Union Church

Well Proved Help

Today we grieved the loss of Miles Garcia and reflected on Psalm 46.

Matthew: Jesus is Alive

Matthew 28:1-20

“These women will become the first witnesses to the resurrection, a fact that seems to guarantee the credibility of the account in a world that usually did not accept women’s testimony as legally binding. Were the story fabricated, only male witnesses would have appeared. The role of the women also points to the dawning of a new age of equality among women and men in Christ” Craig Blomberg

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers…” —Hebrews 2:11

“Not only does he show himself as still loving and accepting those who had abandoned him, but he even treats them as equals! (They might be failures, but) they remain laborers with him in the work of the Father. Jesus is neither denying his uniqueness nor deifying the disciples. But he is portraying the church as a brotherhood that manifests more equality than hierarchy, even if some functional differentiation between leaders and followers is clear from other Scriptures. (e.g., 1 Pet 5:1–5; Heb 13:17).” Craig Blomberg

“Think what he (Matthew) had to gain and lose by it. Denying the resurrection left everybody’s world view intact. The Jews could continue as they had done. The Romans could go on running the world their way. Philosophers could still debate their lofty doctrine. Nobody would need to make radical readjustments. But if the resurrection of Jesus was true, and if people were to start reordering their lives by it, they would be on a collision course with the rest of the world. Matthew knew that as well as we do.” - NT Wright

“Mountains have figured prominently at least six different times in this Gospel (see also 4:8: Temptation Mountain; 5:1: Sermon Mountain; 15:29: Supper Mountain; 17:1: Transfiguration Mountain; 24:3: Consummation Mountain). Ever since Sinai, mountains have been the classic loci of the Lord’s great revelations. Now here in Galilee, the Lord gives the final revelation of his Gospel on a mountain. “As it were, the same divine law swings itself like a bow from the mount of the first revelation in Sinai to this mount of the last revelation in Galilee.” Matthew’s Jesus, the New and Better Moses, the Messiah- Interpreter of God’s law, will now give his church her final orders from the Mission Mountain.” Dale Bruner

“All spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious power “in heaven” but also all social, physical, political, and economic power “on earth” are in his hands. He is in charge around here.” Dale Bruner

“The Christians’ focus was not on “saving” people or recruiting them; it was on living faithfully—in the belief that when people’s lives are rehabituated in the way of Jesus, others will want to join them.” - Alan Kreider

“Disciple” (mathēteusate). Interestingly, the usual missionary terms are not employed here: “preach,” “convert,” “win,” and the like. A slower, lower-profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” To disciple means “to make students of,” “bring to school,” “educate” or, in modern-English terms, “to mentor,” “to apprentice.” The word pictures students sitting around a teacher more than it does penitents kneeling at an altar—an educational process more than an evangelistic crisis, a school more than a revival. The word’s prosaic character relaxes and says in effect, “Work with people over a period of time in the simple educational process of teaching Jesus.” Only the Cosmo-creator can do the big things like convert, win, bring repentance, or bring a person to decision—all authority is his, and his alone. Disciples will do the little thing of “discipling” others—that is, they will spend time with people—in the confidence that sooner or later the Cosmocrator with all his authority will create in some of these people the decision to be baptized (or, in Christianized cultures, the decision to own their baptisms) and then to follow Jesus.” Our Main Man Bruner

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” —Jesus (Jn.10:28)

Matthew: The Cross of Christ

Today we see the cross of Christ and how the love, justice, and victory of God collide.

Matthew 27:32-66

“From beginning to end, the Holy Scriptures testify that the predicament of fallen humanity is so serious, so grave, so irremediable from within, that nothing short of divine intervention can rectify it.” - Fleming Rutledge

“Wit and cruelty were in combination…to make death in the highest degree terrible and miserable.” - Martin Hengel

“Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had as its express purpose the elimination of victims from consideration as members of the human race. It cannot be said too strongly: that was its function”. - Fleming Rutledge

And so he was raised on a cross, and a title was fixed, indicating who it was who was being executed. Painful it is to say, but more terrible not to say..He who suspended the earth is suspended, he who fixed the heavens is fixed, he who fastened all things is fastened to the wood, God is murdered. - Melito of Sardis

Jesus’ last sentence before death was a question, not an affirmation. Jesus could have ended his life much more triumphantly with a noble exclamation—“God is love!” or “Love one another!” or “I triumph!” But when he died asking questions, we learn that Jesus not only took on our flesh and blood but also our nervous systems. He came not only giving us answers; he also came asking our questions, and questions seem weaker than exclamations. Jesus has been redefining strength his whole life. - Dale Bruner

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have very different angles on things, but they all converge on this: When Jesus is crucified something happens, and the result is the powers that have locked up the world in corruption, decay and death are overthrown. And Jesus is, from now on, running the show—even though it doesn’t look like it because we have the wrong idea of what power is and how it works. If we take the New Testament seriously, we ought to see that the crucifixion of Jesus is the means by which God’s Kingdom is actually launched on earth as in heaven—because the powers are defeated, and this new world comes to birth. - NT Wright

Romans 5:6-8
1 Peter 3:18

“The wrath of God, which plays such a large role in both the Old and New Testaments, can be embraced because it comes wrapped in God's mercy..The wrath of God falls upon God himself, by God's own choice, out of God's own love. The 'justice connection' may not be clear to those who are accustomed to privilege, but to oppressed and suffering Christians in the troubled places of the earth, there is no need to spell it out. God in Christ on the cross has become one with those who are despised and outcast in the world. No other method of execution that the world has ever known could have established this so conclusively.” Fleming Rutledge

“The concept of substitution may be said to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God. While the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.” - John Stott

Romans 5:9-11 
2 Corinthians 5:21

“The cross is the means by which God’s kingdom is actually launched on earth as in heaven—because the powers are defeated and this new world comes to birth.” - NT Wright
Colossians 2:13-15

Fake freedom: Be true to yourself.
Real freedom: Be true to your God. - Matt Smethurst 

Galatians 5:1, 13-15

The Devil loves a bloodless cross. He doesn’t mind a shiny trinket around your neck so long as it’s not a shining treasure in your heart. Satan is afraid of the blood. He knows it washes sinners clean. He knows that the bloody cross spells his doom. And he knows the blood of Christ pays the wrath owed sinners, thereby forever making his accusations against God’s people null and void. Which is why Satan would love for you to keep your gospel nice and respectable. - Jared C. Wilson

Matthew: Everything Upside-Down

Listen along as we see everything upside-down as Jesus nears the cross.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 27:1-31

This passion of Jesus Christ, this unveiling of man’s rebellion and of God‘s wrath, yet also his mercy, did not take place in heaven or in some remote planet or even in some world of ideas; it took place in our time, in the center of the world history in which our human life is played out. So we must not escape from this life. We must not take flight to a better land, or to some height or other unknown, nor to any spiritual cloud cuckooland nor to a Christian fairyland. That the word became flesh also means that it became temporal, historical. It assumes the form which belongs to the human creature, in which there are such folk as this very Pontius Pilate. The people we belong to and who are also ourselves at any time on a slightly larger scale! It is not necessary to close our eyes to this, for God has not closed his either; he has entered into it all. The incarnation of the word is an extremely concrete event, in which a human name may play a part. - Karl Barth

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. 
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

 

“Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us. But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.” - The Big Book, AA

Romans 3:23-24

“Oh my soul, oh my Jesus, Peter denied you three times, I have denied you more. Oh my soul, oh my Jesus, Judas sold you for thirty, I’d have done it for less.” - Kings Kaleidoscope 

“Remarkable parallels appear between the names of the two prisoners, along with remarkable differences in their character. “Barabbas” means son of a father in a simple, human sense. Jesus, on the other hand, was the Heavenly Son of his Heavenly Father, though not yet generally so recognized. Several important manuscripts and versions add in both vv. 16 and 17 that Barabbas’s forename was “Jesus.” Although the external evidence for accepting these readings as original is relatively weak, it is hard to imagine anyone creating this potentially embarrassing parallel if it were not true. Certainly, having both characters named Jesus tightens the parallelism and makes the irony of the crowd’s response all the greater. Pilate’s question then becomes, Do you want Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Christ? The “Christ” (Messiah) is still a title at this point in history, and Pilate does not think Jesus deserves it.” - Craig Blomberg

 

“It seems that every generation offers the people of God two Jesuses, one of whom is a popular, patriotic, hate-the-enemy Liberator. No church, of course, has the whole Jesus—he is not easy to capture. Every church makes an attempt to present the authentic Jesus in a way relevant to its time. It is the responsibility of every congregation in every time to discern the Jesus who is truest to canonical sources and, so, most relevant to the deepest (though not always most obvious) needs of the time. The permanent contribution of the Barabbas story is its teaching that the church’s main trial in every age will be her choice of the Jesus she wants…This raises the question: Are the people of God at any given time following the Jesus of the normative apostolic documents or are they following the Jesus of current voices? Are they choosing a Suffering Savior or a macho Messiah?” Dale Bruner

The answer to the question of who killed Jesus, therefore is that we all killed Jesus. The disciples killed Jesus by deserting him. The crowd killed Jesus because they were a crowd. The elites of Israel killed Jesus because they fear his call to holiness. Pilate killed Jesus because he had the responsibility to maintain order. The people as a whole killed Jesus because they had nothing better to do. We all killed and continue to kill Jesus. So let us all say that “his blood be on us and on our children.”  - Stanley Hauerwas 

"You have often left Christ; has he ever left you?
You have had many trials and troubles; has he ever deserted you?
Has he ever turned away his heart and compassion?
No, children of God, it is your solemn duty to say 'No,' and bear witness to his faithfulness.” - Charles Spurgeon

Matthew: Gethsemane‘s Gifts

Listen along as we near the end of Matthew's gospel.

Notes/Quotes:

Text: Matthew 26:47-75
Title: Gethsemane’s Gifts

“Jesus’ enemies are not his only problem. Jesus’ overzealous followers have historically been as painful to him. Disciples who trust their own instincts and praxis too much, who are too sure that Jesus must admire anything they do to serve and defend him or the oppressed, or who think the salvation of sinners or the liberation of the innocent justifies any means, are taught by this Gospel to think again.” 
- Dale Bruner

“This statement is sometimes interpreted as a call to pacifism, but in fact it is simply an observation that violence breeds violence. Perhaps warfare is sometimes necessary to prevent greater evils done to others but never merely in defense of self or God. Still, the proverbial form as a rationale for Jesus’ command suggests it would apply in other situations too. These will have to be settled on a case-by-case basis.”
- Craig Blomberg

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he opened not his mouth. 
—Isaiah 53:7

 “he speaks in his own language, the language he has learned and lived for many years: the language of biblical prophecy. His answer to the question of messiahship is the same oblique form of ‘Yes’ that he gave to Judas in 26.25: ‘You’ve just said so’ or ‘those are your words’. It was perhaps a way of avoiding arrogance or apparent selfish pride. But the ringing affirmation which followed made it clear that Jesus saw himself and his work in terms of the biblical picture of messiahship (the passage about the son of man in Daniel 7, quoted here, was sometimes taken messianically at that time). What's more, he saw the confrontation between himself and Caiaphas as the concrete outworking of the clash between that ‘son of man’ and the Fourth Beast (Daniel 7.7-8), the monster that was waging war against the true representative of God's people.”
- N.T. Wright

“Comes as close as the courtyard, sitting with the guards “to see how this would end.” “Following at a distance” is a wonderful description for the way most of us follow Jesus. We want, as Peter wanted to see how all this will end before we commit ourselves. Unfortunately, that strategy means that we cannot help but end up sitting with the guardians of the established order.”
- Stanley Hauerwas

 

Matthew: God‘s Plan

Title: God's Plan

Matthew 26:30-46

“Remarkable is Jesus’ prediction of the complete collapse of the whole church (“you will all”) right after his complete gift of himself to the whole church (“drink of it, all of you,” v. 27). “Though there will be but one traitor, they will all be deserters” (Henry, 393, emphasis added). Did Jesus know before the Supper that his disciples were this unstable? Would he have given them all forgiveness if he had known that they would all fall? We know the answers. Jesus gives disciples his Supper knowing not only what they have been but what they will be.”  - Dale Bruner

“Why should (or would) a person presume so much on the capacity of his (or her) nature? It is wounded, hurt, damaged.... It needs a true confession, not a false defense”  -Augustine

“He takes the three... in order that those who saw the glories [at the Transfiguration] might also see the griefs [at Gethsemane]”  - Dale Bruner

“It teaches the church at least three important truths: Jesus’ true humanity, his free obedience, and his real courage. If Jesus had not been confused by what was happening, could he have been truly human? And if Jesus had not been truly human, that is, an entire human being with not only a body like ours but also emotions and a mind like ours, could he have been our representative before God? Take away Jesus’ humanity and you take away humanity’s salvation. (“What was not assumed was not redeemed,” the fathers said.) Gethsemane’s emotions do not shame Jesus’ humanity, they prove it; they tell us that Jesus drank our cup to the lees, that he really was one of us, that he knew what it was to suffer, to be down, and in some ways even out. Might we reverently say that in Gethsemane, with its carefully chosen words for Jesus’ emotions and mind, that Jesus knew what it was to be emotionally crushed and mentally “crazy,” at least for awhile? This would mean that Jesus knows what we go through at our limits, and knows this not just “divinely” but also humanly. Does this lowness make him less appealing? Does this “baseness” diminish deity?” 
- Dale Bruner

“He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” —Hebrews 2:17-18

“Jesus did not know this wonderful theology and so prayed here not only for a knowledge of God’s will but for a knowledge of what might be possible for God. Hadn’t Jesus read his Bible enough to know these things? The truth of our text is that the Son of God himself in his human condition lay on the ground dumbfounded before the sometimes unfathomable will of God. This poverty of spirit seems closer to God than a richness of spirit that knows God’s secrets." 
- Dale Bruner

“One actually has the privilege of seeing Jesus’ will move in these petitions. In his first prayer, Jesus’ will moved visibly; there he asked, if possible, for the cup to be removed, but then added his proviso. In this second prayer Jesus does not ask for the cup’s removal, as if he is saying, “I’m beginning to think that you don’t want that cup to go away except by one route—my drinking it.” Jesus’ will moved from a nine, ten, or eleven o’clock position to a twelve o’clock position in his Gethsemane prayers. (Jesus’ will seems never to have been at six o’clock, in opposition to God. But the church learns from his first petition that the human will can ask honest questions “at ten o’clock,” so to speak, and still be within the magnetic field of God’s will.) 
Even in the first petition, in its second half, Jesus asked for God’s perfect will—“yet not as I want, but as you want.” But full humanity means seeking (not always fully having or knowing) this perfect will. The full humanity of even Jesus was not on automatic pilot at perfect twelve o’clock. Gethsemane is full of instruction to the church, for it teaches her not to ascribe to Jesus a divinized, ghostly humanity, as she can sometimes do by speaking too sweepingly or easily of Jesus’ sinlessness and perfection. The Gospels, remarkably, avoid speaking directly of Jesus’ sinlessness because saying too much here can say too little. A superman is not a man; an inerrant Jesus who is never at even eleven o’clock turns Jesus into a machine; a Jesus effortlessly at twelve dehumanizes Jesus. Gethsemane says humanity. Yet Jesus is still the sacrifice without blemish required by the law (Lev 1:3), for human questing is not sin.” 
- Dale Bruner

(We believe in) the Lord Jesus Christ,
      the only Son of God,
      begotten from the Father before all ages,
           God from God,
           Light from Light,
           true God from true God,
      begotten, not made;
      of the same essence as the Father.
      Through him all things were made.

      For us and for our salvation
           he came down from heaven;
           he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human.
           He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
           he suffered and was buried.
           The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
           He ascended to heaven
           and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
           He will come again with glory
           to judge the living and the dead.
           His kingdom will never end. 
                       - Nicene Creed

 

 

Matthew: Christ in the Contrast

Listen along as we near the cross and see Christ shining through all the contrast of life and discipleship.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 26:1-29

A woman began the Christmas story; a woman now begins the passion story. Women will also begin the resurrection mission. The place of women in the Gospel stories has liberating ferment. Jesus is ahead of his time and his people, new and old, and is saying something by permitting so many records of—yes—women’s ministry. - Dale Bruner

The disciples are willing to hurt a woman who is there for the sake of the poor who aren’t; Jesus is unwilling to serve the plural poor at the expense of a single poor woman—he will not even let one human being be sacrificed on the altar of a principle. - Dale Bruner

“Agape love, perhaps the greatest contribution of Christ to human civilization, wills the good of whatever it is directed upon. It does not wish to consume it.” Dallas Willard 

Jeremiah 31:31-34

“Jesus was going to his death wounded by the wounds common to humanity. Greed, lust, ambition: all kinds of natural drives and desires turning in on themselves rather than doing the outward-looking work the creator intended them to do. When we say that Jesus died ‘ because of our sins,’ we don’t just mean that in some high flown, abstract sense. We mean that what put him on the cross was precisely the sins that we all not only commit but wallow in. “It isn’t me, is it, Master?” Only when you’ve said that, knowing that it might well be you, can you begin to appreciate what it meant for Jesus to sit at that table and share that Passover meal with them, with Judas too.”  NT Wright

We don't come to the table to fight or to defend. We don't come to prove or to conquer, to draw lines in the sand or to stir up trouble. We come to the table because our hunger brings us there. We come with a need, with fragility, with an admission of our humanity. The table is the great equalizer, the level playing field many of us have been looking everywhere for. The table is the place where the doing stops, the trying stops, the masks are removed, and we allow ourselves to be nourished, like children. We allow someone else to meet our need. In a world that prides people on not having needs, on going longer and faster, on going without, on powering through, the table is a place of safety and rest and humanity, where we are allowed to be as fragile as we feel.” - Shauna Neiquist

Matthew: How to be a Sheep

Today Jesus wraps up His final discourse and we see the future of history, get a bit of theology and how eternity impacts living.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 25:31-46 - Anthony Garcia

“I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as another book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India already. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside of it” Badrinath, Hindu scholar

“If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers! - Mike Goheen

Deut 15:7-11 Leviticus 19:9-10 Zech 7:8-10 - Proverbs 19:17 -

From the beginning, Jesus teaches, world history has been structured with a split ending in view. History ends in either heaven or hell. This double issue is not peripheral to the Gospel of Matthew; it is not a survival of late-apocalyptic Judaism, an alien growth on the love teaching of Jesus. It is so inseparably a part of Jesus’ love teaching, as even here in one of Jesus’ most loving teachings, that one senses that Jesus’ urgency in mission flowed at least in part from a conviction that human life can be ruined. - Dale Bruner

If your roots are in Jesus, your fruit will be love. Fruit takes time to grow; it doesn’t appear overnight. We don’t have to beat ourselves up for not being perfect Jesus-followers the day after we’ve started walking in his dust. It took the disciples a long time too. But the longer we’re planted in God’s garden, the deeper our roots grow in his goodness, and the more generosity, joy, and selflessness begin to spring forth from our branches. - Joshua Ryan Butler

The book of Revelation offers us the vision of a city which is on the one hand the perfection of all human striving towards beauty, civilization and good order, and on the other hand is the place where every tear is dried and where every one of us knows God face to face, and knows that we are his and he is ours. That is the vision with which the Bible ends, and it is a vision that enables us to see the whole human story and each of our lives within that story as meaningful, and which therefore invites us through Jesus Christ to become responsible actors in history, not to seek to run away from the responsibilities and the agonies of human life in its public dimension. Each of us must be ready to take our share in all the struggles and the anguish of human history and yet with the confidence that what is committed to Christ will in the end find its place in his final kingdom.
That means that as I look forward I don’t see just an empty void, I don’t just see my own death, I don’t just see some future utopia in which I shall have no share. The horizon to which I look forward is that day when Jesus shall come, and his holy city will come down as a bride from heaven adorned for her husband. Lesslie Newbigin

1 Corinthians 15:57-58

Matthew: Patient Kingdom

Listen along as we look at the first half of Matthew 25 and what it looks like to fear, trust, and follow Jesus till the end.

Notes/Quotes:

“the Kingdom Parables in chapter 13 which began in the present tense with the words “the kingdom of heaven is like”—for they taught mainly how the kingdom enters our lives now by the power of the Word; the Judgment Parables in this chapter have a sharper future orientation.”
- Dale Bruner

“21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” 
- Matthew 5:21-23

“The Christian life in Matthew is a life of tough discipleship (chaps. 5–7), of persecuted mission (chap. 10), of practicing joyous demands (chap. 13), and of exercising self-denial for the sake of others’ salvation (chap. 18). The Christian life in Matthew is not the second-soil faith that believes a conversion experience is all one really needs; when the devil, pressures, and temptations come to “conversions-only” people (conversio sola!), they are deeply embarrassed by the gospel and its requirements and make as quick an exit as they did an entrance (13:20–21). Discipleship is a life of patient listening to the Word and of constant repenting under the conviction of the Word. “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘repent,’ he intended for the whole life of believers to be a life of repentance” (Luther, thesis one of The Ninety-Five Theses). “The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17). One-shot Christianity is misleading and finally fatal. The lamp oil of experiential Christianity, without the reserve oil of discipled Christianity—that is to say, an experience of Jesus without obedience to his teachings—betrays unbelief and will not find entrance into the end-time kingdom.” 
- Dale Bruner

“But “safe” as this conduct may be, there is a lack of adventure in it, an unwillingness to take risks, a preoccupation with one’s own security, which Jesus clearly dislikes. This piety is too unworldly, too withdrawn, too removed from the secular to please the earthly Jesus who sends disciples into the world to disciple it (28:19), puts salt into the meat to season it (5:13), and brings light into the room to give light to all who are in it (5:14–16; cf. Mark 4:21). Talents mean mission. 
- Dale Bruner

“The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.” 
- Oswald Chambers

“sees this servant’s laziness as the lawlessness of lukewarmness toward the demands of discipleship—as antinomianism.”
- Kingsbury

“Jesus does not end this parable grimly from a macabre pleasure in telling horror stories—Jesus loves human beings and wants to save them from messed-up lives and eternities, and that’s why he tells his scary stories.”
- Dale Bruner

“The gospel says you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, but more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope.”
- Timothy Keller

 

Technology and Transformation

Listen in to our family worship Sunday and how transformation in the gospel interacts with technology:

Notes/Quotes:

Romans 12:1-2

"We may well find that the best starting place for thinking about how we live is to think about worship.” Beverly Gaventa

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” - Romans 12:1-2, The Message

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean “ecological” in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.” - Neil Postman

“If you wanted to invent a device that could rewire our minds, if you wanted to create a society of people who were perpetually distracted, isolated, and overtired, if you wanted to weaken our memories and damage our capacity for focus and deep thought, if you wanted to reduce empathy, encourage self-absorption, and redraw the lines of social etiquette, you’d likely end up with a smartphone." - Catherine Price - How to Break Up With Your Phone

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment. What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” - Nicholas Carr - The Shallows

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

James 1:5

“We are continually being nudged by our devices toward a set of choices. The question is whether those choices are leading us to the life we actually want. I want a life of conversation and friendship, not distraction and entertainment; but every day, many times a day, I’m nudged in the wrong direction. One key part of the art of living faithfully with technology is setting up better nudges for ourselves.” - Andy Crouch

Tools for Technology:
Parents: BE INVOLVED. Kids: THANK THEM
Mindful usage: Use technology more than being used by technology.
Digital sabbath//Sabbatical - 1 hour per day, 1 day per week, 1 week per month, 1 month per year.
Phone/Devices to bed before you//wake up after you 
Go outside. 
Track your time. Observe it. What’s it being used on?
Don’t simply consume. Contribute in community.
Remember the fear of man is a snare. 
See real people and pray in real life.
Think before you post. Is it true? Is it Necessary? Is it Helpful? Is it kind?

Don't underestimate how much Satan intends to affect your effectiveness. He will disrupt and destroy everything if it means you'll stop being fruitful. - Jackie Hill Perry