Union Church

The Story of God: Hosea

Listen along as we work our way through the minor prophets.

Notes/Quotes:

Hosea 14:1-9 - Denise

Hosea 14:1-9

“The task of the prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” Walter Brueggeman 

Hosea 1:2
Hosea 1:10-2:1
Hosea 2:14-21

“For all its brevity, this little prophecy entwines together strands which only separately delight us in other more familiar passages. In a few lines we have the picture of nature at peace with man (cf. Is. 11:6-9; 65:25), of weapons discarded (cf. Ps. 46:9; Is. 9:5; Mi. 4:3) and of God’s people at one with Him (cf. Je. 31:33f.; Ezk. 36:26f.). It is the last of these that God lingers over, for it is the heart of the matter.” - Derek Kidner 

“Perhaps this is why Hosea captures, as no other writer does, the tension within God’s love for His elect – for He refuses to ease the pain of the relationship either by compromise or by quitting. He loves these people despite their blatant unfaithfulness (‘they turn to other gods’), which He cannot for a moment condone, and despite their fatuous and brutish scale of values.” - Derek Kidner

3:5

In every direction His people have played Him false: in religion, with other gods, another cult; in politics, with shabby intrigues and dubious patrons; in morals, with unbridled sex and violence. His reaction might well have been to write them off and waste no more affection on them. But He is not so easily dismissed. - Derek Kidner

“Amos cries, “Turn, for in front of you is destruction;” but Hosea, “Turn, for behind you is God.” George Adam Smith

It is rather easy to grow up with a naïve idea of God – something like a child’s impression of the adult world – and with a worrying conundrum about His way of doing things. The conundrum is this old one: If God is all- powerful and all-good, why does He not rid the world of evil? (The church too, for that matter?)
One of the things that Hosea does for us is to give us, with extraordinary frankness, the other side of that anomaly. God’s side. The child’s idea of his elders is a puzzled one. They make the rules (he says to himself) – there’s power for you! And they have money, whatever they may say – there’s freedom! What couldn’t we do, we children, with all that freedom, all that power? In this book we see things not in these simplistic terms, where situations and people are uncomplicated and power is like a magic wand. Hosea introduces us to a family which is a miniature of our world, but it is a problem family, and God compares His situation not to that of an autocrat whose orders nobody dares question, nor of a father who rejoices in an adoring wife and children, but to that of a husband whose wife has left him, and a father whose children are like strangers in his own house and are fast destroying themselves. - Derek Kidner

The ‘whoever’ of this verse suddenly exposes us to the same searching encounter, for the word of God goes on speaking; it never slips safely into the past. The rightness of God’s ways as revealed in this book is so far above us in both holiness and love, as to leave self-sufficient man without excuse, self-condemned, while those who turn into the way of righteousness find themselves met more than half-way. - Derek Kidner

The Story of God: Song of Songs

Listen along as Anthony leads us through the Song of Songs.

Notes/Quotes:

Text: Song Of Songs 
Title: Wonder, Wisdom, & Work
Reading 3:1-5 - Crystal

“Without the Song we would be left with only spare and often negative words about a reality that is crucial to the human experience: love and sex. God in his wisdom has spoken through the poet of the Song to both encourage and warn us about the unquenchable power of love and desire. The Song celebrates the joy of physical touch, the exhilaration of exotic scent, the sweet sound of a lover’s voice, and the taste of another’s lips. The Song is a divine affirmation of love and an acknowledgement of the pain that often accompanies it.” – Tremper Longman

“The woman speaks significantly more than the man does, and her words begin and end the Song. She also uses the pronoun ‘I’ and ‘myself’, along with the phrases ‘my soul’ and ‘my heart’, far more frequently than he does: he hardly talks about himself and engages in little of the self-reflection that she does.”
- Ian Duguid

(Ez. 16:1-22)
4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

6 “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ 7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. 9 Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. 10 I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. 11 And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. 12 And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. 14 And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore[b] because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be.17 You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. 18 And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. 19 Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. 20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter 21 that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? 22 And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

(Ez. 16:30-34)
30 “How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, 31 building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. 32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

"the couple are not called husband and wife, but the centrepiece of the book is a wedding scene that concludes with the consummation of their relationship (3:6 – 5:2). It is in this poem that the man calls the woman ‘bride’ (kallâ) for the first time. The word occurs no fewer than six times in this poem (4:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 5:1) and nowhere else in the Song, emphatically connecting the sexual experience described here with the appropriate legal status that goes with it.”
- Ian Duguid

 “The direct echo of Genesis 3:16 reveals a redemptive reversal of desire through use of the rare Hebrew word “desire” (Heb. teshuˆ qaˆh). In Genesis, Eve’s desire for Adam indicates a tension and imbalance of power between the created beings, “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). In the Song, this same word is used of the man toward the woman to communicate a profound mutuality and shared desire: “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). Mutuality in terms of male and female relationships was God’s intention all along.”
- Katlyn Richards

“To miss that connection between human and divine love, which allegorical interpretation makes instinctively, even if sometimes inappropriately, is to miss something profound and important. The awesome power and unique nature of human love within marriage is precisely what makes it such a perfect analogy for the relationship between the bride of Christ and her husband, or between the individual believer and God. The original human one-flesh intimacy in the garden was never simply about Adam and Eve enjoying each other’s company. It was intended to reflect an image of the nature of God himself in his intertrinitarian relations – two distinct and different people who become one flesh, conjoined forever. This same intimacy will ultimately be extended to the bride of Christ by her Saviour; as a result, application to the relationship of Christ and the church flows naturally from the Song of Songs, in a metaphor designed by God himself (Eph. 5:22–33). Of course, the metaphor of bride and bridegroom is an analogy, as are all metaphors. This frees the interpreter from trying to find forced spiritual significance in every poetic detail of the text. But the metaphor is a rich and profound mystery that will repay much pondering.” —Ian Duguid

 

The Story of God: Daniel

Listen along as we see how to engage exile well.

Notes/Quotes:

Daniel 1:8-21
Daniel Chiasm Picture

Daniel 3:16-18
Daniel 7:13-14

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price. - Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

1 Peter 2:9-12 

A father disciplines his own kids, not someone else’s. It’s the same in the spiritual realm. God’s discipline always begins with those he calls his own. It was true of Israel and it’s true of Christians today. Yet for many of us that can be confusing. At times, those who mock him, deny him, or high-handedly sin seem to do so with impunity. We assume God’s judgment should begin with those who do the greatest evil. But it doesn’t. It never has. It begins with us. And that’s been perplexing to God’s people throughout the ages. - Larry Osbourne

1. To form a resilient identity, experience intimacy with Jesus.
2. In a complex and anxious age, develop the muscles of cultural discernment.
3. When isolation and mistrust are the norms, forge meaningful, intergenerational relationships.
4. To ground and motivate an ambitious generation, train for vocational discipleship.
5. Curb entitlement and self-centered tendencies by engaging in countercultural mission. 
David Kinnamen, Faith for Exiles, Forming Resilient Disciples

Self sufficiency to dependency
Absence to presence
Isolation to community
Fear to love
Fragility to strength
Apathy to courage 
Fatalism to hope

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

The Story of God: Ezekiel

Listen along as we see the prophetic vision of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 37:1-14 

“Ezekiel is piling up one Old Testament allusion after another to tell you what it is he sees—the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. He’s seeing the kavod of the Lord! The Hebrew term kavod means “heavy.” It can be used metaphorically like, “that’s so heavy,” meaning weighty or significant. It can also be used to describe the physical manifestation of someone’s significance. Someone’s presence can be so important, so radiant, so significant that we would describe it as their kavod. That’s how it’s used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. It was God’s kavod that rested over the ark of the covenant and filled the Holy of Holies. It was God’s kavod that showed up on Sinai. And now, in Ezekiel, it’s his kavod that’s riding into Babylon on this royal, wheeled throne. Yahweh himself, in all his radiant glory, has just arrived in Babylon on the “God-Mobile!” Whitney Woollard

“He promises to bring Israel out of anarchy (Ezek 34), into the land (Ezek 35:1-36:15), back from disgrace (Ezek 36:16-38), up from the grave (Ezek 37:1-14) and together out of brokenness (Ezek 37:15-28). It is, in modern jargon, a truly holistic gospel. Ezekiel was ministering to a people who were broken and battered in every conceivable way. There were political, economic, agricultural, social, judicial, religious, personal, relational and spiritual dimensions to their sin and suffering. And God intended to tackle every aspect of that need. Such is the breadth and depth of the biblical gospel." – Chris Wright

“I am neither optimist nor a pessimist, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.” Lesslie Newbigin

“Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower, the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.” - Dallas Willard 

The Story of God: Jeremiah

Listen along as we continue our series through the Bible.

Jeremiah
Jeremiah 1:4-10 - Jeff Reading

Prophets: A real encounter with the presence of God, leading to speaking the truth of God to the people of God.
Accusation
Repentance
Consequence

“We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don’t see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.” - Eugene Peterson

Jeremiah 13:17 - 
Jeremiah 29:11

Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah. This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God. But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know. This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops. If we use our ego as the center from which to plot the geometry of our lives, we will live eccentrically. - Eugene Peterson

Jeremiah x image/file

3:6-11

7:5-7

Jeremiah (like other prophets) exposed the idolatry that underlay the spiritual, political, economic and social disintegration of his society. The issue in the Bible is not just “Do you believe in God or not?” Everybody believed in gods of some sort. The question was, “Who is truly the only living God?” And if that God is indeed Yahweh the God of Israel, then there are consequences in real life – as shown in the Torah. Yahweh demanded justice for the poor, compassion and equality for foreigners and refugees, systemic redress for poverty, structural mechanisms to protect the homeless and family-less from abuse and destitution, fair and equitable distribution of land, integrity in the judicial system, humility, simplicity and morality in the government (as opposed to wealth, women and weapons) - Chris Wright

25:11

31:31-34

52:31-34

If we forget that the newspapers are footnotes to Scripture and not the other way around, we will finally be afraid to get out of bed in the morning. Too many of us spend far too much time with the editorial page and not nearly enough with the prophetic vision. We get our interpretation of politics and economics and morals from journalists when we should be getting only information; the meaning of the world is most accurately given to us by God’s Word. - Eugene Peterson

The Story of God: Lamentations

Listen along as we look at the book of Lamentations.

Text: Lamentations 
Title: Difficulty, Direction, & Deliverance
Reading: Lamentations 1:1-5

“In her book Journey through the Psalms, Denise Hopkins examines the use of lament in the major liturgical denominations in America. The study found that in the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, The Catholic Lectionary for Mass, The Hymnal for the United Church of Christ, and in the United Methodist Hymnal, the majority of the Psalms omitted from liturgical use are the laments.”
- Soong-Chan Rah

“This trend is not only in the mainline traditions but in the less liturgical as well. In Hurting with God, Glenn Pemberton notes that lament constitutes 40 percent of the Psalms, but only 13 percent of the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, 19 percent of the Presbyterian hymnal, and 13 percent of the Baptist hymnal emphasize lament. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) licenses local churches in the use of contemporary worship songs and tracks the songs that are most frequently sung in local churches. CCLI’s list of the top 100 worship songs  in August of 2012 reveals that only 5 of the songs would qualify as lament. Most of the songs reflect themes of praise.”
- Soong-Chan Rah 

“Lament is the space between brokenness and God’s mercy where the song is sung. Think of it as the transition between pain and promise. It is the path from heartbreak to hope.” —Mark Vroegop

“These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.” ….“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.”(Jeremiah 29:1 & 4-9)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

“do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon.” (Jeremiah 27: 9)

“He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.” 
(Lamentations 3:16)

“My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
(Lamentations 3:20-26)

“God is immutable in His essence. His nature and being are infinite, and so, subject to no mutations. There never was a time when He was not; there never will come a time when He shall cease to be. God has neither evolved, grown, nor improved. All that He is today, He has ever been, and ever will be. “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6) is His own unqualified affirmation. He cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse. Altogether unaffected by anything outside Himself, improvement or deterioration is impossible. He is perpetually the same. He only can say “I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14). He is altogether uninfluenced by the flight of time. There is no wrinkle upon the brow of eternity. Therefore His power can never diminish nor His glory ever fade.”
- A.W. Pink

 

 

The Story of God: Isaiah

Listen along as Dr. Mike Goheen leads us through Isaiah.

The Story of God: Habakkuk

Mike Gaston leads us through Habakkuk.

The Story of God: Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

“Ecclesiastes determines to show us how to find our way amid the broken sacred of the world. Ecclesiastes shows us more of God than perhaps we knew or are comfortable with. The same God who inspired the Psalms and the Gospels speaks here too. These inspired words which disturb us reveal aspects of God too often neglected by us. If one has only driven a car with automatic transmission, driving manually will take some getting used to. Because of the safe, clean-cut, pristine, sentimental, or naive approaches to Christianity and church that have mentored many of us, we may cherish a mistaken notion that God resembles a more G-rated approach to life. Ecclesiastes reminds us, however, that wherever there is, whatever the conversation, whatever the question or unsettling situation, God is able and willing to go there.” - Zach Eswine

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.”

 “A wisp of vapor, a puff of wind, a mere breath—Nothing you could get your hands on; the nearest thing to zero. That is the vanity this book is about” - Derek Kidner

Ecclesiastes 12:1

“To remember is not a purely mental act, it is to drop our pretense of self sufficiency and commit ourselves to him.” - Derek Kidner

To remember your Creator is more than to recall that there is a Creator, more also than to think about him from time to time. To remember your Creator means to bring to mind daily what your Creator has done for you and to act on this knowledge. To remember your Creator is to make God central in your life and to focus your life on doing his will. - Sidney Greidanus

12:13-14

We face the appalling inference that nothing has meaning, nothing matters under the sun. it is then that we can hear, as the good news which it is, that everything matters—‘for God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.’ That is how the book ends. On this rock we can be destroyed: but it is rock, not quicksand. There  is the chance to build.” - Derek Kidner

1 Cor 15:57-28

The Story of God: Proverbs

Listen along as we look at how the words of wisdom lead to the way of wisdom.

Proverbs 1:1-7 - Denise

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.” Proverbs 29:25

“When your culture is hedonistic, your religion therapeutic, and your goal a feeling of personal well-being, fear will be the ever-present headache.” - Michael Reeves

Proverbs 3:5-6

Proverbs 26:4-5

“Proverbs do not teach a universally valid truth. On the contrary, proverbs are true only if stated at the right time and in the right circumstance. This explains the apparently contradictory proverbs in 26:4-5. They describe what is generally true rather than what is always true.” - Tremper Longman

Proverbs 18:22
Proverbs 25:24

Prov 22:6
Prov 22:15
Proverbs 16:3
Galatians 2:20

“The best way to know how to get on in the world is to become acquainted with the One so intimately involved in its creation.” - Tremper Longman

“Light has a way of welcoming in the truth and letting it put its feet up, which in turns means that everything not like it, though it may invite itself over, can’t get comfortable enough to stay.” - Jackie Hill Perry

Prov 3:9-10

“Worship God and use money, or worship money and use God. There is no third choice.” Jeremy Treat

Colossians  2:1-3