek, and yet it ends with something very clear and solid: having "full assurance" in our faith. Full assurance! Whatever capacity we have to be assured that, when we meet our Maker, we will be with Him forever, that cup of assurance can be filled to the brim. This is really, really good news. Listen to this e...

This is the start of a new Christ in the Old Testament series. The Bible is a whole, one story, all of it pointing to one person: Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. So, it is no wonder that we see the Old Testament and the New point forward or backward to him. This series will look at specifically how the Bible looks forward to Jesus. We will begin this week with Jesus' own words, as he teaches Nicodemus precisely how this ...

Sometimes the Scriptures are to be studied, the way you study for a class. But there are other times when we are not to so much study but INHABIT a text. We are to let it swirl around us, capture our imaginations, and let it take us to the heavens or a foreign land that we’ve never known. 

Such is Psalm 29 - it’s not here for us to completely get our arms around it, but to let it take us to a place and a perspective we’ve never know...

We all face fear, because we all have enemies. These enemies come in three flavors: the world, our flesh and the devil enemies from this world, in the form of temptations, and disasters and people who hate us; our own flesh, in the form of wrong desires and illness and weakness; and spiritual powers directly, in the form of the devil and his servants.

This enmity did not start with communism or Darwinism or Islam. It started in the ...

We don’t know the occasion, but we can make educated guesses. The end of Judges - which was when David was born - records for us that the people of Israel had become no different in their sin than Sodom and Gomorrah.

Thus David’s life was not that different from Lot’s - they were both surrounded on all sides by really wicked people. Not just the nations - the Jews themselves. But David was a man after GOD’s own heart, which put him at...

This Psalm is very hard to outline. It’s all over the place - one second David asks God to protect him from his enemies; the next he is asking God to forgive him his sin; the next he is asking God to protect him, because of his integrity.

The reason for this is that this Psalm is HUMAN. There really was a David. He really was hounded by treacherous enemies who really wanted to kill him and his family and wipe his name off the face o...