Our Goal Is Love

Have you ever stood at the edge of something you’ve never walked before? A diagnosis. A move. A new marriage or an empty house. In Joshua 3, a whole nation stands on the bank of the Jordan River at flood stage. They are staring at water they cannot cross and a land they have never seen.

God’s instructions are not what anyone expected. No bridge. No rafts. No map. Just a gold-covered box carried out in front of the people and a command to keep it in sight. “You have not passed this way before,” God tells them.

In this message we head to the water’s edge by way of a dim tunnel under the streets of Seattle. We look at why God told His people to keep their distance from the ark, and how a set-apart heart and an open Bible help us see where He is going. We meet a God who is loving, living, and leading. And we find out why a river crossing on the tenth day of the first month points straight to Jesus.

If you are facing a river of your own right now, this message is for you. Join us as we walk to the edge of the Jordan and learn to keep our eyes on the One who goes in first.

Every one of us knows someone who seems too far gone. Maybe that someone is you.

In Joshua 2, two spies slip into Jericho, and their very first stop is the house of a prostitute named Rahab. It looks like the story is about to go badly wrong. Rahab lies to the king's men four times to hide them. And yet God uses her.

Should it surprise us when sinners act like sinners? We have fallen hearts, and we live in a fallen world. When we swim in a sea of sin, it is impossible not to get some of it on us.

But Rahab does something that changes everything. She acknowledges the danger that is coming, and she turns to the Lord for mercy. A scarlet cord in her window becomes a sign of deliverance, and a woman with a past ends up in the family line of Jesus.

Join us as we walk verse by verse through Joshua 2 and discover the most sensible thing a sinner can do: turn to the God who is not surprised by our sin and who still saves sinners.

We like to think of independence as a strength and self-reliance as a virtue. Those who have it should be admired and those who don’t need to learn it. But the Bible teaches us something different.

At the end of Joshua 1, Israel’s new leader begins preparing the people to cross the Jordan. Joshua gives instructions to the leaders. The leaders carry those instructions to the people. Then he turns to the tribes who have already received their land east of the river. Their families were already settled. Their inheritance was already secure. But the rest of Israel still had much work ahead of them.

So Joshua reminded them of an earlier command from Moses: they could not settle into their rest while their brothers were still fighting for theirs.

That presses against something deep in us. Sin keeps telling us that life is about me, my needs, my problems, my family, and my future. But God keeps forming a people who belong to one another. We are called not only to receive help, but to give it. Not only to carry our own burdens, but to help carry the burdens of others.

This Sunday, we will look at what Joshua’s instructions teach us about community, service, and our need for one another.

Daniel was a man who faced one challenge after another. He lived in a world filled with stress, uncertainty, and opposition to his faith. Early in his life, he faced the threat of punishment because he would not defile himself by eating the king's food. Later, King Nebuchadnezzar's troubling dreams placed Daniel and the other wise men under the threat of death when no one could provide an interpretation. He also lived through the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Medes and Persians. Then, in his old age, he faced one of his greatest trials when he was thrown into the lions' den.

Yet through every challenge, Daniel remained faithful, and God continually gave him victory. How was that possible? Certainly, the Lord was with him, and we praise God for that wonderful truth. But Daniel 6:3 reveals another key to his remarkable testimony. The Bible says, "An excellent spirit was in him."

I believe that this excellent spirit was a major reason Daniel was able to stand strong in such an ungodly and hostile environment. This Sunday, I want to share a message entitled "Having an Excellent Spirit in Difficult Circumstances." As we study Daniel 6:1-10, we will discover why Daniel had an excellent spirit and how God can help us cultivate that same spirit in our lives today.

A recent study from UC Berkeley found that only 20 percent of people who see a moral wrong will do anything about it. The other 80 percent notice and keep walking. 

This message opens the book of Joshua at the moment of Moses's death; the Jordan is at flood stage, and one man is left holding everything God promised a nation.

God's first words to Joshua are not comforting. They are honest. Before God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous, He makes sure Joshua feels exactly what he lacks and exactly what is waiting on the far bank. There is a reason for that. The absence of fear is not courage. In fact, fear is required for true courage.

Three times in nine verses God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous, and once, at the center, to be strong and very courageous. In Hebrew, the word is doubled for emphasis. Inside that bracket, God gives Joshua three places to put his certainty, and not one of them is his own fearlessness.

Courage does not come from the absence of fear. It comes from where you place your certainty. Listen to this week's sermon and find out where Joshua placed his.

Jacob is dead, and Joseph's brothers are terrified.

They sold him. They watched him disappear toward Egypt. And for seventeen years they have lived under a brother who has every reason and every resource to settle the account. The only thing holding him back, as far as they can tell, was their father. Now their father is gone.

So they do what frightened people do. They send a message ahead of themselves rather than going in person. They lean on the authority of a dead man instead of trusting the mercy of a live one. They offer themselves as slaves, hoping to hand back exactly what they took.

And Joseph weeps.

This message walks through Genesis 50 and the three actions in Joseph's answer that make a heart of forgiveness possible.

God's judgment is not ours to carry. His mercy is not ours to keep.

This week we are in Genesis 25:19–28, in a marriage that started about as well as a relationship can start. Isaac was the son of promise. Rebekah came from a family significant enough that Scripture names her father and her brother. When they could not have children, Isaac pleaded with God on her behalf. They were doing the right things.

Then God gave Rebekah a word about the twins in her womb, and there is no indication she ever told her husband. Isaac loved Esau. Rebekah loved Jacob. Two boys with different profiles and different passions, which was never the problem. The problem was that they grew up with different parents.

Fractures in your marriage will lead to fault lines in your home.

Everybody wants to be accepted somewhere. It is why people join lodges and clubs. It is the number one reason young people join gangs. We are made for it.

Ephesians 1:6 says God has made us accepted in the beloved. The Greek word behind that phrase appears only twice in the whole Bible. The other time is when the angel tells Mary she is highly favored.

This message walks through four things. The place of acceptance. The price of acceptance. The profit of acceptance. And the practice of the accepted.

Are you in the beloved? Listen to this week's message and find out what that changes.

Last week we sat in the hard, honest mess of Abraham's household — the Hagar story, where fear and impatience turned a family in on itself. It wasn't a comfortable text. But it was a true one, because it looked a lot like our families too.

This Sunday we move ahead roughly sixty years, past Abraham, into the life of his son Isaac. And what we find is unsettling: the same sin, in the same place, coming out of the same family — only now it's the son wearing his father's mistakes. Same fear. Same lie. Same town, even. Like father, like son.

Turns out the things we swear we'll never repeat have a way of showing up in us anyway. Habits get handed down. Fears get inherited. Priorities pass quietly from one generation to the next, whether we mean to pass them along or not.

But that's not where Isaac's story ends, and it doesn't have to be where ours ends either. Come tomorrow, and let's ask it together: what are we handing down to the people who come after us? And is there anyone strong enough to break the chain?

God promised Abraham a nation, and then more than ten years passed with nothing to show for it. Sarah was still barren and well past the age when any of it made sense. So she did what most of us do when a promise runs long. She stopped waiting and built a plan of her own.

It was reasonable, and it seemed to work for about half a verse. Then it turned the house into a war zone. And the one who suffered the most was the person with the least power. This Sunday we opened Genesis 16 and followed the chapter in three moves, the cause of their impatience, the consequence of it, and the cure. That cure begins where you would not expect it, out in the desert, where God finds a runaway servant at a spring, calls her by name, and hands her a promise as large as the one he gave the patriarch. She walked away calling him El Roi, the God who sees.