We are starting a new series called “Seeing Jesus,” going through the Gospel of Mark together. Mark was written for one purpose: to help us to see Jesus. Mark is one of four gospels in the Bible, and at the time, a gospel was a new kind of writing. It wasn’t a biography, it wasn’t just a narrative, it wasn’t just a retelling of the life of Jesus. A gospel came about so that we could not just read about Jesus, but so that we could see Him clearly enough to see His uniqueness and beauty for ourselves and to let that seeing affect us. How did He talk? Who did He pay attention to and love? What made Him angry and disappointed? What made Him rejoice? We need to see Jesus clearly because our world sees Jesus in a myriad of ways; the political Jesus, the all accepting and tolerant Jesus, the angry Jesus, the distant Jesus. We need to go back to the gospels—to the testimony of those who walked and talked with Jesus—to see Jesus as He really is.

The New York Times published an article about New Year’s Resolutions a couple of weeks ago. And the idea now in 2025 is that making New Year’s Resolutions is actually unhealthy because it means you aren’t truly accepting yourself; it isn’t loving yourself well to admit that there are areas that you want to change. It seems like our culture has finally become too fragile to make New Years’ Resolutions. In all fairness, it can be defeating to simply build a wall of human resolve that hopes to withstand the storms of daily life. Busyness, unexpected turns, procrastination and bad habits batter our walls of resolution until they break down and we just feel worse. A resolution is basically a wall of our will against the storms of life; a line in the sand against the rising tide of life’s problems. And sand, the Bible says, is exactly the problem. Jesus says that a life that weathers the storms is not determined by the height or the thickness of the walls we build, but by the foundation upon which those walls are built. Resolutions are good, but we need a firm foundation to put those walls upon. Walls that are built on sand just keep sinking lower and lower so we have to constantly work to keep building them higher and higher. And lines in the sand have a tendency to be erased by rising tides of daily life. So what is the foundation? Join us in the gospel of Matthew as we learn that the firm foundation of our lives is hearing and doing the words of Jesus.

The last paragraph of Luke 2 records the only story of Jesus in His childhood within the New Testament. It is an extraordinary story of a child prodigy who amazes the crowds in Jerusalem with His wisdom and love for God. Then, this story ends with His return to Nazareth, where He will live in obscurity for nearly eighteen years before His ministry begins. Join us as we learn how this story can inform us what it means for Jesus to be human as we walk with Him through the ordinary courses of our lives (ft. Joel Stanton, Member at Elevate Hope Centennial).

When was the last time you got some good news? We are inundated with news these days, most of it not good, and in fact, most of it downright terrible. “Good” news is an interesting phrase because news is just the retelling of something that happened. And then only after we evaluate it in relation to ourselves do we determine if it’s good or bad. In Luke 2 when we meet the lowly shepherds keeping watch over their flock at night, an angel tears open heaven and makes a bold announcement. It is the same news that an angel just told Joseph in Matthew 1. For us it may be an old and familiar story, but for those shepherds and for Joseph and for Mary and the wise men who showed up from the East, it was breaking news of the best kind.

In our modern age of streaming movies and binge watching shows, .it isn’t often that we get to feel the anxiety of a cliffhanger ending to our favorite dramas. Rather than wait a year for the sequel to hit theaters, or even just a week for the next episode…, we can just hit “Play Next” and relieve our anxiety. To be fair, books are that way too though, and I confess on many an occasion flipping to the last page of a book when I just couldn’t take the suspense. But when we do that we miss out. The joy of the last page is not as deep when you have missed the suffering, the waiting, and the highs and lows of the story. And so it is with Ruth; today we come to the final page. We have covered over 10 years of loss, bitterness, joy, suffering, poverty, hopes raised and hopes dashed. And from day one we have seen God just below the surface of everything that has been happening; always present but never seen, except in the kindness and love shown by Ruth and Boaz. God only shows His face in this drama, as He even does today, through the actions of His people. So this morning we get to see the end of the story, which, like all good stories, is just the beginning of another, greater story that we get to remember every Christmas Eve.

Christmas comes with a lot of waiting. Waiting in line at the post office, waiting in traffic, waiting for packages to arrive in time, waiting for cookies to be done. No one likes to wait, particularly at Christmas. If there is something I really want and there is a chance that no one will get it for me, I have been known to just take matters into my own hands and buy myself the gift rather than wait on someone to give it to me. What about you, what do you do when you are tired of waiting? In the suburbs we often just power over waiting with our own means. When stuck in traffic, we pay to get in the express lane. When waiting at the airport we pay for PreCheck. When waiting for a package we pay to have it come overnight. But what about when we are waiting on God? When there are things we can’t just power over? It seems like to wait is to admit in some way that you are human. Advent is a time when we are reminded of what it was like to be waiting for our Redeemer. For about 400 years the world lay in sin and error pining with seemingly no word from God about what His plan was. When we are tired of waiting on God, the temptation is always to just take matters into our own hands. The temptation when waiting on God is to either sin or to get cynical. We are in Ruth 3 this morning; Naomi, Ruth and Boaz have all been waiting on God to get something they want. What will they do when it doesn’t seem to happen?

One of our family traditions around Christmas time is a Secret Santa. The idea of Secret Santa is that you draw names out of a hat and then you give a gift to that person on Christmas morning and it’s a surprise who gave it to them. One year, our kids were having a rough season of not getting along with each other, so we added a new element to the Secret Santa. In addition to just a present on Christmas morning, you had to secretly do kind things for that family member all through the month of December without them knowing it. It didn’t always work, but it did happen plenty of times. It was so fun to see someone come down and say, “My bed was made! Who did that?” or “My chore was done this morning!” Through the whole month of December there was this hidden undercurrent of kindness running through your life, and you had no idea who was doing it so you couldn’t give any credit to the one behind the scenes showing you kindness until the last day. The story of Ruth is a story of God at work behind the scenes, under the surface. Behind the scenes of love, behind the scenes of kindness, and behind the scenes of suffering and struggle. And that is where we pick up in Ruth 2.

For every good story out there, there is a prequel waiting to be told. We know this about our favorite stories, right? It’s not just about milking obscure plot lines for more cash, we simply need to know: How did the rebels get access to those Death Star plans? Where did Gollum come from? How did Wolverine get those claws? How did the witch become Wicked? Behind every good story is a prequel waiting to be known. When we think of the Christmas story we begin with the opening line of Matthew 1:18, but before verse 18 there are 17 other verses, over 40 other names. Before he gets to the birth of our Redeemer, Matthew starts the story like this. Each one of those names leading up to the birth of the Savior has a story. But only one of them gets her own book. Ruth is the only book in the Old Testament named for a non-Israelite. Jewish Rabbis consider Ruth to be the crown jewel of the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Ruth was so important to them that they didn’t know where to put it in the order of Old Testament books because it embodies the heart and the Spirit of every single book in the Old Testament. All of Old Testament Scripture points to the coming of our Savior and redeemer. But in Ruth all of those hopes, fears and promises come to us in a story. A story about how the plan of salvation hung precariously in the balance of human sin and divine faithfulness. How Christmas was saved by an immigrant girl who was willing to give up everything to show the little town of Bethlehem what God is really like. For the next four weeks of Advent we will be in this amazing prequel to the Christmas story that I hope will quickly become one of your favorite stories.

Join us this Sunday as we once again dive into Exodus 20 to look at the second commandment — You shall not make for yourself an image. (ft. Colin Campbell, Member at Elevate Hope Centennial).

Join us this Sunday as we once again dive into Exodus 20 to look at the fourth commandment — Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. (ft. Colin Campbell, Member at Elevate Hope Centennial).

This morning is our final Sunday in our series talking about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and we are going to talk about the Holy Spirit as the Sending Spirit; the one who sends us out. Just as Jesus was sent out by the Father, The Spirit Himself is sent out by the Father and the Son. So it’s no surprise that when the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts, He doesn’t lead Christians away from their world but sends them out into it. What exactly does the Spirit send His people out to do? Christians often focus on the power of the Spirit. We want His power to heal, to see miracles, the power to change, power in prayer. It is interesting, though, what the main thing that Scripture says the Spirit gives power for. The immediate result of the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2 was that the apostles began to proclaim Christ. The Sending Spirit sends us out to be witnesses to the world.

As we continue looking at the person and work of the Holy Spirit this morning, the Bible says that God not only gives us the extraordinary gift of our salvation, the gift of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself, but through the Holy Spirit gives us what the Bible calls spiritual gifts or gifts from the Spirit. Spiritual gifts can be easily misunderstood. It’s why Paul starts our passage this morning by saying, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.” One of the biggest misunderstandings about spiritual gifts are who they are for. A lot of spiritual gift inventories or tests out there seem to lead us to believe that Spiritual gifts are for our own fulfillment. But 1 Corinthians 12:7 says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The gifts the Spirit gives us are meant to both bless us, but mostly to be given away to bless the local body of Christ where he has put us. Our Scripture this morning comes from 1 Corinthians 12. Let’s read it together.

As we continue looking at the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, we see that one of the main things that the Holy Spirit has done is give us freedom from our enslavement to sin. That freedom was purchased for us by our new master, Jesus Christ, and personally delivered to us by the Spirit. And yet sin calls out to us daily to return to it. The war that we now fight with our former master is the process the Bible calls our sanctification. And it is now the main work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. Let’s read our text this morning, beginning in Romans 6.

WhitSunday, more commonly recognized as Pentecost Sunday, was celebrated as the second-most important Christian holiday from around medieval times all the way until 1972. Christmas was celebrated as the birthday of Jesus; Pentecost Sunday was celebrated as the birthday of the church. What has happened to all of the joy and festivity surrounding this second most joyful day of the year in the Christian life? Since WhitSunday was a moveable holiday, you didn’t know when it would come each year. By 1972, people had grown tired of the uncertainty and unpredictability of when their day of rest would come each year. So in 1972, after 600 years of celebration, WhitSunday was renamed the Spring Bank Holiday and placed on the last Monday of May. And to this day it has been largely forgotten. Ironically, no one forgets the birthday of Jesus. But no one remembers the birthday of the church. No one forgets the resurrection of Jesus. But no one remembers the resurrection of each and every follower of Jesus into new life that the Holy Spirit brings. As we are in a series on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we come to Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit was poured out in a new way on a small band of disciples, huddled upstairs in a home 50 days after Jesus rose from the grave. What happened on that first WhitSunday, the first Pentecost? Join us this morning in Acts 2.

Our God is a faithful God, but we as His people often forget His past faithfulness, fail to listen to His voice, and fall in love with the false gods and idols this world has to offer. Let us hear God’s response to our unfaithfulness with His own steadfast and unfailing love: “If My people would only listen to Me, if Israel would only follow My ways, how quickly I would subdue their enemies and turn My hand against their foes! Those who hate the Lord would cringe before Him, and their punishment would last forever. But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” - Psalm 81:13-16 (ft. Chad Donohoe, Pastor of Community Life at Deer Creek Church).

We are in a series looking at the person and work of the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture. This morning, we will be looking at John 14-16 where Jesus describes how He and His Father want to dwell again with humanity. And we will also come to know how we come to receive all the benefits that the Son has come to offer us: through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

These days in our modern world we are able to constantly know what’s going on all over our city, all over the world, at all times. It can be frightening and exhausting. It can seem like our world is just an endless cycle of people and things getting worse. People are more and more divided that ever before; war seems to be building everywhere. More and more ethical and moral compromise are demanded of Americans every day. The Bible says that all of this was put in motion the moment that the first man Adam responded to the invitation “You can be just like God.” But what if we could have a do-over, a second chance to go back to the garden and win this time? The Bible says we can. We are in a series looking at the person and work of the Holy Spirit throughout the Bible. Last week we looked at the unique coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus at His baptism, and this week we will look at the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness to make a new way for humanity.

There is something shocking and seemingly unjust in the universe when the gift that the birthday kid gives is greater than the gifts that the party goers are able to bring to the party. But that is exactly what happened at Jesus’ first birthday party. I know it’s shocking to talk about the first two chapters of the Gospels outside of the month of December, but at His birth Jesus was given gifts by kings, but the real reason that He came was to give us a gift. He stepped into our darkness and our exhaustion and our hopelessness to bring us the greatest gift beyond anything our frail humanity had experienced up to that point. And Jesus’ gift to us that was set in motion long before He was born that December night would make the gold, frankincense and myrrh He received look like trinkets in a goody bag. That gift is the gift of Himself, given to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. How did it come to be that He could pour out the gift of the personal presence of the Holy Spirit so freely to us? That is what we will look at this morning as we continue our exciting journey looking at the goal of our salvation—the coming of the Holy Spirit.