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THE NEW COMMUNITY: LOVE'S MANDATE - from Sunday, April 28, 2018

4/30/2018

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God is love, and that means baptizing an Ethiopian eunuch as a child of God, brother to the Lord, and recipient of the promise of new life. Wait! This is shocking! Read on to find out why you should be shocked.

Our continued search into the message and guiding principles of the earliest followers of Jesus is a reminder that the church evolved for centuries before it began setting clear doctrines and practices in place. The question I've been asking is, what were those basic understandings from Jesus' teachings that the earliest followers upheld and valued? We'll nail down a couple of things this week.

1 John 4 is focused on how God is love and what that means in the light of Jesus. As last week's lesson understood, it means more than mere affection or kindness. Previous weeks also revealed that such love also has no boundaries. These points are emphasized again here as the expectation is made very clear that God's love is to be shared and reflected in every believer and their witness.

This gets real when we turn to the selection from Acts 8. Most of this chapter focuses on Philip's ministering (and we never hear about Philip again). 

The first of the two Philip stories breaks across boundaries by reaching out to the despised (by Jews, at least) Samaritans. Considered sinful and outside the covenant with God, they're deemed loathsome and unclean by Jews, but Philip goes right ahead in sharing the good news of God's love and the new life in Jesus.

Then, in our selection, Philip goes even further reaching out to an Ethiopian eunuch, and then baptizing him! Find out why this is so appalling, and get all the insights that we're finding in the sermon video below, noting the downloads below the video panel.

04-29-18-ff-answers.pdf
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04-29-18-the_new_community-loves_mandate.pdf
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THE NEW COMMUNITY - SHEPHERDS AND THE SHEEP - from April 22, 2018

4/23/2018

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Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep - John 10. So, when Jesus is gone, who's the shepherd? And who are the sheep? We like to think we're the sheep, but we should take another look.

Most of John 10 is devoted to a Jesus monologue on his role as the Good Shepherd. First contrasting the Good Shepherd with thieves and robbers, and then in our selection, the contrast is between the Good Shepherd and the hireling - one who cares for the sheep and would lay down his life, and the other who runs away when the wolves appear. And we all know what happened to the Good Shepherd.

We take a look at Ezekiel 34 which is the likely inspiration for the talk about sheep and the shepherds. This text helps us understand more about the predators. It turns out there isn't much attention given by scholars to the wolves and other predators mentioned in John 10.

We should also look again at the stilted dialogue between the resurrected Jesus and Peter in John 21. As I explain in the sermon, Peter fails to accept Jesus' call to become the shepherd. Quite simply, Peter doesn't want to become the next one on a cross. Irritated, Jesus ends up telling him that such is his fate.

We realize that the shepherd role falls to us. Who then are the sheep?

1st John 3 helps us understand who the sheep are. And then we can understand our role. Get these insights form the sermon video below, and note the downloads below the video panel.

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04-22-18-the_new_community-shepherding_and_the_sheep.pdf
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THE NEW COMMUNITY: NEW AND SACRED RELATIONS - from April 15, 2018

4/16/2018

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​Continuing to explore the primary values among the earliest Jesus followers, we find a healing is more than a magic story in Acts 3, and that being right - as in being right with God - has nothing to do with correctness in 1 John 3, but everything to do with children and family. 

The nature of relations between people was always a major concern for Jesus. Judaism and its understanding of righteousness under the Torah-Law often called for separation and exclusion from certain others. Jesus seems to have a different viewpoint, a God's-eye viewpoint, perhaps with its roots in the creation stories from Genesis. When we find out what is not good in God's eyes, we learn something that Jesus may have figured out, too.

This viewpoint would seem to be guiding Peter and John in the Temple healing story in Acts 3. The one who was passed-by by the righteous worshipers, or maybe thrown a charitable tidbit, is not met with such indifferent acceptance by Peter and John. They don't accept his broken condition, not only physically but also spiritually broken. They act.

Some of the same themes as last week continue in 1st John, trying to sort out right from wrong, righteousness from sinfulness, and what one's new life in Christ meant. We end up asking the text repeatedly, "What is right?" We finally get an answer. Discover more about these passages and what they mean in the sermon video below and the downloads below the video panel.

04-15-18-the_new_community-new_and_sacred_relations.pdf
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THE NEW COMMUNITY: NEW IDENTITY - from Sunday, April 8, 2018

4/9/2018

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The (post) Easter season features readings from the book of Acts, giving us insights to the new community forming after Jesus. Sweep away any notions of what you think the church is and start from scratch. Acts 4 deals with possessions as a community while 1 John deals with sin and the community. 

Of course, Jesus didn't set out to form a new religion; his mission was to reform Judaism, but on a different model than John the Baptist, another Jewish reformer. What teachings and learnings did the disciples-now-apostles bring into their beginning movement?

One of Jesus' key teachings had to do with wealth and possessions. In Acts, we hear a unique story about the community of shared goods - communists! Okay, communalists. What was the teaching that the community of believers in Jesus the Messiah put into practice and why?

In 1 John, (not exactly a letter but more like a teaching or a sermon) we hear language akin to the imagery of the Gospel of John. Perhaps they originated in the same community. Composed in the late 1st century, some things were getting clarified, but there was still a lot to sort out. 

We can infer one of the issues being addressed in 1 John from the response, e.g by flipping the response to form the original questions or issue. New life in Christ and forgiveness of sins may be completely understandable to us. But given human capacity to send things in the wrong direction, that seems to be the case here. Correction was needed! Find out what was at issue in the sermon video below, noting the downloads below the video panel.

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04-08-18-the_new_community-new_identity.pdf
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HE IS GOING AHEAD OF YOU - from Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018

4/2/2018

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The good news of Jesus' resurrection comes with instructions. Did anyone get the message? That message remains for the faithful today.

In times of real stress, our perspective on life's events get distorted. We forget the obvious and dwell on what we can't change, for example. We see some of this as the women head to the tomb on the third day following the crucifixion.

Their dismay at having neglected to consider something obvious was quickly replaced by their shock at the issue having been taken care of for them. "Who will roll away the stone?" gets replaced with "Who rolled away the stone, and why?" 

They meet a young man who gives them a message. "The one whom you seek is not here. He is risen!" But there's more. View the sermon video below and note the downloads below the video panel.

04-01-18-ff-answers.pdf
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04-01-2018-he_is_going_ahead_of_you-easter.pdf
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