Pastor Prince

Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden led to brokenness in their relationships with God and each other.  Because of this brokenness, God had to go on a mission to save the world, to redeem it form its brokenness. After God expelled them from the garden, they followed one of God's directives faithfully.  They were fruitful and multiplied!  But human corruption grew with each generation.  Things got so bad, God was sorry he made humanity.  He was especially distressed at the violence of the human race (Gen. 6:13).   God decided he was going to reboot his creation!  He was going to send a great flood to destroy all living creatures in the world.  But one man found favor in his eyes: Noah.  God decided to save Noah and his family, along with a remnant of the living creatures of the earth.  He instructed Noah to build a huge ark, which would preserve the remnant through the coming destruction. Noah built the ark, and he and the animals entered it. God closed the

This past week, we had yet another reminder of our broken world: the shooting at Parkland, Florida.  We wonder how someone could take an AK-15 and murder 17 high school students.  The story of the shooter and his motivations is still being discovered, but we're sickened by this repeated theme in our nation.   But there are much broader evils in our world.  Wars, acts of terror, murders, and other inhuman acts take human lives every day.  Why is it here? Genesis 3 provides the broad reason for the human condition.  We've rebelled against God.  Because of that, our relationships with God and each other are broken. Evil appears in the form of a serpent.  Just as God appears with no back story in Genesis 1, evil appears in Genesis 3 with no explanation.  Most of us have heard the story that Satan was a great angel, whose pride led him to rebel against God.  While that may have happened, that story isn't in the Bible.  The Bible itself presents evil as a brute f

In Genesis 1, God creates thing after thing in rapid succession.  But in verse 26, the story takes a dramatic pause, as God stops and deliberates among his heavenly council (See Job 1).  He proposes to make man and woman in his own image. Scholars have debated for millennia about what it means for humans to be in God's image.  The general meaning is that man and woman correspond to God in the way nothing else does.  God has a relationship with them unlike any of his other relationships. God blesses man and woman, and puts creation in their hands.  They don't own it.  They're stewards of it.  God wants them to use it AND take care of it.  Sadly, we've been poor stewards! Scholars debate about the relationship between Genesis 1 and 2.  Some believe both chapters are the same account, while others say they are separate accounts.  Most likely, they are separate, yet complementary accounts.  God brought them together in this place. Verse 7 shows us how

Everybody loves a good story!  We especially enjoy stories that draw us into the action, and move our hearts.   The Bible is full of stories.  It begins with stories of the patriarchs, and continues with stories about Israel's exodus from Egypt, settlement in Canaan, and kingdom era.  In its latter parts, it has stories about Jesus and his followers. What many people don't know is that there's a big story that weaves together all these individual stories.  It's the story of God's mission to save his world. The first story in that big story is the narrative of God's creation of the universe in Genesis 1.  Genesis 1 is one of the richest, yet most controversial passages in the Bible.  Controversy about it isn't new.  There were many rival creation accounts in the ancient world.  In the early church era, teachers tried to reconcile it with the views of Greek philosophers like Aristotle, who represented the established learning of the time.