Sermons

Bible Text: Ruth 2 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | All the world’s a stage, and all its people merely players. But there’s a director, too, and if we study His art carefully, we’ll come to recognize His touches. So it is in the story of Ruth and Boaz, so it is when we seek to find our place in God’s drama, called all history. And He has given us each a role – what’s yours? (Ruth 2)

Bible Text: Judges 17 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | We’re in a “checkers” world: the goal is to get to “King Me.” Then we can win. But in real life, that’s a losing proposition because life is about King Me, we forget discipline, our religion becomes empty, and we betray our own destiny. It’s a good thing that we can know King Jesus. He loves us enough to keep us in line, to hold us in community, and to keep calling us to follow Him. Not King Me, but The King and I.

Bible Text: Leviticus 25:1-23 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | Our modern world and economy is based on the value of productivity. That’s why we so value things that make us work faster or smarter or more efficiently or whatever. But when we produce more, we use more. At least we can then get more, so we can have more.  How exhausting!  Leviticus 25 may not apply directly today, but God’s ideas of Sabbath and Jubilee still matter for His world today.  

Bible Text: Leviticus 5:1-13 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | Sin is like weeds. It grows, spreads, and somehow regrows when you think you’ve killed it. A holy life before a Holy God takes constant maintenance. But then Leviticus 5 goes and makes clear that even our unintentional impurities and sins are still sins and even the unintentionality itself calls for sacrifice. There’s a good moral lesson there, but also a spiritual one: the weeds need something more potent than maintenance to get rid of them for good.

Bible Text: Jeremiah 6:1-15 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | Ever put a band-aid on a wound that needed stitches instead? How did that work out? Jeremiah brings a word to God’s people about their blithe inability to address a deep collective wound among them. Even their leaders are crying “peace” when there is not any real peace, especially not for the oppressed. This leads to God’s judgement via Babylon, which is a last-ditch emergency surgery to take to excise the infection of the deep wound. Sometimes the church can put band-aids on deep wounds, too. Do we have the strength of calling to do the necessary surgery?

Bible Text: Ephesians 4:1-16 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | The context of Ephesians 4, in which Christians are told to maintain unity and take on diverse roles in the body of Christ, all comes as a “therefore.” It’s actually because of the end of chapter 3 that chapter 4 makes sense: “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine…” If you want to the see the immeasurably more, it means joining God in His work through the Church.

Bible Text: Genesis 17:1-22 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | Covenant is almost too big of a theme in the Bible to cover even in a series. There are variations, multiple key people, nuances, conditions, unconditions, thousands of years, fulfillments, etc. But underneath all that is the firm reality of God’s faithfulness, and covenant-based signs of that faithfulness are all around us. Names, marks, and people. It was that way for Abraham and Sarah, and if you look, it’s that way for you, too.

Bible Text: Colossians 1:1-14 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | 10 years ago January, two congregations voted to merge and become New Hope Church. The decade since then has had all kinds of surprises, challenges, acts of God, and pain… but God. God has been in it, and we can tell because of the faith, love, and hope lived among us. It all begins with the grace that grows us, and so all our best is reflected glory and brings thanks to God.

Bible Text: Job 9 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | Where does evil come from? From humans wounded in childhood? From society that oppresses this or that group? From a basic survival instinct that means we treat others as in competition with us? The book of Job wonders all this and more, but also reveals that evil, while partly a human problem, is bigger than just human sin. But then what to do? If only there were an arbiter – someone to advocate for us broken human beings to God, who is our only hope.

Bible Text: Genesis 2 | Preacher: Pastor Daniel Roels | What is a human life worth? There’s no answer to that question without also asking “what am I worth?” Yet for all the academic ways we handle human beings, in real life, we humans spend a lot of time devaluing ourselves and others. That’s why it’s a relief if we understand that our value is rooted in being created by God, for a purpose, and for relationships