How do you read the Bible when two verses seem to contradict each other? It's the question that has quietly divided churches, families, and friendships for centuries, and most Christians have never been given honest tools to work through it. Pastor Brian walks Alliance Church through a crash course on hermeneutics, the study of how we get from what the Bible says to what it means.

He opens with a hilariously honest story about his early years of marriage and a rough anniversary miscommunication with his wife Hannah, then makes a simple point. Every human being interprets the words they hear. You interpret your spouse. You interpret text messages. You are already interpreting the Bible whether you realize it or not. The only question is whether your interpretation is a good one or a bad one.

Pastor Brian points out something almost every long time Christian has felt. Most church splits and denominational fights are not really debates about what the Bible says. They are debates about how we are interpreting what it says. He calls this out with grace, then gives the room two rules that will change how you read the Bible for the rest of your life.

Rule one. Do not build a doctrine or a theology around a single verse. One verse can tell you something true without telling you everything about the truth. Let the rest of Scripture help you understand any single passage.

Rule two. Do not choose sides when Scripture seems to conflict. If the Bible teaches two truths that appear to compete, hold both as true and trust that they resolve themselves ultimately in the mind of God. Solomon, the wisest mortal to ever live, said it in Proverbs 3. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Pastor Brian then walks through three biblical mysteries that seem to compete on the surface but actually stand together. Divine providence and human responsibility. The Trinity, three persons and one God. And the theandric union, the doctrine that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human at the same time. He anchors this in Colossians 2:9, John 1:1 and 14, Luke 2, and Philippians 2, then lands with a story that will stop you cold. A former professor of his, in the middle of confessing a habitual sin, discovered that Christ did not just die to forgive him. Christ also sent his Spirit through Romans 8 to give him the power to actually walk free.

If you have ever felt confused, cornered, or intimidated by the Bible, or if you have ever watched Christians tear each other apart over interpretation, this teaching from Pastor Brian is one of the most practical and pastoral sermons you will hear all year.

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What does Romans 8:28 actually mean? A lot of Christians quote it in the middle of pain, but not many of us have stopped to ask if we are using it the way it was actually meant to be used. In the aftermath of the EF3 tornado that hit the Fox Valley, Pastor Brandon takes on what may be the most commonly misapplied verse in the Bible and walks the church through what it really says.

This sermon kicks off a new August teaching series at Alliance Church on how to read the Bible well. Pastor Brandon opens with a simple principle. Get to the point. The most important question you can ask about any passage of Scripture is not what does this mean for me, but what was the author trying to say? He walks through five questions that help you actually wrestle with the text before you ever try to apply it. What kind of writing is this? Where does it fit in the Bible's big story? Who wrote it, and to whom? Why was it written? And finally, what was the author trying to say?

Then he applies those five questions to Romans 8:28. He reads the whole passage, Romans 8:17 through 30, not just the isolated verse, and shows something that reshapes how most Christians read this promise. The good that God is working all things for is not material comfort. It is not financial rebound. It is not the guarantee that your house gets rebuilt. It is the good of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And that promise is not made to everyone. It is made specifically to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

Pastor Brandon does something rare in this sermon. He treats grieving people as adults. He does not soften the tornado into a lesson. He does not offer a spiritualized shortcut. He simply says this. For the Christian, even the worst of suffering cannot escape the redemptive purposes of God. That is not a smaller promise. It is a bigger one.

Whether you are wrestling with grief right now, trying to understand a verse that has felt hollow, or simply want to learn how to read the Bible well, this teaching from Pastor Brandon is for you.

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What do you do when everything you built is taken from you in a single storm? Almost no one thinks that question will ever land on them personally, and then one day it does. Pastor Brian preached this message to a congregation whose city had just been devastated by an EF3 tornado, and the answer he gave is one every person is going to need at some point.

In this sermon, Pastor Brian opens with a hard truth. On July 27, 2026, an EF3 tornado over a mile wide touched down for more than twenty minutes and tore through the neighborhoods of Appleton, Menasha, and Neenah. Miraculously, no one was killed. But the loss will take generations to rebuild. And in a moment like that, everyone around you starts watching to see how you respond. Not because you asked for the spotlight, but because the world is quietly asking a question in every disaster. How do Christians handle storms?

Pastor Brian says the answer is that Christians are different. Not weird. Different. Christians still grieve. Jesus himself grieved the death of Lazarus in John 11, even though he was minutes away from raising him. Grief is not weakness. It is honesty. But the way a Christian grieves is otherworldly, because our identity is anchored in a King whose kingdom is not of this world.

Then Pastor Brian walks through two storms in Scripture that reframe everything. In Luke 8, Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and the disciples' response is not relief but fear, because they realize they had no idea who was in the boat with them. And in Matthew 27, at noon on the day Jesus was crucified, the sky went dark and Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1). He names what the cross actually is. It is the storm that defines Christians. You and I were asleep in a sinking boat we did not even know we were in, and Jesus went into the water for us. We may not get every "why" answered on this side of glory. But we know the why of Jesus. His why was you.

That is why Christians are different about home (we build houses, not homes, because only Jesus is home), different about neighbors (we can be generous because we gave up everything to Christ already), and different in storms (we do not have all the answers, but we have the God who understands the tears).

Eight people gave their lives to Christ in the seven days after this tornado through Samaritan's Purse and community ministry. The house may fall. The eternal work never does.

If you have been through a storm you cannot explain, or you are watching one right now, this teaching is for you.

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Why do good people quietly go bad? Almost everyone has watched it happen. Someone who used to be genuinely humble, generous, and grounded starts succeeding, and slowly, in a way nobody can quite name, they become someone their friends and family barely recognize. Pastor Trevor unpacks a 2,800 year old story that names the pattern perfectly.

In this sermon, Pastor Trevor walks through the life of King Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26. Uzziah became king at 16 years old. His father Amaziah had just been assassinated. His mother Ecolia probably whispered a mother's prayer over him that night. "God, let this one be different." And at first, he was. Verse 5 says, "He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He sought God during the days of Zechariah. As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success."

He built. He led. He won wars. His fame spread all the way to Egypt. And then eleven verses later, one sentence changes everything. "But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall." He names the pattern most Christians never notice. It was not success that undid him. God gave him the success. It was what success quietly did on the inside.

Somewhere between verse 5 and verse 16, Uzziah stopped seeking God. Nobody flipped a switch. He just started relying on yesterday's prayers instead of today's dependence. He walked into the temple to burn incense, a role God had reserved only for priests, and 81 priests confronted him with the most loving no of his life. He got furious. Leprosy broke out across his forehead. And the man whose fame had reached Egypt spent the rest of his life in isolation.

Pastor Trevor pulls it to the point that hits home. God's boundaries are not there to limit you. They are there to protect you. When your dad grabs you before you run into the street, that no is love. Uzziah quietly stopped seeing God's commands as protection and started seeing them as limitation, and pride did the rest (Proverbs 16:18).

And then Pastor Trevor lands the whole series where every counterfeit king was always pointing. Uzziah wanted access without a priest. We have access because we have the perfect high priest (Hebrews 4:14 to 16). Uzziah wore a crown and became unclean. Jesus wore a crown because we became unclean. Uzziah was driven outside the city because of his sin. Jesus was led outside the city because of ours. Uzziah spent his life separated from God's presence. Jesus was separated from the Father on the cross so that you and I would never have to be.

That is the gospel. That is the good news no crown can ever carry, but Jesus already did.

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Why are you so tired all the time even when you sleep? A lot of us have been trying to sleep off, vacation off, or scroll off an exhaustion that no bed can actually fix. It is not physical. It is soul deep. And Pastor Brian says most of us are carrying a weight we were never built to carry.

In this sermon, Pastor Brian opens the story of King Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25. The Bible describes Amaziah with one of the most quietly haunting lines in Scripture. He "did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight, but not wholeheartedly." Not evil. Not rebellious. Just partly in. He says that quiet middle ground is where most people live and get slowly drained without ever knowing why.

Amaziah's story unpacks the symptoms one by one. You inherit both the good and the bad from the people you idealize without noticing. You start to blend in, so your budget, your generosity, your forgiveness, and even your joy start looking like everyone else's. You make your own plans first and only consult God when things get bad enough to force it. You worship the gifts victory brings instead of the God who won the victory (Amaziah brought back the enemy's idols and worshiped them after God gave him the win). And eventually, you treat God as a counselor whose input you weigh, instead of Lord whose voice you obey.

Then Pastor Brian pulls in the passage that opens the whole thing up. In Matthew 11, Jesus rebukes the towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum for wanting his miracles but rejecting him as God. And in the very next breath he says something that changes everything. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28 to 30).

Why does Jesus call the half in people weary? Because being in charge of maximizing your own life is the single most exhausting job on the planet. Choosing which advice from Jesus to take, which to skip, which parts of Scripture apply to you, which do not, carrying the weight of every outcome yourself. That is soul exhaustion, and it is what most of us have been calling normal.

Jesus offers the trade. You carry obedience. He carries outcomes. Pastor Brian lands the whole thing on Matthew 6:24. You cannot serve two masters. Not because it is forbidden, but because it is impossible. Part-heartedness is not a moral failure. It is a mathematical impossibility. Your heart was not built to do it. Either Jesus is Lord, or you are, and one of those is way harder than the other.

If you have been walking around exhausted in a way sleep cannot fix, this teaching is for you. The rest you have been looking for is not another day off. It is a different owner of your life.

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How do you pass on your faith to the next generation? You can spend a lifetime building something good, a family, a career, a walk with God, and still watch it unravel in a single generation. If you have ever wondered why kids walk away from faith, or why the things that matter most to you do not seem to stick with the people you love, this message is for you.In this teaching, Pastor Brian opens up the story of King Rehoboam in 2 Chronicles 10. Rehoboam inherited the most successful kingdom of his day. His father Solomon was the wisest man alive, wealthy beyond description, respected by rulers around the world. And in Rehoboam's very first leadership decision, all of it split in half. Not after years of slow decline. One decision, one moment, and a civil war that Israel never fully recovered from.But here is the twist Pastor Brian draws out of the text. This is not really the story of Rehoboam's failure. Scripture repeats one small phrase about the young men Rehoboam listened to instead of the elders: they had grown up with him. The people who shaped Rehoboam were the people who walked with him. And the one person you never find walking with Rehoboam is his own father. Solomon built palaces, cities, and storehouses, but there is no record of him ever investing in his son the way David once invested in him.That is the heart of this message. Faith, wisdom, and character do not transfer by osmosis. They are not passed on through lectures, events, or even success. According to Deuteronomy 11, they are passed on through relationship, when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Only what is passed on through relationship actually gets passed on.Pastor Brian speaks honestly to every generation here. To young people drowning in the noise of peer influence, who have to fight harder than any generation in history for the voices of experience. To parents wondering if what is in their own heart is what they want to see in their kids, because Proverbs 22:15 says foolishness is bound up in a child's heart, and love is what unbinds it. And to grandparents who have believed the lie that their most relevant years are behind them, when research and Scripture both say the opposite.And it all points to the gospel. Jesus did not send us information from a distance. He entered our lives, walked with us through failure, and loved us before we ever asked for it. Then, like every great leader, he told his followers in John 14 that they would go on to do even greater things.So the question Pastor Brian leaves us with is simple and searching: who are you walking with, and how are you walking?

Why does your faith get weaker when your life gets better? Most of us have felt it and never said it out loud. When things fall apart, we cling to God. When things fall together, we quietly forget him. And nobody warns you about the second one.In this sermon, Pastor Josiah opens up one of the most sobering stories in the Bible, King Solomon, to teach us why starting strong is nothing like finishing faithful. Solomon started with everything you would want in a leader. God poured out wisdom on him. He built the temple. He led with peace and prosperity. Kings from other lands traveled just to hear him speak. And yet by the end of his life, the wisest man who ever lived was building shrines to false gods and drifting so far from God that the entire kingdom of Israel would split in two because of it.Pastor Josiah walks us through Deuteronomy 17:16 to 17, where God gave the future kings of Israel three specific warnings. Do not multiply horses. Do not multiply wives. Do not multiply silver and gold. Not because those things were evil, but because God knew they had the power to master the human heart. Solomon knew every one of these warnings. He wrote most of the book of Proverbs. And he violated all three (1 Kings 10 and 11).Pastor Josiah pulls three sobering truths from Solomon's story. First, God's boundaries are not restrictions of joy. They are guardrails for devotion, and whatever God puts a boundary around usually points to what has power to capture your heart. Second, a lack of fear of the Lord is the invitation for erosion. Solomon did not lack wisdom. He lacked submission to the wisdom he had. Third, starting strong is not the same as finishing faithful. Faithfulness is not proven by how you begin. It is revealed by whether you continue.And then the message lands where every Counterfeit Kings sermon lands. Solomon started strong but Jesus finished faithful. Solomon had wisdom, but Jesus is wisdom. Solomon's heart was divided, but Jesus stayed perfectly surrendered. He is the true and better Solomon, and our confidence is not in our ability to hold on to him but in his ability to hold on to us.Pastor Josiah's practical challenge is worth writing down. Name what is getting too big in your life. Let one or two trusted people question your drift. Return to daily surrender. What you keep feeding will eventually start leading, and the strongest guard is not what you build around your kingdom, but what you guard in your heart.If you have been quietly drifting through a comfortable season, this teaching is for you.

Why does God allow suffering when he's supposed to be in control? Most of us have asked it quietly, especially when we hear about Christians around the world losing everything just for following Jesus. The answer is something nobody can give you better than someone who has lived through it.In this sermon, Pastor Job from Burkina Faso (the president of the Burkina Faso Alliance and a partner of our church for more than a hundred years) speaks to our congregation about what God is doing in West Africa right now. The story is hard and the story is glorious. Churches in Burkina have been attacked. Buildings have been destroyed. Pastors and coworkers have lost their lives. Brothers and sisters have been displaced by violence. And in the middle of all of it, the church has not stopped advancing.Pastor Job anchors the whole message in Matthew 16:18, where Jesus says, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it." The point lands differently when it comes from a man whose congregation has actually been hunted. The church does not belong to us. It belongs to Jesus. He is the one who builds it. He is the one who protects it. He is the one who keeps it advancing even when everything looks like it is being torn down.To illustrate it, Pastor Job tells the story of a king and his servant who repeated one line all the time: "everything God does is good." Even when the king lost his thumb in a hunting accident, the servant said it. The king threw him in prison for it. Then later the king got captured by people who tried to sacrifice him to their god, but they let him go because he was missing a thumb. He went home, freed the servant, and finally understood. Everything God does is good. Even the things we cannot see the purpose of yet.The numbers Pastor Job shares should silence the skeptics. In the first six months of this year alone, in a country being torn by violence, 10,500 people came to know Jesus. 745 baptisms. 38 new churches planted. 24 new missionaries sent to unreached people groups (the Lobi, Bidifor, Dagara, Djan, Senufo, Wara, and others). The gates of hell are not winning. They never were.The sermon closes with Romans 8:35 to 39. Nothing, not persecution, not famine, not danger, not death, not anything in all creation, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And the parable of the body reminds us that every part of the church matters. Some are called to go, some to give, some to pray. All of it is the work of the same church being built by the same King.If you have ever wondered whether God is still building his church in a world that feels like it's falling apart, this teaching will move you.

In this Fire Away Q&A service, Pastor Brian and Dr. Dennis Episcopo sit on stage together (it just so happens to be Father's Day, and Dr. Dennis is Pastor Brian's actual dad) and answer the questions our congregation texts in live. No script, no preselected questions, no editing. Just real pastoral answers to the things people are actually wrestling with.Pastor Brian and Dr. Dennis Episcopo open with a question almost everyone new to faith eventually asks. How do you read the Bible when it feels impossibly large and confusing? They recommend starting in the Gospel of Mark or Luke (Jesus is the point of the whole Bible, so go straight to him), then layering in Proverbs for everyday wisdom, and using a basic study guide like Halley's or Unger's when you get into the Old Testament.The tithing conversation that follows is honest and not soft. Dr. Dennis Episcopo points out that Jesus endorsed tithing in the New Testament and that the principle of percentage giving (10 percent of the gross before anything else) is the only biblical percentage anywhere in Scripture. Pastor Brian shares how multiple people in the church recently told him, unsolicited, that giving sacrificially was the moment everything else in their faith and marriage started to heal.Then the conversation gets harder. If God can heal, why does he allow sickness? Their answer leans on John 9 (the man born blind, "so that the works of God might be displayed in him") and the truth that suffering matures us in ways nothing else does. Pastor Brian adds the line that lands hardest. Suffering is God asking us, am I enough?The parenting question hits anyone in the throes of raising young kids. Family dinners. Annual family only vacations. The marriage prioritized above the parenting. The line they both come back to is that more is caught than taught.They close with the Great Commission in Matthew 28. A disciple is not an egghead loaded with knowledge. A disciple is someone who makes other disciples. The Greek "as you are going" matters. Discipleship happens in the ordinary cadence of real life, not in a special program. And Jesus is with you in it.

Why does your spiritual life feel stuck right now? You know you are supposed to love God with everything you've got, but it feels more like an obligation than a fire. You sing the songs. You show up. You try to want it. And still, something feels distant.In this sermon, Dr. Mark Harris opens our brand new series Counterfeit Kings by walking us through the only person in the entire Bible of whom it is said that he loved the Lord with all his heart and all his soul and all his very. The Hebrew Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 to 5 is the most famous text in all of Jewish life, repeated every morning, every night, taught to children before anything else. Jesus said this command is the foundation of every other one. And yet only one person in the whole biblical narrative is named as having fully obeyed it.That person is King Josiah, and the wild part is that Josiah came from one of the most disastrous family lines in Scripture (2 Kings 22 and 23, 2 Chronicles 34 and 35). His grandfather Manasseh was the most wicked king in Judah's history. His father Ammon followed the same path and was assassinated in the palace when Josiah was eight years old. The Bible had been hidden or destroyed. Idol worship, child sacrifice, and every false god imaginable were woven into daily life. And yet at 16, this kid made a decision in his heart to seek God. By 20 he was destroying altars Solomon himself had built 300 years earlier. And a few years later, he found the lost Book of the Law inside the temple and tore his clothes when he realized how far his people had drifted.Dr. Mark Harris pulls four characteristics out of Josiah's story for anyone wanting to love God for real and not for show. Need him. Weed the garden of whatever competes with him in your music, your screens, your scrolling, your habits. Feed your soul on his actual word, not just other people's sermons. And lead others toward him because you cannot help it.Dr. Mark Harris closes by tracing the line that finally lands at Jesus. Twenty five years after Josiah died, the Babylonians destroyed the temple and the palace, and Davidic kingship looked over forever. Six hundred years later, Matthew 1 opens with: the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. The promise did not die. The true King came, not to defeat a foreign empire, but to defeat hell itself for everyone chained to it who did not even know it.If you are tired of going through the motions, this teaching gives you a path back to wholehearted faith.