In the second of two talks on money as our new financial year begins we’re turning our attention to the NT view of money. In 2 Corinthians 9 Paul appeals to the church in Corinth to give generously to the struggling church in Jerusalem. It’s a passage which tells us much about what Christian giving is all about. It’s rooted in love. Love from God and love for one another is the basis for all Christian generosity. And it means that to be a Christian is to be a giver. It is part of our new identity. But not just a giver, a giver of reckless generosity. We’re called to give abundantly. And whilst we don’t give in order to receive, God’s promise is that when we give abundantly we will receive abundantly: not necessarily materially (although God will always look after all our material needs), but also spiritually. Giving money away robs it of much of its power and frees from anxiety and joyful abundant living. Just like we’re meant to be!
Gloriously Generous
The first of two talks on the subject of money. Often people have grown up with a skewed understanding of money in the bible. This is a talk from the Old Testament about what concepts have never applied (but have often been understood to apply), what has always applied and always will, and what applied in OT times but no longer does because of Jesus. Ultimately Christianity is about having our hearts completely changed. And when our hearts are like Jesus’ heart, we are able to be free and gloriously generous with our resources. This paradigm goes way beyond Old Testament concept of tithing- we are called instead to be joyful, carefree, delighted givers. Generosity is us! Allow him to make you more and more like this. And be who you now are by giving generously and abundantly.
Back To The Start: Human History
Concluding our series on the opening chapters of Genesis we look at what life is like east of Eden. The consequences of Adam and Eve’s choosing independence from God mean that oneness with God, creation and humanity is lost. Post fall, the battle with sin is an ongoing constant reality. In the story of Cain we see that none of us is immune from temptation and the power of sin. But if our identity is built on the grace and love of God we can, in Jesus’ power, overcome. Cain though has built his identity in something far less secure, and his life falls apart very quickly.
Back To The Start: Curse
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!
Back To The Start: Crisis
The Fall of Adam and Eve is one of the most famous passages not only in the Bible but all literature. But despite this it’s not always easy to understand what is going on. Rather than just being about disobedience or a loss of innocence, it’s really about something much deeper. The heart of Adam and Eve’s fall is about independence. They go after something they already have (wisdom and divinity) but they want it without God. This tends to be the heart and result of all human sin - a turned inwards on oneself, grasping at an identity independent of God. We become incapable of being the generous open people, connected to our creator, that we were made to be. The beauty of the gospel though is that we don’t have stay that way - Jesus has broken the death spiral of independence and offered us a reconnection to the God without whom we would be lost.
Back To The Start: Relationships
It is not good for us to be alone. In a culture that strives for autonomy and individuality, Genesis reminds us that we are made for togetherness. Often togetherness has been defined in terms that exclude and diminish some under others. The togetherness that Genesis speaks of is one of equality without any sense of hierarchy or patriarchy. What we find in Genesis 2 is God’s purpose for us is to grow into his family. It used to be one built through physical means but in Jesus, it is one growing by the Spirit. God’s family is blended, its big, and theres room for you.
Back To The Start: Garden
Genesis 2 tells a second creation narrative that is told from the ground-up, whereas Genesis 1 tells the story from a more cosmic perspective. It speaks of Eden as a space where luxury and pleasure had no limit. It contained a garden where God himself walked with humanity, along with some symbolic rivers and trees. In this poetic-narrative we see a mirror-image of where all humanity is headed, when Jesus finally restores the earth. This series is called Back to the Start, but part of that is remembering where we are going. We aren’t headed back to Eden, but we are headed toward an earth that is restored and renewed by Jesus himself, when he will finally set all things right.
Back To The Start: Humankind
The creation of humankind in Genesis 1 is one of the most important passages in the whole bible. In it we see what God was and is again aiming for with us, the human race. We’re not a cosmic disappointment. We’re the pinnacle of his creation. He loves us and he saw that we are very very very good!
We are not God’s slaves (like in Babylonian mythology) we aren’t created to serve him, we are created to be him - an extension of his presence and power in the world. We are given extraordinary position and influence in the world. Through Jesus, God has redeemed, restored and ultimately recommissioned us to be his vice-regents on earth. Every single one of us has an identity and a calling from the King of Heaven. So allow him to breath his royal life into us once again.
Back To The Start: Creation
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.
Back To The Start: Pre-existence
Ultimately the central character of Genesis is not Adam or Eve. It’s the one true God. And he is unlike all the gods of the surrounding nations. He is creative - he both creates out of nothing in his exclusive power; and he creates out of chaos in his redemptive power. And his spirit, there at creation, is, thanks to Jesus, here for us now. He wants to bring his redemptive and matchless power to every aspect of our lives. Because this is what he is like - the matchless creator who is good.
Good News of Resurrection
The most important moment in all of human history is the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In the resurrection Jesus provides all humankind with answers to our most fundamental questions - is there a God? What happens when we die? Is there more to life than just the material? - as well as our most longed for needs - do we matter? Can we change? will we be ok?
When Jesus rises from the death all pain and sickness, evil and death are defeated - and he welcomes us into a new world order of love and peace and joy with him.
The Paradox of the Triumphal Entry
On this important day en route to Easter, we celebrate Palm Sunday as a paradox. Jesus was not the sort of king that God’s people were expecting. In the same way, Jesus experienced the heaviness of disappointment in God’s people missing the point. This message digs into the paradox of the now-and-not yet of Christ’s kingdom and how we can make room for Him and listen to the Spirit in new ways.
Discipline of Worship
Discipline of Confession
It’s not quite the most attractive of the disciplines but it is just as powerful. Confession is naming where we are and what we’ve done. It is unguarded truth-telling. Its unguarded because we know who we’re confessing to. When we know God to be eager and ready to forgive, we can approach him with anything we may be carrying. In confession, we’re released from the pressure to pose, to hide in shame, and we receive the forgiveness of Jesus. His forgiveness is immediate; he takes our sins, hides it, and forgets about it. The goal of all confession, whether it’s confession to God or to one another, is healing. This kind of healing-nourishment results in what Psalm 32 calls, true happiness. The more regular this practice becomes in our journey, the more confident we are in Jesus’ loving and transformative power.
Discipline of Celebration
Considered alongside other disciplines like prayer, worship or confession for example, celebration may seem incongruous. However celebration is integral to the christian life. After all the gospel begins with celebration, ends with celebration and has celebration at its heart: Jesus’ kingdom is one built on the foundations of the Old Testament concept of Jubilee. The gospel literally means good news, and good news must be celebrated. So how do we become more joyful people? Paul gives us three steps on the path to celebration - doing away with anxiety, presenting our requests to god, and fixing our hearts and minds on the beauty of our world. Despite all the trouble we may have in this world, joy is the hallmark of those who have placed their lives in the hands of good God who comes to bring good gifts to his children.
Discipline of Meditation
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.
Introducing the Spiritual Disciplines
Many have grown up with the Christian faith being represented as one long slog of discipline - Do this, Don’t do that, Try harder, Be better. This is not what the Spiritual Disciplines are about at all. Rather they are tools in the spiritual tool kit God gives us. Their job is to place us in a position to receive more of God’s grace directly from him. It is only ever grace that changes us. The two most common method for trying to overcome our old sinful nature are both equally flawed: either we rely solely on their will power, or we remain passive and hope for the best. By contrast the Spiritual Disciplines involve our wills - we have to choose to engage with them, but they rely entirely on God’s grace to change us. They are the keys to how we mature in our faith, becoming better people, and come closer to Jesus.
Revelation: City of the Lamb
The final chapters of Revelation depict a glorious vision of heaven. In our final talk on the series we look specifically at what the people of heaven are like. There’s a lot of them; they are you and me and everyone else who responds to Jesus; they are not just future, they are present; and most importantly they take a like God’s emissaries, his vice-regents, his high-priests. This means we, as heavenly people, have purpose and calling - to witness to and extend God’s heaven here on earth. It is what makes sense of life and brings us fulfillment. The vision we have at bread is that all of us play our unique part, with our unique gifts, and so get to enjoy all the glory of heaven, and bring it to a world in need.
Revelation: Restoration of All Things
What is likely to come to mind when we think of Revelation is the question, “what will the end of the world look like”. It is what most of cultural interest tends to be around the book. But it’s not quite what the book aims to answer. Instead, Revelation is about Jesus and what He is doing. The book unveils Jesus’ restoration of the earth by bringing heaven and thus transforming everything about our world. It also shows how God will be permanently present with his people - no temples, no sacred locations - God face-to-face with us all the time. It isn’t just for the future, it also is for today, in-part that is. So we can experience intimacy with Jesus and glimpses of his kingdom restoring relationships, bodies, and more. Looking ahead at what God is doing means we can have joy today.
Revelation: Empire State of Everything
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.