June 30, 2019

Beginning a verse-by-verse look at 1 John, Pastor Evan explores the joy we can find in Jesus and our call to share our faith, that others may know this joy.

July 7, 2019

John writes that we are to live out the command of Jesus to love one another.  He then says that if we say we are walking in the light, but hate a fellow believer, then we are not walking in the light but instead in darkness.  What is hate but anger that has become a habit? In this message, Pastor Evan explores ways to overcome habitual anger and work for reconciliation, so that we do not walk in the darkness but in the light.

July 14, 2019

John writes that if we love the world then we cannot really love the Father.  Pastor Evan explores the challenge of living in the world without taking on the world’s values and priorities, so that we can live and love as Jesus did.

July 21, 2019

In this world, people have a tendency to dwell at the extremes of pendulum swings. The same can be true in our faith: focusing so much on love that people forget doctrine and truth; focusing so much on the humanity of Christ that we lose sight of his divinity. Continuing this walk through the epistle of 1 John, Pastor Evan talks about the extremes and how it is we are to walk in the middle between these truths in order to be faithful to who God is.

July 28, 2019

What gives you hope in this world? For the apostle John, it was the idea of becoming like Jesus at his second coming, as we will become like him when we see him face-to-face. This is to be the hope of every Christian: to see him as he is, face-to-face, without a veil between him and us, so that we can know the satisfaction that comes with living into our created purpose as the adopted and loved children of God.

August 4, 2019

John declares that those who sin are not children of God but children of the devil and that those who sin do not know God. But. . .can we ever really be without sin? Is it possible to be perfect in this life? In this sermon, Pastor Evan exams this hard teaching and then explores what it is to seek to be like Jesus in this world.

August 11, 2019

The book of 1 John talks a great deal about love. In this verse-by-verse series through the book, there will be three sermons in all about love. In this second of those three sermons, Pastor Evan talks about what love is and what it isn’t, and how often love can be defined by action, thus, in many ways, making love not something that happens to us but a choice that we have to keep making.

August 18, 2019

John encourages us to test the spirits, to see if they are of God. The implication and expectation is that when we pray, we are to pray expecting that God will move and will answer us, which is why we need to be wary and test the things we hear with our spiritual ears, to make certain that they are of God. In this message about testing the spirits, Pastor Evan talks about our enemy, the devil; about ways we can test the spirits; and some common ways we may have bought into lies and created idols when we were not vigilant to test the spirits.

August 25, 2019

For the third time in nine weeks, 1 John has led us to discuss the idea of love. But far from being played out, the idea of selfless love is one we need to emphasize because of its centrality to the life of a follower of Jesus. In this sermon, Pastor Evan discusses the idea of a perfecting love that God puts in our hearts, and how that perfecting love is about wholeness, completeness, and contentment in God.

September 1, 2019

Concluding the series in 1 John, Pastor Evan goes verse-by-verse through the entire fifth chapter, much of which will be familiar if you’ve watched the other sermons or studied 1 John 1-4, given how John is effectively summing up those four chapters. And yet, Chapter 5 is not a throw-away chapter by any means. Rather, the repetition is about some of the most important truths: love, obedience, faith, etc. Because if it matters, it’s worth repeating.