Union Church

Listen along as we continue our series through 1 Peter. Notes/Quotes: Jon readingTitle: Lock In “We prefer a gospel in which God gives us healthy bodies and bulging wallets. And we too readily think that material blessing is the entitled reward of the gospel. To put it bluntly, the democratized West expects Jesus, comfort, ease, and acceptance from the world.”- David Helm “Indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us—an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof “God did it” and “I did it” are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.”- C.S. Lewis

Listen along as we begin a 3 week series on the kingdom of God. Notes//Quotes: Text: Isaiah 35:1-10Title: Kingdom Promised “The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of all Christian faith. God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it. ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and rejoice with joy and singing; the desert shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.’ The last book of the Bible ends, not with the company of the saved being taken up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, resulting in God’s new creation, new heavens and new earth, in which everything that has been true, lovely, and of good report will be vindicated, enhanced, set free from all pain and sorrow. God himself, it says, will wipe away all tears from all eyes.”- N.T. Wright “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17) “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matt. 11:5&6) “This is a story of a man who is disillusioned with Jesus just like we are sometimes–with Jesus or with God, or with the church, or with the whole Christian faith. But, you know something? That may not be so bad as it seems. Disillusionment means literally to have our illusions “dissed.” It’s very painful, but it’s not a bad thing. Disillusionment can be a gift. When we are disillusioned we have discovered that God does not always conform to our expectations. We look at our requirements for God and begin to see our own selfish illusions–the kinds of things we tell ourselves to feel good or comfortable, or to make sense of it all. But when God yanks away our illusions, we are free to discover the real God. Taylor says, “Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I rubbed the lantern? Then perhaps God is not a genie? Who then is God? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Then perhaps God is not a cop. Who, then, is God? Did God fail to make everything run smoothly? Then, perhaps God is not a [cosmic] mechanic. Who, then, is God?” When God does not meet my expectations I am drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of who God really is and what God is really doing in my life and in the world.- Leonard J. Vander Zee “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”(Matt. 6:10-13)

Listen along as we near the finish of our journey through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Mike reading - Acts 28:1-16 “No crowd gathers for Paul’s preaching, and no description illumines the situation of those believers who journey out to meet him. That minimalistic assessment should not obscure the importance of Paul’s thanksgiving in v. 15. The journey all along has less to do with what will happen in Rome than with the God who directs Paul to that place.” - Beverly Gaventa Map Picture (attached) “God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.” - Augustine, City of God Col 1:19-20 “There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety – let us pray that we may always know it!” Corrie Ten Boom

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 26:1-32 First-century Pharisees excelled in everything we admire spiritually. They were zealous for God, completely committed to their faith. They were theologically astute, masters of the biblical texts. They fastidiously obeyed even the most obscure commands. They even made up extra rules just in case they were missing anything. Their embrace of spiritual disciplines was second to none. - Larry Osborne “Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.” - Shusaku Endo, Silence “You can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.” - Tim Keller “Goads is a greek aphorism that reflects the futility of resisting a greater power, in this case the power of God. The aphorism reveals the crisis: Paul has been acting upon his own perception of God’s will, all the time resisting God’s will.” - Beverly Gaventa I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse.CS Lewis “Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.” Augustine “By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. ... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet” F. Buechner Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.” - Tim Keller

Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 24:1-27 The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. - NT Wright 1 Thess 4:1-8 2 Peter 3:13 The church’s growth; it is life in “the way of Christ,” distinctive and hopeful. Christians, were growing in numbers because they were distinct from the “unjust”—living patiently in relation to their neighbors and enemies, doing good to them, and waiting for them to come to faith - Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church It doesn't matter if life is long or short, it isn't time that's the problem, it's the speed. Far too much happens when you're alive. everything goes so fast, how are you supposed to have time to be a human being? - Fredrik Backman Waiting requires living by what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. - Mark Vroegop

Listen along as we continue through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 21:37-22:29 Matthew 5:9-11, 5:43-46 ”Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else? The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Romans 9:1-5 1 Peter 3:8-17

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Text: Acts 20:17-38 - Jack readingTitle: Apostolic Goodbyes Slide 1:“The ancient world considered humility a weakness. Whether you were rich or poor, what you prized instead was honour—having your merits recognized and your name praised. Boasting about your achievements was expected in the Greco-Roman world, and one never humbled themselves to others as that would sacrifice your well-earned status. Humility was something for children and slaves, not honourable men and women…All this changed in AD33 when an innocent man believed to be the Son of God submitted to the most humiliating act the Romans could concoct—crucifixion. Jesus relinquished his divine status, Christians believed, dying not for himself but for us—which left onlookers with a dilemma: either Jesus wasn’t worthy of honour, or their definition of humility had to change. The definition changed and today you and I see humility not as a weakness but as a virtue.” —John Dickson Slide 2:“But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Cor. 4:2) Slide 3:“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together Slide 4:“We may have said to someone even this week, “Well, as long as you’ve got your health, that’s all that matters,” or “As long as you get your feet over the bed, that’s what counts,” or “As long as you’re vertical, you know, it’s a great day.” Well, of course, we know what we mean by that. But that is not all that matters. For our very frame is a dying frame. We’re crumbling even as we go. And unless we’re able to say with Paul, “To me, to live is Christ,” we cannot legitimately affirm with Paul, “and to die is gain.” The only way that death can be gain is if Christ is everything. And if Christ is everything, as Paul says it is, then he’s able to say, “The ultimate issue is not my life.” —Alistair Begg Slide 5:“God promised and, in his sacraments, he gave me a sure sign of his grace that Christ’s life overcame my death in his death, that his obedience blotted out my sin in his suffering, that his love destroyed my hell in his forsakenness. This sign and promise of my salvation will not lie to me or deceive me. It is God who has promised it, and he cannot lie either in words or in deeds.” He who thus insists and relies on the sacraments will find that his election and predestination will turn out well without his worry and effort.” —Martin Luther, Fourteen Consolations