Sea Change Sermons

Proverbs 31 and the woman who fears the Lord, opened with thanks to a congregation that sent a generation of children to camp.

Ecclesiastes 1:8

Ecclesiastes 1:8 and the eye never satisfied with seeing. The key word is desire, and the question is what desire is actually for.

 January 11, 2026
 Sea Change Church
 Learning Curve: A Study of Proverbs S4E2: The Best Laid Plans 
Pastor Adam Stadtmiller 

Proverbs 16:1-9 ESV 
1 The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD. 2 All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit 3 Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. 4 The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. 5 Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished. 6 By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil. 7 When a man's ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. 8 Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. 9 The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. 

A study in the book of Proverbs. Ancient wisdom for a modern world. Covering scripture Proverbs 13:25 and 1 Timothy 6:6-10.

Proverbs 13:25 opens the January wisdom series, on appetite and enough — part of a deliberate year-long pass through every genre of Scripture.

The last Sunday of the year belongs to the youth pastor, and Vinny Iudici takes the passage about the tongue — a rudder, a bit, a spark in dry forest, and the one thing nobody has managed to tame.

His framing comes from Calvin: the tongue exists to reveal the heart. So this is not a message about language management. What comes out is evidence of what is in there.

He proves it at his own expense. As a boy he told an eleven-year-old girl, in front of everyone, that she looked like a boy. She ran to her mother in tears. He has never worked out what possessed him, and he clearly still carries it — which is exactly the argument. Small things said do not stay small.

Three takeaways. The faith you sing on Sunday should look the same on Monday: church Vinny and office Vinny and surfing Vinny and Costco Vinny should be the same person, and he credits his girlfriend with keeping him honest about the gap. Don't be a Hannah Montana Christian, which he explains for anyone who missed the Disney Channel — the wig on, the wig off, two lives running in parallel. And a passion to teach without a burden to study is only a desire to perform.

The test he leaves is three questions asked before speaking: is it true, is it kind, is it necessary.

Pastor Adam closes the year with a criticism fast heading into January.

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Christmas Eve, and Pastor Adam builds the message on a small word used twice in verse 5. Joseph goes to be registered with Mary, who is with child. With is the whole point; Emmanuel means God with us.

He sets that against something current. Reflecting on how readily people are forming attachments to systems built to please them, he draws the contrast he wants: a thing designed to work out what you want and give it to you is not a relationship. A relationship has give and take, and includes being told things you did not ask for.

How God came is the evidence. Not as an idea or a visitation, but as a Jew, into a people, into a particular family, through a specific lineage traceable to David. He did not stay at a distance. He moved in.

So the question for the night is margin: how much room are you willing to give God, particularly when it gets uncomfortable?

Adam is honest about the cost of asking that. He says plainly that he is currently surrounded by people whose prayers are not being answered the way he hoped, and does not resolve it. What he offers instead is his own account: looking back across his life, even the stretches when God felt absent, he can see he was never alone. He was lonely. That is not the same thing.

The invitation, for anyone who has been following a long time or not at all, is to define the relationship.

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Pastor Harry starts with Gabriel rather than Mary. There are only two angels named in scripture, and Gabriel appears to exactly three people — Daniel, Zechariah and Mary — and every time the subject is the Messiah.

That matters because of what happened the first time. Daniel was mid-prayer, confessing his people's sin and pleading for forgiveness, when Gabriel arrived with a decree: a time appointed to finish transgression, put an end to sin, and atone for iniquity. Centuries later the same messenger walks into a room in Nazareth. The annunciation is not a beginning; it is the answer to a prayer already prayed.

Mary is greeted as favoured one, and Harry lingers on what being told that does to a person. His illustration is a wrestling coach he loved and looked up to, whose stated belief in him produced a match won in thirty seconds — not because anything about his ability had changed.

Her reply carries the message. Told she is favoured, she answers that she is the servant of the Lord. Favour and service in the same breath, which Harry names as the Christian's own position.

On nothing being impossible he offers his own life without planning to: a pattern of brokenness in his family had convinced him as a boy that he would never marry, and he is eight years in with a two-year-old.

The ask is a daily fiat — let it be to me according to your word.

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One point this week, and Pastor Adam says so up front. The question underneath it is when to stay, when to fight, and when to run — and the answer here is run.

An angel wakes Joseph with two verbs. Rise, which shares a root with resurrection and means get up now. And flee, a present imperative meaning run and keep running until I say stop; the same word gives us fugitive. There is no explanation attached, and no timetable.

Egypt makes practical sense. It was the standard refuge for Jews in danger, it had an established community, and Herod's authority stopped at the border.

The observation Adam thinks gets missed is that God provided before he required. A family who could only afford two birds at the temple weeks earlier now has gold in the house, brought by strangers. The escape was funded before the escape was ordered — and he applies that to anyone trying to get out of something now, who has resources sitting unused because they have not been recognised as provision.

The takeaway is short. Delayed obedience is disobedience. God rarely shouts stay, and regularly whispers go.

The story on himself involves a school bully, a bus window, and a very bad decision to linger outside an arcade machine on a Saturday rather than ride away while he still could. He was caught, and he got hit. The lingering is the point.

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