Union Church

Acts 2:42-47 - What a Spirit Filled Church Looks Like

Listen along as we continue our time in the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 2:42-47

Haiku - Following Jesus, learning from Him, joining in His mission on earth 

“The idea of salvation cannot be reduced to a personal relationship with Jesus. God's plan is much more encompassing. God intends for salvation to be a community-creating event.” Joseph Hellerman

“Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow. We all know people who are consumed with spiritual wanderlust. But we never get to know them very well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move along from church to church, ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots and seldom experience lasting and fruitful growth in their Christian lives.” - Joseph Hellerman 

”These four go together. You can't separate them, or leave one out, without damage to the whole thing. Where no attention is given to teaching, and to constant, lifelong Christian learning, people quickly refer to the worldview or mindset of the surrounding culture, and end up with their minds shaped by whichever social pressures are most persuasive, with Jesus somewhere around as a pale influence or memory. Where people ignore the common life of the Christian family (the technical term often used is "fellowship", which is more than friendship but not less), they become isolated, and often find it difficult to sustain a living faith. Where people no longer share regularly in 'the breaking of bread' (the early Christian term for the simple meal that took them back to the Upper Room 'in remembrance of Jesus'), they are failing to raise the flag which says 'Jesus' death and resurrection are the centre of everything. And whenever people do all these things but neglect prayer, they are quite simply forgetting that Christians are supposed to be heaven-and earth people. Prayer makes no sense whatever - unless heaven and earth are designed to be joined together, and we can share in that already.”NT Wright

Gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture. The doctrine of grace creates a culture of grace. When the doctrine is clear and the culture is beautiful, that church will be powerful. But there are no shortcuts to getting there. Without the doctrine, the culture will be weak. Without the culture, the doctrine will seem pointless. Ray Ortlund

“Money flows effortlessly to that which is its god.” Tim Keller

“If the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, then perhaps the love of generosity is the root of all kinds of good.” CS Lewis

“Prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is. One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.” That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect “a sense of the reality of the supernatural” of which I speak. And one should wish for no prayer, except precisely the prayer that God gives us—probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.” Henri Nouwen

Acts 1:1-41 - Pentecost, Preaching, Repentance

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 2:1-41

Revelation 7:9-10

"We formerly rejoiced in uncleanness of life, but now love only chastity; before we used the magic arts, but now dedicate ourselves to the true and unbegotten God; before we loved money and possessions more than anything, but now we share what we have and to everyone who is in need; before we hated one another and killed one another and would not eat with those of another race, but now since the manifestation of Christ, we have come to a common life and pray for our enemies and try to win over those who hate us without just cause.” Justin Martyr

Is our evangelism a joyful proclamation of what God has done for us or a frantic “workaholic” search for as many scalps for our evangelical belt as we can find? Biblical evangelizing is a twofold commission: to preach and to pray, to talk to people about God and to talk to God about people.” Harvey Conn

2 Cor 5:17-21

Acts 1:12-26 - The Space in Between

Listen along as Anthony continues our series through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 1:12-26 - Scott Reading

Title: The Space Between

 

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” 

- Karl Barth

 

“One reason why the experiential reality of perceiving God is unfamiliar country today is that the pace and preoccupations of urbanized, mechanized, collectivized, secularized modern life are such that any sort of inner life... is very hard to maintain. To make prayer your life priority, as countless Christians of former days did outside as well as inside the monastery, is stupendously difficult in a world that runs you off your feet and will not let you slow down. And if you attempt it, you will certainly seem eccentric to your peers, for nowadays involvement in a stream of programmed activities is decidedly ‘in,’ and the older ideal of a quiet, contemplative life is just as decidedly ‘out.’ That there is widespread hunger today for more intimacy, warmth, and affection in our fellowship with God is clear... but the concept of Christian life as sanctified rush and bustle still dominates, and as a result the experiential side of Christian holiness remains very much a closed book.” 

- J.I. Packer

 

“There are no more lots after the coming of the Holy Spirit. It’s a shame isn’t it? I mean life would be a lot easier if we just had to draw lots to know God’s will, but evidently that’s not how he wants it. The Spirit is who is in our hearts helps makes these things clear. One of my favorite prayers is, God will you make it so clear that there’s no choice? I hate choice. Of the eighteen possible variations, just make seventeen go away will you, because I’m not real bright and I don’t always get these things. I’m still hoping for casting lots to come back into use, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”

- William Mounce

 

“As much as modern Christians love to talk about successes, sometimes the failures of the church need airing.”

- Holman Commentary

 

{Verse 1}

Free fall, feet off the ground             

A clean, white page, fresh snow, no sound       

Here as we wait, from dark to dawn          

New paths before us, the old is gone

 

{Chorus 1}

Unplug the lights, take down the tree      

The less we have, the less we need              

From Christmas night to New Year's Eve           

We bless the space that’s in between         

We bless the space that’s in between

 

{Verse 2}

December ends, make way for dreams          

Wait for the light to raise the spring     

Embrace it all from hope to doubt       

Like ocean waves washin' in and out

 

{Chorus 2}

Two roads apart, come close again       

Where do you stop? Where do I begin?     

Each year we learn more what it means            

We bless the space  that’s in between            

We bless the space  that’s in between

 

{Bridge}

We bless the seeds under the snow

We bless the patience take it slow

We bless the limits, bless the tears

We bless the failures that brought us here

 

{Verse 3}

I wipe the frost the glass is cold         

Our dreams beneath the falling snow        

Be Thou my vision until I see        

And bless the space that’s in between

- Sandra McCracken & Josh Garrels

 

O Almighty God, you pour out your spirit of grace and of supplication on all who desire it. Deliver us, when we draw near to you, from cold hearts and wandering minds, that with steady thoughts and kindled passion we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

-adapted from the Book of Common Prayer

 

Acts 1:1-11 - How Jesus Starts His Church

Listen along as we begin a series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 1:1-11 - Faith 
"How Jesus Starts His Church"

”Customary descriptions of Acts as the story of the church's growth or the story of the spread of the gospel neglect the larger context within which this journey takes place. Although it begins in Israel's leading city, Jerusalem, and ends in the Empire's leading city, Rome, the context of Acts reaches well beyond the cities of the Mediterranean world. Readers who set aside the expectation that Acts is an institutional history, shaped and reshaped by human leaders, will instead see God at work from the beginning until well past the end. God is the one who glorifies Jesus and raises him from the dead, who rescues the apostles from prison, who directs Ananias to baptize Saul, and who insists upon the inclusion of the Gentiles. As Acts unfolds, the audience comes to know God through the activity ascribed to God as well as through the speeches and their claims about God. And the first thing the audience learns is that God is the God of Israel.” Beverly Gaventa

“The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism.The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them Is it not amazing: though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world’s wisdom, trust its forms of publicity and its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord’s work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity, at the center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world, but we will lack the power of the Holy Spirit.” - Francis Schaeffer

“Travelers who desire the predictability of an interstate highway system where all roads look alike and every interchange features three gas stations and two fast-food stores will find this journey more closely resembles A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” Beverly Gaventa

Joel 2:28-29

“For the verb restore shows that the were expecting a political and territorial kingdom; the noun Israel that they were expecting a national kingdom; and the adverbial clause at this time that they were expecting its immediate establishment.”  John Stott

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer - Rainer Rilke

“Some have seen Jesus’s answer as a gentle rebuke to their curiosity: they are to mind their own business and not worry about the end. Others have seen a challenge to the disciple’ narrowly nationalistic view of the kingdom. But these interpretations miss the legitimate eschatological expectation that all Jews, including Jesus and the apostles, held in common. If the last days had come indeed—as all the signs seemed to indicate—then Israel must be restored: this was the first order of business on the prophets’ kingdom agenda! Jesus’s response precisely answers this question: this is how the kingdom is to be restored to Israel so that (in keeping with prophetic promise) the gentiles might soon stream in. Jesus shifts his disciples expectation from when to how.”  - Mike Goheen

“When the Spirit comes to them and gives them the gift of power, their very identity will be transformed into that of witnesses.” - Darrell Guder 

“The key question is this: As we work for God in this fallen world, what are we trusting in? To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous promise that we have something different—the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of human technique.” - Francis Schaeffer

Exodus 33:12-23 - Exodus and Easter

Listen along as we wrap up Exodus and see the hope of Easter.

Exodus 33:12-23

“For a while” is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting. - Haruki Murakami

“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true. Actions are not impostions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with.” Dallas Willard 

Exodus 34:6-7 

Romans 8:34-39

1 Peter 1:3-7

2 Cor 3:16-18

Exodus 23:1-9 - A Jealous God

Exodus 23:1-9 - Faith

Title: A Jealous God

 

“The jealous God”— doesn't it sound offensive? For we know jealousy, the green-eyed monster, as a vice, one of the most cancerous and soul-destroying vices that there is.”

- J.I. Packer

 

I was dreaming of the past

And my heart was beating fast

I began to lose control

I began to lose control

I didn't mean to hurt you

I'm sorry that I made you cry

Oh no, I didn't want to hurt you

I'm just a jealous guy

- John Lennon

 

“Were we imagining a God, then naturally we should ascribe to him only characteristics which we admired, and jealousy would not enter the picture. Nobody would imagine a jealous God. But we are not making up an idea of God by drawing on our imagination; we are seeking instead to listen to the words of Holy Scripture, in which God himself tells us the truth about himself. For God our Creator, whom we could never have discovered by any exercise of imagination, has revealed himself. He has talked. He has spoken…”

- J.I. Packer

 

“There are two sorts of jealousy among humans, and only one of them is a vice. Vicious jealousy is an expression of the attitude, "I want what you've got, and I hate you because I haven't got it." It is an infantile resentment springing from unmortified covetousness, which expresses itself in envy, malice and meanness of action. It is terribly potent, for it feeds and is fed by pride, the taproot of our fallen nature. There is a mad obsessiveness about jealousy which, if indulged, can tear an otherwise firm character to shreds. "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?" asks the wise man (Prov 27:4). What is often called sexual jealousy, the lunatic fury of a rejected or supplanted suitor, is of this kind.

But there is another sort of jealousy: zeal to protect a love relationship, or to avenge it when broken. This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex; there, however, it appears not as the blind reaction of wounded pride but as the fruit of marital affection. As Professor Tasker has written, married persons "who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception; for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage" (The Epistle of James, p. 106). This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact.”

- J.I. Packer

 

“For your Maker is your husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name…” 

(Isaiah 54:5a)

 

“For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 

(2 Corinthians 11:2)

 

“There is no need to be disturbed by this. Jealousy is a resentment of rivals, and whether it is good or evil depends on whether the rival has any right to be there. Since God is unique, and there is no other, he has the right to ask that we worship him alone.”

- John Stott

 

“A counterfeit god (idol) is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”

 —Timothy Keller

 

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 

—Eph. 5:25-32

 

Exodus 19:1-6 - Sinai Pt. 2

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus.

Notes//Quotes:

Text for reading: Exodus 19:1-6 - Scott
Title: Sinai pt. 2

“We can imagine our octogenarian mountaineer in joyful fellowship with the God whose patience he had exhausted at this spot some months earlier.”
- Christopher Wright

10  “He found him in a desert land,
and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
he kept him as the apple of his eye.
11  Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
bearing them on its pinions,
12  the LORD alone guided him,
no foreign god was with him.”
—Deut. 32:10-12 ESV

“Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” - Exodus 16:3 NKJV

“It’s three months since they've left Egypt. They started a new calendar the moment they stepped foot out of Egypt. So now time is being reckoned in relation to his work of deliverance. And he tells them, we're entering into covenant. If you obey me and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you're going to be my treasured possession.” 
- Carmen Imes

“9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 
- 1 Peter 2:9&10 ESV

 

Exodus 14:5-31 - Deliverance and Doubt

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus.

Notes//Quotes:

Exodus 14:5-31

“The story of God is the story of salvation, centered on the One whose name means “Yahweh is salvation,” and here is what that looks like: deliverance from slavery and certain death, announced by faith, and received as a gift through trust and obedience.” - Chris Wright

“With our modern curiosity, we tend either to explain the phenomenon (and deny the miracle) or to think of it solely in miraculous terms (and resist any natural causation). Our text, however, sees the event from both perspectives as equally valid. On the one hand, the Bible itself provides a perfectly natural explanation. A combination of wind and movement of the sea caused a dry corridor for a temporary period, long enough for Israel to get to the other side. On the other hand, who rules the wind and the waves? We have just read the whole narrative of the natural disasters inflicted on Egypt by Yahweh using the forces of creation for his own purposes. This event, no matter what the natural causes, was Yahweh’s doing (he caused the wind to drive back the sea) through Moses’s agency (he stretched his hand and raised his staff). Two other points turn this natural event into a miracle of salvation: first, that it should happen at precisely the time when the Israelites needed it to; and second, that the danger surrounding them was only too evident—the sea was still there in the threatening darkness (the walls of water on either side) but was held back long enough for all to cross in safety.” Chris Wright

Ezk 18:23

Prov 3:6-7

“The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.” Brennan Manning

“Almost anything in life that truly matters will require you to do small, mostly overlooked things, over a long period of time with him.” Zach Eswine

Exodus 12:1-13 - Passover

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus.

Notes//Quotes:

Exodus 12:1-13

“Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.”. - James K.A. Smith 

Exodus 12:29-32

13:17-22

Whenever Israel returned to God in such times of national repentance, covenant renewal, or restoration, they returned to the foundational historic event of their national existence—the event on which their identity and faith was founded: God’s great demonstration of compassion, justice, and redemption, the exodus. They needed to be shaped again by the story that had first shaped them and respond to its promise and its demand in renewed worship and obedience. They needed to tell and hear again the story they were in, the story of God and God’s people, and then live in the light of it.For us, individually or as Christian communities, times of revival and renewal will always include going back to the cross and resurrection of Christ, back to the redemption story that defines the good news for us and the world, the story that shapes our identity, our mission, and our future. As it was for Israel, the road to renewal and restoration for us has to be the road of remembrance. For even as Christians, we so easily forget the story we are in. We need, just as much as the Israelites, to hear and tell again and again the story of God, the foundational biblical narrative of our redemption, and then live in the light of it. Chris Wright

Jesus is a teacher who doesn’t just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn’t content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings - James KA

Exodus 7:1-13 - There Will Be Frogs

Listen along as we continue our time through Exodus.

Exodus 7:1-13

 2 Tim 3:16-17

“One could object that it is not worthy of God to wield the sword. Is God not love, long-suffering and all-powerful love? A counter-question could go something like this: Is it not a bit too arrogant to presume that our contemporary sensibilities about what is compatible with God’s love are so much healthier than those of the people of God throughout the whole history of Judaism and Christianity? If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship.” - Mirolsav Volf 

6:6-8

“How are we to interpret all this? With humility, would be a good place to start. There is (and always will be) a mystery in holding together the sovereignty of God and human moral responsibility for our own willed choices and actions. Yet we must, without hesitation, insist that the Bible affirms both, frequently and unequivocally, however difficult it is for us to reconcile them in our human logic” - Chris Wright

“The entire created order is caught up in this struggle, either as cause or victim. Pharaoh’s antilife measures have unleashed chaotic powers that threaten the very creation that God intended.… Water is no longer water; light and darkness are no longer separated; diseases of people and animals run amok; insects and amphibians swarm out of control. And the signs come to a climax in the darkness, which in effect returns the creation to the first day of Genesis 1, a precreation state of affairs. While everything is unnatural in the sense of being beyond the bounds of the order created by God, the word hypernatural (nature in excess) may better capture the sense. The plagues are hypernatural at various levels—timing, scope, intensity. Some sense of this is also seen in the recurrent phrases to the effect that such “had never been seen before, nor ever shall be again” (10:14 cf. 10:6; 9:18, 24; 11:6). Terence Fretheim

“It cannot be accidental that God used ten plagues to teach the Egyptians that he is sovereign and that their gods were of no account. At the time of the exodus, both the Israelites and the Egyptians used a decimal counting system, which meant that the number ten tended to connote a full, complete, sufficient quantity of anything being explicitly enumerated. A run-through of the whole decimal list from one to ten provided more than enough demonstration of God’s power over Egypt for anyone to get the message.” Doug Stuart

“after six occasions of pharaoh hardening his own heart, we at last read that God hardens his heart, it is not so much that God is causing him to make those choices but that God gives him up to the choices he has shown himself determined to make and allows the consequences to take their course” Chris Wright

Romans 12:14-21