I’ve been back at Crestview 2 weeks after my preaching and used them to preach through Luke 16.

On 7/14, I preached Luke 16:1-18, Jesus Knows Your Heart. The hope of this text is that because Jesus knows us, we can lean into Him and find acceptance and satisfaction.

On 7/21, I preached Luke 16:19-31, Adjusting Our Lives. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus invites us to listen to Jesus and find the new life He offers. I hope these sermons encourage you.

Oh, and check out the new graphic we just got for our Luke series, designed by Seth Yutzy.

My 5/5/24 sermon at Crestview, Be Careful (Luke 11:14-54), is online. This sermon went after a full chapter of teaching that related to people who are considering Jesus, but just aren’t sure of Him for one way or another. Jesus let us know what He was after in a very clean way in Luke 11:23 – “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” You could say from this that discipleship is about being with Him and gathering with Him. This sermon had plenty of head-scratching moves as we would think about them, but Jesus knows what He’s doing. I hope the sermon encouraged you.

My 4/21/24 sermon, Easily Distracted (Luke 10:25-42), is online. This sermon dug into Jesus’s testing and the self-justifying measures of a lawyer (the Good Samaritan), as well as the story of Mary and Martha at the end of Luke 10. The three paragraphs followed the 72 returning with joy, Jesus having joy in His Father’s will, and Jesus blessing His followers for what they have understood. So, these paragraphs showed ways we can easily be distracted from Jesus and His mission. I hope it encourages you.

My 3/17/24 sermon at Crestview, Hearing Jesus (Luke 8:22-56), is online. This sermon discussed the effects of hearing Jesus and recapped the four stories at the end of Luke 8: calming the storm, freeing the demon-possessed man, healing the woman with the issue of blood, and raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead. In each of these stories, Jesus speaks for effect: to move us in faith or to move us on the mission. I hope the sermon encourages you.

My 3/10/24 sermon at Crestview Bible is online. It was entitled Hearing and Jesus (Luke 8:1-21). This passage contains the parable of the sower, which also includes part of what Jesus is up to when He teaches using parables. I tried to show connections between our hearing and Jesus Himself in this sermon. To put it simply, how we hear is tied to the relationship we have with Him. I hope the sermon encourages you.

My 2/25/24 sermon at Crestview Bible Church, Jesus Comes Near (Luke 7:1-35), is online. In the sermon, I unpacked all the different types of people to whom Jesus draws near and apply them to us.

I also discussed how Jesus is way closer than any of us would dare imagine. I hope the sermon encourages you.

It’s been a good while since I updated things here. I enjoyed family vacation time in Chicago, took some college students to the Cross Conference, and executed a Youth Retreat for our church’s middle and high school students.

I’ve continued preaching in Luke’s Gospel. Here are some sermons:

12/17/23 – Jesus Brings Saving Certainty (Simeon/Anna)

12/31/23 – Growing Strong (Luke 2:39-52)

1/14/24 – Jesus Passes the Tests (Luke 3:21-4:13)

1/21/24 – The Mission of Jesus (Luke 4:14-30)

1/28/24 – Jesus Is Unique (Luke 4:31-5:16)

2/11/24 – Questions for Jesus (Luke 5:17-6:11)

2/18/24 – Jesus Calls Followers (Luke 6:12-49)

I hope the new year finds you well. I hope you grow closer to Jesus in any sermons you engage with.

My 12/3/23 sermon at Crestview, to kick off the first Sunday of Advent, was entitled Good News, Good Effects from Luke 1:57-80. This narrative includes the birth of John the Baptist and Zechariah’s Benedictus. My sermon dug into the effects of God’s promises breaking into our world and what we can expect when He moves in this way. I hope the sermon encourages you.

It was a fantastic day at our gathering. We enjoyed communion together, thinking about what it looks like to rejoice in Christ for what He’s done. People were hopping with energy after the big snowstorm the previous weekend. So, I hope you were encouraged. Have a great week.

I intentionally messed up the spelling so I could all “S”s in my title. We had a fantastic weekend in South Central Kansas. Saturday brought Hutchinson 9.5 inches of snow. It was lovely as a cold weather lover, with Winter as my favorite season and Christmas as my favorite holiday. I recognize it’s not enjoyable for many, so I will stop with my verbal excitement. I know you’ve all seen snow before, but here’s how it piled up on my back deck around 4:45 PM.

The church I pastor has a policy that we rarely cancel (like if it was overly icy or the power was out, we might) so snow didn’t keep us from gathering to worship. We encourage people nervous about getting out or needing to stay in to enjoy our livestream. We began our service with three teenagers sharing their testimony of coming to faith in Jesus and publicly announcing their allegiance to Jesus through baptism. We were “selebrating” with them. Here’s a pic we put on our church website as our students were bouncing after the service.

Finally, on top of this, I began a new sermon series on the Gospel of Luke. My first sermon dug into Luke’s purpose in compiling this Gospel account and contrasting two different responses we see in the opening narratives. The sermon, Responding to God’s Certainty (Luke 1:1-56), is now online. I hope you enjoy it. And, if you follow the link, baptisms were at the start of the service.

I hope you have a great week.