» Crestview Church of Boulder -Weekly Podcast

Podcast: 2025-12-21: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 4 – Love: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Love

https://crestviewchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-12-21.mp3 2025-12-21: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 4 – Love: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Love Good Morning and an early Merry Christmas greeting!  God demonstrates his love for the world by sending his (willing) Son to bring salvation to humanity – more than that, to the ends of the earth!  It began with God’s Son taking on humanity (fully human and fully God), becoming incarnate in the flesh.  Why would God do this, become this?  Because God loves what he has made (John 3:16).  Why incarnation?  It was necessary.  Only God’s power could bear the weight of sin and God’s wrath.  Only a human can pay for human sin.  Incarnation gives us both, and both are necessary for our salvation. God’s love incarnate in Jesus opens the door for our salvation.  Because of Jesus, and only Jesus.  The salvation of God in Jesus Christ goes beyond personal, it’s COSMIC. During Advent 2025, we have marveled at God’s COSMIC salvation in Jesus, for it looks like (is like) hope, peace, joy, and love on earth.  Sunday, we focus on God’s love in and through Jesus.  Join us Sunday for our pre-Christmas celebration with a telling of God’s story (a pageant/skit), communion, and a fellowship meal. When it comes to God’s salvation in Jesus, what does it look like to embody God’s love and respond to it?  Think practical and tangible.  Think every day living.  Think about relationships.  Salvation gets authentically real really fast. See you Sunday, Pastor Mark

Podcast: 2025-12-14: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 3 – Joy: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Joy  

https://crestviewchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-12-14.mp3 2025-12-14: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 3 – Joy: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Joy   God’s salvation in CHRIST is COSMIC and it looks alot like JOY.  I’ve been thinking about this; a big thing in a small package.  Jesus’ coming was unbelievably small and by all indications insignificant – a small town called Bethlehem, born out back away from the inn, placed in a manger… yet, this was God’s plan.  The Son of God came to us incarnate, born as a vulnerable little baby.  And babies are small packages.  Yet, this was a big ‘happening’ with a cosmic effect. During the Advent season we celebrate gifts like hope, peace, joy and love.  How do we understand these gifts?  I wonder if we see them as little packages that bring us some personal comfort, benefit, and direction in living.  And they do bring these things.  However, think about it.  God’s gift of salvation and the evidence in hope, peace, joy, and love aren’t only for us individually (small packages).  Think bigger, they are God’s gifts for the entire world (BIG package).  It’s COSMIC. Hear it in the proclamation of Isaiah 35 and 52, “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.” What?  “The world will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.”  Huh?  “All the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.”  That sounds BIG.  From a baby boy born in a manger in no nothing Bethlehem?  Yep. Advent Joy!  The angel says to the shepherds, “I bring you Good News that will cause great joy for all the people! A Savior is born to you!”  Is this joy a personal joy only, or is it joy for the whole world?  The cosmos? If so, how so? See you Sunday, Pastor Mark

Podcast: 2025-12-07: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 2 – Peace: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Peace

https://crestviewchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-12-07.mp3 2025-12-07: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Advent 2 – Peace: God’s Salvation in Christ is Cosmic and It Looks Like Peace Sunday is Advent week two, a focus on Peace.  In Isaiah 52, the prophet Isaiah speaks of a coming Savior, who will bring salvation, and this salvation will go out to the ends of the earth.  What does this mean?  In John 3:16, we read, “God loved the world so much, he sent his Son…” A Savior, bringing salvation!  What does this mean? I used to think of God’s salvation mostly as a personal thing… God comes to my heart, saves me from my sin and gives me a new life.  Salvation certainly includes this, my personal salvation.  Yet, I’ve come to understand from God’s Word that his salvation is much, much bigger – it’s COSMIC!  That’s right, God’s salvation in Jesus is a big announcement, big happening, with big affect – it’s COSMIC!   A salvation that proclaims, “Our God reigns!”  How big is God’s reign?  It’s COSMIC! So there it is, a wild claim about Jesus and his rule over all things.  Take a look at Colossians 1:15-20.  Can you see it?  Question for Sunday and into the next week to ponder: If God’s salvation announced and fulfilled in Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection has brought the Kingdom of God near to us, actually brought it to us and is here now, what does this mean for our living, obedience, faithfulness to God’s rule in all things?  Is it just some of my life or all of my life?  Some aspects of the world we live in or aspects? See you Sunday, Pastor Mark

Podcast: 2025-11-30: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Sin: Pervasive and Progressive – Natural, Moral and Societal Evil

https://crestviewchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-11-30.mp3 2025-11-30: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Sin: Pervasive and Progressive – Natural, Moral and Societal Evil Sunday is the 1st Sunday of Advent 2025, a great day to turn the page!  For in the fullness of time, God stepped into time, at just the right time, to redeem ALL time!  As Galatians 4:4 says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might be adopted as God’s children.” Isaiah speaks of a light dawning.  Of those walking in darkness, living in the land of darkness, seeing a Great Light.  We are (or were) those people walking in darkness in the land of darkness, and Jesus is this GREAT LIGHT. As we ‘move into’ our time of Advent, anticipating Jesus’ 1st coming in salvation and now, to his 2nd coming in glory ‘making all things new’, we see our need for a Savior then and now.  For 4 weeks God has revealed our need for salvation from our sin (lawlessness, mis-direction, depravity and foolishness).  Sunday, we will look at another truthful aspect of sin – it’s corporate societal reality.  Most important on Sunday is an illustration God gives of how best to overcome societal sin and evil.  A clue?  It begins with the Light of the World and God’s salvific calling to be ‘light in the world.’ See you Sunday! Happy Thanksgiving – The Lord bless you and the name of the Lord be praised, Pastor Mark

Podcast: 2025-11-23: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Sin – Foolishness, Such Folly Is

https://crestviewchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-11-23.mp3 2025-11-23: Pastor Mark Quist – Discipleship: Sin – Foolishness, Such Folly Is Happy Thanksgiving!  “Give Thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever!” Divin’ in, to understand sin… for 3 weeks, we have taken a look at our problem of sin.  We know we break God’s good law of love, a law for our flourishing, to love God and neighbor, and break it.  We know even our best efforts miss the mark of God’s desire and intention for our flourishing.  Last week we understood this problem of our sin goes deep, the depravity is total in ‘every part of us is tainted.’  These things are true, undeniable, and inescapable.  Simply put, our sin separates us from God.  And often separates us from one another.  This makes sin and its engagement utter foolishness… but we can’t seem to help ourselves.  If God is our source of all life (and God is) why would we separate ourselves from God by sinning?  If our design is for unity in community, why do we sin in our relationships causing so much separation?  That’s an age old question to an age old problem… a squirrelly one. Ever watch two squirrels chasing after each other, almost in lock step as they run from branch to branch yet never quite catching each other?  Maybe, this is similar.  The Apostle Paul says it well in Romans 7, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer myself who does it, but it is sin living in me.  For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep doing.”  It’s a human struggle… always. Let’s meditate on the foolishness of sin this Sunday.  Simply do a search of the book of Proverbs and you will have all the wisdom needed to wrap your head and heart around the foolishness of sin. See you Sunday, Pastor Mark