Parables

Pastor Jimmy Harris | April 30, 2023

This morning Pastor Jimmy wrapped up the Parables series and in this parable from John 12, Jesus is saying if we are truly going to live, we have to be willing to die. The seed that dies bears much fruit.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. – Galatians 2:20-21

We can’t rule and reign over our own lives. King Jesus is inviting us to lay everything down and completely surrender with nothing held back in order to follow Him and make Him the Lord of our lives.

Pastor Rob Rogers | April 23, 2023

In this parable from Matthew 13, Jesus is telling us that the byproduct of a life wholly surrendered to Him is to bear fruit and multiply the Kingdom. Through His Word, Jesus is sowing seed in our lives, and maybe you haven’t seen fruit because you’ve been living with a hardened heart toward God and your relationship with Him has grown cold, or you love Jesus but when hard times come you get easily uprooted, or maybe your fear of man has caused you to be choked out…If this is you, ask God today to till up the land again, and remove the rocks and thorns from your life so that you may begin to bear fruit.

Pastor Rob Rogers | April 16, 2023

In the parable of The Ten Bridesmaids from Matthew 24, Jesus is giving a warning and an encouragement to the Church. Jesus is coming back for His bride, and He is telling us here to get ready and stay ready because if you wait until the Bridegroom shows up, it’ll be too late.

We need to be ready not only for the return of the Bridegroom, but also need to be ready to love and serve our neighbors, the lost, the hurting, broken, and confused…to bring light into dark places. Church, we have a responsibility to be ready with light in a world that gets darker by the day because as it gets darker and darker, the light gets brighter.

Pastor Rob Rogers | April 9, 2023

On this Easter Sunday, we looked at the three parables found in Luke 15; The Lost Coin, The Lost Sheep, and The Lost Sons. Through these parables, Jesus is showing us that God cares about lost things. He is absolutely set on pursuing and finding what has been lost. His heart is for lost people because you are His highest treasure! So much so that He sent His own Son to die – but Jesus didn’t just die, He rose! He conquered death, hell, and the grave so that through Him what is lost can be found.

Maybe today, you need to come home. Maybe you’ve wandered off, maybe you’ve been running, and today God is searching for you. And as soon as you take one step toward Him, He will run to you, embrace you, and say “Welcome home.”

Pastor Rob Rogers | March 26, 2023

With this parable, Jesus is reminding us that if we, like the rich man, place our entire identity in wealth or other temporary comforts, when those things are taken away there is nothing left. Riches, reputation, beauty, and possessions will all fade away, but when our life is centered on the Lord, even after every single pleasure this world has to offer is faded and gone, God is still our help because He alone remains constant through eternity.

Bill Spencer | March 19, 2023

This morning we had the privilege of being taught by Bill Spencer, the Executive Director of the Narrow Gate Foundation, on the Parable of the Talents found in Matthew 25. Bill has a special way of breaking stories down, putting them into the full context of Scripture, and helping us gain so much understanding.

Pastor Dylan Dawkins | March 12, 2023

This morning Pastor Dylan taught on the parable of The Pharisee and the Tax Collector found in Luke 18 in which both men go into the temple to pray and the Pharisee uses his prayer to elevate his righteous actions while condemning the shortcomings of others. The problem wasn’t his behavior but that he believed that he could be justified by his behavior. We can easily fall into this self-righteous trap of comparison by thinking that we are better than other Christians because of what we do for God or the way we live our lives, but we must humble ourselves, stop relying on ourselves for justification, and admit that we need Jesus to transform our lives and restore us to who God made us to be.

Pastor Rob Rogers | March 5, 2023

Every single one of us is like the fruitless fig tree in the parable from Luke 13 that deserves to be cut down. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but that’s not the end of the story. In this parable, the caretaker is committed to making this tree fruitful. That’s Jesus! He is doing all the work in order to create the conditions in us through which we would come to repentance. Our job as the tree is to simply cooperate with what the caretaker is doing so that we may bear fruit.

Pastor Rob Rogers | February 26, 2023

We have an enemy who loves to sow division, discouragement, duplicity, and distraction in an effort to sabotage the work of King Jesus in the world and in our lives. In this parable, Jesus is warning us of that and telling us it’s not our job to worry about the tares. One day the farmer is going to take care of the tares. Our job is to mature and multiply, and trust that the farmer knows what He’s doing.

Pastor Rob Rogers | February 19, 2023

This morning the Holy Spirit was moving in powerful ways during worship, so we decided to lean into that and follow His lead.

Pastor Rob Rogers | February 12, 2023

The parable of the workers in the vineyard found in Matthew 20 is not actually about the workers or the vineyard, it is about a gift that you’ve been given by an extravagantly generous God in heaven, who kept seeking out the one’s that no one else wanted. The brokenhearted, the beaten-down, the overlooked, the forgotten.

This story tells us that life is not fair, and thank God it’s not because when we deserved justice, God gave us mercy. When we deserved dismissal and rejection, He chose us and welcomed us in. He pursued us, He came down to invite us into His vineyard – to give us a place to belong, a purpose in life, and a home in heaven where we will be with Him for all of eternity. It is a gift that we could not earn, and do not deserve.

Pastor Jimmy Harris | February 5, 2023

In Mark 2, Jesus is saying that you wouldn’t use an old piece of cloth to patch a garment or put new wine into old wineskins. Similarly, we can’t just patch God onto our lives. We can’t combine our way of life and God’s way – we have to be totally transformed. We cannot receive the gospel of grace and remain the way that we are! We need a whole new wineskin, we need to be reborn, and we need to be “refilled” with the Spirit of God.

Pastor Rob Rogers | January 29, 2023

Sometimes when we pray God says “yes.” Other times, God says “no.” And then there are those times when God says, “not yet” – those are the times that we’re tempted to stop asking, seeking, and knocking. We live in a world of immediate gratification, and we’ve forgotten how to persist.

It’s in the “not yet” where we find out if we really trust God, His character, and His timing.

Is there something you’ve stopped praying for because you’ve lost sight of God’s purpose in it? Something you’d spent so long begging God for and it still hasn’t happened, and what began as a fervent prayer just began to fizzle out? Well today, God wants to breathe new life into those little embers, and reignite that fire. He wants to give you hope to begin again, to pray again, and not quit. He is a good, gracious, and just judge, and you can trust Him even when the answer is “no” or “not yet.”

Pastor Rob Rogers | January 22, 2023

This morning Pastor Rob taught on the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 who was forgiven an enormous debt that he could never repay and then turns around and demands repayment of a much less significant debt from another man who owed him.

Jesus uses this illustration because the reality is, we are all the first servant in the parable who owes a debt that cannot be paid. It’s a picture of the sin that Jesus paid for us. Some of us refuse to forgive because we just don’t feel like it or because we want the person to know how much they’ve harmed us, but some of us are unwilling to forgive others because we have forgotten how much we have been forgiven.

The danger is if we do not forgive from our heart, and we hold onto bitterness, resentment, and grudges, we are the one who pays the price for it. We will experience the torment of being consumed by the thing or the person we are refusing to forgive.

Pastor Rob Rogers | January 15, 2023

At the end of Matthew 7, Jesus tells a parable of two builders – one who built his house on the rock, and one who built his house on the sand. Jesus says in verse 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of Mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” He’s saying we have two options here…if we obey His commands and put His teachings into practice, we’re wise. And if we don’t, we’re a fool.

God’s invitation to us is to become active in our cooperation with Him as we live as people of the kingdom in a foreign land.