Vista Community Church

Isaac had planned to bless his favorite son Esau, but Isaac's wife Rebecca wanted the blessing to go to her favorite son Jacob. So, she hatches a plan for Jacob to trick Isaac into blessing him rather than his brother. When you read this story, you can't help but notice just how dysfunctional this family is. The marriage is messed up, the parenting is messed up... the whole story is pretty sad. However, if we're willing to learn from their dysfunction, we can have families that are full of much more joy, harmony, and grace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac is one of Scripture's most challenging stories, and has been interpreted a number of ways. Exploring the story from 3 distinct angles, we let it speak to us about holding our earthly loves with open hands, about refusing to hurt others in God's name, and about the good news that God in Christ steps into our impossible situations to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are told over and over again in scripture to be people who live by faith. But what does that mean? What does it look like in our day to day lives to "live by faith?" Ironically, Abraham is known for being a man of faith, but in Gen. 16 we see him and his wife Sarah make some very poor decisions. In this particular chapter, they stand out as examples of how not to live by faith... not their finest moment. However, we can learn a lot about what it means to live by faith even from their failure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

God chooses a man named Abram and makes a covenant with him. We learn through this covenant about the character of God. We also see how we (the church) fit into this covenant as both recipients and participants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Genesis 6-9, we find one of the most famous and infamous stories in the Bible: the story of Noah and the Great Flood. In this story, God goes on a journey toward acceptance of an imperfect relationship with his imperfect creatures, because God refuses to give up on his creatures and his creation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.