Alliance Church

Why do you feel so alone right now? Most of us, even on our most ordinary day, carry around a quiet fear that we are facing what we are facing by ourselves. And the answer the Bible gives to that fear is one of the most surprising things in all of scripture.In this sermon, Dr. Dennis Episcopo opens our brand new series Counterfeit Kings with the story of a scared, lonely king named Ahaz, three enemy armies marching toward his city, and the prophet God sent to meet him at the waterworks of Jerusalem.The story is in Isaiah 6 and 7. King Ahaz is one of the worst kings in the Bible. He even sacrificed his own son on a pagan altar (2 Kings 16). And yet, when his world is closing in and three nations have lined up against him, God does not abandon him. God sends Isaiah, the greatest preacher of the eighth century, to meet him at the upper pool with one message: you are not alone, but you have to trust me.Dr. Dennis Episcopo unpacks something here that most of us miss. Isaiah brings his son to the meeting. The boy's name is Shear Jashub, which means "a remnant will return." Isaiah is preaching a sermon just by showing up with his child. And then God gives Ahaz a sign that will echo across the next 700 years of history: a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and he will be called Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14, fulfilled in Matthew 1).Two children. Two names. One message. You are not alone.Then Dr. Dennis Episcopo turns the corner from ancient history into right now. The message Ahaz needed is the same one a lot of us need today. God is with you in the thing you cannot solve. But you have to trust him, because Isaiah 7:9 also says, "Unless your faith is firm, I cannot make you stand firm." Faith is the door God invites you to walk through.And here is where the gospel becomes the only thing that has ever actually worked. Most of us look at "just trust Jesus" and call it too simple. But Jesus told his disciples that following him would cost everything: deny yourself, pick up your cross daily, follow me (Luke 9:23). The fruit of a real Christian is self denial, cross bearing, and loyal trust. Imposters will not pay that price.At the cross, the old you gets crucified, and Jesus rises up to live his life through you. That is why Dr. Dennis Episcopo's life verse is Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." If you are exhausted from white knuckling your way through a season that keeps breaking you, this is the message you needed today.

How do you stop caring so much what other people think of you? It is one of the quietest, heaviest weights most of us carry, and the Bible has a surprising answer for it. The answer starts with a kind of fear most of us have never actually been taught.In this sermon, Pastor Brian opens up one of the most confusing tensions in all of scripture. On one hand, the Bible tells us over and over not to fear. On the other hand, it tells us to fear the Lord. So which is it? Does God want us to be afraid of him or not?Pastor Brian unpacks the difference between bad fear and good fear, starting with Proverbs 29:25. The fear of man is a snare. It traps us in hypocrisy, in people pleasing, in the exhausting work of curating a version of ourselves that we hope will be liked. It leaves us with the lonely lie that the best we can hope for in life is to be loved but not known.Then he turns the corner. There is a different kind of fear running all through scripture, a holy and healthy fear of the Lord, and it does three things our souls actually need. It protects us from evil, the way a true picture of a just God keeps us from playing with sin (Proverbs 16:6). It empowers us for holiness, because cleansing ourselves and bringing holiness to completion happens in the fear of God (2 Corinthians 7:1, Philippians 2:12). And it fuels intimacy with God, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowing him, and the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him (Proverbs 1:7, Psalm 25:14).Along the way Pastor Brian shares the storm on a Colorado mountain that taught him what holy fear actually feels like, the Antique Roadshow teapot that finally helped it click, and the moment from his own childhood when a father's loving discipline kept him from a self destructive choice that nothing else could have stopped. He lands the message in Psalm 130, where the trembling realization that no one could survive God's record of our sin meets the staggering good news that with God there is forgiveness, so that he may be feared. And in Psalm 147, where the same God who delights in those who fear him also commands them to hope in his unfailing love that will never stop chasing them down.The biggest reframe of this teaching is simple. The fear of the Lord is not one more thing to add to your spiritual to do list. It is the posture underneath the whole list. It is how Pastor Brian says you do every other thing God has asked of you. If your walk with God has stalled, this might be the missing link.

What is God really like when you actually stop and ask the question? Not the version of God you grew up with, not the one shaped by your worst memory of church, but the God who actually exists. That is the question this sermon walks straight into.Pastor Paul opens with something most of us never stop to do. He asks you to picture God in your mind. Is he a man? Does he have a beard? Is he disappointed? Is he smiling? Most of us have built a picture of God somewhere along the way, but very few of us have ever held that picture up next to what God actually says about himself in the Bible. And that gap matters, because what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.This message moves into Exodus 33 and 34, where Moses asks God one of the boldest questions in scripture. Show me your glory. God answers in a way nobody expects. He tells Moses he will cause all his goodness to pass in front of him and proclaim his name. Then God describes himself as compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, yet not leaving the guilty unpunished.Pastor Paul unpacks the tension most of us feel here. How can God be both holy and gracious? Both great and good? Both the God of thunder, lightning, and smoke on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19, and the God who speaks his name in mercy in Exodus 34? Pastor Paul holds these two truths together the way they were always meant to be held, not as a contradiction, but as a paradox that gives the Christian life its power. The greatness of God keeps us from sin. The goodness of God draws us back when we have.If you have ever wondered whether God is loving or angry, present or distant, near or far, this teaching offers a careful, pastoral, biblical answer. Pastor Paul leans on Augustine, A.W. Tozer, and the language of scripture itself to help you see a God who is both impossibly great and unbelievably good at the same time.This message is for the believer who has settled into one side of God's character and forgotten the other. It is for the skeptic who has only met an angry version of God and never the gracious one. It is for the deconstructing Christian quietly asking, who is God really. And it is for anyone in pain right now wondering if God is paying attention.

Why does God feel painfully late on the prayer you have been praying for years? The one for the marriage, the child, the healing, the door that still has not opened. If you have ever wondered whether God is even listening, this sermon was made for you.In this message, Pastor Josiah walks through John 11, the story of Lazarus, and asks a question almost no one wants to admit they are sitting in. How do we trust Jesus when his timing breaks our expectations? Most of us have a version of that question quietly running in the background of our lives. We have prayed. We have trusted. We have stayed faithful. And yet the relationship is still in pieces. The diagnosis still came back the way we feared. The child still has not come home. The anxiety is still here.Pastor Josiah pulls three honest, freeing truths out of this chapter. First, delay is not denial. Verse 6 says Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, so he stayed. Not so he rushed. So he stayed. That single word reframes everything. The love of God is not always measured by the speed of his response. Sometimes it is measured by what he is producing in the silence.Second, do not forget who he is. When Martha runs to Jesus, disappointed and grieving, he does not give her a five step plan. He gives her himself. I am the resurrection and the life. Faith is not built on outcomes. Faith is built on a Person. Some of us have become so consumed with what God has not done that we have forgotten who he still is.Third, gratitude comes before the movement. Before Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, he stops and thanks his Father. The stone is still in place. The body is still inside. And Jesus is already worshiping. Pastor Josiah points out that anyone can worship after the resurrection. Mature faith worships while the grave is still in front of you.The sermon lands somewhere most preaching does not dare go. Jesus, knowing exactly what he was about to do, still wept at the tomb. He is not emotionally disconnected from your pain. He is fully God and fully human, and he enters in. Faith is not pretending you are okay. Faith is bringing your real pain to a real Savior who already knows the end of the story.And the end of this story is the gospel itself. Lazarus, whose name actually means God is my helper, was dead, wrapped, sealed in a tomb, with every reason gone. And Jesus stood at the entrance and called him out. That is what Pastor Josiah reminds us he still does today. To every person sitting in their sin, their past, their addiction, their shame, Jesus is on the other side of the wall calling, come out. The barrier is already gone.

Why do I keep failing at the same things? If that question has lived in your head, this message offers a different way to think about the fight, and a kind of freedom most people never expect.Most of us assume the battle against sin happens at the moment we are about to do the wrong thing. Pastor Brian walks through a different picture in this sermon, drawn from Paul's instruction to Timothy and Jesus' words in Matthew 5. The real front of the battle isn't where temptation finally wins. It's somewhere earlier, in the soil we let our lives sit in. When we don't see that, we lose the same battles over and over and wonder why nothing ever changes.Pastor Brian opens with a picture you may have heard a version of: a boy on a fence between Jesus and Satan, refusing to pick a side, until Satan smiles and says, "I'm fine with that. I own the fence." From there the message moves into 1 Timothy 6 and 2 Timothy 2, where Paul tells his young friend Timothy to run from anything that stirs up sin and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, and a steady kind of courage. Two sides of the same coin. Run from. Pursue toward.The teaching pulls in some of the hardest verses Jesus ever spoke about sin, in Matthew 5, where he tells us to gouge out the eye and cut off the hand that causes us to stumble. Pastor Brian helps us hear the urgency without missing the heart of it. Jesus is not asking us to mutilate ourselves. He is asking us to let him do the kind of surgery on our lives that takes sin's soil out of the picture, even when it costs us friendships, comfort, or things we have quietly come to worship.Then comes the turn most people never see coming. There is actually a fuel for change that starts in the place of failure. The sermon unpacks 2 Corinthians 7:10, where Paul says that godly sorrow leads to repentance, salvation, and no regret, while worldly sorrow leads to death. The two look identical from the outside. They cry the same tears. The difference is what your sorrow is sourced in and where it is leading you. Pastor Brian shares a vivid personal story from his college years, a stolen car, a lie, five hours of dread, and the unexplainable peace of confession, to show what shalom actually feels like when you finally tell the truth.This message is for anyone who feels stuck. Anyone tired of carrying the same regrets. Anyone wondering if Jesus is disappointed in them. Anyone who has ever wondered if real change is even possible. Whether you have been following Jesus for forty years or you are just curious what he actually says about all this, you will find something worth sitting with here.

Why does it feel like you keep losing the same fight in your life over and over again? Like no matter how much you read, journal, talk to a therapist, or try to fix your habits, the same struggle keeps finding you in the dark? There may be more going on than you have been told.In this sermon, Pastor Brian walks through what happens when you try to live the Christian life as a single front war. Most of us were trained to deal with our struggles on one battlefield at a time, whether that is psychology, biology, willpower, or routines. All of those matter. Scripture honors all of them. But the Bible also tells us there is a deeper layer to the fight, one that involves not just our own sin nature but real spiritual forces of evil.Drawing from Ephesians 6:10 through 17 and Genesis 4:8, this teaching unpacks two errors that C.S. Lewis once warned the Christian against. The first is disbelieving in evil at all, treating spiritual warfare like an old superstition we have outgrown. The second is becoming obsessed with the demonic, seeing a demon under every rock and behind every bad day. Both errors give the enemy more power than he deserves. The healthy posture is alert vigilance. Sober minded, eyes wide open, but with our gaze fixed on Jesus Christ.The message walks through three areas where every follower of Jesus must stay vigilant. First, the pull of worldly power and influence. As Paul writes, our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against rulers, authorities, and the powers of this dark world. Satan moves toward platforms. Jesus moves toward humility. Second, our own sin nature. The best defense against the enemy is not endlessly mapping where he is at work in the world. It is the ordinary, daily pursuit of holiness, walking in obedience to Christ. Third, pride. The verse begins with be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power, not your own. Humility is the gateway to grace. Pride is what blocks it.Along the way, Pastor Brian shares a story about driving, marriage, and what it would feel like to send a runner into a marathon without warning them about the man hiding in the bushes with a stick. He reminds us that evil is most devastating when we call it something else. When the drinking problem is just a bad habit. When the spending problem is just liking nice things. When the anger problem is just how we were raised. Naming the spiritual reality of our struggles is the beginning of being free from them.This is the heart of the gospel. You are not alone on the battlefield. Christ has already won the war, and his victory is the food and drink of the soul. The bread and the cup remind us where our real strength comes from.

There's a mental image a lot of us carry of what God's face looks like when we finally turn around and start walking home. Maybe you picture disappointment, or a long, tired sigh, or a face that's already made up its mind about you. But Jesus tells a story about a father who saw his son while he was still a long way off, and the father ran.This week's message is part of our ongoing series, The Good Fight, and we walk through what it actually looks like to draw near to God when you feel far from him. Drawing from Luke 11, 1 Timothy 6, James 4:8 to 10, and the three parables of Luke 15, we explore the difference between the omnipresence and the manifest presence of God, why holiness was never meant to keep us away, and how the love of the Father runs toward us before we ever have a chance to clean ourselves up.Paul tells Timothy to fight the good fight, but he doesn't tell him to fight it alone, and he doesn't tell him to fight it through performance. He tells him to run from evil and run toward God. That is the heart of pursuing holiness in the Christian life. We don't simply move away from sin. We move toward our Father.If you've ever felt like one of the put together religious people on the outside, or one of the put out people who feel too far gone, this message is for you. Two of sin's quietest lies are that God runs from you when you fail, and that your worth to him decreases with every wrong turn. The prodigal son sermon in Luke 15 dismantles both. Your Father is filled with compassion before you say a single word. Repentance is not what earns the embrace. Repentance is the debris that falls out of the collision of his love and your fallen humanity.So how do you actually pursue holiness this week? You just show up. You stand in the presence of the Lord. You let him love you. The confession will come. The change will come. But it comes after the embrace, never before.Scripture in this sermon: Luke 11 (the Lord's Prayer), 1 Timothy 6:11 to 12, James 4:8 to 10, and Luke 15 (the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son).

Hey friends, good morning.Have you noticed how temptation often hits right when you're feeling most vulnerable—maybe when you're alone, tired, or questioning your worth? In this powerful message, Pastor Brandon takes us back to the wilderness with Jesus in Matthew 4, right after his baptism.We see the Father speak from heaven: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." Then the tempter comes and immediately challenges it with those three little words: "If you are..."That's Satan's favorite strategy. He doesn't start with some shiny distraction. He goes after your identity first—planting doubt about who you really are in Christ, then offering a shortcut. But Jesus doesn't prove himself. He simply stands on what the Father had already declared. "It is written."This isn't just ancient history. Whether you're battling habits, comparison, anger, or that quiet voice saying you're not enough, the same battle is playing out today. The good news? Because Jesus won in the wilderness, you can fight from your identity as a child of God instead of fighting for it.Pastor Brandon walks us through the three temptations, shows how Satan twists truth just a little, and reminds us that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we really are God's children. He even ties it to real-life moments—like the recent flooding in our area—and how God uses hard things to show his goodness.If you're hungry for a message that's full of grace, rooted in Scripture, and practical for everyday battles, this is for you.

Hey friend, welcome to this week’s message from your Alliance church family. We’re stepping into a brand-new series called The Good Fight, and today Pastor Brian takes us back to the very beginning in Genesis to do some honest reconnaissance on the enemy we all face: sin.Sin isn’t just a behavior. It crouches at the door, desiring to have you. It hijacks your creativity, your relationships, and your joy if you don’t learn to rule over it by God’s grace. Through the story of Adam and Eve, we see how a single moment of misplaced desire leads to hiding, shame, and separation from the God who made us and loves us completely.You’ll hear powerful reminders that we don’t always know what’s truly good for us, how the enemy plants seeds of doubt about God’s goodness, and why real freedom starts not with behavior modification but with heart-level repentance and trust in the One who sees us fully and still clothes us with grace.This message is full of relatable stories, biblical truth, and gentle pastoral encouragement that points us to Jesus, the ultimate answer to our deepest splinter-like wounds. Whether you’re new in your faith or have been walking with the Lord for years, there’s breakthrough and healing available here.

Discover this powerful Easter sermon that’s stirring hearts everywhere! In this Gospel message, Pastor Brian unpacks the heartbreaking Judas betrayal and reveals the life-changing truth that Jesus saves completely. If you’re battling guilt, shame, or the weight of sin, this message shows the path to true Christian forgiveness, overcoming sin, and complete salvation through surrender to Jesus.Watch the full live stream as 88 people (across all locations) step into the waters for a joyful Easter baptism—a beautiful picture of the Resurrection and new life drenched in God’s righteousness. No more photocopies of past hurts or endless self-fixing. Jesus takes your entire file, pays for it on the cross, and fills you with His perfect righteousness.Whether you’re exploring the Gospel, craving forgiveness, or ready for real salvation, this Easter sermon will encourage you to let go and trust the only Priest who makes it possible.