Founded In Truth Fellowship

08/29/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 29th, for the conclusion of our Image Bearer series: The Other Genesis - The Oldest Lie About You.

This week’s message takes us back more than 2,500 years, into the streets of ancient Babylon.

Imagine being a Judean child growing up in exile. Your parents tell you about YHWH, the God who defeated Egypt, rescued slaves, and dwelt in Jerusalem. But when you walk outside, Jerusalem is six hundred miles away and its temple is rubble. Babylon is magnificent. Marduk’s temple is standing. His priests are worshiping. His king is ruling.

So eventually you ask the question:

Did their god beat ours?

Babylon had an answer. It was written into its creation story, the Enuma Elish. Marduk defeats the chaos monster Tiamat, establishes the cosmos, becomes king, and humanity is created to carry the workload of the gods so that heaven can rest.

Then Israel tells another story.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

No divine war. No frightened gods. No cosmic rival capable of threatening YHWH. The sun and moon are reduced to lights. The sea monsters are creatures God simply makes. Humanity is not created as disposable labor but crowned as the tselem, the image of God.

And then comes perhaps the most radical contrast of all.

Humanity is created on day six.

Their first full day alive is Shabbat.

Before they build anything. Before they accomplish anything. Before they prove their usefulness, God gives them rest.

Babylon says you exist so heaven can rest.

Genesis says God rested first and invited you into it.

And when Yeshua enters the story, the contrast becomes even sharper. The King does what Babylonian gods could scarcely imagine: He serves. He kneels. He washes feet. He gives his life. And to everyone exhausted from carrying the old Babylonian story, he says:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Maybe Babylon’s oldest lie never disappeared. Maybe we simply gave it new names.

Your value is your productivity.
Your worth is what you accomplish.
Rest comes when the work is finished.

Genesis tells another story.
You are not what you produce. You are the image of God.
The work will never all be finished.
Put the brick down.

Resources behind this message:

J. Richard Middleton — The Liberating Image
John Walton — Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament
Stephanie Dalley — Myths from Mesopotamia
Alexander Heidel — The Babylonian Genesis
Jon Levenson — Creation and the Persistence of Evil
BibleProject — Chaos Dragon
Enuma Elish
Atrahasis

08/22/2026

Join us live at 11:00am!

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 22nd, ...

08/22/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 22nd, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast beginning at 10:00 a.m.

This week, our Image Bearer series continues with “The Name You Wear: The Mark of the Beast and the Name on Your Forehead.”

What is the mark of the beast?

For generations, Revelation 13 has fueled speculation about barcodes, microchips, technology, vaccines, and hidden marks. But what if John’s first readers already knew exactly what a mark on the hand or forehead meant? What if the mark of the beast is not the Bible introducing a strange new idea, but the beast counterfeiting a mark God had already placed on His people?

Long before Revelation, Israel was commanded to bear the name of YHWH among the nations. The high priest wore “Holy to the LORD” engraved like a seal on his forehead. Israel bound God’s words as a sign on the hand and forehead. God placed His name upon His people because they belonged to Him and represented Him.

Then Revelation introduces another name.

A beast rises from the sea wearing blasphemous names. Another beast appears looking like a lamb but speaking like a dragon. It creates an image, gives that image breath, directs the world’s worship toward empire, and places the beast’s name on the right hand and forehead.

The imagery is not accidental.

The mark of the beast is a counterfeit seal.

In this teaching, we’ll explore the ancient world of slave marks and royal seals, the command to bear God’s name at Sinai, the high priest’s forehead medallion, Deuteronomy’s signs on the hand and forehead, the beasts of Revelation 13, emperor worship in Rome, the number 666, and the striking contrast John creates between those who bear the beast’s name and those who bear the name of the Lamb and His Father.

We’ll also confront one of Revelation’s most uncomfortable warnings: the beast does not always look like a beast. Sometimes it looks like a lamb and speaks like a dragon. Religious language can be used to redirect worship toward political power, empire, nation, and state while convincing worshipers that their allegiance still belongs entirely to God.

From Rome’s imperial religion to the German Christian movement of the 1930s to modern attempts to merge the language of Scripture with national power, the question remains the same:

Whose name are you wearing?

Revelation does not ultimately present humanity as divided between marked people and unmarked people. It presents two foreheads, two names, two allegiances, and two objects of worship.

“Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”
— Revelation 14:1

And on the final page of Scripture:

“They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”
— Revelation 22:4

The mark of the beast cannot be understood until we see the mark it is trying to counterfeit.

Everybody wears a name.

Join us as we trace that name from Sinai to Zion, from the seal of the high priest to the mark of the beast, and finally to the redeemed standing before the throne with the name they were always created to bear written across their foreheads.

08/15/2026

Shabbat shalom! Join us live!

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 15th, ...

08/14/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 15th, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast starting at 10:00 a.m.

This week’s message continues our Image Bearers series with a teaching titled “The Garden Grows.” We will tracehttps://youtube.com/live/to1WxwienX8 one of the Bible’s largest themes from the first garden in Genesis to the city that fills the final pages of Revelation.

God plants Eden as a small, sacred space and places His image bearers inside it with a commission: be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. The goal was never to keep the garden contained. Humanity was meant to extend the presence, order, and life of Eden outward until the whole world became God’s dwelling place.

Then the garden stopped growing.

Adam failed to guard the sanctuary, humanity was driven east, and the presence of God became increasingly contained behind boundaries, curtains, walls, and temples. But the original commission was never canceled.

In this teaching, we’ll follow the garden as it begins moving again: a river flows out from Ezekiel’s temple and turns the Dead Sea alive, a stone in Daniel grows into a mountain that fills the whole earth, a mustard seed becomes a tree large enough for the birds of the sky, leaven quietly works through an entire batch of dough, and Zechariah sees a Jerusalem growing so quickly that an angel has to run out and stop someone from measuring it.

The kingdom of God does not stay where you put it.

Yeshua takes the original commission of Genesis and hands it back to His followers on a mountain: go to all nations. Fill the earth. Carry the presence outward.

This is a message about Eden, temple, mission, the kingdom of God, the Great Commission, and what it means to be the living frontier of an expanding city with no walls.

You are not the flower pot. You are the seed that gets thrown over the wall.

Join us as we follow the river, the stone, the seed, and the city from Genesis to Revelation and discover how God intends to make the whole earth His garden.

Some helpful study resources for this topic:

G.K. Beale — The Temple and the Church’s Mission
Christopher J. H. Wright — The Mission of God
Carmen Imes — Being God’s Image
Tim Mackie & The Bible Project — Temple; Heaven and Earth; The Kingdom of God
N.T. Wright — Surprised by Hope; Simply Jesus
Genesis 1–2, Ezekiel 47, Daniel 2, Zechariah 2, Matthew 13, Matthew 28, and Revelation 21 — Read these passages together and watch the same movement repeat: outward.


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08/07/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 8th, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast starting at 10:00 a.m.

This week’s message continues our Image Bearers series with a teaching titled “You Become What You Worship: Check the Eyes.” Pastor Matthew Vander Els traces one of Scripture’s most sobering patterns: what people revere, they eventually resemble.

On the plain of Dura, Nebuchadnezzar gathers officials from every nation and language before a towering statue of gold. When the music begins, nearly everyone bows. The question is not only why three men remained standing. It is why everybody else had already learned to kneel.

Psalm 115 describes idols with mouths that cannot speak, eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, and feet that cannot walk. Then it delivers the diagnosis: those who make and trust in them become like them.

In this teaching, we’ll follow that pattern from the golden calf at Sinai to the fall of Israel, from Isaiah’s blind and deaf generation to the officials bowing in Babylon, from Romans 1 to Revelation. Again and again, people stare at lifeless things until their own eyes, ears, hearts, and minds begin to resemble what they worship.

But the pattern can run in the other direction.

In the wilderness, Yeshua is shown all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. He sees everything the serpent offers, but He does not take. His eyes remain fixed on the Father, and He becomes the perfect image of the invisible God.

This is a message about worship, attention, proximity, assimilation, idolatry, spiritual blindness, and the unseen forces that form us long before we realize we are changing.

Join us as we ask what our eyes are pointed toward, what we are becoming, and how beholding the glory of the Lord transforms us into the same image from glory to glory.

You become what you worship. Check the eyes.

Some helpful study resources for this topic:

G.K. Beale — We Become What We Worship
Carmen Imes — Being God’s Image
Daniel I. Block — For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship
Rikk Watts — Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark
I. Howard Marshall — New Testament Theology
Tim Mackie & The Bible Project — Image of God; Idolatry; The Test
Psalm 115, Isaiah 6, Daniel 3, and Romans 1 — Read these passages together and watch how worship reshapes the worshiper.

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, August 8th, f...

07/28/2026

Happy Birthday Pastor Matthew. The milestone 40. Every message has impacted so many.

07/25/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, July 25th, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast starting at 10:00 a.m.

This week’s message continues our Image Bearers series with a teaching titled “The Image in the Ruins: Becoming What God Made You to Be.” Pastor Matthew Vander Els asks what remains of the image of God after humanity’s rebellion, exile, violence, and shame.

The sermon begins with the story of a damaged painting once dismissed as a worthless copy. Cracked, repainted, and buried beneath centuries of restoration attempts, it sold for only forty-five pounds. But when experts discovered whose hand had made it, its value changed completely.

The painting had not changed. The attribution had.

In Genesis, humanity is driven from the garden and separated from the presence of God. Yet God clothes Adam and Eve, protects Cain, and after the flood declares again that human beings are still made in His image. The panel cracked, but the signature remained.

In this teaching, we’ll explore exile as death, Adam naming Eve in faith, God clothing the guilty, the image reaffirmed after the flood, Nebuchadnezzar’s descent into beastly living, and the moment he lifts his eyes toward heaven and becomes human again.

This is a message about dignity, shame, restoration, identity, and the difference between your condition and your attribution. Sin can bury the glory beneath layers of damage, but it cannot erase the hand of the One who made you.

Join us as we discover why your worth is not determined by the cracks in your history, the labels placed upon you, or the price others assigned to your life. You are not a worthless copy. You are a damaged masterpiece still bearing the signature of the King.

Lift your eyes from the dirt, return to the presence of your Maker, and become what God already made you to be

Some helpful study resources for this topic:

Carmen Imes — Being God’s Image
John F. Kilner — Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God
J. Richard Middleton — The Liberating Image
Tim Mackie & The Bible Project — Image of God; Exile; Heaven and Earth
N.T. Wright — After You Believe; The Resurrection of the Son of God
Genesis 3–9 and Daniel 4 — Read these passages together and watch how the image survives exile, violence, judgment, and even the descent into beastly living.

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, July 25th, fo...

07/15/2026

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, July 18th, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast starting at 10:00 a.m.

This week’s message continues our Image Bearers series with a teaching titled “The Skull Crusher: The Ethic of the Beast and the Seed of the Woman.” We explore one of the Bible’s oldest promises from the garden of Eden to a hill called the Place of the Skull.

In Genesis 3, humanity listens to the beast, and the order of creation turns upside down. But before God speaks judgment over the humans, He makes a promise to the serpent: a son born from the woman will come, strike the serpent’s head, and be struck in the heel.

From that moment forward, the Bible begins searching for the promised Son.

In this teaching, we’ll trace the serpent-crushing pattern through Cain, Pharaoh, Moses, Jael, Abimelech, David and Goliath, Mary, Herod, Golgotha, and the resurrection of Yeshua. Again and again, the enemies of God fall facedown in the dust with their heads crushed, yet none of those victories finally destroys the ethic of the beast living inside the human heart.

Until the Seed of the Woman arrives.

At the Place of the Skull, the serpent strikes His heel. The hammer and peg fall on the promised Son. But the strike becomes the trap. Through death, Yeshua destroys the one who holds the power of death, disarms the rulers and authorities, and walks out of the garden tomb alive.

This is a message about the war between the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the Woman, the ethic of the beast and the ethic of the King, and the God of peace who crushes evil through self-giving love.

Join us as we follow the promise from Eden to Golgotha and discover how the Skull Crusher won—not by becoming a beast, but by offering His own heel and breaking the serpent’s power forever.

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, July 18th, fo...

07/10/2026

https://www.youtube.com/live/Q8IS3CnQ758

Join us at Founded in Truth Fellowship this Saturday, July 11th, for worship at 11:00 a.m. EST. Come early for fellowship and a light breakfast starting at 10:00 a.m.

This week’s message continues our Image Bearers series with a teaching titled “The Reach: Saw, and Took.” Pastor Matthew Vander Els returns to the garden of Eden and uncovers a literary pattern that runs from Genesis through the entire biblical story.

Human beings were created in the image of God and commissioned to rule over the creatures. But in Genesis 3, that order turns upside down. The beast begins speaking, the image begins listening, and the humans created to rule creation begin taking their instructions from a creature they were meant to govern.

The fingerprints of that rebellion are found in two words: saw and took.

Eve saw the fruit and took it. The sons of God saw and took. Achan saw, coveted, and took. Sarah took Hagar and gave her to Abraham. David saw Bathsheba and sent for her. Again and again, the biblical authors reach back to the garden, showing how human beings surrender their calling when appetite becomes their ruler.

In this teaching, we’ll explore biblical intertextuality, the serpent as a beast, Adam’s failure to guard the garden, sin crouching at Cain’s door, the repeated pattern of seeing and taking, and the promise of the coming Son who will crush the serpent’s head.

This is a message about temptation, appetite, power, shame, addiction, human responsibility, and the God who refused to destroy His cracked image.

Join us as we follow the biblical hyperlink from Eve to Cain, from Achan to David, and finally to Yeshua—the one man who faced the serpent’s offer and refused to reach. Where the first Adam grabbed, the last Adam gave.

Some helpful study resources for this topic:

Carmen Imes — Being God’s Image; Bearing God’s Name
J. Richard Middleton — The Liberating Image
Robert Alter — The Art of Biblical Narrative; The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary
Tim Mackie & The Bible Project — Image of God; Genesis 1–11; Biblical Narrative
N.T. Wright — The Day the Revolution Began; Paul and the Faithfulness of God
Genesis 1–4 — Read these chapters together and watch the patterns of ruling, seeing, taking, and exile.