Making Friends and Loving Those Who Hurt Us
July 28, 2024 • Trey Van Camp • Luke 6:27–36, James 3:13–18
As our church looks ahead to the rest of the year, we want to pause and remind ourselves of the vision we started the year with: to make friends and love other people. However, most of us have realized by now how difficult this really is. Jesus holds us to a high standard by commanding us to love our enemies in https://biblia.com/bible/csb/luke%206, and so does James when he tells us to confront our bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in https://biblia.com/bible/csb/james%203. But the gospel gives us hope. By doing the holy work of faith, dying to ourselves, and practicing agape love, we can maintain the friends we’ve made this year and truly love both our friends and our enemies.
Feasting with the Sinner [Hospitality E4]
February 25, 2024 • Trey Van Camp • Luke 7:34–50
Many of Jesus’ interactions with the lost happened over a meal. In https://biblia.com/bible/csb/luke%207.34, Jesus is accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” The Gospel of Luke illustrates this well: In https://biblia.com/bible/csb/luke%205, Jesus is described dining with tax collectors and sinners at a man named Levi’s house. Jesus is anointed by a sinful woman while eating at a Pharisee’s home in https://biblia.com/bible/csb/luke%207. And when Jesus forgives and restores Zacchaeus, the Jewish tax collector in https://biblia.com/bible/csb/luke%2019, he first invites himself over for a meal. Bottom line: Jesus’ proximity to those living counter to the way of God was scandalous to the self-righteous and life-giving to the self-rejecting. Again, if seeking and saving the lost was his mission, then sharing a meal with them was his method. As Jesus’ disciples, we’re instructed to do the same. By practicing hospitality, we create a safe space for those opposed to the way of Jesus to encounter and experience the love of God. We don’t affirm people’s sin, but we do affirm that they’re loved and valued image-bearers of God.
Feasting with the Stranger [Hospitality E3]
February 18, 2024 • Trey Van Camp • Luke 14:12–24
If “loving your neighbor as yourself” was the second most important commandment in the scriptures according to Jesus, then it’s something we should make a regular part of our day-to-day life. But in our hyper-individualistic and self-serving culture, few of us actually get to know the strangers we interact with on a daily basis. Jesus and his disciples faced similar issues in their day. Loving their neighbors was difficult because of boundary lines and discrimination that occurred between Jews and Gentiles. Later in the biblical story, the early church faced violent opposition and persecution due to their commitment to King Jesus. And yet, the more meals they shared with their “enemies,” the more their enemies became friends. Over time, those friends became part of the family of God. Henri Nouwen defines hospitality this way: “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.” People will always expect our hostility until they experience our hospitality. By getting to know the neighbors in our lives, even our actual neighborhood neighbors, we create spaces and opportunities to serve those around us and demonstrate the love of God.
Material Simplicity E2
August 13, 2023 • Trey Van Camp • Matthew 6:22–25, Luke 12:13–21
As Americans our identities are often shaped by the quantity and quality of the stuff we own. Security, stability, and satisfaction are only possible when we buy and accumulate more wealth. And while we’re really after deep contentment, we falsely believe that the very joy we’re searching for is still on the other side of the next purchase. Cue our endless cycle of buying more so we can desire less. But Jesus offers us a better way. He does this by confronting our attachment to our stuff and our lack of trust in him, and also by modelling a life of simplicity. When we study the Scriptures, we find a deeper truth than the lie we’re trained to believe — real contentment is actually found by limiting what we own and increasing what we give.
Story (E2)
May 14, 2023 • Trey Van Camp, Caleb Martinez • Psalm 119:27–37, Luke 4:16–21, Isaiah 8:11–13
All of us are living by a story. We tell ourselves stories about our identity, our purpose, and about how to find meaning and success in life. We also tell ourselves stories about the world around us, how it got this way, and how to fix it. The stories we believe end up being the stories we live out. But these stories we tell ourselves often fall short of reality. The Bible presents us with true reality, and it does so by telling us a story. Each part of Scripture, each book, each genre, each poem, and each law, fit together to tell one unified story that leads us to Jesus. And by learning to read Scripture as a story.
Zechariah & The Mission of God
December 5, 2021 • Trey Van Camp • Luke 1
Why celebrate Christmas? To rejoice in the first coming of Christ and look forward to His 2nd and 3rd coming. The characters of Christmas remind us God’s delays are not God’s denials. In the midst of heartache, we can hold to the Christmas truth that God is not punishing us but preparing us.