Union Church

Listen along as Dr. Michael Goheen continues our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 19:21-41 - Jack
21 Once all this had been finished, Paul decided in his spirit to go back through Macedonia and Achaea and, from there, on to Jerusalem.

“After I’ve been there,” he said, “I really must go and see Rome.”

22 He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, on ahead to Macedonia, while he himself spent a little more time in Asia.

“Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

23 Around that time there was a major disturbance because of the Way. 24 There was a silversmith named Demetrius who made silver statues of Artemis, which brought the workmen a tidy income. 25 He got them all together, along with other workers in the same business.

“Gentlemen,” he began. “You know that the reason we are doing rather well for ourselves is quite simply this business of ours. 26 And now you see, and hear, that this fellow Paul is going around not only Ephesus but pretty well the whole of Asia, persuading the masses to change their way of life, telling them that gods made with hands are not gods after all! 27 This not only threatens to bring our proper business into disrepute, but it might make people disregard the temple of the great goddess Artemis. Then she—and, after all, the whole of Asia, indeed the whole world, worships her!—she might lose her great majesty.”

28 When they heard this, they were filled with rage.

“Great is Ephesian Artemis!” they shouted. “Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

29 The whole city was filled with the uproar; everyone rushed together into the theater, dragging along with them the Macedonians Gaius and Aristarchus, two of Paul’s companions. 30 Paul wanted to go in to speak to the people, but his followers wouldn’t let him. 31 Indeed, some of the local magistrates, who were friendly towards him, sent him a message urging him not to risk going into the theater. 32 Meanwhile, some people were shouting one thing, some another. In fact, the whole assembly was thoroughly confused, and most of them had no idea why they had come there in the first place. 33 The Jews pushed Alexander forward, and some of the crowd informed him what was going on. He motioned with his hand, and was going to make a statement to the people to explain things. 34 But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted together, for about two hours, “Great is Ephesian Artemis!”

35 The town clerk quietened the crowd.

“Men of Ephesus,” he said, “is there anyone who doesn’t know that our city of Ephesus is the place which has the honor of being the home of Artemis the Great, and of the statue that fell from heaven? 36 Nobody can deny it! So you should be quiet, and not do anything rash. 37 You’ve brought these men here, but they haven’t stolen from the temple, or blasphemed our goddess. 38 If Demetrius and his colleagues have a charge they want to bring against anyone, the courts are open and we have magistrates. People can present their cases against one another. 39 But if you are wanting to know anything beyond that, it must be sorted out in the authorized assembly. 40 Let me remind you that we ourselves are risking legal proceedings because of this riot today, since there is no reason we could give which would enable us to present a satisfactory explanation for this uproar.”

41 With these words, he dismissed the assembly.

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 19:1-20

Jer 31:31-34

2 Cor 5:17

“As throughout Acts, there is no set pattern. The Spirit came at various times and in various ways. What is consistent is that the Spirit is always a vital part of one’s initial commitment to Christ and a mark of every believer.” J.B. Polhill

The norm of Christian experience, then, is a cluster of four things: repentance, faith in Jesus, water baptism and the gift of the Spirit. Though the perceived order may vary a little, the four belong together and are universal in Christian initiation. The laying on of apostolic hands, however, together with tongue-speaking and prophesying, were special to Ephesus, as to Samaria, in order to demonstrate visibly and publicly that particular groups were incorporated into Christ by the Spirit; the New Testament does not universalize them. John Stott

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 18:24-28 Faith

 

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. Frederick Beuchener 

Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones - Pete Scazerro

Gal 3:28-29

“Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones, and the task of discipleship is to get Jesus more and more into your bones.”- Pete Scazerro 

Eph 2:8-9
Eph 2:10

1 Cor 3:1-9 

1 Cor 3:10-23

The local church is an unlikely collection of people, and with earthly eyes it may be hard to see that we belong together. With spiritual ones, however, it is clear. In the church, we all have one testimony. Meghan Hill

Listen along as we continue our journey through acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 18:1-23

Our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person. - Tim Keller

1 Cor 6:9-11

There is much to be cynical about—and it is a good answer if there has not been an incarnation. But if that has happened, if the Word did become flesh, and if there are men and women who in and through their own vocations imitate the vocation of God, then sometimes and in some places the world becomes something more like the way it ought to be.
Steven Garber, Visions of Vocation

1 Cor 15:57-58

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 17:16-34 - Nathan

Acts 17:16-34

“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.” Martin Luther

Isaiah 44:12-20

 

The gospel does not come as a disembodied message, but as the message of a community which claims to live by it and which invites others to adhere to it. Therefore, the community's life must be so ordered that it "makes sense" to those who are so invited. Leslie Newbigin

 

Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts.

Acts 17:1-15 - Faith

Acts 17:1-15

“The resurrection was indeed a miraculous display of God’s power, but we should not see it as a suspension of the natural order of the world. Rather it was the beginning of the restoration of the natural order of the world, the world as God intended it to be…The resurrection means not merely that Christians have a hope for the future but that they have a hope that comes from the future. The Bible’s startling message is that when Jesus rose, he brought the future kingdom of God into the present.” - Tim Keller

1 Thess 1:1-10

1 Thess 5:1-11

Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing in God's judgment, hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word. - JC Ryle

 

The Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne—everything— to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. - Sally Lloyd Jones

What’s going on?
Where is the good news?
How has the church seen this through history?
How does this shape us toward repentance/faith/flourishing?

Psalm 119:105 

Hebrews 4:12 

Ephesians 6:17 

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

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 16:11-40 - Jack

 

Slide 1

Scene 1: The Conversion of Lydia (16:11-15)

 

Slide 2

 See Map that I'll send by email

 

Slide 3

Takeaways from Scene 1

1. God is sovereign in salvation

 

2. Obedience is our response to His work

 

Slide 4

Scene 2: The Exorcism of the Slave Girl (16:16-24)

 

Slide 5

Takeaway from Scene 2: We are wise to see the spiritual battle going on behind the scenes.

 

Slide 6

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

Slide 7

Scene 3: The Conversion of the Jailer (16:25-34)

 

Slide 8

“From one perspective, Paul and Silas’s day was a picture of perfect mayhem. Their spiritual power was slandered; their gospel trampled by a mob; their innocence silenced by injustice. They appeared like two victims caught in the chaos of a merciless, purposeless world.

But such was not their perspective. For Paul and Silas, all the day’s sorrows rested in the hand of a sovereign God. God had called them to Philippi through a midnight vision. Was he now any less sovereign in a midnight prison? God had used them in Philippi to save Lydia and her household. Had he discarded them now? No, prison could neither thwart the plans of God nor remove them from his sight; of this they were sure.”

 

Scott Hubbard

Slide 9

Takeaway from Scene 3: We do well to ask ourselves “What does God owe me?”

 

Slide 10

“He lets things happen that I don’t understand. He doesn’t do things according to my plan, or in ways that make sense to me…

If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he doesn’t stop your suffering, you also have a God who is great enough and powerful enough to have reasons that you can’t understand…

And so often, if God seems to be unconscionably delaying his grace and committing malpractice in your life, it’s because there is some crucial information that we don’t yet have, some essential variable that’s unavailable to us.”

Tim Keller

 

Slide 11

Scene 4: The Vindication of Paul and Silas (16:35-40)

 

Slide 12

Takeaway from Scene 4: In the end, God wins. And so do His people.

 

Slide 13

The Takeaways from Phiiippi

1. God is sovereign in salvation

2. Obedience is our response to His work

3. We are wise to see the spiritual battle

4. We do well to ask ourselves “What does God owe me?”

5. In the end, God wins. And so do His people.

 

 

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes/Quotes:

Acts 16:1-10 - Josh

Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs. - Willard

The world is full of miracles. But none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them
Frederick Backman (My Friends) 

 

“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

Map

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.” - Dallas Willard, Hearing God

“Usually God’s guidance is not negative only but also positive (some doors close, others open); not circumstantial only, but also rational (thinking about our situation); not personal only, but also corporate (a sharing of the data with others, so that we can mull over them together and reach a common mind).” - John Stott

Listen alongs as we continue through the book of Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Acts 15:22-41

2 Timothy 2:22 

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone. - Dallas Willard

“They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified” Epistle to Diognetus (2nd Century)

Matthew 23:1-12

The early church understood well the powers at work in the Roman Empire. There were many gods who ruled and oppressed its citizens. Among them were Aphrodite (goddess of sex), Hephaetus (god of technology), Mars (god of war), Ploutos (god of wealth), and Bacchus (god of pleasure). At the top of the ladder, and unifying them all, was political power, deified in the Caesar, and nourished by the Imperial theology and religious practice. The powers and gods were the forces that most determined and shaped their lives. The church understood the oppressive and intrusive influence of evil. They understood the comprehensive scope and spiritual power of these cosmic powers to tyrannize their lives. Perhaps we shake our heads at the primitive and childish worldview that could ever conceive of a world populated by powers. After all, science has liberated us from such nonsense. Yet when we see millions addicted to pornography, it seems the goddess of sex is not dead. When we see millions of lives trivialized and emptied of significance by addiction to technology, we observe that the god of technology still wields power. When we experience the seductive power of a consumer society that inflames us with a desire for the senseless consumption of goods and experiences, we must grant that the gods of wealth and pleasure are alive and well. And the billions of dollars spent annually on arms betray our enslavement to the gods of war and national security. Economic forces, political powers, sexual addiction, technological seduction: it seems we are helpless before these powers. All scientific attempts to control them have failed. - Mike Goheen

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

Listen along as we continue our series through Acts.

Notes//Quotes:

Slide 1
God promised salvation to Israel...
     God's blessings would come to the Nations through
     the covenant with Abraham... 
          Circumcision was the standard means of entering 
          into full participation with the covenant people... 
               These Gentiles had not been circumcised... 
                    They remained outside of Israel and therefore
                    could not participate fully in God's promises 

Slide 2
Amos 9:12 (MT)
     12 that they may possess the remnant of Edom 
      and all the nations who are called by my name,” 
      declares the LORD who does this.

Amos 9:12 (LXX)
     12 so that the remnant of the people, 
       and all the nations upon whom my name was invoked     upon them, 
       will search for me,” says the Lord who is making these things.

Slide 3
אדום = Edom
אדם= adam/ humanity

Slide 4
Deuteronomy 30:6 
6 And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.