Union Church

Matthew: Doubt and Disappointment

We continue through Matthew 11:1-19 and see how Jesus interacts with John the Baptist's doubts.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 11:1-19

 

“Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” - Anne Lamott

 

“Jesus is out in the sticks healing sick, “insignificant” little individuals here and there, but not doing much to change the basic structural problems in Israel’s life. The Pharisees still control popular religious life; the Sadducees still control the temple; the whole religio-ideological system seems thoroughly unthreatened by Jesus’ do-goodism in the hills. What is more, John (the propagandist of the New Order) is in prison, and Herod (the embodiment of the oppressive Establishment) is still on the throne and is in fact about to have John’s head. What kind of Messiah is this?” - Dale Bruner

 

Isaiah 29:18-19

Isaiah 35:3-6

Isaiah 61:1-2

 

Luke 1:17

1. Our doubts don’t discredit Jesus.

 

2. Our doubt don’t drive Jesus away

 

3. Our doubts need a greater story. 

 

The answer to doubt is God. The answer to our questions about tithing, membership, gender roles, politics, sin, and any other aspect in life that gives us pause is God. The blight of our generation is that we believe we are god. - Lore Ferguson Wilbert

 

4. Our doubts need patience, and questions and community

 

“Feelings are indicators, not dictators. They can indicate where your heart is in the moment, but that doesn't mean they have the right to dictate your behavior and boss you around. You are more than the sum total of your feelings and perfectly capable of that little gift . . . called self-control.” - Lysa TerKeurst

 

5. Jesus addresses what’s underneath our doubts

 

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it.” - Tim Keller

6. There is still a blessing and invitation in our doubts.

 

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 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

Matthew: Trust Issues

Listen along as we continue to allow some of the tough words of Jesus tackle our hearts.

 

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 10:26-42 

Fear Archetypes - Ruth Sukoup
The Procrastinator
The People Pleaser 
The Rule Follower 
The Outcast 
The Self Doubter 
The Excuse Maker 
The Pessimist 

1 John 4:18, 2nd Timothy 1:7

“It is Christ-following that enables cross-bearing. Who would be willing to have family and world against them if they did not have Jesus (over and) with them?” - Dale Bruner 

"The fastest place the church is growing is in Iran. The myth we have taken into is that you have to have a Christian nation for Christianity to survive and thrive. False." - JonTyson

“Because 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

1 Corinthians 15:19

“Jesus often contrasts eternal life and this life. Our time needs the corrective of an otherworldliness in order to be braver in this world.” Dale Bruner

Matthew: Disciples, Demons, Dangers

Listen in as we continue through Matthew and see Jesus gather, form, and send His disciples. 

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 10:1-25

Both the snake-intelligence and the dove-innocence are both designed to keep the sheep out of trouble. Jesus does not mean for us to get ourselves into as much difficulty as possible. He means: Risk your lives as vulnerable, non-combative, sheep-like, courageous witnesses, but try to find ways to give your witness in a way that does not bring down unnecessary persecution.” - John Piper

“Jesus tells us our task is not to force the kingdom into existence, but to endure. To endure turns out to be the only way we can be witnesses to Christ’s kingdom” - Stanley Hauerwas

Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it. - Scot McKnight

Matthew: New Wine

Today, we continue our series through Matthew and see the work of Christ in bringing the kingdom.

Notes/Quotes:

Text: Matthew 9:14-38

Title: New Wine

Reading: Matthew 9:14-38

“a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses” -Harvard Business Review

“Sinners are safe with Jesus but sin is not.”  - Jon Wolfinger

 

“After an ancient Jewish wedding, the couple did not honeymoon, but stayed at home for a week of open house in which there was continual feasting and celebration. For the hardworking, this was traditionally considered to be the happiest week in their lives. The bride and groom were treated like a king and queen that week (sometimes they even wore crowns). They were attended by chosen friends known as “guests of the bridegroom,” Their guests were exempted from all fasting through a rabbinical ruling which said, “All in attendance on the bridegroom are relieved of all religious observances which would lessen their joy.” - R. Kent Hughes

 

Questions:

• If Jesus was walking the world today in what ways would He be demonized?
• Am I following Jesus into this tension?
• Am I embracing the new wine of the Kingdom of God?

 

Matthew: The Authority of Jesus and Roadblocks of Religion

Listen in as we look at Matthew 9:1-13 and see the authority and ability of Jesus to forgive sin and form followers and how religion sets up roadblocks toward God and others.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 9:1-13

Forgiveness of sins is a “coming home” not only to the Creator but to natural life; forgiveness brings about reintegration with the home and the community. Dale Bruner

“By Jewish law a tax-gatherer was debarred from the synagogue; he was included with things and beasts unclean, and Leviticus 20:5 was applied to them; he was forbidden to be a witness in any case; ‘robbers, murderers, and tax-gatherers’ were classed together” H. Merkel, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament

“It seems that holiness begins with the recognition that we are not well”Stanley Hauerwas

Roadblocks begin with a shift from:
Truth to opinion
Loving to critiquing
Learning to arriving
Asking to assuming
Embrace to exclusion
Fear and glory to apathy and comfort
Curiosity to rigidity
Following to observing
Outward to inward

Invitations back to center:
Remember the miracle(s)
Fully place faith and follow
Cast the current cares

How would you live today if you knew all your sins were forgiven, all your days were guided by a God of love, and your future was secure? - Jared Wilson

 

Matthew: Jesus is Different

Listen in as we look at Matthew 8:18-34 and see just how different Jesus is and how that's really good news for us today.

Sermon Notes/Quotes:

Reading: Matthew 8:18-3

 

“to be a disciple of Jesus, it seems, requires such dedication because what Jesus is and does means that “normal” is reconstituted. The one who would be a disciple of Jesus stands in the presence of life itself, yet remains captured by death, wanting to bury the dead. Jesus, who will die on our behalf, requires that those who will follow him not let death determine their relationship to the living.” -Stanley Hauerwas

 

“demons recognize the son because they—more than we—are able to recognize who threatens them. Demons draw their existence from death and are, therefore, able to recognize the one who is life. They fear that Jesus has come before the appointed time, but they discover that the appointed time is now. The disciples fear of Jesus’ absence as he sleeps in the boat the demons fear his presence”  -Stanley Hauerwas

 

“This dramatic incident is most revealing. It shows what Satan does for a man: robs him of sanity and self-control; fills him with fears; robs him of the joys of home and friends; and (if possible) condemns him to an eternity of judgment. It also reveals what society does for a man in need: restrains him, isolates him, threatens him, but society is unable to change him. See, then, what Jesus Christ can do for a man whose whole life—within and without—is bondage and battle. What Jesus did for these two demoniacs, He will do for anyone else who needs Him.” -Warren Wiersbe

 

“Humanity often holds onto their bondage and evil rather than yield to the pain of transformation by Christ’s power and grace.” -Sinclair Ferguson

 

Do my crying underwater

I can't get down any farther

All my drowning friends can see

Now there is no running from it

It's become the crux of me

I wish that I could rise above it

But I stay down

With my demons

I stay down

With my demons

-The National

 

“we would rather be ruined than changed,

we would rather die in our dread

than climb the cross of the moment

and let our allusions die”

- W.H. Auden

Questions:

1. Am I following Jesus?
2. Is it always comfortable? 
3. Is Jesus sovereign over the things I hold most sacred? 
4. Have I limited Jesus to mere human categories?
5. Am I choosing the familiar instead of being free?

 

Matthew: Far As The Curse is Found

Listen along as we look at Matthew 8:1-17 and see how we can come to Jesus with our need, come to Jesus with other's needs and how Jesus ultimately comes to us.

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 8:1-17

“We learn from this first specific healing in the Gospel that faith is not a general belief in God; it is particular trust in God’s Son and in his ability to help us with our deepest problems” - Dale Bruner

“No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found!”

Matthew:Jesus the Judge

Listen in as we wrap up Matthew 7 and the Sermon on the Mount.

 

Notes/Quotes:

Matthew 7:13-29

 

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to” - C.S. Lewis

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” - G.K. Chesterton

“You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.” - Tertullian - 2nd Century Ad

“It is possible to work for Jesus and yet not live under him. We can be intoxicated by the power of Jesus and yet be hostile to his hard commands. “Inever ever really knew you; get out of my face, you doers of the very opposite of my teachings.” They believe that they know Jesus, but apparently they never gave him a chance to know them (“I never really knew you”), that is, they never gave him a chance to come into personal contact with their innermost life (the force of the biblical word “know”). It is strangely possible to serve and even to glorify Christ and yet in one’s own personal life not to obey him.” - Dale Bruner

 

“For many, the first great surprise of the Christian life is in the form of the troubles we meet.” - Eugene Peterson

 

“Obedience to Jesus’ words is not so much protection from troubles as protection in them, just as rock under a house does not shield from storms but supports during them” - Dale Bruner

 

“Almighty God, give us grace to be not only hearers, but doers of thy holy word, not only to admire, but to obey thy doctrine, not only to profess, but to practice thy religion, not only to love, but to live thy gospel. So grant that what we learn of thy glory we may receive into our hearts, and show forth in our lives: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Matthew: Judging, Asking, and the Golden Rule

Listen in as we continue our time in Matthew's gospel. Today we look at Jesus' words on judging, asking, and his heart behind the golden rule.

Notes/Quotes:

Text: Matthew 7:1-12

Title: Judging, Asking, And The Golden Rule

 

Reading: Matthew 7:1-12

 

“The boundary between those who would follow Jesus and the world is unmistakably apparent, but nonetheless permeable. Matthew chapter 7 consists of Jesus’s instructions for how to negotiate that permeability.” -Stanley Hauerwas

 

“We quite literally cannot see clearly unless we have been trained to see “the log in (our) eye.” But it is not possible for us to see what is in our eye because the eye cannot see itself. The only way we are able to see ourselves is through the vision made possible by Jesus—a vision made possible by our participation in a community of forgiveness that allows us to name our sins. -Stanley Hauerwas

 

“When I judge, I am blind to my own evil and to the grace granted the other person. But in the love of Christ, disciples know about every imaginable kind of guilt and sin, because they know of the suffering of Jesus Christ.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

“There is a form of evangelism that urges Christians to use every opportunity to share the gospel. Unfortunately, insensitive evangelism often proves harmful not only to the obdurate whose heart is hardened by the undifferentiating evangelist, but harmful also to the gospel that is force-fed.… Aggressive evangelism gets converts and counts them, but we are never able to count those turned away from the gospel for the numbers of the offended are never tallied.” -Fredrick Bruner

 

Oh, that all men acted on it, and there would be no slavery, no war, no swearing, no striking, no lying, no robbing; but all would be justice and love! What a kingdom is this which has such a law!” - Spurgeon

 

Questions:

1. Do I understand the difference between the way the world makes judgment and the way a christian does?
2. Do I have discernment when it comes to presenting the gospel in the world?
3. How does being apart of a community of forgiveness which names their sins help me?
4. When I come to God in prayer do I ask selflessly or selfishly?
5. In terms of the Golden Rule, how do I hold it? In the negative or positive perspective?

 

 

 

 

Christmas Eve 2020

Listen in as we look at how all of Advent (Jesus) effects all of life.

Notes/Quotes: