Line Upon Line

Pastor Miles teaches Acts 8:26-39, where Philip obediently goes to the desert road and shares the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch, drawing out the call to obey God, go to people relationally, open our mouths, and lead others to faith and baptism.

Pastor Miles teaches through the brief but powerful letter of Jude, who, instead of writing about our common salvation, urgently exhorts believers to contend for the faith against false teachers who had crept into the church turning grace into a license to sin. The teaching surveys Jude's warnings, his Old Testament and extra-biblical examples of judgment, and his closing call to build ourselves up in faith, love, and hope, resting in the God who keeps us from falling.

A verse-by-verse study of 3 John, John's short final letter, contrasting three men—Gaius (strong in soul, faithful, hospitable), Diotrephes (proud, selfish, a slanderer who rejected the brethren), and Demetrius (a man of good report)—and exhorting believers to walk in the truth, exercise themselves toward godliness, and show hospitable love to both brethren and strangers.

Beginning at the stoning of Stephen and the rise of Saul, this teaching traces how persecution scattered the Jerusalem church and drove it to fulfill Christ's commission in Judea and Samaria. It moves through Philip's Spirit-empowered ministry in Samaria and the false conversion of Simon the magician, calling believers to active obedience and genuine repentance.

A verse-by-verse teaching through 2 John, in which Pastor Miles explains John's exhortation to a persecuted church to practice the truth and protect it against false teachers, emphasizing the necessary balance of love and truth in the believer's life.

Continuing through 1 Timothy 1, Pastor Miles teaches that God plants a seed of faith in every person, that this faith grows through hearing the Word and dies through false teaching, and that the proper, lawful use of God's law is to reveal sin and point us to Christ rather than to make us feel righteous.

Drawing on Luke 12:15 and Jesus' parable of the rich fool, Pastor Miles warns that covetousness is a destructive form of idolatry that God will judge, and that a person's life is not measured by possessions. He calls believers to set their affections on heavenly things, trust God for daily provision, and lay aside the material entanglements that bind us so we can simplify, focus, and walk in freedom.

A verse-by-verse walk through John's first letter, showing how its central themes—life, love, and the Son of God—answer the Gnostic heresy that denied Jesus' true humanity and how, again and again, John points believers back to 1 John 1:9 to confess sin and be cleansed. The teaching also addresses assurance of salvation, abiding in Christ, and the textual question surrounding the "Trinity" verse in chapter 5.

Stephen, one of the seven men chosen to serve the widows, is drawn into a larger calling that leads to his trial before the Sanhedrin. As he answers their accusations by retelling Israel's history, he demonstrates that God met His people apart from the temple, that Israel repeatedly rejected God's deliverers, and that the same council had now rejected and murdered the Messiah Himself.

A verse-by-verse walk through 2 Peter, written near the end of Peter's life under Nero's persecution, showing how the knowledge of God builds godly character (ch. 1), exposes and condemns false teachers (ch. 2), and anchors the believer's hope in the certain second coming of Christ (ch. 3). The central exhortation is to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the best defense against heresy.