Union Church

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 This piety is too unworldly, too withdrawn, too removed from the secular to please the earthly Jesus who sends disciples into the world to disciple it (28:19), puts salt into the meat to season it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

Matthew: Understanding the End

Matthew 24:1-51

“The approaching birth of a baby is a time of great hope and new possibility, and also, especially before modern medicine, a time of great danger and anxiety.” NT Wright

“This little introduction also teaches the church not to be taken up with anything else impressive on earth except God in his Christ. Temples do not last—nor do places, institutions, attitudes, beliefs, or acts over which Jesus has pronounced judgment. When unwisely idolized realities come crashing down, so will our hopes and dreams.” - Dale Bruner

Matthew Henry - “Neither miracles nor multitudes are certain signs of a true church”

Ps 27:1-3

“All nine of these preliminary events in fact occurred before AD 70 though most if not all have recurred many times since then as well.” - Craig Blomberg

“speculation surrounding what Jesus must have meant by “desolating sacrilege” is endless.” Stanley Hauerwas

Luke 21:21

“After entering the city, Titus placed his army’s standards at the temple’s eastern gate and offered sacrifices to the Empire, defiling what was left of the Holy City — the “corpse” of verse 28. The Greek word the esv translates as “vultures” here is the plural form of aetos, which was also used of eagles. Notably, the Roman standard, a long pole that bore a legion’s insignia into battle, was always topped with the figure of an eagle, the symbol of the empire. Given this context, “eagles” is probably a better translation than “vultures” in verse 28; thus, Jesus’ reference to eagles gathering at the corpse naturally foresees the eagle-topped standards of Titus standing amidst Jerusalem’s ruins.” RC Sproul

As with the “abomination that causes desolation” in v. 15, seeing Jesus’ reference to the great tribulation as beginning in a.d. 70 does not exclude a later application of this expression to the period of time described in Rev 7–19—the final stages of this entire inter-advent period. Revelation 7:14 seems to suggest precisely such an intensification of horrors immediately preceding the end of the age. - Craig Blomberg

Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have though much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else -something it never entered your head to conceive- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.” - CS Lewis

“Maryland forests and St. John’s Apocalypse show me over and over again that when I am bored it is no fault of creation or covenant. Familiarty dulls my perceptions. Hurry scatters my attention. Ambition fogs my intelligence. Selfishness restricts my range. Anxiety robs me of appetite. Envy distracts me from what is good and blessed right before me. And then Monday’s unhurried pace and St. John’s apocalyptic vision bring me to my senses, body and soul. This power to wake us up is the most obvious use of the Revelation. It is also very often overlooked. Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing of all to see.” - Eugene Peterson

Matthew: Hope for Hypocrites

Today we look at Matthew 23 and see Jesus give warnings and woes against hypocrisy while offering an alternative way forward.

Notes/Quotes:

Micah 6:6-8 

In what way does my own faith and life embody & give a credible alternative to the things I criticize & condemn in others? The gap between what I criticize in others & fail to embody myself is the root of hypocrisy. Criticism is cheap, discipleship is costly. - Jon Tyson

Matthew: Kingdom Collision

Text: Matthew 22:15-46
Title: Kingdom Collision 
Reading: Matthew 22:15-46

“The Pharisees were nationalistic, loyal to Israel. Whereas the Herodians had sold themselves out to the Romans and served as their stooges. The Pharisees represented narrow, conservative Judaism, and the Herodians were liberal and syncretistic in their convictions. The Pharisees were right-wingers; the Herodians were left-wingers. The Pharisees represented resistance to Rome, the Herodians accommodation.” 
-R. Kent Hughes

“inspired the Reformation doctrine of differing spheres of authority for government and religion and proved foundational for the American constitutional separation of church and state. It would be anachronistic, however, to claim that Jesus’ words support modern democratic forms of government as opposed to the imperial or monarchichal forms of his day. One can give God his proper due under a monarchy as well as in a democracy, just as authorities, sadly, can usurp prerogatives reserved for God in either system.”
-Craig Blomberg

“the problem with the question is that the Sadducees are assuming resurrection bodies to be exactly as bodies are now, which includes the capacity for sexual intercourse.” 
-Craig Blomberg

“Jesus sees two errors in their logic, one regarding their specific question about this woman and the other related to their more fundamental, underlying concerns about resurrection in general. These errors deal, respectively, with their understanding of Torah and of God’s power. Concerning the latter, God is able to transform us into creatures who do not engage in sexual relations or procreate. A model for such a being already exists, namely, the angels (cf. the rabbinic tradition in b. Hag. 16a, in which, interestingly, demons, in contrast to angels, are believed to copulate). Since the Sadducees also do not believe in angels (cf. Acts 23:8), Jesus is probably deliberately inserting this jibe. Lack of sex or marriage does not in any way diminish heavenly bliss. In the life to come, all interpersonal relationships will no doubt far surpass the most intimate and pleasurable of human intercourse as we now know it. Neither jealousy nor exclusivism will mar human interaction in any way.”
-Craig Blomberg

“when God raises people to new life they will have passed into a new world order in which death itself has been left behind. (otherwise, resurrection will simply collapse into reincarnation, an endless cycle of death and rebirth.) But this will mean a whole new kind of life, which at present we can only guess at. Our present bodies are decaying all the time; it's very hard to think what a non-decaying body would be like. (Paul faces the same question in 1 Corinthians 15.) Similarly, there will be no need to propagate the species, and hence no need for sexual activity. Again, most humans find it very hard to think of a non-sexual world, but that's what Jesus probably means when he says that resurrected people will be ‘like angels’. (if you grumble that this makes God a killjoy, remember what C.S. Lewis said: asking if there will be sexual activity in the future world is like the child who, on being told that sex was the greatest pleasure known to humans, assumed that people eat chocolates at the same time.)”
-N.T. Wright

“we will, with the angels, have a life with God and one another where there is no aloneness to be overcome. Jesus does not say that we will or will not have some memory of our marriages in the resurrection, but our histories will no doubt be radically transformed. Yet we know that the way we have lived will not be irrelevant to our resurrected life precisely because the very names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob matter to God.”
-Stanley Hauerwas 

“In this psalm, written by David, the king of Israel makes reference to two Lords. In the original Hebrew of the psalm, the first “Lord” translates the Hebrew word Yahweh, God’s covenant name. The second “Lord” translates the Hebrew word Adonai, a title usually given to Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus is pointing out that the Messiah, who is one of the sons of David, is also much more.”
-R.C. Sproul

 “Christ is both David’s Son, and David’s Lord: David’s Lord always, David’s Son in time: David’s Lord, born of the substance of His Father, David’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Ghost. . . . Unless our Lord Jesus Christ had vouchsafed to become man, man had perished. He was made that which He made, that what He made might not perish. Very Man, Very God; God and man, the whole Christ.”
-Augustine 

 

Matthew: From Apathy to Awe

Listen along as we continue our series through Matthew, looking at a difficult passage with Jesus and judgement.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 22:1-14

“In a wide variety of human activity, achievement is not possible without discomfort.” - Alex Hutchinson

“To ask God to redeem Jerusalem but not cast sin outside the city walls is like asking a doctor to heal your body without excising the disease. Like asking the light to arise without casting out the darkness. Like asking for restoration to come and destruction to remain. It is to ask for a contradiction. God excludes sin from his kingdom because of his goodness, not in opposition to or in spite of it.” - Joshua Ryan Butler

“There is no point in arguing about the marriage garment, whether it is faith or a holy and godly life; for faith cannot be separated from good works and good works proceed only from faith. All Christ wants to say here is that we are called by the Lord under the condition that we be renewed in our spirits into His image, and therefore, if we are to remain always in His house, the old man with all his blemishes is to be cast off and we are to practice the new life so that our appearance may correspond to our honorable calling.” - John Calvin

John 6:37, 
John 15:16

“In the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God’s good world, and God is on a mission to get it out, to reconcile heaven and earth from hell’s evil influence to himself through the reconciling life of Christ. The time is coming when God’s heavenly kingdom will come down to reign on earth forever, when Jesus will cast out the corrosive powers of sin, death, and hell that have tormented his world for so long.Our problem is not that we’re reaching out for God and he’s refusing to be found. It’s the opposite: God’s reaching out for us, and we’re scattering in other directions. God loves us, but we love darkness. God moves toward us. But sin can’t stand the presence of God.” - Joshua Ryan Butler

“We may not long for bread, but we long for meaning, intimacy, fulfillment, community, purpose, and joy.” - Tim Chester

Matthew: The Stories that Shape Us

Listen along as we continue through Matthew's gospel and see how Jesus uses the story of scripture to shape our lives.

Cross References:

Matthew 21:23-46
2 Chronicles 36:15-16 
Titus 2:11-14
James 1:19-25 
1 Peter 2:1-10
Prov. 29:25

Matthew: Counterintuitive Kingdom

The power went out!

Listen along as we continue through Matthew's gospel.

Text: Matthew 21:1-22
Title: Counterintuitive Kingdom
Reading: Matthew 21:1-22

“Jesus is consciously making preparations to enter Jerusalem after the fashion of Zech 9:9, with echoes of Isa 62:11. Zechariah’s prophecy was widely interpreted in rabbinic literature as messianic” 
- Craig Blomberg

“One who sees a donkey in a dream should anticipate salvation, as it is said: “Behold, your king comes unto you; he is triumphant, and victorious, lowly, and riding upon a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).” - Berakhot 56 b

“it is a triumphal entry, but one that parodies the entry of kings and their armies. This is the entry of the one who has come to serve, but that he has come to serve makes him no less a king….Jesus identifies himself as the Lord, but one that will ride on an ass, a creature not normally associated with what it means to be a king. Victors in battle do not ride into their capital cities riding on asses, but rather they ride on fearsome horses. But this king does not and will not triumph through forces of arms.” - Stanley Hauerwas

“The crowds acclaim Jesus as Messiah with regal, Davidic terminology. “Son of David” also echoes the blind men’s cry in the previous chapter. “Hosanna” originally meant God save us but by the first century was probably just a cry of praise to Yahweh. The “He who comes in the name of the Lord,” like the “coming one” of whom John the Baptist spoke, refers to the Messiah, and the entire beatitude echoes Ps 118:26. 
- Craig Blomberg

“And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” - Luke 19:41-44

“Jesus is the great high priest who has come to restore to Israel the right worship of Israel's God. The chief priests and scribes understand that this is about power. They will soon ask him where he gets the authority to do what he has done. They do not understand that the son of David can do what he does: cleanse the temple by making it the place where the blind, lame, poor, and children can praise God. If Jesus is not the Messiah he's certainly acting like He is.” - Stanley Hauerwas

“In Jeremiah 8:13, the Lord had said to Jeremiah that he wanted to gather the nations but he had found no "figs on the fig tree," and even the leaves had withered. Jesus, fresh from his confrontation with the chief priests and scribes, curses the fig tree, declaring that no fruit would ever come from it again. The tree withered, just as the scribes and chief priests withered the temple.” - Stanley Hauerwas

“Our personal lives can look like “in leaf.” Our leaves may look like those of a supermom, a winner, a perfect family, an A-team Christian with an overstuffed schedule of ministry activities. But the root may be withered. There may be no fruit of holiness and no intimacy with God. What’s worse—our leaves may even fool us. And our churches can do the same. A church’s leaves may look impressive: booming attendance, capital campaigns, clever pastors, impressive music. But what will the Lord find upon close inspection? Will he find only leaves? Or will he find figs, too?”
- Greg Lanier

Questions:
1. Are we celebrating, in awe, moved to tears over this or are we just disappointed that He is not bringing the reforms of our personal agendas?
2. What do we really mean when we sing hosanna?
3. Are we all leaves and no fruit?

 

Matthew: Attention and Ambition

Matthew 20:1-34

“My message, unchanged for more than fifty years, is this: God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be. It is the message of grace…A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wages as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five…A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck toward the prodigal reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party no ifs, ands, or buts…This grace is indiscriminate compassion. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the Orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough…Jesus is enough.” - Brennan Manning

“God’s grace, in short is not the sort of thing you can bargain with or try to store up. It isn’t the sort of thing that one person can have a lot of and someone else only a little. The point of the story is that what people get from having served God and his kingdom is not, actually, a ‘wage’ at all. It’s not, strictly, a reward for work done. God doesn’t make contracts with us, as if we could bargain or negotiate for a better deal. He makes covenants, in which he promises us everything and asks of us everything in return. When he keeps his promises, he is not rewarding us for effort, but doing what comes naturally to his over flowingly generous nature.” - NT Wright

“As before they knew not what they asked, so now they knew not what they answered.” Matthew Henry

It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, "Look here, we've got to get you in on this examination somehow" or "Charles and I saw at once that you've got to be on this committee." A terrible bore...ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons, but to have them free because you don't matter, that is much worse. - C.S. Lewis

“People hanker after it, because the love of bossing other people is even greater than the distaste for being bossed oneself.” Lesslie Newbigin

Romans 3:23-24

Where is your attention?
Where is your ambition directed?
In what is your assurance placed?

Matthew: Treasure

Text: Matthew 19:16-30
Title: Treasure 
Reading: Matthew 19:16-30

“When you have a real encounter with the real Messiah, you realize that He requires far more of you than you ever thought but He offers far more to you than you ever imagined.”  -Timothy Keller

"How few of the Lord's people have practically recognized the truth that Christ is either Lord of all, or is not Lord at all!" -Hudson Taylor

“God is saying, when you make my son your treasure, that makes you my treasure.” -Timothy Keller

“Americans profoundly underestimate how rich they are compared to the rest of the world. The average U.S. resident estimated that the global median individual income is about $20,000 a year. In fact, the real answer is about a tenth of that figure: roughly $2,100 per year….What explains these misperceptions? Human beings draw heavily on their own local, lived experience to make judgments about the wider world. As individuals’ own incomes rise, and therefore the incomes of those around them, so too do their overestimates of the global median income.”                         — Washington Post, Gautam Nair, PhD candidate in political science at Yale University.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” - Matthew 6:24 

Question: Who and what do we really treasure? What percentage of my riches actually go to Kingdom priorities?