The Ranch Church Podcast

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On this family Sunday, Dr. Rich Danson teaches the whole congregation, kids included, what it means that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Starting in John 10, he traces the shepherd picture from Isaiah's prophecy of a coming Ruler through David the shepherd king, showing how sheep are helpless without a shepherd's guidance and protection, and how the Good Shepherd, unlike a hireling, lays down His life for the flock and never abandons it. He grounds our need for that shepherd in Isaiah's picture of sheep gone astray and Paul's word in Romans 3:23 that everyone has sinned, pointing to Jesus as the only way back to the Father.

The message then moves to John 21, where the resurrected Jesus restores Peter through a threefold question, do you love me, answered with a threefold charge, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. Danson uses this exchange to call every believer into active service rather than sitting on the sidelines, and closes with the promise that those who serve faithfully will be honored by the Father and will shine forever.

 

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, visit ranchchurch.com.

Continuing through Hebrews 11, Pastor Rick Soto asks the church a direct question: are you ready to grow? Preaching from verses 17 through 22, he walks through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, four men who all experienced God's discipline on the way to becoming heroes of faith. He grounds the theme in Romans 8:29 and Romans 12:2, God's will to conform and transform us into the image of Christ, then turns to Hebrews 12 for a fuller picture of discipline as fatherly love rather than punishment. Abraham had to release his hold on Isaac. Isaac blessed the wrong son. Jacob was chosen for a different kind of growth altogether, one that included wrestling with God and walking with a permanent limp. Joseph, despite betrayal by his own family, never forgot his true home. Rick's core encouragement: God disciplines those he loves in order to change them, and that discipline, while painful in the moment, is the very thing that produces strength, holiness, and abundant life.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:17-22; Genesis 22:8; Romans 8:29; Romans 12:2; Hebrews 12:7-11; 2 Corinthians 12:10; John 10:10

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

John and Debby Wright, who are stepping into the role of global leaders of the Vineyard movement, join us at the Ranch while on sabbatical in the Santa Ynez Valley with their family. Debby opens with a greeting from the worldwide Vineyard family and a picture of churches gathering in every kind of place, open-air settings like ours, centuries-old buildings, shanty towns, and countries where worship is not permitted, so that around the clock the Lord is receiving worship somewhere. John then preaches from three consecutive stories in the book of Judges, built around a question most of us have asked at one time or another. Could God really use me?

He starts with his own story: a quiet, bullied, introverted boy who tested out as a perfectionist and a specialist, wired to be a jeweler, who has now spent almost 40 years in pastoral ministry. Then he walks through Judges 3, 4, and 6. Ehud was a left-handed man in a right-handed world, marked by a stigma that made him look expendable, and that same left hand is what God used to free Israel from 18 years under Moab. Jael was a woman in a man's world, not a leader and not a judge, a tent wife who knew how to drive a peg because she had done it a thousand times, and God used that ordinary skill to break 20 years of Canaanite oppression. Gideon was a timid man in a dangerous world, threshing wheat down in a winepress out of fear, calling himself the least in the weakest clan, and the Lord told him to go in the strength he had.

The thread running through all three is Paul's word in 2 Corinthians 12, that God's power is made perfect in weakness. God's pattern is to choose people who cannot do what he is calling them to do in their own strength. The message closes with John and Debby leading a time of ministry, welcoming the Holy Spirit, praying for those held back by fear, setbacks, or the sense that they do not quite fit, and calling the church forward for prayer.

Scriptures: Judges 3:12-30; Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:24; Judges 6:1-16; Judges 7:7; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

Guest speaker Pastor Lars Linton opens John 5 at the pools of Bethesda, where a great crowd of sick people waited for the water to stir and one man had been lying there thirty-eight years. Out of that entire crowd, Jesus walks straight to the one person nobody noticed. Around that single moment, Lars builds three truths: Jesus sees you, Jesus saves you, and Jesus is superior.

He traces the God who sees back to Genesis 16, where Hagar meets God in the wilderness and calls him El Roi. He shows that Bethesda means house of mercy, and that Jesus skipped the palaces during the feast and went to the hospital instead. He follows the healed man into the temple, where Jesus finds him a second time, because the word translated made well means whole, and Jesus came for the soul as well as the body. From there Lars teaches a practical pattern for biblical confession, a practice he believes the church has largely lost: regard the great love of Jesus, recognize your own responsibility, realize the seriousness of the offense, and receive forgiveness. The message closes in the Sabbath controversy of John 5:16-22, where Jesus answers his accusers by claiming equality with the Father in nature, power, and authority, and calls every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that he is Lord.

If you have been waiting a long time, or if you have wondered whether anyone notices, this message is for you.

Scriptures: John 5:1-22; John 5:39; John 9:1-3; Genesis 16:13; James 5:14-16; 1 John 1:8-9; Philippians 2:10-11

For more information and service times, visit ranchchurch.com.

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

Continuing through the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, Pastor Rick Soto turns to verses 13 through 16, where the saints of old are called strangers and exiles who died in faith while seeking a better country. His message begins with a simple charge: don't waste your life. Using the picture of packing luggage for a trip, he asks the question every traveler settles before zipping the bag. Where are you going? If heaven is the destination, pack accordingly. Rick gives five packing instructions for the journey. Pack God's story, letting God write and interpret the narrative of your life instead of the stories we tell ourselves, with the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 as the guide. Pack contentment, a harder discipline than it looks, commanded in Hebrews 13:5 and commended in 1 Timothy 6:6. Pack significance, giving your life away to what matters in Jesus, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah did. Pack Sabbath, the stop that God built into creation before there was ever a tabernacle, temple, or church. And pack heaven, a real place of no pain and no decay, a great reunion, and a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The message closes with an invitation to let God become the author and interpreter of a brand-new story, and to take a step of faith toward prayer.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:13-16; Matthew 5:1-9; Hebrews 13:5; 1 Timothy 6:6; Hebrews 12:1

Pastoral invitation: Come forward for prayer during the closing ministry time. The changing of a story needs a new beginning, a pivot, a new interpreter, and a new storyteller. Getting out of the seat, even when socially awkward, is itself framed as the step of faith.