Trinity Church of the Nazarene

09/10/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18vMXZBYZ6/

Ezekiel 18 starts with a proverb that apparently had become very popular in Israel: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Basically, our parents made bad choices and somehow we are the ones walking around with the weird taste in our mouths. It was a convenient explanation for why everything was going terribly. Their ancestors had sinned. Previous generations had rebelled against God. Their leaders had made disastrous choices. Therefore, here they were suffering the consequences of a mess they did not personally create. And to be fair, there was some truth buried in there. Choices absolutely can affect generations. If somebody sets the house on fire, the children living upstairs do not get magically fireproof bedrooms simply because they were not holding the match. Ezekiel has spent plenty of time explaining how Israel arrived at this point. But there is a very large difference between saying, “Someone else’s choices affected my life,” and saying, “Therefore I am not responsible for what I do with my life now.” God is about to dismantle that second idea.

God says, “Behold, all souls are mine.” Then He walks Ezekiel through several generations of one imaginary family. First there is a righteous man who follows God. Then that man has a violent, sinful son who does basically the opposite of everything his father did. Then that man has a son who looks at what his father has done and decides he is not continuing it. Same family. Different choices. And God’s point is unmistakable: righteousness is not inherited like your nose, your height, your inability to function pleasantly before sunrise, or whatever other family trait everyone agrees came from Grandpa. Neither is guilt simply passed down as though God has some enormous heavenly spreadsheet where your great grandfather did something terrible in 1947 and now apparently your account has an outstanding balance. Each person stands before God.

“The soul who sins shall die.” That sounds harsh until you realize what God is actually correcting. Israel wanted to believe they were trapped inside somebody else’s story. God says no. Your father’s righteousness cannot save you while you rebel against Me, but your father’s wickedness cannot condemn you when you turn toward Me either. You are not spiritually doomed because you came from a mess. You also do not get to coast because you came from faithful people. You cannot stand before God holding Grandma’s Bible and say, “We were very religious,” as though salvation works like a family Costco membership. God knows you.

And then Ezekiel 18 gets even more interesting because God talks about someone wicked who turns away from his sin. You would almost expect God to say that the damage has already been done, the record is too long, and there are simply too many things written in permanent ink. Instead: “None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him.” Read that again. This is the same book where we have spent chapter after chapter watching judgment approach Jerusalem because sin actually matters. God has not suddenly decided rebellion is adorable. He is saying something far better. Repentance matters too.

Then God asks one of those questions that tells us something enormous about His heart: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked… and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” God is warning them because He wants them to turn around. Judgment is coming, yes, but God is practically standing in the road waving both arms saying, turn around. You do not have to keep going this direction. The warnings themselves are mercy. Ezekiel is not standing there gleefully announcing destruction. God is calling people back while there is still time to come back.

That also means Ezekiel 18 leaves us without some of our favorite excuses. I am this way because of my family. Because of what happened to me. Because somebody else started it. Because I have already messed up too badly. Because this is simply who I am now. Some of those things may explain how we got somewhere, and some wounds left by other people are very real. But explanation is not the same thing as a life sentence. God does not look at the road behind you and tell you there is therefore no point changing direction. He says turn.

And near the end of the chapter comes this incredible plea: “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!” If you have read ahead in Ezekiel, that language should start ringing bells because eventually God is going to explain who ultimately provides that new heart and new spirit. Ezekiel 18 tells Israel they desperately need one. Later, God promises He will give one. And eventually the entire story points us toward Jesus, because our problem was never going to be solved by becoming slightly nicer people who occasionally remember not to eat the metaphorical sour grapes.

The chapter ends almost painfully simply. God says He has no pleasure in anyone’s death. “So turn, and live.”

Turn and live.

Not fix your family history and live. Not somehow undo every stupid thing you have ever done and live. Not prove that you deserved another chance and live. Turn.

Maybe you inherited consequences you never asked for. Maybe people before you made choices that shaped your life in ways you are still dealing with. Maybe you are the person who made the choices and you are looking backward thinking there is absolutely no way God wants anything to do with you now. Ezekiel 18 speaks to both people.

You are not trapped by the faithfulness of the people before you, and you are not trapped by their failures either. You are not trapped by yesterday.

God is still calling.

Turn and live.

09/06/2026

Pastor Angus preaching part 2 of his sermon

08/23/2026

IGLESIA NAZARENA "LA TRINIDAD"
2805 ENGLEWOOD AVE YAKIMA WA
SERVICIO ESPANOL
PASTOR : JULIO C BARRAGAN

08/09/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ELUm9dqTm/

Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.” I have read that verse plenty of times, but the more you actually look at what an anchor does, the better the comparison gets. Because an anchor is not something you use to make the weather behave itself. You do not toss an anchor overboard and suddenly the wind stops, the waves flatten out, the clouds disappear, and everyone gets to continue their pleasant little boat ride like nothing happened. That would be a significantly different piece of equipment and I suspect sailors would be extremely interested in purchasing one. An anchor has a much less glamorous job. The wind can keep blowing. The waves can keep coming. The current can keep pushing. The anchor's job is to keep all of those forces from taking the boat wherever they feel like taking it.

There is quite a bit of physics happening here. A boat on the water is being acted on by forces constantly. Wind pushes against the portion above the water. Currents push against the hull below it. Waves transfer energy into the boat and make it rise, fall, roll, pitch, and generally remind anyone with a questionable stomach that land was actually a perfectly lovely invention. If nothing counteracts those forces, the boat drifts. It may not drift very quickly, which is actually part of the problem. Move a tiny amount every minute for enough minutes and eventually you can be a very long way from where you started. You do not have to be violently thrown somewhere to become lost. Sometimes all it takes is a little pressure in the same direction for a long enough time.

An anchor provides resistance to that movement, and this is where it gets even more interesting because anchors do not primarily work by being really heavy objects that somebody throws onto the bottom. Weight certainly matters, but a good anchor is designed to dig into the seabed. As tension develops in the anchor line, the anchor bites into sand, mud, or another suitable bottom and transfers the forces acting on the boat into something capable of resisting them. There is an entire system involved, including the anchor, the chain or line, the angle of pull, the seabed, and the amount of line that has been let out. Apparently “throw heavy metal thing in water and hope for the best” is not the complete science of anchoring. Who knew.

And that makes Hebrews 6:19 such an incredibly good description of Christian hope, because God never promised us that becoming a Christian meant the forces acting on our lives would disappear. There are still storms. There is still grief. There is still disappointment. There are still prayers that seem to go unanswered longer than we wanted. There are still relationships that hurt, plans that collapse, people we lose, things we do not understand, and days when approximately seventeen problems apparently coordinated their schedules and decided today looked convenient. Christianity does not mean nothing will ever push against you again. An anchor would be rather unnecessary if nothing ever did.

What Hebrews promises is not the absence of forces. It gives us something capable of holding against them. And the thing Hebrews calls our anchor is hope. Not hope in the modern sense of crossing our fingers and saying, “Well, hopefully this works out,” while having absolutely no idea whether it will. The verses immediately before this talk about God's promise, God's unchanging purpose, and the fact that it is impossible for God to lie. Then comes the statement that “we have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” Biblical hope is not confidence that everything happening around me will turn out exactly the way I requested. It is confidence that God remains exactly who He says He is regardless of what is happening around me.

There is also something important about an anchored boat that I think we sometimes miss. An anchored boat still moves. Quite a bit, actually. It can rise and fall with waves. It can swing around its anchor as the wind changes direction. It can rock enough that the people aboard are wondering whether breakfast really needed to be eaten that morning. Being anchored does not mean being motionless. It means that all of that movement is happening while the boat remains secured to something that keeps it from being carried away.

I think sometimes Christians confuse those two things. We feel ourselves moving and assume our anchor must have failed. We have a difficult season and wonder why our faith isn't making us feel perfectly calm. We grieve and wonder whether we should be handling it better. We get scared and think maybe stronger Christians don't get scared. We ask God questions and worry that questions somehow mean we have stopped trusting Him. But an anchor was never designed to make the boat incapable of feeling the storm. It was designed to keep the storm from deciding where the boat ultimately ends up.

You can be grieving and still be anchored. You can be confused and still be anchored. You can be afraid and still be anchored. You can have questions you cannot answer and still be anchored. You can have moments when you feel like you are doing a fairly accurate impression of a small boat in a washing machine and still be anchored. The presence of movement does not prove the absence of an anchor. Sometimes the reason you feel the pull so strongly is precisely because something is holding you while everything else is trying to move you.

But Hebrews gives us an even stranger and more beautiful picture than an ordinary anchor. Normally an anchor goes down. Hebrews says our hope “enters into the inner place behind the curtain,” and the next verse says Jesus has gone there “as a forerunner on our behalf.” The language moves from a nautical picture to the imagery of the Most Holy Place, the presence of God. Our anchor is not ultimately buried somewhere beneath us where we cannot see it. Our hope reaches ahead of us to where Christ has already gone. In a sense, the anchor in Hebrews is thrown upward. We are down here getting tossed around by everything life can produce, while what holds us is secured somewhere beyond what we can currently see.

And maybe that is exactly why hope matters so much. An anchor disappears beneath the water. From the boat, you cannot stand there watching it grip the bottom. What you can see is the line. You can feel the tension. You can see that despite the wind pushing and the current pulling, you have not been carried away. There are times when faith feels a little like that. We cannot see everything God is doing. We cannot see the entire plan. We cannot see tomorrow, much less ten years from now. Sometimes all we can see is the storm, and storms tend to be rather obnoxious about taking up the entire view.

Yet the anchor is still there.

The goal of faith is not to become a person who never gets rocked by anything. Scripture is full of faithful people who cried, questioned, grieved, became afraid, and occasionally had absolutely no idea what God was doing. The difference was not that the storms somehow missed them. The difference was what ultimately held them.

So if life feels like it is moving underneath you, that does not necessarily mean you are drifting away from God. If you are being tossed around a little, that does not mean the anchor has failed. And if you can feel the tension between what you see happening around you and what you still believe about God, maybe that tension itself is worth noticing.

Because you only feel tension on an anchor line when something is pulling one direction and something stronger is refusing to let it go.

The waves can move you. The wind can shake you. The storm can make the ride considerably less pleasant than you would have personally selected.

But it does not get to decide where you end up.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.”

The storm can keep making noise.

The Anchor is still holding.

08/01/2026

What Happens to People Who Have Never Heard About Jesus?

This is one of those questions that doesn't usually come from someone's head. It comes from their heart. Maybe you're thinking about a tribe deep in the Amazon rainforest that has never had contact with the outside world. Maybe it's someone who lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago before missionaries reached their part of the world. Maybe it's the kind elderly neighbor who never went to church or someone you loved who never seemed interested in faith. Most people don't ask this question because they're trying to win a theological debate. They ask it because they care about people. And I think that's worth remembering. If your heart hurts over the thought of someone you've never met, imagine how much more the God who knit that person together in their mother's womb cares about them.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming God loves people less than we do. We'd probably never say that out loud, but sometimes that's how we think. We worry that someone might somehow "slip through the cracks," as though the God who knows every star by name could accidentally overlook an entire village. The same God who notices when a single sparrow falls to the ground isn't going to lose track of someone made in His own image. He knows every heartbeat that has ever beaten, every language ever spoken, every culture, every question, every fear, every tear, every person who has ever lived. Before you ever cared about that person, God already did. Before missionaries ever knew they existed, God knew them. Before the first sunrise they ever saw, God had already planned the day they would be born.
The Bible is also very clear about something else. Jesus is the only way to be saved. Those aren't my words. They're His. In John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Peter later preached, "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." That's a difficult statement for our culture because we like lots of options. We have thirty brands of cereal, a hundred flavors of coffee, and enough streaming services that nobody can remember which one has the movie they wanted to watch. We like choices. But God didn't give us many ways to be saved. He gave us one perfect Savior because only one person could do what needed to be done.
Then comes the question everyone is really asking. "Okay...but what about the people who never heard His name?" And this is where we have to be careful not to answer more than Scripture answers. Sometimes we want God to provide a detailed chart explaining every possible situation. If someone lived here...if they died at this age...if they only heard part of the Gospel...if they never met a missionary...if this happened...if that happened. We like nice, neat categories because they make us feel like we understand everything. God, however, seems remarkably comfortable reminding us that He is God and we are not. There are questions He has answered clearly, and there are questions where He simply tells us enough to trust Him.
What He does tell us is that no one is completely without knowledge of God. Romans 1 explains that creation itself reveals His eternal power and divine nature. Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Every sunrise, every mountain range, every newborn baby, every strand of DNA, every law of physics points toward a Creator. I still find it amusing that some people think believing everything happened by accident is somehow the easier explanation. Most of us can't accidentally assemble a piece of furniture without ending up with three leftover screws and a shelf that's somehow upside down, but we're supposed to believe the human eye, the immune system, and the billions of galaxies just sort of happened? That's asking me to have a lot more faith than Christianity ever has.
But while creation tells us there is a Creator, it doesn't tell us about the cross. You can stand on top of a mountain and be overwhelmed by God's power without ever learning that Jesus willingly took your place on the cross. You can spend your life studying the stars and never hear about the empty tomb. That's why Jesus gave the Great Commission. If creation alone were enough to explain salvation, there would have been no reason for missionaries. There would have been no reason for Paul to endure beatings, prison, shipwrecks, hunger, and persecution just to tell people about Jesus. Romans 10 asks, "How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?" and then follows with, "How are they to hear without someone preaching?" The existence of people who haven't heard isn't an argument against missions. It's the reason missions exist.
Here's the part that brings me the greatest comfort. When Abraham was talking with God about S***m, he asked a simple question: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" That question is still the foundation for my answer today. Will God do what is right? Yes. Every single time. Will His justice be perfect? Yes. Will His mercy be perfect? Yes. Will His understanding of every person's life, opportunities, motives, and circumstances be infinitely greater than mine? Absolutely. And honestly, I'm thankful for that because I don't even trust myself to remember where I left my keys half the time. I certainly don't want the responsibility of sorting out every human life that has ever existed. That's a job for Someone whose wisdom has no limits.
Deuteronomy 29:29 says, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever." There are things God has told us plainly, and there are things He has chosen not to explain. Sometimes faith means trusting the character of God even when we don't have every answer we'd like. We know He is holy. We know He is just. We know He is loving. We know He sent His own Son to die for sinners. We know Jesus rose from the dead. We know God desires people to come to repentance. Those truths are enough for us to trust that whatever God does on the day of judgment will be completely right, even if we can't answer every hypothetical question beforehand.
So instead of spending all my energy trying to solve situations the Bible doesn't fully explain, I'd rather spend it doing what the Bible does tell me to do. Tell people about Jesus. Love my neighbor. Support missionaries. Live in a way that points people toward Christ. Because while I don't know the answer to every "what if," I do know this: you have heard the Gospel. I have heard the Gospel. And that means we have the incredible privilege and responsibility of making sure as many other people as possible hear it too. One day, when we're standing before the Lord, I don't think any of us will say, "God, You weren't fair." I think we'll finally see what we've always struggled to fully believe: the Judge of all the earth has always done exactly what is right. See less

07/03/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Joaf357h4/

One of the questions I see come up fairly often is whether Israel is still God's chosen people or whether God's chosen people are now those who believe in Jesus. Depending on who you ask, this can turn into a theological debate that makes people start reaching for Bible commentaries, maps of the Middle East, and enough coffee to keep a small nation awake.

The answer is not as complicated as people sometimes make it, but it is also not quite as simple as picking one side and ignoring the other.

God absolutely chose Israel. That is not up for debate. He chose Abraham. He chose Isaac. He chose Jacob. He made covenants with them. He gave them the Law. The prophets came through Israel. The Messiah came through Israel. Romans 9:4 says, "They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises." None of that suddenly became untrue. None of that stopped mattering. If God makes a promise, He keeps it. That is one of the themes that runs through the entire Bible.

But when you read Scripture carefully, you begin to notice something interesting. Being physically descended from Abraham was never the entire point. Even in the Old Testament, God kept welcoming people who were not Israelites but who believed Him. Rahab was not an Israelite. Ruth was not an Israelite. Yet both became part of God's people through faith. God was already painting a picture that was much bigger than a single nation. The plan was never simply to bless one group of people and stop there. The plan was always bigger than that.

Then Jesus came, and suddenly the invitation was thrown wide open. John 1:12 says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." Notice it does not say some. It does not say one nation. It does not say one bloodline. It says all who believe. For the first time, what God had been hinting at throughout the Old Testament became impossible to miss.

Then Paul writes something remarkable in Galatians 3:29: "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." Think about that for a second. Most of us are probably not physically descended from Abraham. My family tree is about as Middle Eastern as a Holstein cow. Yet Scripture says that if we belong to Christ, we become heirs to the promise through faith. Not because of where we were born. Not because of our nationality. Not because we can trace our ancestry back far enough. Not because our last name sounds biblical. Because of faith.

That does not mean God has forgotten Israel. Romans 11 goes out of its way to say He has not. In fact, Paul warns Gentile believers not to become arrogant. He describes Israel as an olive tree and Gentile believers as wild branches grafted into it. We did not replace the tree. We were invited into it. We did not create the promises. We were graciously included in them. That should produce humility, not pride.

And maybe that is what I love most about the Gospel. The ground at the foot of the cross is remarkably level. The wealthy stand beside the poor. The educated stand beside the uneducated. The farmer stands beside the lawyer. The pastor stands beside the former addict. The person who has followed Jesus for fifty years stands beside the person who surrendered their life to Him five minutes ago. The Jew stands beside the Gentile. Every single one of us arrives exactly the same way. Not because we earned it. Not because of our last name. Not because of our nationality. Not because our grandparents believed. Not because we were good enough. Only because Jesus made a way.

I think sometimes we forget how radical that really is. Human beings are experts at dividing ourselves into groups. We sort ourselves by nationality, politics, income, education, skin color, language, denomination, and about a thousand other things. We are constantly looking for reasons why we belong in different categories. Then Jesus comes along and says the most important category is not where you came from but whether you belong to Him.

When Revelation describes Heaven, it does not describe one nation gathered around the throne. It describes "a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" standing before God. Just imagine that for a moment. People who spoke different languages. People who grew up on different continents. People whose lives looked absolutely nothing alike on earth. All worshiping the same Savior together.

That was always the plan. God chose Israel and through Israel He sent a Savior. Through that Savior, He opened the door to the world. The invitation that began with Abraham now extends to every person reading this. The story was never about excluding the nations. It was about saving them.

So is Israel important in God's plan? Absolutely. Does God still keep His promises? Absolutely. Can someone from any nation become part of God's family through faith in Christ? Absolutely.

The question is not whether Israel was chosen.

The question is what you will do with the One they were chosen to bring.

03/30/2026

Pastor Adam teaching from John 10

02/19/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ju2jRihQh/

Most people talk about Judas like he is the villain in a story we would all rather skip over.

He is the guy everyone is quick to judge. The one who took the money. The one who kissed Jesus in the garden. The one who betrayed the Son of God. If the gospel story were a stage play, Judas is the character who walks on and the audience immediately starts hissing, booing, and maybe throwing the occasional metaphorical tomato.

But here is the uncomfortable truth.

Without Judas, there is no cross.

And without the cross, there is no forgiveness, no resurrection, no salvation, and no hope for any of us. No Easter morning. No empty tomb. No “it is finished.” Just a very wise teacher who said some nice things and eventually died like everyone else.

Judas was not an accident in the story. He was not a surprise to Jesus. He was not a last-minute problem God had to scramble to fix like a flat tire on the way to a wedding. From the beginning, Jesus knew exactly who Judas was and exactly what he would do.

In John 6:70–71, Jesus says, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He said this about Judas, the one who would betray Him.

Jesus chose him anyway.

Let that sink in for a moment. Jesus knew about the silver. He knew about the kiss. He knew about the ropes in the garden and the cross on the hill. He knew about the trial, the crown of thorns, the nails, and the spear. He knew all of it.

And still, He called Judas to follow Him.

He let Judas walk beside Him for three years. He let Judas hear every sermon. He let Judas watch every miracle. He trusted him with the money bag, which in hindsight is a little like letting the raccoon guard the snack cupboard, but Jesus did it anyway. And on the night Judas would betray Him, Jesus still knelt down and washed his feet.

The feet of the man who would sell Him out in just a few hours.

Judas was not just a traitor in the story.

He was one of the twelve.

And somehow, in a way only God can orchestrate, even his betrayal became part of the rescue plan.

That does not mean what Judas did was good. Betrayal is still betrayal. Sin is still sin. Judas was responsible for his choices. The priests were responsible. The crowd was responsible. The soldiers were responsible.

And yet, God was still at work through all of it.

In Acts 2:23, Peter says that Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” even though He was crucified by sinful men. In other words, the worst act in human history was still inside God’s plan of redemption.

Judas meant it for betrayal.
God used it for salvation.

That is a truth that is both comforting and uncomfortable at the same time. It means God is bigger than our worst decisions. But it also means even the darkest moment in human history was not outside His knowledge or control.

So here is the question people sometimes whisper but rarely say out loud.

Could Judas have gone to heaven?

The Bible does not give us a neat, tidy answer wrapped in a bow. We know Judas felt remorse. We know he returned the silver. We know he said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). But instead of running back to Jesus, he ran away in despair.

Peter also failed Jesus. He denied Him three times. He swore he did not even know Him. If denial were an Olympic sport, Peter would have at least qualified for the finals that night. But Peter ran back to Jesus. Judas ran away.

The difference was not the size of their sin. The difference was where they went with their guilt. Judas believed his sin was bigger than God’s mercy. Peter discovered that God’s mercy was bigger than his sin.

And that is where Judas becomes painfully relatable.

Because if we are honest, most of us have had moments where we chose the silver instead of the Savior. Maybe not literal coins, but comfort over obedience. Pride over humility. Control over trust. We have all had moments where we traded something eternal for something temporary and then tried to convince ourselves it was a really smart decision at the time.

We all have a little bit of Judas in us.

And that is why his story matters.

Judas reminds us how easily a heart can drift. How small compromises can grow into life-changing decisions. How you can walk beside Jesus, hear His words, see His goodness, and still choose your own way.

But his story also shows something else.

Even the man who betrayed Jesus was part of the plan that saved the world.

That does not make his betrayal good. It makes God’s redemption that much greater. Because if God could take the kiss of betrayal and turn it into the doorway to the cross, and take the cross and turn it into the doorway to the empty tomb, then He can take the worst parts of our story and still write something redemptive with them too.

Judas is not just the villain of the story.

He is the warning. He is the tragedy. He is the reminder of how close a person can be to Jesus and still walk away. And he is also the proof that not even betrayal itself was powerful enough to stop God’s plan.

Because the cross was coming…with or without the silver.

But the fact that God used even Judas to get there should be the ultimate mic drop reminder that nothing, not even the worst decision in human history, is bigger than the redemption plan of God.