Sermon text: Hebrews 12:1-3
Hebrews 12 opens with “therefore,” and understanding that word requires looking back to chapter 11—commonly known as the Hall of Faith. After defining faith in its opening verses, the chapter catalogs figures like Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and the prophets, each commended for trusting God’s promises before those promises were ever fulfilled. The book of Hebrews itself, written by an unnamed author (despite some older Bible headings attributing it to Paul) to Jewish believers wavering under mounting persecution and tempted to return to Judaism, builds a sustained case for one central idea: Jesus is better—better than the law, better than the priesthood, better than anything Judaism alone could offer.
Month: February 2026
Lift Them Up
Sermon text: Exodus 17:8-13
This passage recounts a pivotal early battle in Israel’s wilderness journey—only weeks after crossing the Red Sea, the nation faces an attack from the Amalekites at Rephidim, in the southern desert not far from Mount Sinai. The Amalekites, descendants of Esau, were a nomadic desert people who would remain hostile toward Israel for generations, later connected even to Haman in the book of Esther through the title “the Agagite.” Deuteronomy 25 later reveals a particularly despicable detail about their tactics: they attacked from the rear, targeting the weak, elderly, and stragglers trailing behind Israel’s massive procession—a million or so people who had been enslaved brick-makers mere months earlier, now suddenly required to fight as soldiers with virtually no weapons or military experience, against a mobile, camel-riding enemy on their home terrain.
The Gilgal Project
Why we call ourselves The Gilgal Project. Based on passages from several books of the Bible. The name “Gilgal” describes the place where Israel camped immediately after crossing the Jordan River into the promised land, under Joshua’s leadership following Moses’s death. Understanding what happened there reveals seven distinct dimensions that shape what this fellowship is meant to embody.
Humble Instruction
Sermon text: Acts 18:24-28
This passage introduces Apollos, a Jewish man from Alexandria—at the time the second-greatest city in the Roman Empire, renowned for its library, lighthouse, and university. Described as eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures, Apollos would have been trained in the more vivacious, emotionally expressive rhetorical style typical of Alexandria, distinct from the more reserved delivery favored further north in Greece and Rome. That stylistic difference likely explains some of the factionalism Paul later addresses in 1 Corinthians, where believers had begun aligning themselves with favorite teachers—Paul, Apollos, Peter—based on delivery and personality rather than substance, even though all were preaching the same gospel. Paul himself, by contrast, explicitly rejected relying on polished rhetoric, telling the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 that he came to them in weakness and trembling, deliberately avoiding persuasive human wisdom so that their faith would rest on God’s power rather than eloquence.