Line Upon Line

Teaching from Deuteronomy 11 (and 30, 10) showing that God delights to bless His people, but His blessings are conditional upon fearing Him, walking in His ways, loving Him, and keeping His commandments. Pastor Miles warns against the two great pitfalls of unfaithfulness (idolatry) and forgetfulness, calling individuals and the nation to choose life and blessing by returning to the Lord.

Pastor Miles surveys the rampant chaos and confusion of postmodern Western culture and shows from Deuteronomy 10 that God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos by His word. He teaches that departing from God's law—whether etched on stone or written on the human heart—inevitably produces chaos, while courageously walking in God's word brings blessing.

Returning to the book of Deuteronomy after a two-year hiatus, Pastor Miles reviews how God delivered Israel and brought them to the border of the promised land—not because of their righteousness but because of His love and grace—and warns against the snare of self-righteousness.

Pastor Miles traces the overarching story of the Bible—creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—from the garden of Genesis to the new creation of Revelation, centering on the promise of Genesis 3:15 fulfilled in Jesus. He then calls believers, as ambassadors of Christ entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation, to connect the people around them with the gospel.

Pastor Miles teaches that human beings were created for connection, a need confirmed by the COVID social-distancing experiment and by Scripture's declaration that "it is not good that man should be alone." He argues that the deep oneness lost in the fall is restored only through Christ's work on the cross, and is practically experienced through trusting Christ and becoming an engaged participant in His body, the church.

Pastor Miles examines our cultural moment of widespread distrust and "shaking" through the lens of Isaiah 19, arguing that God shakes the things we trust in so we will turn to the only unshakable refuge—life in connection with God through Jesus Christ.

In this "state of the church" address, Pastor Miles reflects on how dramatically culture has changed and explains why, beginning in 2009, Cross Connection Church chose to simplify and focus—pruning programs to recover the essentials of the early church so it could effectively reach a transformed, increasingly post-Christian culture.

Tracing Peter's journey from his miraculous catch to his denial and restoration, this teaching shows that failure is part of the human condition and that God's response to our sin is not condemnation but a call to repent and follow Him again. Using New Year's resolutions as a backdrop, Pastor Jason reminds us that our failures don't break God's plan and that Jesus continually pulls sinners close.

On the Sunday after Christmas, Pastor Miles reflects on how Jesus—though fully God and fully man—grew strong in spirit, full of wisdom, and in favor with God and man during nearly thirty years of obscurity. He exhorts the church to pursue that same transformation in the new year through four steps from Colossians 3: seek, set, put off, and put on.

Christmas — Pastor Miles DeBenedictis