Union Church

Listen along as Anthony continues our series through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 1:12-26 - Scott Reading Title: The Space Between   “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”  - Karl Barth   “One reason why the experiential reality of perceiving God is unfamiliar country today is that the pace and preoccupations of urbanized, mechanized, collectivized, secularized modern life are such that any sort of inner life... is very hard to maintain. To make prayer your life priority, as countless Christians of former days did outside as well as inside the monastery, is stupendously difficult in a world that runs you off your feet and will not let you slow down. And if you attempt it, you will certainly seem eccentric to your peers, for nowadays involvement in a stream of programmed activities is decidedly ‘in,' and the older ideal of a quiet, contemplative life is just as decidedly ‘out.' That there is widespread hunger today for more intimacy, warmth, and affection in our fellowship with God is clear... but the concept of Christian life as sanctified rush and bustle still dominates, and as a result the experiential side of Christian holiness remains very much a closed book.”  - J.I. Packer   “There are no more lots after the coming of the Holy Spirit. It's a shame isn't it? I mean life would be a lot easier if we just had to draw lots to know God's will, but evidently that's not how he wants it. The Spirit is who is in our hearts helps makes these things clear. One of my favorite prayers is, God will you make it so clear that there's no choice? I hate choice. Of the eighteen possible variations, just make seventeen go away will you, because I'm not real bright and I don't always get these things. I'm still hoping for casting lots to come back into use, but I'm not going to hold my breath.” - William Mounce   “As much as modern Christians love to talk about successes, sometimes the failures of the church need airing.” - Holman Commentary   {Verse 1} Free fall, feet off the ground              A clean, white page, fresh snow, no sound        Here as we wait, from dark to dawn           New paths before us, the old is gone   {Chorus 1} Unplug the lights, take down the tree       The less we have, the less we need               From Christmas night to New Year's Eve            We bless the space that's in between          We bless the space that's in between   {Verse 2} December ends, make way for dreams           Wait for the light to raise the spring      Embrace it all from hope to doubt        Like ocean waves washin' in and out   {Chorus 2} Two roads apart, come close again        Where do you stop? Where do I begin?      Each year we learn more what it means             We bless the space  that's in between             We bless the space  that's in between   {Bridge} We bless the seeds under the snow We bless the patience take it slow We bless the limits, bless the tears We bless the failures that brought us here   {Verse 3} I wipe the frost the glass is cold          Our dreams beneath the falling snow         Be Thou my vision until I see         And bless the space that's in between - Sandra McCracken & Josh Garrels   O Almighty God, you pour out your spirit of grace and of supplication on all who desire it. Deliver us, when we draw near to you, from cold hearts and wandering minds, that with steady thoughts and kindled passion we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. -adapted from the Book of Common Prayer  

Listen along as we begin a series through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 1:1-11 - Faith  "How Jesus Starts His Church" ”Customary descriptions of Acts as the story of the church's growth or the story of the spread of the gospel neglect the larger context within which this journey takes place. Although it begins in Israel's leading city, Jerusalem, and ends in the Empire's leading city, Rome, the context of Acts reaches well beyond the cities of the Mediterranean world. Readers who set aside the expectation that Acts is an institutional history, shaped and reshaped by human leaders, will instead see God at work from the beginning until well past the end. God is the one who glorifies Jesus and raises him from the dead, who rescues the apostles from prison, who directs Ananias to baptize Saul, and who insists upon the inclusion of the Gentiles. As Acts unfolds, the audience comes to know God through the activity ascribed to God as well as through the speeches and their claims about God. And the first thing the audience learns is that God is the God of Israel.” Beverly Gaventa “The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism.The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them Is it not amazing: though we know the power of the Holy Spirit can be ours, we still ape the world's wisdom, trust its forms of publicity and its noise, and imitate its ways of manipulating men! If we try to influence the world by using its methods, we are doing the Lord's work in the flesh. If we put activity, even good activity, at the center rather than trusting God, then there may be the power of the world, but we will lack the power of the Holy Spirit.” - Francis Schaeffer “Travelers who desire the predictability of an interstate highway system where all roads look alike and every interchange features three gas stations and two fast-food stores will find this journey more closely resembles A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” Beverly Gaventa Joel 2:28-29 “For the verb restore shows that the were expecting a political and territorial kingdom; the noun Israel that they were expecting a national kingdom; and the adverbial clause at this time that they were expecting its immediate establishment.”  John Stott Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer - Rainer Rilke “Some have seen Jesus's answer as a gentle rebuke to their curiosity: they are to mind their own business and not worry about the end. Others have seen a challenge to the disciple' narrowly nationalistic view of the kingdom. But these interpretations miss the legitimate eschatological expectation that all Jews, including Jesus and the apostles, held in common. If the last days had come indeed—as all the signs seemed to indicate—then Israel must be restored: this was the first order of business on the prophets' kingdom agenda! Jesus's response precisely answers this question: this is how the kingdom is to be restored to Israel so that (in keeping with prophetic promise) the gentiles might soon stream in. Jesus shifts his disciples expectation from when to how.”  - Mike Goheen “When the Spirit comes to them and gives them the gift of power, their very identity will be transformed into that of witnesses.” - Darrell Guder  “The key question is this: As we work for God in this fallen world, what are we trusting in? To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous promise that we have something different—the power of the Holy Spirit rather than the power of human technique.” - Francis Schaeffer

Listen along as we wrap up Exodus and see the hope of Easter. Exodus 33:12-23 “For a while” is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting. - Haruki Murakami “We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true. Actions are not impostions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are. They come out of our heart and the inner realities it supervises and interacts with.” Dallas Willard  Exodus 34:6-7  Romans 8:34-39 1 Peter 1:3-7 2 Cor 3:16-18

Exodus 23:1-9 - Faith Title: A Jealous God   “The jealous God”— doesn't it sound offensive? For we know jealousy, the green-eyed monster, as a vice, one of the most cancerous and soul-destroying vices that there is.” - J.I. Packer   I was dreaming of the past And my heart was beating fast I began to lose control I began to lose control I didn't mean to hurt you I'm sorry that I made you cry Oh no, I didn't want to hurt you I'm just a jealous guy - John Lennon   “Were we imagining a God, then naturally we should ascribe to him only characteristics which we admired, and jealousy would not enter the picture. Nobody would imagine a jealous God. But we are not making up an idea of God by drawing on our imagination; we are seeking instead to listen to the words of Holy Scripture, in which God himself tells us the truth about himself. For God our Creator, whom we could never have discovered by any exercise of imagination, has revealed himself. He has talked. He has spoken…” - J.I. Packer   “There are two sorts of jealousy among humans, and only one of them is a vice. Vicious jealousy is an expression of the attitude, "I want what you've got, and I hate you because I haven't got it." It is an infantile resentment springing from unmortified covetousness, which expresses itself in envy, malice and meanness of action. It is terribly potent, for it feeds and is fed by pride, the taproot of our fallen nature. There is a mad obsessiveness about jealousy which, if indulged, can tear an otherwise firm character to shreds. "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?" asks the wise man (Prov 27:4). What is often called sexual jealousy, the lunatic fury of a rejected or supplanted suitor, is of this kind. But there is another sort of jealousy: zeal to protect a love relationship, or to avenge it when broken. This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex; there, however, it appears not as the blind reaction of wounded pride but as the fruit of marital affection. As Professor Tasker has written, married persons "who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception; for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage" (The Epistle of James, p. 106). This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact.” - J.I. Packer   “For your Maker is your husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name…”  (Isaiah 54:5a)   “For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.  (2 Corinthians 11:2)   “There is no need to be disturbed by this. Jealousy is a resentment of rivals, and whether it is good or evil depends on whether the rival has any right to be there. Since God is unique, and there is no other, he has the right to ask that we worship him alone.” - John Stott   “A counterfeit god (idol) is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”  —Timothy Keller   25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.  —Eph. 5:25-32  

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus. Notes//Quotes: Text for reading: Exodus 19:1-6 - Scott Title: Sinai pt. 2 “We can imagine our octogenarian mountaineer in joyful fellowship with the God whose patience he had exhausted at this spot some months earlier.” - Christopher Wright 10  “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. 11  Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, 12  the LORD alone guided him, no foreign god was with him.” —Deut. 32:10-12 ESV “Oh, that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” - Exodus 16:3 NKJV “It's three months since they've left Egypt. They started a new calendar the moment they stepped foot out of Egypt. So now time is being reckoned in relation to his work of deliverance. And he tells them, we're entering into covenant. If you obey me and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you're going to be my treasured possession.”  - Carmen Imes “9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  - 1 Peter 2:9&10 ESV  

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus. Notes//Quotes: Exodus 14:5-31 “The story of God is the story of salvation, centered on the One whose name means “Yahweh is salvation,” and here is what that looks like: deliverance from slavery and certain death, announced by faith, and received as a gift through trust and obedience.” - Chris Wright “With our modern curiosity, we tend either to explain the phenomenon (and deny the miracle) or to think of it solely in miraculous terms (and resist any natural causation). Our text, however, sees the event from both perspectives as equally valid. On the one hand, the Bible itself provides a perfectly natural explanation. A combination of wind and movement of the sea caused a dry corridor for a temporary period, long enough for Israel to get to the other side. On the other hand, who rules the wind and the waves? We have just read the whole narrative of the natural disasters inflicted on Egypt by Yahweh using the forces of creation for his own purposes. This event, no matter what the natural causes, was Yahweh's doing (he caused the wind to drive back the sea) through Moses's agency (he stretched his hand and raised his staff). Two other points turn this natural event into a miracle of salvation: first, that it should happen at precisely the time when the Israelites needed it to; and second, that the danger surrounding them was only too evident—the sea was still there in the threatening darkness (the walls of water on either side) but was held back long enough for all to cross in safety.” Chris Wright Ezk 18:23 Prov 3:6-7 “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 next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. 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 “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

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus. Notes//Quotes: Exodus 12:1-13 “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.”. - James K.A. Smith  Exodus 12:29-32 13:17-22 Whenever Israel returned to God in such times of national repentance, covenant renewal, or restoration, they returned to the foundational historic event of their national existence—the event on which their identity and faith was founded: God's great demonstration of compassion, justice, and redemption, the exodus. They needed to be shaped again by the story that had first shaped them and respond to its promise and its demand in renewed worship and obedience. They needed to tell and hear again the story they were in, the story of God and God's people, and then live in the light of it.For us, individually or as Christian communities, times of revival and renewal will always include going back to the cross and resurrection of Christ, back to the redemption story that defines the good news for us and the world, the story that shapes our identity, our mission, and our future. As it was for Israel, the road to renewal and restoration for us has to be the road of remembrance. For even as Christians, we so easily forget the story we are in. We need, just as much as the Israelites, to hear and tell again and again the story of God, the foundational biblical narrative of our redemption, and then live in the light of it. Chris Wright Jesus is a teacher who doesn't just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn't content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings - James KA

Listen along as we continue our time through Exodus. Exodus 7:1-13  2 Tim 3:16-17 “One could object that it is not worthy of God to wield the sword. Is God not love, long-suffering and all-powerful love? A counter-question could go something like this: Is it not a bit too arrogant to presume that our contemporary sensibilities about what is compatible with God's love are so much healthier than those of the people of God throughout the whole history of Judaism and Christianity? If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make the final end to violence God would not be worthy of our worship.” - Mirolsav Volf  6:6-8 “How are we to interpret all this? With humility, would be a good place to start. There is (and always will be) a mystery in holding together the sovereignty of God and human moral responsibility for our own willed choices and actions. Yet we must, without hesitation, insist that the Bible affirms both, frequently and unequivocally, however difficult it is for us to reconcile them in our human logic” - Chris Wright “The entire created order is caught up in this struggle, either as cause or victim. Pharaoh's antilife measures have unleashed chaotic powers that threaten the very creation that God intended.… Water is no longer water; light and darkness are no longer separated; diseases of people and animals run amok; insects and amphibians swarm out of control. And the signs come to a climax in the darkness, which in effect returns the creation to the first day of Genesis 1, a precreation state of affairs. While everything is unnatural in the sense of being beyond the bounds of the order created by God, the word hypernatural (nature in excess) may better capture the sense. The plagues are hypernatural at various levels—timing, scope, intensity. Some sense of this is also seen in the recurrent phrases to the effect that such “had never been seen before, nor ever shall be again” (10:14 cf. 10:6; 9:18, 24; 11:6). Terence Fretheim “It cannot be accidental that God used ten plagues to teach the Egyptians that he is sovereign and that their gods were of no account. At the time of the exodus, both the Israelites and the Egyptians used a decimal counting system, which meant that the number ten tended to connote a full, complete, sufficient quantity of anything being explicitly enumerated. A run-through of the whole decimal list from one to ten provided more than enough demonstration of God's power over Egypt for anyone to get the message.” Doug Stuart “after six occasions of pharaoh hardening his own heart, we at last read that God hardens his heart, it is not so much that God is causing him to make those choices but that God gives him up to the choices he has shown himself determined to make and allows the consequences to take their course” Chris Wright Romans 12:14-21

Listen along as we continue our series in Exodus. Exodus 5:1-9, 6:1-8 - Scott Reading Title: Battle Of The Gods “The exodus is a battle of the gods, in which only one can emerge from the ring victorious…The conflict between the deities: Egypt's against Israel's, the false against the true, the serpent against the seed, Pharaoh against the Lord. It is a mismatch. Battles against the Lord always are.” —Alistair J. Roberts & Andrew Wilson, Echos Of Exodus, (pg. 41) “Their words in 5:1 have all the hallmarks of a bold prophetic word, beginning with the classic “Thus says Yahweh” (author's translation) and framed as a simple imperative, “let my people go.” At first reading it sounds impressively courageous as a direct word from God. Except that it was not. That speech in verse 1 was not actually what God had told Moses to say to pharaoh, and the narrator knows this, since he records Moses and Aaron reverting in verse 3 to the words God had actually given Moses in 3:18. — Christopher Wright “That “long tradition” includes not only Job and the writers of many a psalm of lament, not only the poet who produced the prolonged and searingly poignant protest called Lamentations, but also the prophet Elijah (1 Kgs 19) and, especially, Jeremiah, whose depression and desperation lead to outbursts of astonishing honesty, some of which employ Moses's imploring “Why …?” (e.g., Jer 12:1–4; 15:10–21; 20:7–17). That “Why …?”—echoing through the pain of so many in the Old Testament—is heard from the cross at the moment of that greater exodus that Christ accomplished there. And indeed, it was a “Why …?” taken straight from the Scriptures that shaped Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Ps 22:1). We know why. And Jesus, too, knew why. He was doing what he had come to do, bearing in his own divine-human self the full and terrible weight and cost and consequences of the sin of the world. But the agony of doing so draws forth this cry of dereliction. Even in the silence of heaven at that moment, we may hear the echo of exactly what God said in answer to the “Why?” that Moses asked.” - Christopher Wright "Standing on business" means to firmly prioritize your responsibilities, commitments, and personal values in a professional or serious manner, essentially indicating a dedication to taking care of your business and following through on your words with actions; it implies a sense of duty, assertiveness, and a no-nonsense attitude towards achieving goals.”   - Google Ai “God just gets on with business. This is really good news for you and me because sometimes we lack faith in God, we lack enthusiasm, and we're not sure if God is going to make good on his promises. God's promises however, do not depend on us, they depend on him. And so, even if we're in a period of discouragement, we're not in danger of derailing God's plan. God will carry out the promises that he made with or without our participation. And here, God isn't just going to save the ones who are on his side and who are excited, he is going to save all of the Hebrews. He's giving them time to come around and by the time they leave Egypt, they will be on board and he will be able to rescue them.” - Dr. Carmen Imes

Listen along as we continue our series through Exodus. Text: Exodus 3:1-6 Title: God With Us “What Moses does mean by this? Did he mean that he became a foreigner to those who no longer accepted him? To the Egyptians, the Hebrews, or that now he's in Midian and he doesn't belong here either? Moses is a misfit and he has this hybrid identity that doesn't really belong.”  — Dr. Carmen Imes “What is the significance of the fire's being in the bush but not of the bush? It indicates that the fire Moses saw was independent of the bush—it was not using the bush for its fuel. That's why the bush wasn't consumed. It was burning from its own power. It was self-generated. This is a biblical example of what we call theophany, meaning “God made manifest.” The God whom we worship is a spirit. He is invisible, and His invisible substance cannot be seen by the human eye. But there are occasions in redemptive history where the invisible God makes Himself visible by some kind of manifestation. That is called a theophany, and it's what we see with the burning bush.” — R.C. Sproul  “God is not only identifying himself as Yahweh, the God who made a covenant with Abraham to bless him and multiply him and bring him into the land and make him be a blessing to all nations. Not only is He that God, but at the same time He's defining who Moses is. He belongs in that covenant people and the God of his father is that God, the God Yahweh. So he's grown up in an Egyptian context where there are lots of deities, lots of temples, lots of priests worshiping these different deities, and in his first encounter with God he finds out simultaneously who God is, and who he is, and that settles things for him. Going forward, his hybrid identity gets resolved and I think this is how it works actually for all of us. When we come to fully encounter the God of the Bible (Yahweh who revealed himself in Jesus)…as we come to know Yahweh we come to know ourselves. There's no real way to know who we are outside of knowing who God is, who God has created us to be, and who He's called us to be.” — Dr. Carmen Imes “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distill to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. Here, again, the infinitude of good which resides in God becomes more apparent from our poverty. In particular, the miserable ruin into which the revolt of the first man has plunged us, compels us to turn our eyes upwards; not only that while hungry and famishing we may thence ask what we want, but being aroused by fear may learn humility.”     — John Calvin “Yahweh is and always will be “God with”—God with those who faithfully obey his sending; God with his people in good times and bad; God with the poor and needy in their affliction; and eventually, Immanuel, “God with us.” —Christopher Wright Questions: 1. Can I celebrate the slow nature of character building?  2. Am I attempting to know myself apart from looking outward and upward? 3. Have I truly encountered the God who is with me?

Listen along as we look at Exodus 2. Notes//Quotes: Exodus 2:1-25 “The one universal balm for the trauma of war was tea. It was the thing that helped people cope. People made tea during air raids and after air raids, and on breaks between retrieving bodies from shattered buildings. Tea bolstered the network of thirty thousand observers who watched for German aircraft over England, operating from one thousand observation posts, all stocked with tea and kettles. Mobile canteens dispensed gallons of it, steaming, from spigots. In propaganda films, the making of tea became a visual metaphor for carrying on. “Tea acquired almost a magical importance in London life,” according to one study of London during the war. “And the reassuring cup of tea actually did seem to help cheer people up in a crisis.” Tea ran through Mass-Observation diaries like a river. “That's one trouble about the raids,” a female diarist complained. “People do nothing but make tea and expect you to drink it.” - Erik Larson Heb 11:23 God's story is not one in which individuals or whole nations are simplistically portrayed as immutably good or bad. People change, times change—and the only constant is that God works in and through the see-saw and reversals of history to accomplish his purpose. - Chris Wright “If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.” - D.A. Carson 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 2 Peter 3:8-13

Listen along as we begin our series through Exodus. Notes//Quotes: Exodus 1:7-22 Books do not usually begin with the word “And.” But Exodus does, in the Hebrew text, and so do Leviticus and Numbers: the second, third, and fourth books of the Bible. You would not know this from most modern English translations, presumably because it is not considered good literary style to begin a sentence, never mind a whole book, with “And.” In Hebrew, however, although these are clearly whole books in their own right, each of them begins in a way that clearly connects them altogether as part of one long story that began in Genesis and stretches to the borders of the promised land by the end of Numbers. Deuteronomy, however, begins with a fresh telling of the same story and ends where it started, so does not need the connecting and forward-moving opening word “And.” - Chris Wright The Pentateuch as a whole—the Torah—constituted the foundation of Old Testament Israel's faith and identity, and the book of Exodus sets in place some of the largest theological blocks within that foundation. It showed Israel who their God was, who they were as God's people, how God's desire was to dwell in their midst, and how the grace of God was the only guarantee that their journey with God (or rather, God's journey with them) could continue - Chris Wright “Ironically, Genesis presents the mother of all Israelites oppressing an Egyptian slave, while Exodus presents an Egyptian king oppressing Israelites as slaves. To that degree, Sarah foreshadows pharaoh's role, just as Hagar's story prefigures Israel's story” - Victor Hamilton “The pogrom has reached its height. All Egypt has been recruited to destroy the population explosion of the enemy” Brevard Childs The first exodus comes in the midst of a plot that should be familiar to anyone who has read the garden story in Genesis. The people of Israel are fruitful and multiply and fill the land, but the serpent-like king is tricksy, and he attacks the women, with a view to destroying their male descendants. Yet in contrast to the garden story, the women outmaneuver him. - Alastair Roberts The unmissable proclamation heard in the openings of all four gospels, then, is simply this: “God is doing it again!” The God of Abraham is keeping his promise. The God of Moses is confronting the world's pharaohs. The God of the exodus is on the way to save his people. Except that the ultimate confrontation and victory will not come about by God sending plagues upon the Romans but by God the Son becoming the Passover lamb, his flesh broken and his blood shed on the cross for the redemption not only of Israel but of people from all nations who put their trust in him. From this point on, the New Testament is replete with echoes of exodus and new-exodus themes, along with its references to the covenant and law given at Sinai, and the tabernacle - Chris Wright

Ephesians 4:1-6 “Not only (1) is their unity expressly stated as coming from the Spirit, but (2) four of the five graces listed in vv. 2–3 are among the fruit of the Spirit in Gal 5:22–23; and (3) in the Trinitarian confession that follows, pride of place is given to the Spirit, precisely because the one body, which is Paul's present concern, is the result of their common experience of the one Spirit, whose presence in their lives is also the predicate of their one hope.” - Gordon Fee “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (Jn. 17:20&21) “Put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:25-32) “We cannot expect the world to believe the Father sent the Son, that Jesus' claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.”  - Francis Schaffer, The Mark of the Christian “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:”  (1 Cor. 1:2) “This is highly instructive. This mess of a church whose meetings did more harm than good is still a real, legitimate church. It is a church of God…This church is composed of "those sanctified in Christ Jesus." A saint is not a special kind of Christian, someone who has been through some sort of spiritual finishing school. A saint is another word for a Christian. In Christ we are sanctified in the sense of already having been set apart by God to be his people and needing to learn—bit by bit, day by day—how to live out what that actually means. Paul goes on to say that these Corinthian believers have been "called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord." Their own individual status in Christ connects each of them not only to the rest of their own church but even more widely to all who name the name of Jesus as they do. There is something unavoidably corporate involved in calling on Christ. He is the common Lord they all share—“both theirs and ours.” - Sam Allberry “The church is wholly constituted of those saints that are his jewels, that are the spoils of his enemies, that were once his enemies' possession, but that he has redeemed out of their hands.”  - Jonathan Edwards “The Spirit delivers Christ to us not just anywhere and in any way but where and how he has promised. Although he is free to work outside of his covenanted mercies, we are assured of his saving blessings and presence only where he has been promised to us. If we identify the Spirit only with the unexpected and irregular, we will miss most of the times and places where he actually meets us.” —Michael Horton 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. (Eph. 4:4-6)  

Listen along as we continue our series looking at the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Notes//Quotes: 1 Cor 12:1-14 -  Ex 31:1-5 Joel 2:28-29,  Ezekiel 36:25-27 Christian faith has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal there is not a single Jew who is a beggar, and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them - Julian, appx 360ad They look too much to man's efforts, and know not how the second blessing is nothing more nor less than a new vision of what Christ is willing to work in us, and the surrender of faith that yields all to Him - Andrew Murray We are commanded to be full, and yet we are not the filler; the Spirit is. The answer to this predicament in the New Testament is that God has ordained to move into our lives with fullness through faith. The pathway that the Spirit cuts through the jungle of our anxieties into the clearing of joy is the pathway of faith. Luke says of Stephen in Acts 6:5, that he was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” and he says of Barnabas in Acts 11:24 that he was “a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith,” The two go together. If a person is filled with faith, he will be filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of joy and peace. - John Piper Romans 12:3-10 Eph 4:30

Listen along as we continue our series looking at the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Notes//Quotes: Romans 8:12-17 - Jack “How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son—not for Christ's own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men?” - John Calvin “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: (Jn. 16:7&8) Regeneration: “mighty work of God by which unbelievers are given a new nature, being born again.... It is both (1) the removal of one's old self, and (2) the imparting of a new self that is responsive to God. Unlike conversion, which is the human response to the gospel, regeneration is completely a divine work, to which human beings contribute nothing.” - Greg Allison This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  (John 3:2-8) “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. 4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”  (Titus 3:3-7) “To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”  ― C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:9-11) “Justification is the "mighty act of God by which he declares sinful people not guilty but righteous instead. He does so by imputing, or crediting, the perfect righteousness of Christ to them. Thus, while they are not actually righteous, God views them as being so because of Christ's righteousness." Thus, justification is a forensic act, a legal declaration, consisting of two elements. "The first aspect is the forgiveness of sins, resulting from Christ's substitutionary death (Rom. 3:25; 5:9). The second is imputation, resulting from Christ's obedience that makes people righteous (5:18-29). The New Testament ties justification to the Holy Spirit in one passage, in which an absolute contrast is made between "the unrighteous, [who] will not inherit God's kingdom" (1 Cor 6:9), and believers: "And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God' (6:11).” — Greg Allison  “14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14)  “The Spirit does not enter hearts that prepare him room or sweep the floor and dust before his arrival (an optimistic set of tasks to expect of the dead); rather, he enters, hovers, infuses life, gives faith, and begins immediately to renovate the mansion in which he once breathed merely the natural (i.e., biological) life but now breathes the breath of eschatological—new creation—life.” — Michael Horton 

Listen along as we look at week three of our Holy Spirit series. Luke 4:16-30 - Mike Reading Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'Maybe this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death. - Henri Nouwen   Stones into Bread The Fountain thirsts, the Bread is hungry here
The Light is dark, the Word without a voice.
When darkness speaks it seems so light and clear.
Now He must dare, with us, to make a choice.
In a distended belly's cruel curve
He feels the famine of the ones who lose
He starves for those whom we have forced to starve
He chooses now for those who cannot choose.
He is the staff and sustenance of life
He lives for all from one Sustaining Word
His love still breaks and pierces like a knife
The stony ground of hearts that never shared,
God gives through Him what Satan never could;
The broken bread that is our only food. The Kingdoms of this World ‘So here's the deal and this is what you get:
The penthouse suite with world-commanding views,
The banker's bonus and the private jet
Control and ownership of all the news
An ‘in' to that exclusive one percent,
Who know the score, who really run the show
With interest on every penny lent
And sweeteners for cronies in the know.
A straight arrangement between me and you
No hell below or heaven high above
You just admit it, and give me my due
And wake up from this foolish dream of love…'
But Jesus laughed, ‘You are not what you seem.
Love is the waking life, you are the dream.' On The Pinnacle ‘Temples and Spires are good for looking down from;
You stand above the world on holy heights,
Here on the pinnacle, above the maelstrom,
Among the few, the true, unearthly lights.
Here you can breathe the thin air of perfection
And feel your kinship with the lonely star,
Above the shadow and the pale reflection,
Here you can know for certain who you are.
The world is stalled below, but you could move it
If they could know you as you are up here,
Of course they'll doubt, but here's your chance to prove it
Angels will bear you up, so have no fear….'
‘I was not sent to look down from above
It's fear that sets these tests and proofs, not Love.' John 14:15-17 John 14:25-26 John 16:7-15 “You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct.” JI Packer  

Listen along as we continue our series on the Holy Spirit. Notes//Quotes: Genesis 1:1-2 - Faith Reading “The Spirit is not the architect, nor is the framework of the cosmos or of the new creation “in him” as is true of the Word in whom all things hold together (Col 1:17). But he is the builder, carrying with him the plans of the Father and the materials purchased by the Son as he builds the sanctuary according to all that he has received…When we begin with the Spirit's work in creation, the canvas of his operations widens.” - Michael Horton These all look to you,
 to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up;  when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die
 and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,
 and you renew the face of the ground. - Psalm 104:27-30 “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” - Job 33:4  “The redemptive Spirit is cut off both from bodily life and from the life of nature. It makes people turn away from this world and hope for a better world beyond. They then seek and experience in the Spirit of Christ a power that is different from the divine energy of life which according to Old Testament ideas interpenetrates all the living. The theological textbooks talk about the Holy Spirit in connection with God, faith, the Christian life, the church and prayer, but seldom with the body and nature." - Jurgen Moltmann “There is something to the pagan love of nature, even its myths and rituals tied to the changing seasons. However, biblical faith grounds this instinct in a transcendent and triune God who is ever active even in the regularities of nature. What is striking in all of the Old Testament references to creation is the pure naturalness of nature. Nothing in creation is to be worshiped but rather is meant to lead us from the artistry to the Artist.”  - Michael Horton

Listen along as we begin our series on the Holy Spirit. Notes//Quotes: Acts 1:6-11 - Josh Reading We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to his people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as the other Paraclete, is present with and in believers. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and by his powerful and mysterious work regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit's agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God's family; they participate in the divine nature and receive his sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit is himself the down payment of the promised inheritance, and in this age indwells, guides, instructs, equips, revives, and empowers believers for Christ-like living and service.   We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. “The key affirmations are: (1) The Holy Spirit is God, being called "the Lord" and, together with God the Father and God the Son, being the object of worship and adoration. (2) The Holy Spirit is a divine Person, the Third Person of the Trinity, proceeding from both the person of the Father and the person of the Son. (3) Two major works in which the Holy Spirit (without separation from the Father and the Son) is involved are as the "Giver of life" — creation/re-creation/perfection-and as the one who spoke by prophets— revelation-with particular reference to Scripture, the written Word of the triune God.” —Allison & Kostenberger “The presupposition is that, far too often, we settle for and suffer "parched lives, in need of renewal and refreshment. Tragically, some believers and churches are skeptical about and even afraid of the presence and work of the Spirit. Their mistrust and dread are often due to poor or absent teaching about the Holy Spirit and/or bizarre experiences with extreme forms of Pentecostalism and/or the Charismatic movement. Such suspicion and trepidation, even when properly held, too often result in a suspicion of rightful experiences of the Spirit. Our pneumatology, with its emphasis on a renewing experience of the Spirit, seeks to prompt believers and churches to move beyond cynicism and fear. Indeed, it affirms, "Without the active presence of the Spirit of God there must be a desperate vacuum at the heart of the Christian life”  For believers and churches who find themselves on the opposite end of the spectrum, our doctrine of the Holy Spirit cautions them against overly emphasizing the Spirit's "bold" or "miraculous" manifestations but to expect with joy and thanksgiving the Spirit's "mundane" or "normal" works. From a simple prayer like "Spirit, fill me!" as they tumble out of bed in the morning to their daily reading of Scripture, and from their trust in and obedience to th  Spirit-breathed Word of God to going about their work as spouses, singles, parents, educators, small business owners, carpenters, farmers, homemakers, and more, they should be renewed by the spirit in the routines of life.” Allison and Kostenberger

Listen along as we wrap up our final gathering of 2024. Notes//Quotes: 2 Cor 4:7-18 Just as wine cannot keep well in silver or gold vessels, but only in the lowliest of vessels—earthen ones—so words of Torah do not keep well in one who considers himself to be the same as silver or gold vessels, but only in one who considers himself the same as the lowliest of vessels—earthen ones. - Rabbinical Commentary on Torah The Stoic philosopher—and still more the Cynic—prided himself on his indifference to physical and mental suffering, and would often give a recital of what he had been through in order to demonstrate the power of the philosophy to make one able to rise above such purely external and short-term vicissitudes. - David Garland “Epictetus believed that difficulties (peristaseis) “show what men are.” What they endured exhibited their true grit and moral constancy. For Paul hardships do not disclose what humans are made of but what God's power is like” - David Garland “While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world's sorrows, tasting the coming joy. Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire.” - Tim Keller 

Listen along as we reflect on the paradox of Advent.

Listen along as we wrap up our series in Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Phillipians 4:10-23 - Jack Title: The Good Life “For the Stoics, self-sufficiency meant becoming independent from all external circumstances and from material goods. As Seneca expressed it, “The happy man is content with his present lot, no matter what it is, and is reconciled to his circumstances” Through discipline and inner strength, individuals could master their own universe. The Stoics' aim was to become serenely indifferent to anything fate tossed their way.” - Dean Fleming  “We are often more frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”  - Seneca “Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all, – the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet.” - Seneca “The apostle does not seek detachment from life's circumstances. Instead he has learned to see his hardships as a part of God's great drama of salvation… Above all, 4:13 reveals that Paul's contentment comes not from his own inner resources, but from God. Fee puts it well: “[Paul] uses the language—and outwardly assumes the stance—of Stoic ‘self-sufficiency,' but radically transforms it into Christ-sufficiency. The net result is that Paul and Seneca, while appearing to be close, are a thousand leagues apart” - Dean Fleming “Our disciplines don't address our deepest longings.”  - Ruth Chou Simons “Christ in me, not me in a set of different circumstances”  -  Elisabeth Elliot 

Listen along as we continue our journey through Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 4:8-9 - Faith “Who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember” - Joshua Foer  The next two words are more at home in the world of Hellenism than that of the Bible. This first term appears nowhere else in the NT. Nor does it show up on any list of ancient moral virtues. Its usage embraces both what is “lovely” (i.e., “beautiful”) as well as what is “lovable” or attractive to others. Christians are to reflect on what is beautiful and pleasing, both in creation and in the spiritual lives of God's people - Dean Flemming “Thought leads to action, and what we open our minds to quickly becomes our master” - T. Deasley  (Rom 12:1-2) We must model our relationships on Christ, surround our circumstances by prayer, drill our minds in godly thinking, and subject our life to the Word of God. Do this, ‘and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus … and the God of peace will be with you'. If we ignore the calling we must be prepared to forgo the blessings. - Alec Motyer  

Listen along as we continue our journey through the book of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Phillipians 4:4-7 - Kim (Chris F Preaching) Perhaps ‘graciousness' is the best English equivalent; and, in the context here, it is to be the spirit of willingness to yield under trial which will show itself in a refusal to retaliate when attacked. It may have seemed an impossible ideal to the Philippians, but the preceding verse is a reminder that such a quality ‘is the outshining of joy in the Lord'... -Ralph P. Martin, Tyndale New TestamentMM Phil. 1:27-28: Only let your manner of life (politeuomai) be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents... Phil. 3:20: But our citizenship (politeuma) is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ... 1 Tim. 2:1-4: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Tim. 3:3: ... not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive... "The Philippians, living in a garrison town, would be familiar with the sight of the Roman sentry, maintaining his watch. Likewise, comments the apostle, God's peace will garrison and protect your hearts and your minds." Ralph Martin Psalm 8:1-2: "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger." Just as babies cannot appeal or persuade by means of articulate speech or rhetorical eloquence, so God's enemies are defended against by means of those who are totally dependent on God. Their only defense is to cry out to him in trusting prayers, petitions, and protests.  "The Lord only needs an army of praise-wielding infant warriors to “silence” these enemies! Even the kings and rulers of “the earth” (2:2, 10) will be silenced by children praising him whose majestic name fills “the earth” -Bruce Waltke

Listen along as Mike Gaston teaches through Philippians 4:1-3. Notes//Quotes: Phil 4:1-3 - Zyler   Slides Philippians 4   Slide 1   Big Idea:   Our understanding of beautiful theological truth must be accompanied by healthy personal relationships.   An application of powerful theology (v 1)   An intervention for healthy relationships (v 2-3)     Slide 2    JPEG of Selah Suite wall coming by email     Slide 3   For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?  For you are our glory and joy.   1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 Slide 4   “The Greek word for crown … was commonly used to denote the festive garland, worn as a sign of gladness, or the wreath awarded to the victor of the athletic contest. If the metaphor is to be applied here, it means that the Philippian Christians would be regarded as his ‘reward,' the seal of his apostleship … at the last day, the triumph of grace would be seen in the perseverance of the saints to the inexpressible joy of their spiritual mentors.” Ralph P. Martin     Slide 5   Two pics of Gettysburg, side by side, coming by email               Slide 6   “Paul's willingness to call out two women when he knew the letter would be read to the whole congregation demonstrates the fact that he cared more about the unity of the church than about the church having a superficial, “everything is going to be alright” sentimental warmth. Paul's most joyful letter expresses his willingness to do the hard work of pursuing unity rather than just papering over problems… Paul tells them to agree in the Lord. And he urges the church to help them. He doesn't say, “Hey everyone else, stay out of it. It's none of your business!” He expects the church to be involved in bringing about reconciliation. Why? Because of the gospel. The church is made up of the servants of the Lord. We are servants of Jesus Christ. We should be of the same mind because we love the same God. We believe in the same Jesus. We're indwelled by the same Spirit. Reconciliation isn't easy, but pursuing it says something about the power of the gospel. So let's be Christians who are so steeped in grace that we pursue unity in the church and with other people. Let's be willing to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of reconciliation or to get involved and help other people reconcile because we want people to see what it looks like when grace reigns supreme.” Trevin Wax, The Gospel Coalition   Slide 7 “People know Jesus, not just by what we say, but how we live. The way we serve one another, love one another, bear with one another, rejoice with one another, weep with one another, everything we do with one another is either evidence for or against the reality of the Gospel. In the 3rd Century, Christian Theologian Tertullian recorded how the pagans surrounding the church in North Africa exclaimed, “See how these Christians Love one another!” Love has been, and always will be, the sign of Christian maturity and evidence of the Gospel.    Andrew McClure   Slide 8   Big Idea:   Our understanding of beautiful theological truth must be accompanied by healthy personal relationships.

Listen along as we continue our series through Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Phil 3:12-21  Gospel Shaped Goals   “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”  (Matthew 16:24-26)    “Most of our society is constantly urging us to be aware of what we are, and what we have achieved, and what we have done, and so on. But maturity in Christian living has actually as its beginning an awareness of what I'm not. Christian maturity is not exemplified by high-sounding talk, but in a life of humble, steady consistency. It is a sign of immaturity to “think of [ourselves] more highly than [we] ought.” Maturity rejects exaggerated claims. Maturity is marked instead by a sane estimate of our spiritual progress.”  —Alistair Begg   For Paul, and for us, the prize that beckons us forward “is not something—it is Someone” (Welch 1988, 109). The full knowledge of Christ—this is the prize that awaits us at the end of the race. Unlike many popular notions of the future today, Paul did not conceive of the goal of his journey as something literal and tangible, such as simply “getting to heaven” or “walking on streets of gold” or “wearing a crown.” Nor was his hope focused on the chance to be reunited with departed loved ones, as sincere as such longings may be. For Paul, living meant Christ (1:21). Knowing Christ and becoming like him was both his present passion and his supreme goal for the future. The goal motivates the journey. If our purpose is merely “making it to heaven,” we might be tempted to rest on our past laurels and passively coast along until we finally receive our reward. Even worse, eternity might become “nothing more than a selfish pursuit born of a fear of death or hell” (Walton 2001, 469). But when the fullness of Christ is the prize ahead, then the journey is earmarked by a deepening desire for communion with God.” — Dean Fleming   “Let us choose … men who teach us by their lives, men who teach us what we ought to do and then prove it by their practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid. Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.” —Seneca     

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Phil 3:1-11 Acts 15:1 The key passage is Genesis 17, and the important point can be simply expressed. The covenant is God's promise. He goes on oath in certain specific matters. Abram is the recipient of the promise which is first personal: Abram becomes Abraham (verse 5), a vivid promise of regeneration or a new nature, for with the new name there is created a new man. Secondly, the promise is national, a multitude of nations (verses 5b–6). Thirdly, it is spiritual, ‘to be God to you and to your descendants after you' (verse 7). Fourthly, it is territorial, the ‘land of your sojournings' (verse 8); and finally, by way of emphasizing the most important point, spiritual again, ‘and I will be their God' (verse 8). Circumcision symbolizes the application of the covenant promises to those individuals whom God has chosen to receive them. This came to be seen as the essential heart of the covenant promise and the most quoted verse in the Bible: ‘You shall be my people, and I will be your God.' Paul, the Philippians, the whole company of Christian believers down the years—we are the chosen people of God, individually born again, individually and collectively heirs of the Lord's purposes of grace. It is as though Paul said: We may be sure that God has set his personal seal of choice and ownership upon us, for we are the circumcision-  Alec Motyer Eph 2:11-16,  Gal 3:26-29 “I consider them rubbish is too weak a translation for the shocking word Paul uses (skybala). Found only here in the New Testament, skybala could refer to refuse, stinking and decaying food, or even human excrement. It carries the idea of something that is only fit to be thrown out because it is so disgusting. As a result, filth or the coarse colloquial term “crap” better captures the detestable quality expressed in this term. Paul could hardly have stated his revulsion toward his former sources of pride and self-righteousness more emphatically - Dean Flemming "Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously, radically insecure persons. We must first make real to them the grace of God accepting them daily, not because of their spirituality or their achievements in Christian service, but because God has accounted to them the perfect righteousness of Christ.” Richard Lovelace Matthew 7:24-27

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 2:19-30 1 Cor 12:21-26 “The Christian community demonstrates the effectiveness of the gospel. We are the living proof that the gospel is not an empty word but a powerful word that takes men and women who are lovers of self and transforms them by grace through the Spirit into people who love God and others. We are the living proof that the death of Jesus was not just a vain expression of God's love but an effective death that achieved the salvation of a people who now love one another sincerely from a pure heart” - Tim Chester 1 Peter 2:9-10 John20:21) “The Swiss psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross once wrote, "Beautiful people do not just happen." Do you know any of these beautiful people? People who shine with an inner luminescence, who radiate a kind of moral beauty? These kinds of people don't "just happen" by accident; they are formed, or forged, often in the fire of suffering and pain, over a long period of time, into people of love.” - John Mark Comer Almost anything in life that truly matters will require you to do small, mostly overlooked things, over a long period of time with him - Eswine

Listen along as we continue our journey through Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 2:12-18 - Kim Working It Out “The doctrine of justification concerns God's gracious judicial verdict in advance of the day of judgment, pronouncing guilty sinners, who turn in self-despairing trust to Jesus Christ, forgiven, acquitted of all charges and declared morally upright in God's sight.” - Philip Eveson Ephesians 2:8&9: 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  “While the language of sanctification in theological terminology has focused on the progressive aspect of growing holiness in the Christian life, the Bible uses the term sanctification to point towards the status as consecrated and holy that we have in Christ through our union with him.”  - Fred Zaspel “Just as God assessed and then reacted to the worth of his Son's life of obedience (verses 9–11), so the Christian must ponder the example of Christ and determine upon a worthy response (verses 12–18).” - Alec Motyer Romans 11:33:  “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”  “If we are to follow Christ, we must continue to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must continue to receive God's grace. We must continue to manifest the fruit of the Spirit. We must continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We must continue to come before God in prayer. We must continue not to reject the assembling of ourselves for worship, but we must continue to gather for worship, so that, in all of these things, we are doing just exactly what we are called to do…It means that when we pray the Lord's Prayer, and it says, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,”that we actually do forgive our debtors. It means that when we are called to be witnesses, that we actually witness. It means that all of the benefits which have been made available to us are being utilized, and all of the responsibilities and challenges to which we are being called are being assumed.” —Alistair Begg Numbers 11:11-15: 11 Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? 12 Did I conceive all this people? Did I give them birth, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child,' to the land that you swore to give their fathers? 13 Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.' 14 I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. 15 If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.”  “How can you come to grips with someone giving himself utterly for you, without you giving yourself utterly to him?”  — Timothy Keller

Listen along as we continue our time in the letter of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 2:1-11 When salvation has taken place in the life of someone under the sovereign hand of God, they are set free from the penalty of sin and its power. In a body without the Spirit, sin is an unshakable king under whose dominion no man can flee. The entire body, with its members, affections, and mind all willfully submit themselves to sin's rule. But when the Spirit of God takes back the body that He created for Himself, He sets it free from the pathetic master that once held it captive and releases it into the marvelous light of its Savior. It is then able to not only want God, but it is actually able to obey God. And isn't that what freedom is supposed to be? The ability to not do as I please, but the power to do what is pleasing. Jackie Hill Perry Romans 12:9-10 - Gospel doctrine - gospel culture = Hypocrisy  Gospel culture - gospel doctrine = fragility Gospel doctrine + gospel culture = power  Ray Ortlund Romans 8:31-32,  2 Peter 1:3-4 “It follows, then, that we cannot start with a definition of God and try to fit Jesus into it. We must look first to Jesus himself, who reveals to us the identity of God. If we want to know what God is like … God is like Jesus" Dean Flemming What greater mercy is there than this, which caused to descend from heaven the maker of heaven; which reclothed with an earthly body the one who formed the earth; which made equal to us the one who, from eternity, is the equal of the Father; which imposed “the form of a servant” on the Master of the world—such that the Bread itself was hungry, Fullness itself was thirsty, Power itself was made weak, Health itself was wounded, and Life itself was mortal? And that so that our hunger would be satisfied, so that our dryness would be watered, our weakness supported, our love ignited. What greater mercy than that which presents to us the Creator created; the Master made a slave; the Redeemer sold; the One who exalts, humbled; the One who raises the dead, killed? - Augustine The present passage uniquely unfolds the cross as seen through the eyes of the Crucified, and allows us to enter into the mind of Christ. We tread, therefore, on very holy ground indeed. We do well to remember that this privilege is given to us not to satisfy our curiosity but to reform our lives - Alec Motyer

Listen along as we continue through Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 1:19-30 An important clue is that Paul's words, "this will turn out for my salvation," are an exact quotation of Job 13:16 in the Greek Bible. Here Paul's unmarked quotation evokes clear analogies between the apostle's present situation and the former plight of Job. In Job 13, Job defends himself against the accusatory arrows of his pious “comforters.” The charge is that his suffering is the direct result of harboring some secret sin. In response, Job pleads his innocence, declaring that ultimately he will be vindicated by God (Job 13:16, 18). Similarly, Paul, in the face of afflictions and the attacks of rival preachers, looks forward to vindication before God in the end. - Dean Flemming James 4:13-15 “If the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.” - Lesslie Newbigin If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world. - Vance Havner

Listen along as we continue our journey through the book of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 1:12-18 - Kim   The Sweet Sovereignty of God   “Rather than detail the hardships he faced, Paul took a divine perspective.” — Richard Malick   “Paul has a definition of life that enables him to face anything. In this passage he is teaching that its not the circumstances of your life, its not whether things go well for you or go ill for you. It's not the circumstances of your life but the way you define life that will determine whether you stand or fall in this world.”  — Timothy Keller   “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)   Because Romans 8:28 exists, those who love God and are loved by him can have confidence that he is working through all of life's circumstances to bring good out of bad, light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow. It's not that God is especially agile, a kind of cosmic PR man adept at manipulating circumstances, but rather that he is the Planner, the Engineer, the Designer who has ordained the means just as much as the end. He ordains the calm and the storm, the darkness and the dawn, the famine and the feast. This being the case, no event is meaningless, no situation purposeless, no condition ultimately hopeless. God is working out his good will not despite dark days, difficult trials, and broken hearts, but through them. Such circumstances are the raw material he uses to form and shape his good plans, his perfect purposes.   God's specialty is not bringing good from good, but good from bad and Romans 8:28 gently tells me that if I trust him through my tears, he will give me reason to laugh; if I trust him through my pain, he will teach me to praise; if I trust him through my grief, he will afterwards show me all the good that came with it and through it. He will show me the precious flowers in the dry desert, the beautiful blooms against the sharp thorns, the gentle petals beneath the vicious skies. For behind every black cloud is a yellow sun, behind every dark night a bright day, behind every frowning providence a smiling face—the smiling face of the God who works all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.  —Tim Challies   “God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”  — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Listen along as we continue our series through Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Philippians 1:3-11 - Karen Every other ethical system calls us to the costly effort of becoming what we are not. But in the full salvation already bequeathed to us in Christ, the new nature is already ours, waiting for expression, poised for growth, until its potential is triggered by our obedience to the word of God - Alec Motyer “A striking feature of this verse is the way that Paul stacks up the words for all and always. The rhetorical impact is strengthened by Paul's use of alliteration (each word begins with the letter p) and by a play on words with similar sounds (pasē … pantote … pasē … pantōn). This serves to spotlight “the all-inclusiveness of his prayer … None of the Philippians Christians for any reasons whatever was excluded from the apostles' love and concern” - Dean Flemming “I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce.The Resurrection is the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story – and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled.” JRR Tolkien “Paul's confidence is not in the Christianity of the Christians, but in the God-ness of God, who is supremely trustworthy, able, and committed to finish the work he has begun” Markus Bockmuel “God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo.” Ann Voskamp  Acts 16:11-15 “We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men but to look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, an image which, by its beauty and dignity, should allure us to love and embrace them.” - John Calvin   “We must understand that God does not "love" us without liking us - through gritted teeth - as "Christian" love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core - which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word “love” - Dallas Willard   “The word affection (splanchna) originally referred to the inner organs (heart, liver, lungs), which were seen as the seat of human emotions. In the Gospels, it expresses Jesus' heartfelt compassion toward others. Here Paul says that he loves his dear friends in Philippi with the same affection that Christ has for them. At the same time, Christ loves the Philippians through Paul. This testifies to a “three-way bond” of love between Paul, the Philippians, and Christ” - Dean Flemming What God desires from us, he graciously forms in us as we grow in our love for him. Ruth Chou Simmons  

Listen along as we begin our time in the book of Philippians. Notes//Quotes: Linda - Philippians 1:1-2   “How is leadership to be exercised? What is the relationship between leaders and led? The one word with provides the answer: ‘… the saints', writes Paul, ‘… with the bishops and deacons.' The strong natural leader chooses the easy path of being out front, taking it for granted that all will follow; the low-profile leader ‘plays it cool', submerges his own identity and takes the risk that the tail will soon wag the dog. The more demanding exercise, the sterner discipline and the more rewarding way are found in companionate leadership, the saints with the overseers and deacons. This kind of leadership has many facets. It involves realizing that leader and led share the same Christian experience: both are sinners saved by the same precious blood, always and without distinction wholly dependent on the same patient mercy of God. It involves putting first whatever creates and maintains the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It means that leaders see themselves first as members of the body, and only then as ministers. In this way they face every situation from within the local body of Christ and not as people dropped in from outside (or even from above!). It involves patiently waiting for the Holy Spirit to grant unanimity to the church in making and executing plans. It involves open relationships in which the leaders do not scheme to get their own way or play off one against another, but act with transparent integrity. It involves willingness to be overruled, to jettison role-playing and status-seeking, to be ready to cast a single vote with everyone else. It involves putting the welfare of the body of Christ before all personal advantage, success or reputation and it involves co-equal sacrifice for the Lord and his gospel. It is the leadership of those who are content to stand among the saints as those who serve.” - Alec Motyer   Philippians 2:5–11 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  

Listen in as we wrap up our series through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 13:20-25 “The author wants believers to live out God's will in light of the work of Christ.” - George Guthrie Here is the sea, great and wide,
 which teems with creatures innumerable,
 living things both small and great. There go the ships,
 and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. These all look to you,
 to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up;
 when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
 when you take away their breath, they die
 and return to their dust. (Ps. 104:25-29) Food comes at proper seasons (verse 27) and is gathered (verse 28) yet through all it is God who is giving us food (verse 27). The great sea creatures “frolic” and leap in the air (verse 26) and the swallows perform Ariel acrobatics. While those activities may also have practical purposes, in some deeper sense, these creatures know the joy and freedom of doing what they were “formed" to do by God. We too, can know joy and fulfillment only as we live, according to God's design. At this point, nature has us beat. As Elizabeth Elliot has said, "a clam glorifies God better than we do, because the clam is being everything it was created to be, whereas we are not.” Prayer: Lord, disobeying you is easy in the short run but hard in the long run because I'm violating my own nature. And so obedience to you can be excruciating to start, but it's wonderful in time, because I become my true self. Oh, help me to remember this when things get hard! Amen. —Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Songs of Jesus

Listen along as we near the close of the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 13:1-19 In friendship, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others. - CS Lewis “Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.” - Rosaria Butterfield ”In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions you must BE tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love." Tim Keller “Church membership, in other words, is not about “additional requirements.” It's about a church taking specific responsibility for a Christian, and a Christian for a church. It's about “putting on,” “embodying,” “living out,” and “making concrete” our membership in Christ's universal body.” - Jonathan Leeman “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” - GK Chesterton 

Listen along as we continue our journey through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: “Although the author of Hebrews never mentions Sinai by name, he clearly has that mountain in view in his poetic comments in these verses. He draws his depiction of the desert wanderers' encounter of God at Mount Sinai from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy (e.g., Ex. 19:16–22; 20:18–21; Deut. 4:11–12; 5:23–27). In the Sinai encounter they came near to God in a solemn assembly to covenant with him (Deut. 4:10–14). But the experience was terrifying.” - George Guthrie Exodus 19:12: “And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.” Exodus 19:23: “Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because you yourself warned us, ‘Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy.'” “"Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for thou only art holy" (Rev. 15:4). He only is independently, infinitely, immutably holy. In Scripture, He is frequently styled "The Holy One." He is so because the sum of all moral excellency is found in Him. He is absolute purity, unsullied even by the shadow of sin. "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Holiness is the very excellency of the divine nature; the great God is "glorious in holiness" (Ex. 15:11). Therefore we read, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity" (Hab. 1:13). As God's power is the opposite of the native weakness of the creature, as His wisdom is in complete contrast from the least defect of understanding or folly, so His holiness is the very antithesis of all moral blemish or defilement.” - A.W. Pink “Every aspect of the vision provides encouragement for coming boldly into the presence of God (cf. 4:16). The atmosphere at Mount Zion is festive. The frightening visual imagery of blazing fire, darkness, and gloom fades before the reality of the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem. The cacophony of whirlwind, trumpet blast, and a sound of words is muted and replaced by the joyful praise of angels in a festal gathering. The trembling congregation of Israel, gathered solemnly at the base of the mountain, is superseded by the assembly of those whose names are permanently inscribed in the heavenly archives. An overwhelming impression of the unapproachability of God is eclipsed in the experience of full access to the presence of God and of Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.” - William Lane    

Listen along as we continue our series through Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 12:1-17 “It is not so much they who look at us as we who look to them—for encouragement.” - FF Bruce “In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don't feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?” - The Message “When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man, and skill a man,  When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part;  When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man  That all the world shall be amazed,  Watch His methods, watch His ways!  How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects!  How He hammers him and hurts him, and with mighty blows converts him  Into trial shapes of clay which Only God understands;  While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands!  How He bends but never breaks when his good He undertakes;  How He uses whom He chooses, and with very purpose fuses him;  By every act induces him To try His splendor out—  God knows what He's about.” The theme of endurance works as the thread binding 12:1–17 together. In each use of figurative or illustrative material—a race, parental discipline, the foolish Esau—difficult experiences and the struggle of Christian perseverance form the backdrop. The image of the race and that of loving, parental discipline also reveal God as a great redeemer of pain and, therefore, as the God of hope for believers who find themselves in painful circumstances. - George Guthrie “surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.” - Winston Churchill 

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 11:32-40 -Faith reading    Roll Call Part 4   Slides Roll Call Part 4   Slide 1   Big Idea Whether we clearly win or appear to lose, we're all called to a life of faith.   1) The obvious winners   2) The apparent losers   3) The surprising inclusion     Slide 2   “Notably, most of the individuals mentioned fell into significant sin. Gideon led the people into idolatry at the end of his life (Judges 8:22-28). Barak doubted that the Lord would give him victory over the Canaanite king Jabin (Judges 4:1–9). Samson visited prostitutes and gave the secret of his strength to Delilah (Judges 16:1–22). David committed adultery and had Uriah killed (2 Sam. 11). This sin brought suffering and made the lives of these individuals and their families harder than they needed to be. Nevertheless, Hebrews 11 remembers them for their faith, reminding us that true faith can be exercised by sinners. This encourages us as well. We dare not take the Lord's grace for granted, but we also should not despair that God overlooks true faith in His sinful people. John Calvin comments, “In all the saints, something reprehensible is ever to be found; yet faith, though halting and imperfect, is still approved by God. Ligonier.org     Slide 3   Defeatory – A defeat that leads to a victory     Slide 4   “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.  They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—  of whom the world was not worthy —wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”   Hebrews 11:35-38     Slide 5   “Those on the second half of the list were just as much people of faith as those on the first half! In fact, you could argue that they had greater faith, because it's not as easy to trust God when you're being scourged, stoned, or sawn in two as it is when you're seeing foreign armies put to flight and the dead raised to life. While all of us, if we could, would sign up to be in the first group, we need to recognize that sometimes God is pleased to withhold spectacular results and bless us instead with His grace as our sufficiency in overwhelming trials.”   Steven J Cole   Slide 6    See JPEG sent separately under Files and by email to Jon     Slide 7   You don't answer all my questions But You hear me when I speak You don't keep my heart from breakin' But when it does, You weep with me You're so close that I can feel You When I've lost the words to pray And though my eyes have never seen You I've seen enough to say   I know that You are good I know that You are kind I know that You are so much more Than what I leave behind I know that I am loved I know that I am safe 'Cause even in the fire to live is Christ, to die is gain I know that You are good   Big Daddy Weave   Slide 8    And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Hebrews 11:39-40   Slide 9   “Here, however, it ("made perfect") is used in the corporate sense with the idea of completeness. No part of the true Christian community can be complete without the rest. There is a strong element of solidarity behind this idea … which is also evident in some of the New Testament metaphors for the church, like body or building.”   Donald Guthrie   Slide 10   ““'Us' means us Christians; we who are Christ's have our place in God's plan. And that plan provides that the heroes of the faith throughout the ages should not ‘be made perfect' apart from Christians… Only the work of Christ brings those of OT times and those of the new and living way alike into the presence of God.”   Leon Morris   Slide 11   Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.   1 Peter 1:10-12   Slide 12   Big Idea Whether we clearly win or appear to lose, we're all called to a life of faith.  

Listen along as we continue our journey through the hall of faith. Notes//Quotes: “Faith is not something passive, not something private, not an esoteric interest kept in a corner, brought down, as it were, to be put on display every so often, but actual biblical faith, a decisive decision, and a sustained attitude. Beginning as a man or a woman gives up all dependence upon himself or herself in order to trust in living God.” —Alistair Begg “You're only as durable as the thing you love most. If I love something most that can never pass away….I will never pass away. If I can love something most that will lasts forever…I will last forever. But if I love anything that's vulnerable…then I'm vulnerable.” —Timothy Keller 1. Every person is goal oriented. 2. All goals compete. You can't live unless you choose one goal as the center of value by which all other goals are judged. One bottom line. 3. “If you choose a finite center of value, you're always anxious.”  — Thomas Oden “It might have seemed strange, that Moses should set a few drops of blood, as a remedy, in opposition to God's vengeance; but being satisfied with God's word alone, that the people would be exempt from the scourge that was coming on the Egyptians, he did not hesitate.” —John Calvin 10 “When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:10-12) “You see, we don't have to worry about how he's gonna part the sea. We just have to worry about whether we're prepared to stand with the staff stretched out over the water. And some of us never have the joy of standing, as it were, and seeing the deliverance of God because we're so worried about how God is gonna manage to take care of it. God says, “Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it. You just do what I told you.” “By faith.” By faith! Nothing but persevering faith could enable Moses to do what he did, and then in turn the people to follow him as they did.”—Alistair Begg  1 God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.  2 Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill; He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sov'reign will.  3 Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.  4 Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. 5 His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour; the bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flow'r. 6 Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain. Source: Psalms and Hymns to the Living God #412 by William Cowper     

Listen along as we continue through the book of Hebrews.

Listen along as we continue our time through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 11:4-16 - Josh “11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”  — 1 John 3:11-15 (ESV) “it was what Abel believed, not what he brought, that made the difference.” —Hebrews 11:4 (MSG) “13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…”  — Ephesians 2:13 & 14 (ESV) “It's like we're reversing the negative effects of Adam and Eve's fall and fulfilling our deep desire to be accepted. By making peace with God every day, we move away from feeling alone and towards a peaceful relationship with Him.” - Timothy Keller “Noah, was the first to act in faith based on a message from God. Noah acted on the divine warning in regard to a flood that was not yet seen and did so “in holy fear” (a form of the verb eulabeomai, meaning that he paid close and reverent attention to God's instruction). Accordingly, Noah built an ark to save his family and, correspondingly, condemned the world. His building of the ark both bore witness to the unseen God and his Word and constituted a stark, prophetic rebuke to that godless generation. Their unbelief stands in bold relief to Noah's faith stance toward God. As one who lived by faith, or confident boldness, with regard to God's Word, he became an heir of righteousness.” - George Guthrie “privilege and duty are inseparably connected, yet duty will never be performed where faith is absent.” - A.W. Pink “13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”  - Hebrews 11:13-16 (ESV)

Listen along as we begin Hebrews 11. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 11:1-3 Faith is confidence that results in action carried out in a variety of situations by ordinary people in response to the unseen God and his promises, with various earthly outcomes but always the ultimate outcome of God's commendation and reward. - George Guthrie “A man lives by believing something, not by debating and arguing about many things.” - Thomas Carlyle  “God does not expect us to submit our faith to him without reason, but the very limits of our reason make faith a necessity.” Augustine  “A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the 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 they failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.” - Tim Keller Faith is not a distant view but a warm embrace of Christ. - Calvin 2 Peter 1:3-11 Luke 17:5-6 -  “If you're falling off a cliff, strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch. Salvation is not finally based on the strength of your faith, but on the object of your faith.” Tim Keller Matthew 18:2-5  Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again -- until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other. - William Boothe

Listen along as Anthony continues our journey through Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 10:19-39 - Jack A Title: Beyond The Forrest 19 Therefore, (in other words, if all of this is true) brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. - Hebrews 10:19-23 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - Hebrews 10:24&25 “In the body of Christ, we are looking to relate to each other in such a way that—it prompts us to live out the dynamics of love and good works in the community.”  - Donald Guthrie  31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. - Ephesians 4:31&32 “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”   - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together 26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. - Hebrews 10:26-31 “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” - Hebrews 10:14 “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us”  - Richard Sibbes 32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. - Hebrews 10:32-36

Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 10:1-18 - Mike Hebrews 10:1-18 We should weep; for God has given us the freedom, the forgiveness, the life, which we could not win for ourselves. Our tears are not tears of separation but tears of homecoming; not tears of death but tears of life; not tears of a past but tears falling on a bedrock of hope for the future. Our sins have been taken away and we, through the accomplishment of another, have been brought to the Father and incorporated into his family forever. This is the gospel. George Guthrie  (The secular assumption is that) morality is relative—there are no absolutes. In such a worldview, confession and forgiveness are always something of a sham: Who is to say what a sin is? Why should I feel guilty for something I want to do? Who are you to declare whether I am forgiven or not? - Tim Keller “Forgiveness is not so much a word spoken, an action performed, or a feeling felt as it is an embodied way of life in an ever-deepening friendship with the Triune God and with others. As such, a Christian account of forgiveness ought not simply or even primarily be focused on the absolution of guilt; rather, it ought to be focused on the reconciliation of brokenness, the restoration of communion—with God, with one another, and with the whole creation.” - L. Gregory Jones

Listen along as we continue our journey through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 9:11-28 - Jon Title: The Son's Offering (vs. 11) “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)” 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, “The priests under the old system went daily into the Temple, the successor of the wilderness tabernacle; the high priest went annually into its inner sanctum, the holy of holies. But all along, as Hebrews explained at the start of chapter 8, this tabernacle or Temple was a secondary thing, a temporary substitute for the reality which God had in mind all along, the ultimate sanctuary or tabernacle which was the very presence of God himself in the heavenly realms. We may perhaps find it difficult to think of this heavenly sanctuary as an actual building, and of course that's the point; the building on earth, ‘made with hands' (verse 11), is simply a signpost to the reality. The reality is that God dwells in light and holiness which would dazzle us to bits. We can only come near to him if someone, like the high priest in the Temple, goes in ahead to present the tokens of our purification, to certify that we have been passed as fit to enter.”  - N.T. Wright (Vs. 12) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.  13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. “the most important problem in the development of civilization…the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt.”  - Sigmund Freud “Although I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt myself to be a sinner before God with a most unquiet conscience. . . .I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners . . . Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.”  - Martin Luther 15 Therefore he (Christ) is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.  (Vs. 23) …it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,  28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. 

Listen along for family worship as we continue through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 9:1-10 Lamp Pic // Table // Ark // Tabernacle Exodus 31:1-6 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Genuine holiness is genuine Christ-likeness, and genuine Christ-likeness is genuine humanness—the only genuine humanness there is. Love in the service of God and others, humility and meekness under the divine hand, integrity of behavior expressing integration of character, wisdom with faithfulness, boldness with prayerfulness, sorrow at people's sins, joy at the Father's goodness, and single-mindedness in seeking to please the Father morning, noon, and night, were all qualities seen in Christ, the perfect man.” - JI Packer It is when we face ourselves and face Christ, that we are lost in wonder, love and praise. We need to rediscover the almost lost discipline of self-examination; and then a re-awakened sense of sin will beget a re-awakened sense of wonder. - Andrew Murray A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again,” and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough.… It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. - GK Chesterton  

Listen along as we continue through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 8:1-13 - Jack Hebrews 8:1-13 The Israelites believed that the Temple in Jerusalem was the place above all where heaven and earth met, quite literally. When you went into the Temple, especially when you went into the holy of holies in the middle of it, you were actually going into heaven itself. “Heaven' is not, in the Bible, simply a ‘spiritual', in the sense of ‘non-physical', dimension; it is God's space, God's realm, which interlocks with our realm, our world (‘earth') in all sorts of ways.” NT Wright "If "gospel" means good news, then Jeremiah had some for sure. He saw the judgment coming, in horrifying technicolour. But he saw beyond it to the redeeming, restoring grace of God, and indeed he speaks of the "new covenant", which takes us to the heart of the gospel in Christ." ~ Christopher J. H. Wright Colossians 2:6-7 “One of the tragedies of the contemporary church is that, just when the world seems to be ready to listen, the church often seems to have little or nothing to say. For the church itself is confused; it shares in the current bewilderment, instead of addressing it. The church is insecure; it is uncertain of its identity, mission and message. It stammers and stutters, when it should be proclaiming the gospel with boldness. Indeed, the major reason for its diminishing influence in the West is its diminishing faith” John Stott  

Listen along as we continue our time in the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Hebrews 7:11-28 The ‘perfection' in question could also be translated completeness; it's what you get when everything has been put into place for the final great purpose to be achieved. What is this great purpose? Nothing less, it seems, than God's intention for the whole created world. This includes human behaviour, but goes much wider. The world is God's great project. Just as a bride and bridegroom plan their wedding day, and work to make it perfect, God is working at bringing his world to perfection and doing what is necessary to make it complete. NT Wright “The adjective in v. 24 is aparabatos (“permanent,”). This word, used only here in the New Testament and rarely elsewhere, was applied in legal contexts in the ancient world to mean “inviolable” or something not to be transgressed. “Permanent” represents a meaning widely attested in ancient literature. The first-century writer Plutarch, for example, used the word to describe the constancy of the sun's course through the sky. Thus, Jesus' priesthood may be characterized as “unchangeable,” since he will hold the office forever." - George Guthrie “In Hebrews 7 God has given us powerful words meant for a relational end. This discourse detailing the superiority of Jesus' high priesthood is far more than a theoretical treatise. It expresses relational theology, as all true theology is in essence.” - George Guthrie

Listen along as Mike Gaston continues our series through the book of Hebrews. Notes//Quotes: Slides Hebrews 7:1-10   Slide 1   “The author of Hebrews was trying to convince people that a religious system of sacrifices, rituals and rules that had been in place for over 1400 years had now been replaced by a better way. He focusses on the supremacy of Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of all that had been written by the Jewish prophets. He introduces a theme that is only treated in the book of Hebrews, that Jesus is our High Priest.” Steven Cole     Slide 2 (Big Idea and outline on the same slide)   Big Idea   God's plan is incredibly detailed, and it all leads to King Jesus, our great High Priest.   Outline The Mysterious Person of Melchizedek (7:1-3) The Superior Priesthood of Melchizedek (7:4-10)     Slide 3 After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King's Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said,   “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,     Possessor of heaven and earth;  and blessed be God Most High,     who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”   And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.    Genesis 14:17-20     Slide 4 (Please divide up the verses on the screen)   1 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,    2 and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace.   3 He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.   Hebrews 7:1-3     Slide 5 (the attribution of this quote is purposefully left out)   “Abram shows due respect to Melchizedek, but there is no sense of awe or wonder at his appearance on the part of either Abram or the King of Sodom. They merely go about their business, giving no indication that Melchizedek was at all mysterious to them. It is a mistake to attempt to place this mystery back into the context on the basis of one questionable passage. Again, an ironclad case would be needed to support this, and that case does not exist.   Interestingly enough, this author came into the research open-minded, but leaning toward Melchizedek being a preincarnate (appearance of) Christ due to past teaching. While he still sees this as a viable option, research has swayed him. The view that Melchizedek was a man, King of Jerusalem, and priest of Yahweh, appears to be the scripturally correct identification.”     Slide 6   “What is typology? In essence, it is the way that God used history to bring His promises to life. God's plan of redemption, brought to its fullness in the work of Christ, was not carried through history by the words of prophecy alone. Rather, it touched down in the experience of God's people as particular individuals and events illustrated the promises of God…. More specifically, the person and work of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the history that led to His incarnation. People and events in Israel's history offered prophetic glimpses of the coming Savior and His work, reassuring them of the promise of His coming.” C. J. Williams     Slide 7   “Melchizedek appears in history with no record of a genealogy or ancestral line, no record of his birth, and no record of his death. The point is, Melchizedek appears to transcend earthly existence; this makes him a type of Christ, who truly does transcend earthly existence as the eternal King-Priest who has no predecessor and no successor in His high office.”   S. Michael Houdmann     Slide 8   Abraham > Levi and the Levitical Priesthood Melchizedek > Abraham  Melchizedek > Levi and the Levitical priesthood   Slide 9 “But the patriarch gave up a tenth of the spoils, thus implicitly acknowledging the superior place of Melchizedek. And Melchizedek proceeded to bless Abraham, accepting the implied superiority. The situation is clear to all parties. There is no need to spell it out. And the author is simply drawing attention to what the narrative clearly implies when he brings out the superior status of Melchizedek. Even when Abraham is seen as the one “who had the promises,” Melchizedek is superior.” Leon Morris   Slide 10   Big Idea   God's plan is incredibly detailed, and it all leads to King Jesus, our great High Priest.  

Hebrews 6:13-20 - Faith   “central to the plot and storyline of Scripture are a series of covenants between God and his creation, especially with humans as deputies and stewards of his world.” - Peter J. Gentry   5 “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”  Genesis 15:5&6   “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram… Genesis 15:9-18   “Picturing God passing through that gory path between the carcasses of animals, imagining the blood splashing as he walked, helps us to recognize the faithfulness of God's commitment. He was willing to express, in terms his chosen people could understand, that he would never fail to do what he promised. And he ultimately fulfilled his promise by giving his own life, his own blood, on the cross. Because we look at God's dealings with Abraham as some remote piece of history in a far-off-land, we often fail to realize that we, too, are part of a long line of people with whom God made a covenant on that rocky plain near Hebron. And like those who came before us, we have broken that covenant.  When he walked in the dust of the desert and through the blood of the animals Abraham had slaughtered, God was making a promise to all the descendants of Abraham—to everyone in the household of faith. When God splashed through the the blood, he did it for us. We're not simply individuals in relationship to God, we're part of a long line of people marching back through history, from our famous Jewish ancestor David, Hezekiah, and Peter to the millions of unknown believers; from the ancient Israelites and the Jewish people of Jesus' day to the Christian community dating from the early church. We're part of a community of people with whom God established relationship in the dust and sand of the Negev.  But there's more. When God made covenant with his people, he did something no human being would even have considered doing. In the usual blood covenant, each party was responsible for keeping only his side of the promise. When God made covenant with Abraham, however, he promised to keep both sides of the agreement.  “If this covenant is broken, Abraham, for whatever reason—for My faithfulness or yours—I will pay the price,” said God. “If you or your descendants, for whom you are making this covenant, fail to keep it, I will pay the price in blood.” And at that moment, Almighty God pronounced the death sentence on his Son Jesus.” - Ray Vänder Laan   “What he's going to say, more fully, in the passages to come is that Jesus has gone in, not into the earthly Temple in Jerusalem, but into the true sanctuary, the world of heaven itself, right into the innermost courts and into the very presence of the loving father. And he has gone there on our behalf. We are attached to him as though by a great metal cable. He is there, in the very presence of God, like an anchor.”   — N.T. Wright   15 As for man, his days are like grass;
    he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16  for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
    and its place knows it no more. 17  But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
    and his righteousness to children's children, 18  to those who keep his covenant
    and remember to do his commandments. 19  The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
    and his kingdom rules over all. Psalm 103:15-19  

Listen along as we continue our journey through the book of Hebrews. Notes // Quotes  Hebrews 5:11-6:8 - Faith Hebrews 5:11-6:12 Lincoln Picture “What the writer here longs for is that people should become proficient in understanding and using the entire message of God's healing, restoring, saving justice. He wants them to know their way around the whole message of scripture and of the gospel, to be able to handle this message in relation to their own lives, their communities and the wider world, and to see how all the different parts of God's revelation fit together, apply to different situations and have the power to transform lives and situations.” - NT Wright “It's far easier to go to church once a week chasing a spiritual high and angle for a download from heaven than to do the daily, unglamorous work of discipleship.” - John Mark Comer The assertion here must be considered in light of the broader context of Hebrews. In 6:1 the author has identified “repentance” as foundational in Christian teaching. In the view of the author of Hebrews true repentance can be experienced only in the shadow of Christ's sacrifice, since there exists no other valid sacrifice for sin (10:18, 26). In the Jewish literature of the day, repentance was God's gift, and Hebrews has taken that thought as specifically incarnated in the person and work of the Son of God. Repentance in 6:4–6 is “impossible” because there is nowhere else to go for repentance once one has rejected Christ. The apostate in effect has turned his or her back on the only means available for forgiveness before God. - George Guthrie Matthew 13:24-30 “Everyday moments of epiphany are bestowed on everyone. Our role is to simply learn to pay attention. It is remarkable how often the parables handed down to us from Jesus end with the words: “Consider carefully how you listen,” and “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.” - Martin Schleske