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Union Church
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Sermons and content from Union Church in Prescott, Arizona.
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1 Peter 3:1-7 - The Way Home
2w ago00:39:31Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue our time in 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: Faith: 1 Peter 3:1-7 Title: The Way Home “Submission is not something being taken from me, but is something I’m choosing to give. The truth that Jesus, being fully God, willingly entered into this world, becoming fully man and submitting His will to God the Father and giving His life to justify us as well as the Spirit’s role of illuminating and pointing people to Jesus is proof that the differing roles God has for men/women and husbands/wives is not about value or worth. Submission actively happens in the Trinity. If Jesus submitted even unto death, how can I stand on my “rights” and ultimately demand to always be the one in authority?” - Kathy Keller “Renounce yourself, take up your Cross and follow Me. To recognize one's own nonentity and discover the secret of the Kingdom is not enough: the King of Love must be enthroned in our mind and heart, take undivided possession of our will and make of our very bodies the Temples of the Holy Ghost. This small particle of the Cosmos, which is our soul and body must be conquered, freed by a lifelong struggle from enslavement to the world and to the devil, freed as if it were an occupied country and restored to its legitimate King.” - Anthony of Sourozh, Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Transcribe →1 Peter 2:13-25 - Providence and Politics
3w ago01:15:36Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue through 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 2:13-25 - Jack 1 Peter 2:13-25 There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine! - Abraham Kuyper Romans 13:1-2 “The cross is not a sign of the church's quiet, suffering submission to the powers-that-be, but rather the church's revolutionary participation in the victory of Christ over those powers. The cross is not a symbol for general human suffering and oppression. Rather, the cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God's account of reality more seriously than Caesar's. The cross stands as God's (and our) eternal “no” to the powers of death, as well as God's eternal “yes” to humanity, God's remarkable determination not to leave us to our own devices.” - Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens “Peter writes “Honor all people.” It is hard to imagine a more devastating critique of the Roman way, for with the pairing of these two directives Peter has flattened the status pyramid of the Roman world. He has just made one’s response to the slave next door no less than one’s response to the emperor. Without saying so explicitly, Peter has thus cast his Christian audience as imitators of the Father who exercises impartiality in judgment.” Joel Green “The Bread itself was hungry, Fullness itself was thirsty, Power itself was made weak, Health itself was wounded, and Life itself was mortal. 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
Transcribe →1 Peter 2:9-12 - Earworm
May 1000:37:27Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue our time in 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 2:9-12 - Faith Title: Earworm [Verse 1] Guilty running down the side of the egg I'm in love with the past, and the things that they said Guilty running down the side of my head I get by on the promise of future excess Guilty running, guilty running I put my back in waiting for something [Chorus] I keep waiting for the shoe to drop Microplastics in my lemonade I keep waiting for my friend to call And forgive me of my bad faith Guilty running, guilty, I'm running out of time - Hudson Freeman 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” (Exodus 19:6&7) “They all make one family, a sort and species of people distinct from the common world, of another spirit, principle, and practice, which they could never be if they were not chosen in Christ to be such, and sanctified by His Spirit.” - Matthew Henry “26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31) “The community that is created by the cross, is not just a warm family or aggregation of people giving one another emotional support. It is an alternate society with different habits, different customs, different loves. It is a foretaste of the heavenly city to come.” - Timothy Keller
Transcribe →1 Peter 2:1-8 - Discard, Desire, Build
May 300:37:24Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue through 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 2:1-8 Psalm 19:7-11 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 What God desires from us, he graciously forms in us as we grow in our love for him. Ruth Chou Simmons
Transcribe →1 Peter 1:13-26 - Exilic Exercise
Apr 2600:28:57Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue our time through 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 1:13-26 - Chris F Reading Title: Exilic Exercise “The tidings were mostly sad and ominous: of gathering darkness, the wars of Men, and the flight of the Elves…And I warn you that peril is now both before you and behind you, and upon either side…. ‘But where shall I find courage?’ asked Frodo. ‘That is what I chiefly need.’ ‘Courage is found in unlikely places,’ said Gildor. ‘Be of good hope!” — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship Of The Rings “So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness.” (1 Peter 13-16, MSG) “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that is distinctively Christian… is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.” — J. I. Packer, Knowing God “Christianity is completely and entirely and utterly hope — a looking forward and a forward direction; hope is not just an appendix. So Christianity inevitably means a new setting forth and transformation of the present…[The hoping person] can never come to terms with the inescapability of death or with the evil that continually breeds evil. For him the resurrection of Christ is not merely consolation in suffering; it is also the sign of God’s protest against suffering. That is why whenever faith develops into hope it does not make people serene and placid; it makes them restless. It does not make them patient; it makes them impatient. Instead of being reconciled to existing reality they begin to suffer from it and to resist it.” — Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences of God
Transcribe →1 Peter 1:10-12 - Trust and Temptations
Apr 1900:37:49Tap to summarizeListen along as we continue our series through 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 1:3-12 “Jesus matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weaknesses he gives us strength and and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.” - Dallas Willard Peter opens the body of the letter by providing a theological and hermeneutical basis for the Christian life that introduces the major motifs and themes of the letter. In the Greek, these verses constitute one very long sentence that is composed of a series of subordinate clauses modifying the main clause “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Doxology provides the context for Christians’ new life in Christ (1:3–5) because both their experience of suffering grief in trials (1:6–7) and their present and ultimate salvation is the goal not only of their faith but also of the plan of God as revealed to the prophets - Karen Jobes We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price. As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression. - Stanley Hauerwas Luke 24:25 Image “Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.” - Wendell Berry
Transcribe →1 Peter 1:1-9 - Intro to 1 Peter
Apr 1300:18:30Tap to summarizeListen along as we begin our series through 1 Peter.
Transcribe →Revelation 21:1-5 - The Kingdom to Come
Apr 600:25:00Tap to summarizeListen along as we wrap up our series on the kingdom of God and celebrate Easter. Notes//Quotes: Revelation 21:1-5 - Karen Reading Revelation 21:1-5 (pic) “The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom…It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven…The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.” N.T. Wright Eph 1:13-14 Romans 8:22-25 John 3:16-17
Transcribe →The Kingdom of God: The Kingdom Arrives
Mar 2900:32:07Tap to summarizeListen along as we look at the Palm Sunday story. Notes//Quotes: Mark 11:1-10 Luke 17:20-21 Matthew 11:4-6 Zech 9:9 “One the one hand this looks like all other triumphal entries. Two hundred years earlier Simon Maccabeus had defeated foreign armies and kept Israel independent and he rode in to Jerusalem with people shouting cheers and waiving Palm branches because he delivered them… This triumphal entry parodies the entries of kings and armies. Victors in battle do not ride into their capital cities riding on donkeys but on fearsome horses, but this kind does not, and will not triumph through force of arms.” Stanley Hauerwas “Jesus is the Lord of all and under his hand nothing but harmony and peace comes about. The animal knows and loves his true master for who he is. This is a foreshadowing of the healing and completion of all nature as found in Isaiah 11, the wolf shall live with the lamb” Tim Keller Donkey cross 1/2/3/4 “Humans are very attached to outcomes. We say we trust God but behind the scenes we work our fingers to the bone and our emotions into a tangled fray trying to control our outcomes. We praise God when our normal looks like what we thought it would. We question God when it doesn’t. And walk away from Him when we have a sinking suspicion that God is the one who set fire to the hope that was holding us together…What if disappointment is really the exact appointment your soul needs to radically encounter God?” - Lysa TerKuerst - Not Supposed to Be This Way
Transcribe →Isaiah 35:1-10: Kingdom Promised
Mar 2300:38:47Tap to summarizeListen along as we begin a 3 week series on the kingdom of God. Notes//Quotes: Text: Isaiah 35:1-10 Title: Kingdom Promised “The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of all Christian faith. God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it. ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and rejoice with joy and singing; the desert shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.’ The last book of the Bible ends, not with the company of the saved being taken up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, resulting in God’s new creation, new heavens and new earth, in which everything that has been true, lovely, and of good report will be vindicated, enhanced, set free from all pain and sorrow. God himself, it says, will wipe away all tears from all eyes.” - N.T. Wright “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17) “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matt. 11:5&6) “This is a story of a man who is disillusioned with Jesus just like we are sometimes–with Jesus or with God, or with the church, or with the whole Christian faith. But, you know something? That may not be so bad as it seems. Disillusionment means literally to have our illusions “dissed.” It’s very painful, but it’s not a bad thing. Disillusionment can be a gift. When we are disillusioned we have discovered that God does not always conform to our expectations. We look at our requirements for God and begin to see our own selfish illusions–the kinds of things we tell ourselves to feel good or comfortable, or to make sense of it all. But when God yanks away our illusions, we are free to discover the real God. Taylor says, “Every letdown becomes a lesson and a lure. Did God fail to come when I rubbed the lantern? Then perhaps God is not a genie? Who then is God? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Then perhaps God is not a cop. Who, then, is God? Did God fail to make everything run smoothly? Then, perhaps God is not a [cosmic] mechanic. Who, then, is God?” When God does not meet my expectations I am drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of who God really is and what God is really doing in my life and in the world. - Leonard J. Vander Zee “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matt. 6:10-13)
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