Northland Church Riverside

Tyler opens with a reflection on how true worship isn't about human performance, but an overflow of what fills the heart from the inside out. Preaching through Ephesians 5:15–21, Tyler breaks down the passage into three clear movements: how believers walk, what fills them, and what spills out into their everyday lives.

Rather than chasing emotional "spiritual highs," Tyler emphasizes that the Christian walk is mostly made up of ordinary, daily steps taken with intentional care and wisdom. He challenges the cultural obsession with productivity, warning against the twin ditches of workaholism and laziness while showing how God's will acts as a compass pointing to Christ rather than a rigid treasure map. Ultimately, when believers place themselves in environments to be continuously filled with the Spirit, it naturally spills over into communal song, constant gratitude, and mutual submission.

Key Topics:

• The Ordinary Walk: Recognizing that true spiritual growth happens in mundane daily routines, not just during high-energy events.

• Walking Awake: Paying careful attention to daily decisions, like walking through a dark living room at night to avoid obstacles.

• Faithfulness Over Productivity: Rejecting cultural burnout to prioritize faithful obedience over constant optimization, avoiding both workaholism and laziness.

• God’s Will as a Compass: Seeing God's will not as a treasure map with single wrong turns, but as a compass constantly pointing toward Jesus.

• Ongoing Spirit-Filling: Understanding that being filled with the Spirit is a continuous, passive posture rather than a one-time event.

• The Four-Fold Overflow: How Spirit-filling organically produces encouragement across the room, heartfelt worship, constant gratitude, and humble submission.

Tyler opens with a story about an early-morning backyard camping trip with his sons after finishing his PhD, illustrating how sudden, intense light can feel jarring, uncomfortable, and make us want to retreat back into the dark. Walking through Ephesians 5:6–14, Tyler breaks down a biblical framework for stepping out of spiritual slumber through four key themes: the caution, the change, the challenge, and the charge.

Tyler warns against the siren song of empty cultural slogans that make sin sound reasonable and compassionate. Highlighting the shift in a Christian's identity—moving from once being darkness to now being light in the Lord—he challenges believers to discern what pleases God and let their daily presence naturally illuminate the dark. Ultimately, believers are called not to act as "sin police," but to wake up, expose hidden habits, and let Christ’s light transform them from the inside out.

Key Topics:

• The Disorientation of Sudden Light: How God’s truth can feel uncomfortable or disorienting when it interrupts our comfortable routines.

• The Caution Against Empty Words: Recognizing enticing cultural phrases that sound reasonable but lure believers toward destruction, much like the Sirens in The Odyssey.

• An Identity Change: Understanding that salvation isn't just a location change from dark to light, but a total transformation of who you are in Christ.

• Discerning What Pleases the Lord: Testing daily choices against Scripture, like holding pottery up to the sun to inspect it for hidden cracks.

• Exposing Darkness Without Being "Sin Police": How living an authentic, Christlike life naturally reveals darkness in the world without requiring self-righteous judgment.

• The Charge to Wake Up: Four diagnostic questions to help believers bring hidden sins into the open and experience Christ’s transforming light.

In this message on Ephesians 5:1–5, Tyler unpacks how Paul equips believers to distinguish between real, Christlike love and the counterfeit versions offered by the world. Tyler explains that spiritual growth begins with understanding identity: believers do not imitate God to earn a place in His family, but because they are already His beloved children. Using an illustration of his young son mimicking his actions at church, Tyler highlights how gospel imitation flows naturally out of secure belonging, contrasting the peace of a child with the anxious performance of an employee.

Turning to Ephesians 5:2, Tyler examines the three defining marks of real love modeled by Jesus—love steps up, love serves, and love sacrifices. He then contrasts this self-giving love with the cultural counterfeits of sexual immorality, impurity, and covetousness, demonstrating how these sins stem from a single root craving: self-worship and taking for oneself. Tyler closes by navigating Paul's strong warnings in verses 3–5, offering comfort to struggling believers by distinguishing between condemnation that drives people away in shame and Holy Spirit conviction that leads to repentance.

Key Topics:

• Identity Before Imitation: Why imitating God is a slow, steady progression flowing from our secure status as beloved children rather than a trial period to earn a spot at God's table.

• The Three Marks of Real Love: How Christ’s love actively steps up without waiting to be asked, serves others for their good, and sacrifices fully as a fragrant offering to God.

• Two Counterfeits, One Craving: Why sexual immorality and covetousness are two sides of the same coin, replacing the worship of God with the worship of self.

• Understanding Kingdom Warnings: Reading Paul’s warning about inheritance in light of the secure promises in Ephesians chapter 1.

• Condemnation vs. Conviction: Identifying whether feelings of guilt are the enemy’s voice causing shame and distance or the Holy Spirit’s conviction drawing us toward repentance and grace.

• Practical Life Audit: Four diagnostic questions to evaluate whether we are stepping up in love, waiting to be served, using others, or harboring covetousness.

Using the iconic story of the Grinch, Pastor Dalton illustrates how a heart can transform from being "two sizes too small"—isolated, bitter, and focused on taking—to overflowing with love and a desire to give. Continuing through Ephesians 4:25–32, Dalton explores how Jesus replaces our hard, desensitized hearts with tender hearts that reflect His grace. Reminding us that believers no longer live at their "old address" of sin, this message challenges us to stop running on spiritual cruise control and actively put off the habits of the old self.

Dalton walks through five practical contrasts between the old calloused heart and the new tender heart in Christ: moving from deceit to truth-telling, rash anger to prayerful response, stealing to radical generosity, corrupting talk to edifying encouragement, and bitterness to Christlike forgiveness. Anchored in God's promise to replace our stony hearts with hearts of flesh, we are reminded that because God has completely canceled our debt, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to extend that same forgiveness to others.

Key Topics:

• The Grinch and Heart Transformation: How moving from a self-serving, hard heart to a tender, giving heart reflects the radical inner change Jesus accomplishes in a believer.

• Callous Hearts Lie vs. Tender Hearts Tell the Truth: Why minor exaggerations, convenient lies, and hidden motives create division, using the picture of how a body suffers when its internal signals lie.

• Anger Without Sin: Understanding the difference between rash, destructive outbursts and Jesus's methodical, righteous anger when clearing the temple.

• From Taking to Generous Giving: Why the Christian call goes beyond avoiding bad behavior to actively serving others, highlighted by Jesus's lesson on the widow's two coins.

• Replacing Rotten Words with Edification: Why sarcastic jabs and filthy language rot the church body, and why believers must intentionally build each other up.

• Forgiveness as Debt Release: How understanding that we were sealed by the Holy Spirit and forgiven of an insurmountable debt enables us to freely forgive those who wrong us.

Over the span of seven years in college and grad school, Pastor Tyler lived in ten different places—from dorm rooms and duplexes to a host family’s home in Germany, a friend's blow-up mattress, and even a storage room for two months. With so many moves, muscle memory would occasionally take over on late, exhausting Friday nights. He’d look up and realize he had driven straight to the driveway of an old house where he no longer lived. He couldn't reside there anymore—his name was no longer on the lease—but his hands still knew the route.

Pastor Tyler opens this message with this relatable experience to reveal a deep spiritual truth: every believer who puts their faith in Jesus has changed their spiritual position and moved addresses. Diving into Ephesians 4:17–24, Tyler outlines the progression of Christian transformation across three vital movements: who we were, who we met, and who we are. We trace the anatomy of the old life as it moves from head to heart to hands, confront the subtle trap of an appetite that feels less while needing more, and discover why Christianity isn't a textbook subject you master, but a Person you come to know.

Key Topics:

• The Muscle Memory of the Old Self: Why returning to old, destructive habits on autopilot doesn't mean you were never saved, but simply that your hands still remember the route to a house you no longer live in.

• Head, Heart, and Hands: Breaking down Paul's anatomy of spiritual decay—how what we feed our minds shapes what we love in our hearts, and what we love ultimately drives what we do with our hands.

• The Good Father’s "No": Understanding why God withholding harmful desires isn't cruelty or restriction, but the loving protection of a Heavenly Parent who knows what lies ahead.

• Feeling Less, Wanting More: Examining the cycle of spiritual callousness and numbness, where desensitization leads to an unquenchable appetite for impurity.

• Learning a Person, Not a Subject: Exploring Paul’s unique phrase "learned Christ" to show that saving faith is built on personal encounter and relationship rather than just accumulating biblical data.

• Ditching the Prison Jumpsuit: Using the illustration of a pardoned prisoner to explain why believers don't put away sin to become free, but put away sin because they are already free co-heirs in a house bought by Christ's blood.

Remember the terrifying, exhilarating moment you learned to ride a bike? You probably had a parent or an older sibling running alongside you with a stabilizing hand on the back of the seat. That hand provided comfort, courage, and a steadying presence—but it wasn't meant to stay there forever. The ultimate goal was for the hand to lift so you could ride on your own, grow up, and eventually become the stabilizing hand for someone else. Pastor Tyler opens this transformative message with this beautiful picture to illustrate exactly what Jesus is doing within His church.

Stepping into Ephesians 4:7–16, a critical hinge point in Paul’s letter, Pastor Tyler breaks down the blueprint for a healthy, mature church using three distinct markers: the Giver, the gifts, and the goal. We discover a victorious, ascended King who doesn’t hoard the spoils of His cosmic triumph over sin and death, but generously pours them out onto His people. But these gifts aren't objects—they are gifted leaders given to the church for a very specific purpose. Learn how church leaders act as spiritual "personal trainers" or temporary "scaffolding," designed not to perform all the ministry themselves, but to equip everyday saints to step off the sidelines and into their true calling as ministers of the gospel.

Key Topics:

• The Stabilizing Hand: Using the universal memory of learning to ride a bike or swim to illustrate how God provides temporary support structures to help believers grow into maturity.

• The Generous Conquering King: Looking at Paul's use of Psalm 68 to contrast ancient, self-serving rulers with Jesus—a King who completely conquered death and gave the spoils away to His church.

• Spiritual Personal Trainers: Redefining the role of church leaders, shifting the perspective from leaders doing ministry to people to leaders doing ministry through people.

• Every Believer a Minister: Breaking down the Greek word katartizo (mending fishing nets) to show how every Christian is uniquely gifted and called to serve the body in both light and heavy capacities.

• Scaffolding vs. The Building: Sharing reflections from a recent trip to Morocco to explain why preaching and programs are merely temporary support structures, while the people themselves are God’s true building.

• Winds, Waves, and Grown-Up Faith: Examining the two primary obstacles that keep believers from growing into a steady, unshakeable Christ-likeness that resists cultural outrage and deceitful schemes.

What does it mean to be "worthy"? Whether you think of King Arthur proving his right to the throne by pulling Excalibur from the stone, or Thor struggling to lift his hammer because he hasn't yet earned the right to rule, our culture loves stories of heroes proving their worthiness. Even in everyday life, we encounter it—like the modern process of proving your "debt-worthiness" to a bank when trying to buy a house. Pastor Dalton opens this powerful message by contrasting our world's version of performance-based worth with the revolutionary truth found in the gospel.

Stepping into Ephesians 4:1–6, Pastor Dalton unpacks Paul’s urgent plea for the church to "walk in a manner worthy of the calling." Crucially, this isn't a command to earn your salvation or prove you deserve God's love. Your worthiness was already fully paid for and established by Jesus Christ on the cross. Discover how true Christian unity is built when we allow Jesus to grow richly in our hearts, enabling us to serve one another, bear each other’s burdens, and maintain the bond of peace by His Spirit.

Key Topics:

• The Cultural Myth of Worthiness: Exploring how popular legends, superhero stories, and even bank loan approvals train us to think worthiness is always earned through personal effort and performance.

• The Blueprint of the Call: Diving into Ephesians 4 to understand the distinction between striving to earn a relationship with God versus walking in a way that honors the gift we've already received.

• Jesus is the Worthy One: Resting in the reality that Christ alone met the standard of perfection, and our identity is anchored securely in His finished work.

• Growing from the Inside Out: Why we cannot truly love others or maintain unity on our own independent strength; it requires the Holy Spirit growing Jesus' character within our hearts.

• Burdens, Service, and Peace: Practical ways the Riverside campus family can actively seek unity, cultivate a soft heart toward biblical correction, and intentionally share the gospel in the community this week.

If you have ever been part of a close-knit church community, you probably know the life-saving beauty of a "meal train". Pastor Dalton opens this message with the exciting news that he and his wife are expecting their fourth child this August. Joking about already being outnumbered and sleep-deprived, he highlights how incredible it is to have a church family step in with meals so you don't have to worry about cooking or dishes during the chaotic throes of a newborn. But as wonderful as tangible, earthly support networks are, they point to a much larger, cosmic reality of divine support.

Diving into Ephesians 3:14–21, Pastor Dalton walks us through Paul’s monumental prayer for the internal strength of the church. God doesn’t just want to provide for our external comfort; He desires to strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being so that Christ can dwell richly in our hearts. Discover what it means to be fully "rooted and grounded in love," and learn how to rest in a salvation that you didn't have to earn, but was freely given as a perfect gift through Jesus Christ. Tune in to explore the four dimensions of a love that completely surpasses human logic—the breadth, length, depth, and height of the unknowable love of Jesus.

Key Topics:

• Outnumbered and Sleep-Deprived: Pastor Dalton shares a fun family update about expecting baby number four in August, using the relief of community meal trains to illustrate the power of a supportive church family.

• Strengthened from the Inside Out: Unpacking Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 for God to place His Spirit deep within us, providing spiritual resilience that outlasts any physical trial.

• Rooted and Grounded: Understanding how our identity must be firmly anchored in God's unconditional affection rather than our own fluctuating performance or independence.

• The Dimensions of Christ’s Affection: Exploring the immense scale—the breadth, height, depth, and length—of a Savior whose love is wide enough to cover every single one of our failures.

• A Gift Freely Given: Rejoicing in the liberating truth that Christ paid our price in full, allowing us to approach God with bold confidence because His grace is far greater than all our sin.

About 15 years ago, Pastor Tyler’s mentor, Cameron, took him out to lunch and handed him the leadership of a thriving college ministry that he had spent 15 years building. Along with being entrusted with 250 weekly students, 70 student leaders, and 10 staff members, Cameron handed Tyler a physical symbol of this transition: a blue metal baton engraved with "2nd Timothy 2". To make the handoff even more daunting, Cameron announced he was going completely dark on a sabbatical—instructing Tyler not to contact him unless the ministry was literally burning to the ground. We all know what it feels like to be handed a heavy responsibility that feels far larger than our independent strength can handle.

In this message focusing on Ephesians 3:1–13, Pastor Tyler connects this personal handoff to the ultimate spiritual stewardship given to the church. The Apostle Paul describes himself as a steward of a magnificent, once-hidden mystery: that through the gospel, everyone has equal access, full citizenship, and inheritance in Christ Jesus. God has chosen the church to be His active display case, putting His multi-faceted wisdom on cosmic display. Discover how to stop relying on your own arguments or eloquence, anchor your life in the eternal truth of Scripture, and faithfully carry the baton of Christ’s unsearchable riches into your home, workplace, and community.

Key Topics:

• The Passing of the Baton: Tyler shares a powerful story about his mentor Cameron handing off a large college ministry along with a blue metal baton engraved with 2nd Timothy 2:2, illustrating the weight and privilege of spiritual stewardship.

• Entrusted with the Mystery: Unpacking Paul’s role in Ephesians 3 as a steward of God's grace, tasked with revealing the once-hidden mystery that Gentiles are full, equal heirs in the body of Christ.

• The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: Exploring the infinite, inexhaustible treasures available to every believer through Jesus, which far exceed any earthly inheritance or independent human strength.

• The Church on Cosmic Display: Recognizing that the church is God's active, living showcase designed to put His multi-faceted wisdom on display to both the earthly world and spiritual realms.

• Bold Access and Practical Conversations: Relying on the Holy Spirit to guide our everyday routines, trusting that God's eternal Word stands the test of time and empowers us to speak truth at the right moment without needing every counter-argument figured out beforehand.

If you scroll through your social media feed today, you are almost guaranteed to see a "before and after" transformation photo. Whether it’s a radical weight loss program, a targeted fitness app promising to get 50-something men back in military shape, a hair loss miracle cure, or a skincare ointment erasing crow's feet, we are captivated by dramatic turnarounds.

In this message, Pastor Matt dives into the second half of Ephesians chapter 2 to look at the most significant "before and after" picture in human history. Paul paints a stark portrait of our spiritual reality before Christ: we were absolute outsiders—foreigners excluded from the citizenship of God's people, completely hopeless, and alienated from the Creator. But the after picture changes everything. Through the blood of Jesus, the historic "wall of hostility" that divided humanity has been utterly demolished. Discover how Christ didn't just mend relationships, but created an entirely new humanity where we are welcomed as full citizens, adopted into the family, and being built together into a holy temple where God dwells. This message challenges us to drop our personal animosities, cultivate deep gratitude for our spiritual access, and find the boldness to share this life-giving truth with the world.

Key Topics:

• The Infinite Scroll of Turnarounds: Exploring our cultural fascination with before-and-after marketing ads—from thinning hair to skincare transformations—and how they point to a deeper longing for change.

• Life as a Spiritual Foreigner: Facing the sobering reality of what it meant to be "far off"—living without Christ, without a covenant, and without hope in the world.

• Dismantling the Wall of Hostility: Unpacking how Jesus’ work on the cross decisively tore down the deep-seated divisions of race, class, and prejudice to forge peace.

• The Rights of Citizenship and Family: Celebrating our transition from spiritual immigrants to full citizens and beloved members of God’s personal household.

• Beggars Sharing Bread: Overcoming the fear of sharing our faith by remembering that evangelism isn’t about showing off our own strength, but simply telling other beggars where we found the bread.