Episodes

Sunday Mar 17, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: WOE
Sunday Mar 17, 2024
Sunday Mar 17, 2024
Listen along as Anthony continues our series through the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:
Kim reading Matthew 23:25-27
1–3 “…The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4–7 “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8–10 “Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11–12 “Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
(Matthew 23:1-12 MSG)
“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
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”
(Philippians 3:12–15 ESV)
“The church that listens to this indictment with good faith will remove from her midst the showy and pretentious; disciples who listen with good faith will question culture’s and their own carnal megalomania, successism, and title hunger.” —Dale Bruner

Sunday Mar 03, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Depart from Me
Sunday Mar 03, 2024
Sunday Mar 03, 2024
Listen along as we look at the close of the Sermon on the Mount.
Notes//Quotes:
Matthew 7:21-29
Deut 30:15-20
”We learn at least that 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. “I never 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. The fact that Jesus says “many” will present their christocentric-charismatic credentials at the Judgment and that even then they will not get in should be frightening to us all. It means that just as a loving manner (sheep’s clothing) is not necessarily the real item, so a Christ-glorifying ministry (“in your name, … in your name.… in your name”) is not always the real thing either.” - Dale Bruner
“If I ever reach Heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had thought to meet there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.” - John Newton
“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
The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be admired but to be obeyed - RT France
“The focus is on my ability, my creativity, and my potential. These become the pistons driving the engine of self (resulting, Jesus tells us, in the eternal loss of self). No place for weakness exists in this view of reality. More important, no place exists for God. We don’t reject God outright, but we retain the god of Deism, who once did some powerful things but is generally detached from our day-to-day lives. So instead of abiding, we pray for God to give us some of his power. Instead of growing into him who is our head (Eph. 4:15), we ask him to give us some magic (“Just make me stop sinning,” “Just make these temptations go away,” and so on). Instead of entering into the way of weakness, we try to use God to become something powerful.” - Kyle Strobel and Jamin Goggin

Sunday Feb 25, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Revelation and Invitation
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
Sunday Feb 25, 2024
Listen along as we look at Matthew 11:25-30 and see the revelation of who Jesus is coupled with his invitation to rest.
Notes//Quotes:

Monday Feb 19, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Fear Not?
Monday Feb 19, 2024
Monday Feb 19, 2024
Listen along as we continue our series looking at the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:

Sunday Feb 11, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Let the Dead Bury the Dead
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Listen along as we continue looking at the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:
Luke 9:57-62
Throughout history various religious traditions have used the imagery of pilgrimage or journey to describe spiritual development. These journeys were focused on an eternal destination, a spiritual transformation of the individual. Today, however, the “pilgrimage” is all about the individual’s own life journey. The contemporary self does not have to literally be on the move to be on the road. Being on the road is primarily a state of mind, one that constantly is dissatisfied, looking for the next best thing, living in incompleteness, always engaged in a quest for a sense of significance. This search for meaning becomes even more problematic in a culture which flees from objective truth, which fears authority and the holding of belief too strongly. Mark Sayers
“we have a generation whose principal desire is to feel [God] rather than worship Him.” - Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
”By degrees, attachment to the law sank deeper and deeper into the national character…. Hence the law became a deep and intricate study. Certain men rose to acknowledged eminence for their ingenuity in explaining, their readiness in applying, their facility in quoting, and their clearness in offering solutions of, the difficult passages of the written statutes” Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature
“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.” - CS Lewis, Screwtape Letters
How can the dead bury their own dead? This is normally taken metaphorically: "Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead." This reading would make good on the change of life for which Jesus calls, particularly with regard to the reconstruction of one's dispositions and behaviors and of one's self-identity. Contemporary Jewish funerary customs make possible another reading. The practice of primary burial (in which the corpse is placed in a sealed tomb) followed by secondary burial (following a twelve-month period of decomposition the bones were collected and reburied in an ossuary or "bone box"') is well attested, with the additional twelve months between burial and reburial providing for the completion of the work of mourning. According to this reckoning, Jesus' proverbial saying would refer to the physically dead in both instances: "Let those already dead in the family tomb rebury their own dead." In either case, Jesus' disrespect for such a venerable practice rooted in OT law is matched only by the authority he manifests by asserting the priority of the claims of discipleship in the kingdom of God. In this way, Luke brings to a close his introduction to the journey narrative by asserting through the repetition of rigorous demands the nature of commitment required of those who would follow Jesus on the journey. Joel Green
“The Lord had not committed himself to my plans. The Lord had committed himself to me. Learning the difference was what was to make up the long arc of the Christian life. We are not most changed by what we think or feel or by what happened. We are most changed by what we depend on. And nothing has disfigured me more cruelly than my dependence on myself.” John Andrew Bryant

Sunday Feb 04, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: If You Want To Be Perfect
Sunday Feb 04, 2024
Sunday Feb 04, 2024
Listen along as we look at Matthew 19 and look at Jesus' interaction with the rich young ruler.
Notes//Quotes:
Matthew 19:16-30 - Faith
“It is wrong if eternal life is an additional “acquisition,” if one wants the spiritual as a complement to all the other good things one has—physical, financial, social, and the like. “I am a successful businessman, a good father, and respected in my community; now I want to be a success with God as well.” Service clubs sometimes seek such well-roundedness in their members, but the idea of eternal life as the acquisition of an upwardly mobile person is offensive to Jesus. Eternal life is not spiritual real estate for a person on the make.”
— Dale Bruner
“It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture, anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is a little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness…Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship, among whom I counsel, visit, pray, preach, and teach, want short cuts. They want me to help them fill out the form that will get them instant credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But a pastor is not a tour guide. I have no interest in telling apocryphal religious stories at and around dubiously identified sacred sites. The Christian life cannot mature under such conditions and in such ways.
—Eugene Peterson
“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.”
— Gautam Nair, PhD political science at Yale University
Questions:
1. Do I think that God has a price? Am I transactional with Him?
2. Am I attempting to speed God up?
3. If God were to ask me for __________ could I and would I give it to Him?
4. Am I generous with my wealth and what percentage of it goes to Kingdom priorities

Sunday Jan 28, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Eating Flesh, Drinking Blood
Sunday Jan 28, 2024
Sunday Jan 28, 2024
Listen along as we look at John 6 and the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:
John 6:52-60 - Jack A.
“Jesus offers himself as God's doorway into the life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us today, as in other times, to become his apprentices in eternal living. "Those who come through me will be safe," he said. "They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they may have life, and life to the limit.” In other words, eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, "life to the limit." It cannot be stolen from us, and so it does go on. But the focus is on the life itself. "In him was life," the apostle John said of Jesus, "and that life was the light of men.” - Dallas Willard
“There have been five chapters of John's Gospel leading up to this point; they establish the frame of reference into which eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood actually fits. Come to him and believe in him as Nicodemus was taught to do (John 3), as were the woman at the well and the other folk from Sychar in the next chapter. And in chapter five, you've got the reality of Jesus healing the cripple, and restoring to him a life that he didn't have before.The Jews were understandably bewildered because they didn't know that Calvary was coming, and so they scratched their heads and asked the question which at that stage was unanswerable, really: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” The reference Jesus made to eating his flesh and drinking his blood is a metaphorical way of describing the person who draws on, claims, or lays hold of the reality of his atoning sacrifice by putting personal faith in him. We've constantly got to come back to that. It all adds up, you see. And this is something that I find myself wanting to say over and over again to people who ask me about difficult Scriptures. If you read what leads up to them in the book from which they come, again and again you'll find that the problem answers itself, because the foundation for resolving it has already been laid.” - JI Packer
Hebrews 11:1-3,6
If Christ be anything He must be everything. O rest not till love and faith in Jesus be the master passions of your soul! Charles Spurgeon

Sunday Jan 21, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Not Peace, but a Sword - Matthew 10:34-39
Sunday Jan 21, 2024
Sunday Jan 21, 2024
Listen along as we continue our series looking at the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:
Matthew 10:34-39 - Karen W Reading
“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me.
- Matthew 10:34–37 (MSG)
“Since the prophets always promise that under the reign of Christ there will be peace and tranquil times, what else would the disciples have hoped for, but that everything would at once be pacified, wherever they should travel?” - John Calvin
“Jesus enters earth, he enters the world, and he lays claim now, as a king from another kingdom, on every human heart. “I am worthy of greater affection, greater love, greater allegiance than any member of your family.” If all the family members respond to Jesus this way, you’ve got peace. But if they don’t, if there is anger because Jesus has become more important than family bonds and family affections, then a sword cuts right through the relationship. We’ve all tasted this in some ways.” - John Piper
“And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”
- Colossians 1:18 (ESV)
“If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me."
- Matthew 10:38-39 (MSG)
“Jesus is not triumphalist about the future of Christian mission; he knows that his mission is a rugged minority movement, a tough, divisive affair, and he prefers to make this clear rather than to give false hopes. “The gate is wide and the way pleasant that leads to destruction, and many people [a majority] go this route; but the gate is narrow and the way is tough that leads to real life, and very few people [a minority] find this way” (7:13–14). The effect of this minority movement as it moves aggressively into the massive majority culture is bound to be friction. Jesus does not want his disciples to expect great triumphs and then, when persecution, hostility, and rejection are their experience, to feel betrayed. “This is the way it goes,” Jesus assures them; in fact, “this is the way I plan it to go.”” — Dale Bruner
Questions:
1. Am I a jerk?
2. In what aspects of my life am I tempted to tell Jesus to take a back seat in? What threatens my allegiance to Him?
“Anything that becomes more important and nonnegotiable to us than God becomes an enslaving idol. In this paradigm, we can locate idols by looking at our most unyielding emotions. What makes us uncontrollably angry, anxious, or despondent? What racks us with a guilt we can’t shake? Idols control us, since we feel we must have them or life is meaningless.” —Timothy Keller
3. To whom am I truly aligned?

Sunday Jan 14, 2024
The Hard Sayings of Jesus: Did You Not Know? Luke 2:40-52
Sunday Jan 14, 2024
Sunday Jan 14, 2024
Listen along as we begin our new series through the hard sayings of Jesus.
Notes//Quotes:
Luke 2:40-52 - Mike Reading
“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.” - Augustine
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.” - Anne Lamott
“I can state unequivocally that childlike surrender in trust is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. And I would add that the supreme need in most of our lives is often the most overlooked—namely, the need for an uncompromising trust in the love of God.” - Brennan Manning
A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts — not only their own but their friends' and neighbors'. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide the grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt. - Tim Keller
“Doubt your doubts. Be skeptical of your own skepticism. Why? Because you realize that you are not completely objective.” Tim Keller

Sunday Dec 31, 2023
Becoming - Colossians 3:12-17
Sunday Dec 31, 2023
Sunday Dec 31, 2023
Listen along as we look at Colossians 3 and meditate on the invitation to transformation.
Notes//Quotes:
Colossians 3:12-17 Zyler Reading
“Spiritual formation in a Christian tradition answers a specific human question: 'What kind of person am I going to be?' It is the process of establishing the character of Christ in the person.” Dallas Willard
“How much misery we would avoid if we permitted “the peace of Christ” to umpire in our hearts. How many words we would hold back if he were the arbitrator in our lives. How many sleepless nights we would forego if we did that. How the Church needs this too, “since as members of one body you were called to peace.”
Kent Hughes
Revelation 3:20
“The Jesus way wedded to the Jesus truth brings about the Jesus life. Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way. Jesus as the way is the most frequently evaded metaphor among the Christians with whom I have worked for fifty years as a North American pastor.” Eugene Peterson
“Spiritual formation is the slowest of all human movements.” - James Houston
“A black belt is just a white belt who never quit.” A saint is just an ordinary apprentice who stayed at it with Jesus. John Mark Comer
The story of my life, which I am about to record, is one full of striking incident. Keener pangs, deeper joys, more singular vicissitudes, few have been led in God’s providence to experience. As I look back on it through the vista of more than eighty years, and scene after scene rises before me, an ever fresh wonder fills my mind. I delight to recall it. I dwell on it as did the Jews on the marvelous history of their rescue from the bondage of Egypt. Time has touched with its mellowing fingers its sterner features. The sufferings of the past are now like a dream and the enduring lessons left behind, make me to praise God that my soul has been tempered by Him in so fiery a furnace under such heavy blows. - Josiah Henson
Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey—in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life.
Kallistos Ware
“Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.” James Clear