The Moment A Murderer Became a Minister
June 16, 2024 • Trey Van Camp • Genesis 15:6, Psalm 106:28–31, Acts 9:1–19, Philippians 3:4–9, 2 Corinthians 12:9
In Acts 9 we meet Saul, a murderer and enemy of the new Christian movement. Saul has built his life around what he believes is the righteous way of God: zealously eradicating evil from the world. But then, in a moment, Saul is transformed. He meets the risen Jesus and learns that the righteousness of God doesn’t come by our earthly power, violence, or force. Instead, it comes through Christ. God in human flesh, coming to take our punishment and suffer violence on our behalf. We can learn from Saul by accepting our own brokenness and inability to achieve righteousness. Like Saul, we learn that to be a follower of Jesus is to let him be a warrior for us against sin and evil. Jesus is our only hope and confidence. Acts 9:1-19 CSB
Eat It (E3)
May 21, 2023 • Trey Van Camp • Joshua 1:7–8, Revelation 10:9–10, Psalm 1
All of us tend to twist the Bible to mean something it doesn’t or tame the Bible to make its teachings more palatable for us. But both ways of handling Scripture lead to our destruction and deformation. Instead, throughout the Scriptures, one of the most common metaphors for engaging with God’s word is eating it. We eat the text when we meditate on it, study it, and submit ourselves to it. We chew on passages, mulling their truths over and over in our minds and rethinking how we’re living our lives in light of what the Bible commands. And while this way of meditating on the Bible confronts and challenges us, it’s also the way we allow Scripture to form us into better followers of Jesus.
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.