Sermon text: Jeremiah 31:31-34
This passage introduces what’s known as the New Covenant, and understanding it starts with recognizing that the old covenant—the one God made with Israel at Mount Sinai—didn’t work. Not because God failed but because people did. Back in Exodus 19, God offered Israel a conditional relationship: obey, and you’ll be my treasured people. They agreed readily, having personally witnessed the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. But over time, that covenant curdled into legalism—Israelites believed that keeping the letter of the law made them righteous, going through the external motions while their hearts drifted elsewhere. God’s frustration with empty sacrifice throughout the Old Testament wasn’t about the sacrifices themselves; it was that the hearts behind them weren’t engaged.
Category: Old Testament
Philip and the Eunuch
Sermon text: Acts 8:26-40; Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Philip first appears in Acts 6 as one of the seven men chosen to oversee food distribution in the early Jerusalem church—widely considered the first deacons, selected specifically for being “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” He resurfaces after Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7, when persecution scattered believers out of Jerusalem. Rather than retreating, Philip went to Samaria and became the first to preach the gospel outside Israel’s Jewish population—a significant step, given the deep animosity between Jews and Samaritans dating back to the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom centuries earlier.
Enoch: A Profile
Sermon text: Genesis 5:21-24; Hebrews 11:5: Jude 1:14-15
Enoch appears in only ten verses of Scripture total, yet his brief presence carries remarkable weight. This particular Enoch descends through the line of Seth—distinct from an earlier Enoch mentioned in Genesis 4, son of Cain, after whom a city was named. Genesis contains six verses about him; 1 Chronicles and Luke each add one verse within genealogies; and Hebrews and Jude each contribute verses that reveal something deeper about his character and legacy.
Following God’s Lead
Sermon text: Numbers 9:15-23
This passage sits at a pivotal moment in Israel’s wilderness journey—the second year after leaving Egypt, having just observed their second Passover at Mount Sinai. The tabernacle has been fully constructed according to God’s detailed instructions, and Israel now stands ready to move toward the promised land. Numbers 9 pauses here to give a vivid picture of exactly how God led that movement.
God’s Mission First
Sermon text: Haggai 1:1-11
The book of Haggai sits at a striking crossroads in Israel’s history, and understanding what led to this moment matters. After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into northern Israel and southern Judah. The northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians around 722 BC, while the southern kingdom held on for roughly another century before Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian forces conquered Judah in multiple invasions between 605 and 587 BC, ultimately destroying Solomon’s temple and carrying the population into 70 years of captivity, just as had been prophesied.
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.
A Tragedy of Errors
Sermon text: 2 Samuel 6:1-11
Understanding this passage requires backing up to explain how the ark of the covenant ended up away from Jerusalem in the first place. Back in 1 Samuel 4, Israel’s leadership—spiritually compromised at the time—took the ark into battle against the Philistines as a kind of magic talisman rather than out of genuine reverence, and it was captured. What followed was a series of disasters for the Philistines: the idol of their god Dagon collapsed before the ark, their cities were struck with tumors, and eventually they sent the ark back to Israel on a cart pulled by nursing cows, along with golden images of tumors and rats as a guilt offering. When the ark arrived at Beth Shemesh, 50,000 men died after looking inside it, and it was finally relocated to the house of Abinadab, where it remained for decades—now, under David’s reign, finally in territory secure enough to bring it home to Jerusalem.
Keep It Simple
Sermon text: 2 Kings 5:1-19
This account sits during a troubled period in the northern kingdom of Israel—mid-9th century BC, decades after the united kingdom split following Solomon’s reign, with Israel to the north never once having a godly king and now facing regular raids from neighboring Syria (Aram). Against that backdrop, the passage introduces Naaman, commander of Syria’s army—a powerful, respected man who happens to have leprosy, though likely not the severe Hansen’s disease but something closer to a chronic skin condition like psoriasis, serious enough in that culture to carry real stigma. Notably, Scripture attributes his military success directly to the Lord, reflecting a recurring Old Testament pattern where God used foreign nations as instruments of judgment against a disobedient Israel.