It’s some of the densest, Pauliest, grittiest stuff we find in the New Testament, but chapter 3 of his letter to the church in Galatia is where Paul gets right to it: the entire story, the whole point, every bit of the law and the covenant show that it was always faith that He asked for.
From the beginning, He was a God who wanted to dwell among His people, and His plans for their rescue never changed.
By Hannah Flint
Do you know that you’re called? Do you know what you’re called to? It’s usually a subject that often raises some difficult feelings for many, for different reasons...
Paul understood his call in very simple terms: he was chosen by God to fulfill an ancient promise that the gospel of Jesus grace would go out to the gentiles. Not by them being brought into the Jewish way of life, but by Jesus spreading out and permeating there’s (which was causing quite the rift.) His willingness to accept the cost of his call brings us to a very important truth: we have different gifts, talents and work to do, but our call in Jesus is never really about us. It’s about being His witnesses, and loving Him enough to follow wherever He will lead.
By Hannah Flint
In the 22 Days - by best guesses - that the Israelites took to travel from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, a number of memorable events took place. Moses led the people through hunger, thirst and military attack - and God met their needs every time - before finally reaching the mountain. These are vignettes we may be very familiar with but it’s so good to remember God’s patience with us on the journey, his protection, his ongoing call to his people, and what these stories always pointed to!
By Hannah Flint
As well as persecution and conflict, it’s clear from this week’s passage, that the church in Philippi was also dealing with the age-old problem of false-teaching from within. Paul, who is never anything but crystal clear about how to deal with anything or anyone that would infiltrate, distract or dilute the central message of Jesus’ saving power in His churches, reminds his friends of who they are (making some fascinating tangential remarks about maturity, and what it looks like, along the way.) To a city built on a colonist’s mindset he makes the searing statement: You are citizens of heaven, NOT to keep their eyes focussed on future glory (in this instance) but to reverse that logic. It is your highest call, to bring the ways of heaven (its love, justice, and humility) to earth! To meet your universal human condition, wired for tribal belonging and expansion, with a totally other kind of existence. A challenge surely as relevant to us today, as it ever was!
By Hannah Flint
We finished up our series on John’s 7 statements of Jesus’ I ams with arguably the most clear scene of Immanuel - God with us- in the whole of the bible. It shows Jesus operating in extreme truth, power, and messianic fulfilment but also reveals his profoundly loving humanity. It’s quite a scene to grasp, when we get to grips with how badly our english translations have depicted Jesus’ depth about his grieving friends at Lazarus’ tomb. It’s a bonkers concept to hold in tension: the God of the universe, on the throne, who was victorious in conquering all outworkings of death and destruction in our lives. And a God who became human, to show us how deeply he cares about our pain, grief and loss, and draw near to us in them; We can’t pick one Jesus or the other, the fact that he is both these things is life's work for all of us, as his followers, to hold together.
By Hannah Flint
I am the bread of life. Jesus was making a very bold statement about a lot more than a specific food source, having just turned 5 loaves and 2 fishes into a meal for thousands, which had HUGE messianic symbolism and implications to that crowd, that we might easily miss. John wrote his gospel carefully and masterfully because he believed that meeting Jesus had the power to change absolutely everything for everyone of us, so give this 'I am’ statement another listen (and as a bonus, find out how we got our name!)
The story of David and Bathsheba reminds us again how important it is to read an ancient Hebrew story with context and background. This story is uncomfortable! It’s uncomfortable that David did what he did to Bathsheba and Uriah, it's uncomfortable that her feelings and perspective (and name!) are barely included in the account, and it’s uncomfortable that David is still revered as Jesus’ forefather and fore-shadow, after all this. It’s a intricately woven piece of writing - with messaging in there that it’s easy to miss. With a CW on sexual abuse, let this passage speak to you like it might not have done before.
More pages of the bible are dedicated to the life and legacy of King David than any other person apart from Jesus, and in today’s talk we meet him for the first time. He is anointed as the new chosen King of Israel but Samuel the prophet, when he wasn’t even invited to anointing party (he’d been out on the fields, protecting the family sheep.) In front of 7 of his more eligible brothers, God says ’this is the one.’ It’s hard not to imagine how this must have felt to Eliab, Abinadab and the ones Samuel doesn’t even bother to name. God chooses the unexpected one over and over again, which leads us to ask why, and what does it say about Him. This one is about the human instinct to compare, and the unexpected work that God does when we’re out in the wilderness.
Though sung worship is central to our expression of church (culturally, and certainly for us at Bread) the words translated as worship in the new testament aren’t actually to do with singing specifically at all. They build to a much more general picture full and submission and devotion, and wherever these new worshipful communities spread, generosity was their hallmark. It’s not an aspect of christianity that many of us feel most comfortable with, is it? But as Paul reminded the church in Corinth (a community particularly known for its generous promises) giving should not be done under compulsion; rather as a mark of evidence that God’s grace has been understood. Let’s return to this picture of God as the ultimate cheerful giver - the one who shows us how much He loves to gives his children good gifts - as we try to comprehend how this was always meant to work for us too.
The details of gospel accounts of Jesus‘ resurrection never fail to blow our minds when we stop and examine. Just like much of his life and ministry, when Jesus first announced he had risen from the dead, and changed everything for the whole world forever, there was no fanfare or fireshow or thunderous display, just calm, kind words to a woman who had loved him dearly. Jesus always chooses the Mary Magdalene's, which is hope for all of us.
Chapter 12 marks a turning point Paul's letter. He moves his conflicting church readers to the how of the unity thing; how it works to be a body (different parts, all working together, belonging to one another) and what the love that fuels this will look like (the same kind of love for your friends, our church body members, and our enemies alike!) And he begins this instruction with one of the most poignant battle cries in all of scripture: what God wants from us is for us to offer our whole selves to him, and to not fall into worldly patterns of managing our human mess, but to let Him transform us.
Jesus spent his whole ministry teaching his disciples and the crowds what it meant to follow him. In those day it was not uncommon to gather around a rabbi’s teaching, but what Jesus taught WAS uncommon. His kingdom doesn’t always sound like the solid ground we want to build our lives on, which is what the Wise and Foolish builder parable at the end of Sermon on the Mount was supposed to illustrate. Do we want to believe that meekness, service, self-sacrificing and peacemaking are the key to following him? Loving our enemies? Not always our favorite, most easily applied parts of the gospel. And yet any path to unity that includes diversity must understand the real kingdom work of learning how to overcome our fallen, human, tribal conflict patterns, and find His path back to love.
We don’t always do the church calendar thing, but sometimes it does seem to know a thing or two. Advent is all about allow ourselves to enter into the time of waiting that was the Hebrews existence for hundreds and hundreds of years. They know the messiah was coming to be the Prince of Peace, but they weren’t expecting the way he came to do it. We are not promised a peaceful life (ie - a life free of violence, persecution, conflict of tribulation) but we are promised the peace of his presence, that surpasses all understanding.
The rules of human wisdom lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence, says Paul at the end of Colossians 2. Only Jesus, and what he has done, can solve the problem of your flesh. This weeks talk examines how mystics and aesthetics have, throughout the ages, gone to great lengths to receive more of god, which raises the question, why is it that when we are weakest, we are strong? This one is for those of us who feel stuck and backed into corners right now. Be encouraged.
Sin is everyone’s favourite word, but i’m not always sure we have the right spin on it. Sin is all the ways in which we’re not orientated towards the loving ways of God’s kingdom. We’re all caught up in those all the time, but ‘obedience’ to his ways changes its meaning entirely when we learn to come back to the love.
New series alert! We always want to understand Jesus better, so what better way than a series on how he interacted with people in Luke’s gospel? Right from the start, Jesus spoke about how he came to bring a new day for jews and gentiles alike. We might not always relate to how offensive this message was. But we are all wired for groups!
We think this is one of the most important pastoral words we can share in our divided era (but be warned - it’s never been an easy one to hear.)
There were consequences for Adam and Eve’s decision to eat the fruit. We all know this part of the story, an echo and response to the famous creation story of the Hebrews’ Mesopotamian captors. It’s fair to say that Eve’s punishment may have had more air time than Adam and the snake’s throughout christendom. In fact, many christians today still root their belief in ordained male authority over women in what God says to Eve in this scene. But this was never a story about God’s intentions for hierarchy. This story is about quite the opposite!
The first chapter of Genesis may be one of the most controversial, but it’s mind-blowingly revealing, beautifully poetic & meticulously structured, and it serves as a triumphant introduction to the whole new message about the kind of God, God is. Dating back to the Babylonian exile, this was a piece of liturgy for a downtrodden people who were questioning everything about their call and the nature and even existence of the God who called them. It’s the overture to the whole story of God and his people: The Creator is all powerful, He brings order out of chaos, He is in control, He names us, He loves us and He says that we are good. Genesis 1 calls us back to worshipping Him because He is God. And He is good.
Ever heard a talk on how to meditate in church before? Us neither. But the crossover between what the science says about mindful meditation being brilliant for our brains, stress-levels, focus, memory sleep patterns and approximately a zillion other things, and the way we - in the spirit-filled church - prepare our minds, bodies and souls to experience the holy spirit, seems like a weirdly undiscussed marriage. And Jesus did make it quite clear that the spirit was the one who was going to show us how to do this whole christian thing. So let’s talk about it.
Alright so we know it’s not a roadmap of end times by now, but what on earth WAS John of Patmos saying when he wrote this epic and crazy story? We’ve got to the scene with the dragon and beasts now (yep - coming at you with 666 chat this morning) and as a side-note it still blows our MIND how many people were raised with terrifying, entirely wrong teaching on this stuff. This story is about same thing the rest of the bible is about: God is good, evil is real and coming for you, but Jesus is on the throne. The beast was the Roman Empire - no serious scholars disagree on that. Empire, and all it’s lying, deceiving, masquerading about who we should worship and how we should live. Conquer, dominate, and tell ourselves God is on OUR side. Those of us whose politics demand we’re already 100% anti-empire should make no mistake: the imperial cult is still whispering to us all.
