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A tourist reads a mistranslated volcano warning about “mermaids” when it really means sirens—absurd until you realize it points to something humans do constantly. Genesis 11 shows people with genuine talent and ability choosing to build a tower not for survival, but for their own glory. How easily do we wrap our ambitions in a report cover and call it achievement?
We've all known someone's birthday was coming, kept it in the back of our minds, and then realized two weeks too late that we never said a word—recognized it, but never responded. In Matthew 8, the demons who meet Jesus call him “Son of God” with more clarity than almost anyone else in the Gospel, yet that recognition leads somewhere unexpected and deeply unsettling.
Whatever looks triumphant—the people and things we hold out as the absolute measure of concrete, dependable success—still meets death that tramples it. Isaiah warns that rebels and sinners will together be shattered, and those who forsake the Lord will perish. What then are we going to hold onto?
When we want vengeance, we want to get back—but Isaiah 1:24–25 shows a God who wants to get back to *good*, and that difference is harder to hold onto than it sounds when the anger is righteous and the wrong is real.
We've all charged after something we thought would finally set things right, only to watch it cost us everything we hoped to protect. That's the dumb-ox pattern God confronts in Isaiah 1 when he asks his people, “Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?”
The wicked bend their bows, the foundations feel destroyed, and everyone around David has a reasonable-sounding answer: flee. Psalm 11 plants its feet against that pressure, asking whether the upheaval surrounding the righteous actually means what it looks like it means.
Lots of things claim to be of value — but which ones really are? Which ones are just so much “Monopoly money”? Pastor Tim explores the question as we continue in John 5 tonight.
We all want justice against the wrongs we see and experience, but Jesus calls us to better understand just what we really need.
The Pharisees had a standard to make themselves feel justified, but was it good enough to make them truly justified?
We continue to explore Psalm 9 by returning to what God values. Are we keeping our focus and our actions on Him or veering off course?
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