Hope Church Nashville Podcast

This week Joel preached on faith and hope from Hebrews 11:1–3, showing us that faith is the “title deed” to God’s promises, the guarantee that what we hope for is ours even before we see it, signed by the resurrection of Jesus. He reminded us that doubt is not the opposite of faith but an element of it, and that like Abraham and the saints of Hebrews 11 (as well as previous members of Eastland Baptist Church, who faithfully prayed for this church’s future without seeing it), we can trust God even when our hopes go unmet in this lifetime. We’re invited to carry faith for one another in hard seasons, to lean on our church family when we’re hanging by a thread, and to remember that all we have seen should teach us to trust the Creator for all we have not seen.

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In the third installment of the Replanted series, we look at Ezekiel 37:1–14 to see God's profound heart for raising dead things to life. Throughout Scripture, God's heart to overturn death and the destructive power of sin is displayed. We see this vividly when Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35, 38)—grieving the painful effects of death on His creation, even as He prepared to defeat it. When we experience loss or suffering, God does not stand distant or remain uneffected; what breaks our hearts breaks His infinitely more.

Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones offers a powerful picture of spiritual restoration. When asked, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel humbly replied, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” God then commanded him to prophesy over the dry, scattered bones, assembling them step-by-step and breathing the Holy Spirit into them until a dead valley became a vast, living army. The history of Hope Church mirrors this valley: what once seemed like an abandoned, dying work was restored by God's Spirit through steady, faithful obedience. Whether we currently find ourselves in a dry valley, looking intact but lacking spiritual breath, or standing strong on our feet, God is actively breathing His Spirit into us so that we can breathe His life and hope into our community.

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In the second week of the Replanted series, Jason dove into Jesus’ address to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:1–7 to uncover how a thriving, highly effective church can slowly go astray. On paper, the Ephesians were doing everything right: they worked hard, endured suffering, stood for doctrinal truth, and rooted out false teaching. Yet, Jesus brought a serious indictment against them: they had abandoned the love they had at first. Like doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons, it is entirely possible to serve God tirelessly while drifting away from intimate relationship with Him and placing our ultimate affection on the tools and people rather than Christ Himself.

Spiritual drift and church failure often happen when we idolize or demonize what Jason called the “5 Ps” of church life: Place, People, Personality, Programs, and Position. When these secondary things become primary, we reduce the body of Christ to a mere country club or gym, seeking power, control, or personal preference rather than gospel transformation. To prevent our roots from withering and our lampstand from being removed, Jesus gives us a clear path back: remember where we fell, repent of the false loves we have turned to, and return to the simple, humble works we did at first.

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Joel kicked off our Replanted sermon series by looking back at the history of Eastland Baptist Church (now Hope Church) to discover how God brings life out of death, not just in a building, but within our own souls. Drawing from Leviticus and 1 Corinthians 1:30, we see that life and holiness exist only in God's presence, and Jesus was sent to make us righteous so we can experience true, unrestricted access to the Father. Yet, even while in Christ, we can still experience spiritual drift. This drift rarely happens through a single sinful choice; rather, it happens through small, unconscious concessions and steps we fail to take in confession, community, and spiritual growth.

The 100-year history of this local body of believers mirrors our personal faith journeys: from a small but vibrant 1911 "living room" faith, to a 1926 season of momentum and growth, to a gradual, quiet turning inward where a church slowly becomes a place people drive past without realizing life exists inside. Psalm 78:1–7 calls us to remember and speak the truth about our timeline. The path to being replanted does not begin with an immediate renovation or by fixing ourselves, but with honest confession. Whether our faith is alive, quiet, or reduced to a stubborn little remnant, God has already gone ahead of us, proving that death has no hold in His Kingdom.

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In this final week of our Sabbath series, Cameo looked into the words and work of Jesus in the Gospels to discover how He unlocks the true heart of Sabbath rest.

Sabbath as Creation Blessing: Rather than viewing Sabbath as an obsolete Old Testament rule that we no longer need to practice it, we see that Sabbath was established in Genesis as a creation blessing. God engaged in Sabbath not out of need, but out of His fullness of life, inviting humanity to dwell in celebratory communion with Him.

The Easy Yoke: In Matthew 11, Jesus addresses the exhausted by offering a yoke—a wooden beam pairing a stronger ox with a weaker one. When we attach ourselves to Christ and work in tandem with Him, He sets the pace and carries the heavy load, turning our labor into true soul rest..

Living in the Already / Not Yet: While work in Eden was joy-filled delight, the Fall turned labor into painful toil and sweat. Because Christ inaugurated the Kingdom, we live in perpetual spiritual Sabbath, yet we still inhabit a physical world where phones ping and bodies ache. Practicing a dedicated day of Sabbath serves as our intentional "dress rehearsal" for the New Creation—an act of hope-filled resistance where we stop, rest, delight, and worship.

A Restorative Force: As seen in Mark 3 when Jesus heals the shriveled hand, Sabbath is not a static rulebook of prohibitions ("do nothing"), but a force of restoration. True Sabbath sets things right, opposing systems of bondage and extending Kingdom wholeness (shalom) and Jubilee to a broken world.

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While previous weeks focused on identity and work, Sabbath ultimately transforms how we relate to the people around us. When Israel lost their temple and homeland to Babylon, the Sabbath became the one thing the empire could not destroy or confiscate: a portable sanctuary of time. In Ezekiel 11, God promised to be a miqdash me’at—a “small sanctuary”—for His people right there in exile. Over time, God's people realized this sanctuary in exile wasn't a building, but a Sabbath table.

Jeremiah's letter to the exiles offered a radical alternative to either denial (“just survive until we go home”) or despair (“blend in and become Babylonian”). God called them to rooted presence: to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the peace (shalom) of the very city that held them captive. Sabbath is what makes this rooted presence possible; it allows us to plant gardens and bring thriving in our culture without planting our identity or worth there.

When we live under an internal “Pharaoh” driven by anxiety and productivity, we lose the ability to have real neighbors. Instead, we reduce people to four transactional categories:

Rivals (who might get what I want)
Threats (who might take what I have)
Tools (who can be useful to me)
Quotas (who are just another demand on my time)

The Sabbath command in Deuteronomy 5 resets these categories by insisting everyone—family, workers, immigrants, and even animals—stop producing. It breaks into our transactional patterns and brings people back into their God-given position of image-bearers. Ultimately, loving people this way isn't about excess of effort;. it requires the heart surgery God promises in Ezekiel 11: removing our “heart of stone” and replacing it with an undivided “heart of flesh” around a shared table.

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Many of us live with a driving voice telling us that our identity and worth are tied strictly to our output and met (or unmet) quotas. In Deuteronomy 5, God commands Sabbath not only as a reflection of creation, but as a memorial of deliverance from Egypt, where human beings were treated merely as tools for production. God’s goal in Sabbath is not to diminish or condemn human labor, but to strip work off the throne and restore its true, God-given dignity.

Work existed before the Fall; in Genesis 2, Adam was called to "work" (abad) and "keep" (shamar) the garden—the exact priestly terminology used for serving in the Tabernacle. Work was designed to be worship and an act of priestly service. In the language of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Sabbath is a "cathedral in time"—a sacred realm where we step out of our obsession with achieving in the physical space and step into God's presence. As illustrated by the manna in the wilderness, Sabbath is a weekly act of trust, declaring that God is our true provider. When we take Jesus' yoke, we rest in His finished work on the cross, working from His finished accomplishment rather than striving to prove our own worth.

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We live in a culture obsessed with outrunning time, productivity, and efficiency—often defining our worth by what we can manufacture and produce. Yet, in our relentless drive to build our own identity and master time, we quietly lose our humanity. When we write our own purpose, we override our calling as image-bearers and reduce our God-given worth to mere utility.

Unlike ancient mythologies like the Enuma Elish, where humans were created as slaves for gods to rest, Genesis reveals a God who creates humanity out of love and speaks directly to them. We were created on the sixth day, making humanity's first full day the Seventh Day—a day of Sabbath rest, communion, and celebration. Sabbath is not a reward earned by work, but the ancient garden framework (Eden, meaning "pleasure") where our identity is rooted in God's presence before we ever perform a single task. Through the cross, Jesus stepped past the flaming sword, offering us paradise and inviting us back into unhurried, restored fellowship with the Father.

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In Acts 20, Paul gathers the Ephesian elders on a beach in Miletus for a painful farewell, knowing they will never see his face again. This scene offers a vivid portrait of true spiritual leadership—one that weeps, bleeds, and pours itself out for the flock. Like bank tellers trained to recognize counterfeit currency by mastering the genuine, we must first behold true shepherding to spot spiritual corruption. Paul’s life moved in one direction: from Christ as the absolute source, and then outward to the church.

Paul warns that "fierce wolves" will arise—not only from the outside, but from within their own congregations—speaking twisted things to draw believers after themselves and away from their “first love.” Wolves consume the flock to feed their own need for platform, power, or money. For anyone wounded by church leadership, Jesus was never confused by the disguise; He denounced spiritual abuse before we had a name for it. The church does not belong to any human leader; it was obtained with the blood of God. Real shepherds attach the flock directly to Jesus, knowing that while leaders change, the Shepherd who bought us remains unshakable.

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Psalm 115 warns that "those who make idols become like them." An idol is anything created that we ask to do the work of the Creator—anything we look to for security, identity, worth, or control. In Acts 19, as the gospel spreads through Ephesus, Paul confronts a city where the goddess Artemis is tied not just to private worship, but to money, business, civic pride, and systemic power. When Jesus steps into Ephesus, He doesn't just challenge private beliefs; He touches the economic and cultural systems people depend on for their livelihood and safety.

Demetrius the silversmith stirs up a riot because the gospel directly threatens the silver shrine trade, revealing how idols hide behind reasonable concerns ("this is bad for business" becomes "this is bad for Artemis"). Every idol creates an economy—an orbit of habits, sacrifices, and cultural liturgies that promise life while quietly enslaving us. When threatened, these idols get loud and chaotic, as seen in the two-hour chant of the Ephesian crowd. Yet Jesus offers a radically different economy: grace instead of transaction, and open hands instead of clenched fists. At the cross, Jesus absorbs our false systems to free us from every economy that promises life but demands slavery.

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