Union Church

Listen along as we wrap up our series on the kingdom of God and celebrate Easter.

Notes//Quotes:

Revelation 21:1-5 - Karen Reading

Revelation 21:1-5

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“The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom…It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven…The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.” N.T. Wright

 Eph 1:13-14

Romans 8:22-25

John 3:16-17

Listen along as we look at the Palm Sunday story.
Notes//Quotes:

Mark 11:1-10

Luke 17:20-21
Matthew 11:4-6

Zech 9:9 

“One the one hand this looks like all other triumphal entries. Two hundred years earlier Simon Maccabeus had defeated foreign armies and kept Israel independent and he rode in to Jerusalem with people shouting cheers and waiving Palm branches because he delivered them… This triumphal entry parodies the entries of kings and armies. Victors in battle do not ride into their capital cities riding on donkeys but on fearsome horses, but this kind does not, and will not triumph through force of arms.” Stanley Hauerwas

“Jesus is the Lord of all and under his hand nothing but harmony and peace comes about. The animal knows and loves his true master for who he is. This is a foreshadowing of the healing and completion of all nature as found in Isaiah 11, the wolf shall live with the lamb” Tim Keller

Donkey cross 1/2/3/4

 

 

“Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn’t. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together…What if disappointment is really the exact appointment your soul needs to radically encounter God?” - Lysa TerKuerst - Not Supposed to Be This Way

Listen along as we begin a 3 week series on the kingdom of God.

Notes//Quotes:

Text: Isaiah 35:1-10
Title: Kingdom Promised

“The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of all Christian faith. God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it. ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and rejoice with joy and singing; the desert shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.’ The last book of the Bible ends, not with the company of the saved being taken up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, resulting in God’s new creation, new heavens and new earth, in which everything that has been true, lovely, and of good report will be vindicated, enhanced, set free from all pain and sorrow. God himself, it says, will wipe away all tears from all eyes.”
- N.T. Wright

“From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” 
(Matt. 11:5&6)

“This is a story of a man who is disillusioned with Jesus just like we are sometimes–with Jesus or with God, or with the church, or with the whole Christian faith. But, you know something? That may not be so bad as it seems. Disillusionment means literally to have our illusions “dissed.” It’s very painful, but it’s not a bad thing. Disillusionment can be a gift. When we are disillusioned we have discovered that God does not always conform to our expectations. We look at our requirements for God and begin to see our own selfish illusions–the kinds of things we tell ourselves to feel good or comfortable, or to make sense of it all. But when God yanks away our illusions, we are free to discover the real God. Taylor says, “Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I rubbed the lantern? Then perhaps God is not a genie? Who then is God? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Then perhaps God is not a cop. Who, then, is God? Did God fail to make everything run smoothly? Then, perhaps God is not a [cosmic] mechanic. Who, then, is God?” When God does not meet my expectations I am drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of who God really is and what God is really doing in my life and in the world.
- Leonard J. Vander Zee

“Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors. 
And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.”
(Matt. 6:10-13)

Listen along as we wrap up our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 28:17-31 2 Timothy 4:6-8 - 

“Readers always experience “gaps” in narration, but the gap at the end of Acts threatens to widen into a canyon.” Beverly Gaventa

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn.1:43-46)

“They have been looking for a temporal prince, he does not come with the magnificence they expected; he is a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness; they see nothing of Solomon’s splendour in the poor scion of the dried-up stock of David and therefore they walked away.” Charles Spurgeon

2 Cor 4:16-18

Vs.16) At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! 17 But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (2 Tim. 4:16-18)

“Death is the supreme festival on our road to freedom.” —Bonhoeffer 

2 Tim 1:8-14

Listen along as we near the finish of our journey through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Mike reading - Acts 28:1-16

“No crowd gathers for Paul’s preaching, and no description illumines the situation of those believers who journey out to meet him. That minimalistic assessment should not obscure the importance of Paul’s thanksgiving in v. 15. The journey all along has less to do with what will happen in Rome than with the God who directs Paul to that place.” - Beverly Gaventa

Map Picture (attached)

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.” - Augustine, City of God

Col 1:19-20

“There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety – let us pray that we may always know it!” Corrie Ten Boom

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 27:1-44 - Jack
Title: Small Ship, Big Sea

“Chiding is indeed cruel, and brings no comfort; but if it be tempered with some remedy, it is now a part of the medicine.”
- John Calvin

“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed” (Prov. 15:22)

“We do not worship a deistic God, an absentee landlord who ignores his slum; we worship a garbageman God who came right down into our worst garbage to clean it up.” 
- Peter Kreft

Oh Maker of the mighty deep
Whereon our vessels fare,
Above our life’s adventure keep
Thy faithful watch and care.
In Thee we trust, whate’er befall;
Thy sea is great; our boats are small.

We know not where the secret tides
Will help us or delay
Nor where the lurking tempest tides,
Nor where the fogs are gray.
We trust in Thee, whate’er befall,
Thy sea is great; our boats are small.

Beyond the circle of the sea,
When voyaging is past,
We seek our final part in Thee;
Oh bring us home at last.
In Thee we trust, whate’er befall;
Thy sea is great; our boats are small.
- Henry Van Dyke

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 26:1-32

First-century Pharisees excelled in everything we admire spiritually. They were zealous for God, completely committed to their faith. They were theologically astute, masters of the biblical texts. They fastidiously obeyed even the most obscure commands. They even made up extra rules just in case they were missing anything. Their embrace of spiritual disciplines was second to none. - Larry Osborne

“Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.” - Shusaku Endo, Silence

“You can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.” - Tim Keller

“Goads is a greek aphorism that reflects the futility of resisting a greater power, in this case the power of God. The aphorism reveals the crisis: Paul has been acting upon his own perception of God’s will, all the time resisting God’s will.” - Beverly Gaventa

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 a 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse.
CS Lewis

“Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.” Augustine

“By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. ... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet” F. Buechner

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.” - Tim Keller

Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 25:1-27 - Faith 
Title: Political Purgatory

“…He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.”
(Acts 9:15)

“The soul that is not united solely to the will of God will find neither rest nor sanctification in any self-chosen means — not even in the most excellent exercises of piety. If that which God Himself chooses for you does not suffice, what other hand can minister to your desires? If you turn from the food the divine will itself has prepared for you, what viands (archaic for food) will not prove insipid to a taste so depraved? A soul cannot be truly nourished, strengthened, purified, enriched, or sanctified, except by the fullness of the present moment.”
- Jean Pierre de Caussade

“This is an important point about the interaction between God's purposes and our praying. Sometimes when we pray and wait for God to act, part of the answer is that God is indeed going to act but that he will do so through our taking proper human responsibility in the matter. It's hard to tell in advance, what the answer will be. There are times when it is “the Lord will fight for you and you've only to keep still” (Ex. 14:14) and other times when it is “be strong and very courageous for you shall put this people in possession of the land I swore to give them” (Josh. 1:6). Discerning and discovering which applies in which case, a note that even in the latter case God is giving the people the land which Joshua is giving them is a major element in the discernment to which all Christians and especially all Christian leaders are called.”
- N.T. Wright

“God is too wise to be mistaken. Too good to be unkind.  And, when you can’t trace His hand, you can always trust His heart.”
- Charles Spurgeon

“Lord, I would run for you, Loving the miles for your sake.
I would climb the highest tree to be that much closer.

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down into the world of the invisible, the inscrutable and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree on a day of no wind, bathed in light, like the wanderer who has come home at last and kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things; every motion; even words.”
- Mary Oliver

 

Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 24:1-27

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. - NT Wright

1 Thess 4:1-8 

2 Peter 3:13 

The church’s growth; it is life in “the way of Christ,” distinctive and hopeful. Christians, were growing in numbers because they were distinct from the “unjust”—living patiently in relation to their neighbors and enemies, doing good to them, and waiting for them to come to faith - Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church

It doesn't matter if life is long or short, it isn't time that's the problem, it's the speed. Far too much happens when you're alive. everything goes so fast, how are you supposed to have time to be a human being? - Fredrik Backman

Waiting requires living by what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. - Mark Vroegop

Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 22:30-23:35 - Jack
Title: The Second Speech

“[God] upholds heaven and earth with all creatures and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.”
- Heidelberg Catechism 

“The doctrine of providence teaches Christians that they are never in the grip of blind forces (fortune, chance, luck, fate); all that happens to them is divinely planned, and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey, and rejoice, knowing that all is for one’s spiritual and eternal good.”
- J. I. Packer

“And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride….“Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God but bullying God.”
― Eugene H. Peterson