This is the first lesson in a series on how the church can or should interact with the world around it, in politics, culture, social pressures, communities, etc. In this first sermon we consider the way God has always called his people out of the world to be something special or different, and lay the groundwork for what is to come.
(Preaching on the church in the world. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on January 4, 2026.)
Over the course of this year, I will be preaching through the Gospel of Luke, mostly at a pace of one chapter per week. We will do the first half over the first three months of the year, take a break, and then finish out the year by covering the second half of Luke in October-December. We begin with Luke 1, wherein Luke sets up the purpose and stakes of his account of the life of Jesus.
(Preaching through Luke. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on January 4, 2024.)
In the book of Revelation, we learn how God’s story of redemption, restoration, and reconciliation will end. We only get glimpses of what comes after, but the story of God’s plan to restore fallen creation to himself finds its climax and resolution. What will the end of the story look like, and when will the end come?
(Preaching on Revelation. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 28, 2025.)
“The dark triad” is technically a term from modern psychology, but I am co-opting it as a label for John’s categorization of temptation. Throughout the Bible, in important stories of temptation, you see the same triad. What is this “dark triad” of temptation?
(Preaching on temptation. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 21, 2025.)
There is an emotional, relational connection behind all the epistles that can be easy to overlook 2,000 years later. 1-3 John and 1-2 Thessalonians do a good job of foregrounding this connection between the writer and the reader, and inform us how church workers today should feel about the church.
(Preaching through the epistles. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 21, 2025.)
There are a lot of things that distract us from what really, eternally matters. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus emphasize this distinction over and over, in a variety of ways. What was Paul worried would distract the church, and how do we refocus on what really matters?
(Preaching through 1-2 Timothy and Titus. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 14, 2025.)
We are coming to the end of our year-long journey through the Bible story, but the end of the Bible is not the end of God’s story. As we read 1-2 Timothy and Titus, we see that Jesus’s apostles clearly intended his story to continue in the church. How did they intend for us to carry God’s story into the rest of history?
(Preaching through 1-2 Timothy and Titus. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 14, 2025.)
2 Peter and Jude are the most similar of any two books in the Bible (yes even possibly including the Gospels). What were Peter and Jude so concerned about in the early church, and how do their warnings matter for Christians today?
(Preaching on 2 Peter and Jude. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 7, 2025.)
This sermon is a bit of a preview of a series of lessons we will start in the new year. 1 Peter is a book addressed to “the elect exiles of the dispersion.” What does this title mean, who does it apply to, and why does it matter for the modern Christian?
(Preaching on 1 Peter. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on December 7, 2025.)
One of the things that should become quickly apparent as one reads through the letters of the New Testament is that the new life in Christ should not look like the old life before Christ. What does it mean to “put on the new self” and how does one go about doing that?
(Preaching through the New Testament epistles. This sermon was preached at the Dewey Church of Christ on November 30, 2025.)
Watts in the Word 