Grow Weekend – It Is Written

Grow Weekend, a theology conference at Faith Church, looks at Jesus’ words in Luke 24, “It is written.”  Our speakers will be unpacking the three things Jesus said are written: His suffering, His resurrection, and the proclamation of repentance to all nations.  Where is it written?  We begin with Abraham, whose life, read through the lens of resurrection, turns out to be the gospel told in advance (Gal. 3:8).  Attendees will find not just what Genesis says about Abraham, but how to read it the way Jesus read it—pointing to Himself.

We’ve put together all of the resources from the weekend here so you can go through it as a personal study or group study. We recommend it in this order:

  • Session 1, Session 1 Notes attached
  • Session 2, Session 2 Notes attached
  • Session 3, Session 3 Notes attached
  • Session 4
  • Cut for Time Podcast

Sermons in this series

Session 4 - The Gospel Preached to Abraham
August 30, 2026Pastor:Nick Carter

Sermon Notes

Galatians 3:8 contains one of the most astonishing sentences Paul ever wrote: “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” The gospel was not launched at Pentecost. It was preached — in advance, in seed form — to a man in Ur of the Chaldeans. This sermon sits with that claim. What exactly was the gospel preached to Abraham, and how does it connect to the third thing Jesus said was written — that repentance and forgiveness should be proclaimed to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem? The mission to the nations was not a backup plan or a new development. It was the original promise, now fulfilled in the One who suffered, rose, and sent his disciples from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We close where Luke 24 ends: with witnesses who finally understood what had been written all along — and were sent.

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Session 3 - Received Back from the Dead
August 29, 2026Pastor:Nicholas Piotrowski

Sermon Notes

This session works primarily through Genesis 15, 17, and 22, using Romans 4 and Hebrews 11:17–19 as interpretive guides that tell us how the apostles—and likely Jesus himself—read those passages. Isaac is bound as a dead man and returned alive on the third day, and Hebrews 11:19 calls that moment a “parable”—a figurative resurrection. But the resurrection faith of Abraham did not begin at Moriah. In Romans 4, Paul traces it back further—to Genesis 15 and 17, where an old man with a body “as good as dead” and a barren wife believed the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Paul’s argument is striking: Abraham’s faith in the promise of a son and a Christian’s faith in the resurrection of Jesus are structurally the same act of faith in the same God. This session asks the question that these texts force on us: is the resurrection of Jesus a surprise ending to the biblical story, or has it been the internal logic of the covenant from the very beginning?

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Session 2 - God Will Provide the Lamb
August 29, 2026Pastor:Jerry Risser

Sermon Notes

Genesis 22 is a narrative of extraordinary compression. On the third day of a journey toward what Abraham believed would be death, a father climbs a mountain with his only son, lays him on an altar of wood, and raises a knife. At the last moment, his hand is stayed — and a ram is substituted in Isaac’s place. The New Testament authors did not read this story as merely a test of obedience. This session walks slowly through Genesis 22, attending to details that most readers rush past.  We will then look at how Romans 8:32 and Hebrews 11 confirm what the story was always pointing toward.

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Session 1 - The Road and the Books: Reading Scripture with the Risen Christ
August 28, 2026Pastor:Nick Carter

Sermon Notes

This session introduces the interpretive key for the entire weekend: Jesus read the Hebrew Scriptures as a unified story pointing to himself—not by forcing meaning in, but by drawing out what was always there. We will look closely at Luke 24:44–47, explore the structure of the TaNaK and of the Luke-Acts pair.  We will ask what it would mean to learn to read the Bible the way Jesus read it. The weekend ahead is an attempt to do exactly that, beginning with the Torah.

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