The Graffiti Series
If you missed any of the weeks of our Graffiti series, here is your chance to get caught up!
The words that define our faith have the potential to embody the beauty and mystery of our faith. But all too often, they instead become boundary markers, marking who is welcome and who is not. In this series, we seek to recover the beauty of these words, and through them, the beauty and power of the faith into which God has invited us. This is Graffiti.
| Week 1 – Church | PDF or podcast |
| Week 2 – Trinity | |
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Week 3 – Grace |
PDF or podcast |
| Week 4 – Incarnation | PDF or podcast |
| Week 5 – Atonement | PDF or podcast |
| Week 6 – Salvation | PDF or podcast |
| Week 7 – Sanctification | PDF or podcast |
| Week 8 – Faith | PDF or podcast |
| Week 9 – Gospel | PDF or podcast |
| Week 10 – Evangelism (coming soon!) | PDF or podcast |
The Bottom of the Barrel
We recognize that, even though we like to think we’re all unique, there’s a lot of truth to the statement,
“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
That’s why we’re studying the book of Judges: this series explores the very human pattern that emerges when we confront challenging times in our lives. We’ve seen that pattern play out in Judges through the lives of both Gideon and Jephthah. (Remember: the Judges are heroes, champions that God raised up to save Israel – don’t think Wapner, Judy or Joe Brown!)
We saw Gideon doubt God and Jephthah confused God with the culture surrounding him. Neither of them took the opportunities they had to break out of Israel’s downward spiral of disobedience.
This week, we’re going to look at what happens if we don’t choose to break free. What happens when we run out of people to blame. This week, we reach the bottom of the barrel.
We’re going to look at the tragic, horrible and shocking end to the book of Judges – the Benjaminite War in Judges 19-21. Read the story (and brace yourself!).
What shocks me is that the Israelites become the very thing they hate. They set out to avenge rape but in the end authorize the rape of over 500 girls. How could that happen? And how can we learn from this history so that we too do not become the very thing we hate?
The Bottom of the Barrel
We recognize that, even though we like to think we’re all unique, there’s a lot of truth to the statement,
“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
That’s why we’re studying the book of Judges: this series explores the very human pattern that emerges when we confront challenging times in our lives. We’ve seen that pattern play out in Judges through the lives of both Gideon and Jephthah. (Remember: the Judges are heroes, champions that God raised up to save Israel – don’t think Wapner, Judy or Joe Brown!)
We saw Gideon doubt God and Jephthah confused God with the culture surrounding him. Neither of them took the opportunities they had to break out of Israel’s downward spiral of disobedience.
This week, we’re going to look at what happens if we don’t choose to break free. What happens when we run out of people to blame. This week, we reach the bottom of the barrel.
We’re going to look at the tragic, horrible and shocking end to the book of Judges – the Benjaminite War in Judges 19-21. Read the story (and brace yourself!). Pay attention to how the pattern we’ve been seeing breaks. Why do you think that is?
Mixed-up God
In our ongoing series on Judges, we took a look this week at the terrible, tragic story of Jephthah. Here was a man who, after being thrown out of his community for no fault of his own (remember: his mother was the town prostitute, a walking embodiment of the community’s sin). And his need to be accepted by them was so strong he made an unnecessary public oath and sacrificed his own daughter to God. How could Jephthah think God was honored by sacrificing his daughter?
Even though God didn’t approve of child sacrifice, many of the other gods surrounding Israel encouraged it.
We’ve seen that Judges is a slow, downward spiral in which Israel is gradually forgetting who God is. By this point – halfway through the book – they’ve forgotten who God is to the extent that they’re letting the surrounding cultures (and their gods) color their picture of God. They’re letting other religions teach them more about who God is than their own Scriptures.
That can be our temptation as well – to listen to the voices of our culture rather than the voice of our Scriptures and Tradition.
To confuse God with the lesser gods to whom we’re pulled – technology, family, politics, work. If we want to be followers of Jesus, we have to actually follow Jesus. Not any other person, promise or idea. Those things lead us astray and – just like for poor Jephthah – bring pain and death not just to us but to everyone close to us.
If we find ourselves forgetting who God is, if we find ourselves confusing God with the lesser gods of our culture (or any other culture!), we have to remember God. To spend time in the Scriptures. To pray To gather with other believers and celebrate who God is.
Our memory of God has to be active if it is to be effective.
How have you seen this confusion in your life? What are the most powerful reminders in your life of who God is?
Blame it on… someone!
Right now, we’re looking at the very human pattern that emerges when we confront challenging times in our lives, a pattern clear in the Old Testament book of Judges. We all tend to think our experiences are unique. Even though we’ve all heard that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. So let’s listen closely to the stories of the Judges. And remember: the Judges are heroes, champions that God raised up to save Israel – don’t think Wapner, Judy or Joe Brown!
Last week we looked at the cycle that featured Gideon. We explored his doubts and saw that often the first step in our downward spiral is often feeling abandoned by God, questioning His presence in our lives.
We saw that if we want to escape the Judges cycle of despair before we slide downward, we must remember who God is.
But if we choose not to remember God, what does slipping further down the spiral look like?
This week, we’re going to explore the story of Jephthah in Judges 11. You’ve probably never heard of Jephthah before; after reading his story you’ll see why. But compare Jephthah’s story to Gideon’s. Notice how much less present God is. Notice how much less familiar with God and God’s values the Israelites are.
How does that distance contribute to Jephthah’s terrible choice?
And what does that teach us about our own tendencies? Join us this week as Jason Robertson joins us to share his insights!
Judges Week 1
[Vimeo 16622418]
If you missed yesterday, here is the video the we shared as a little explanation of why we are talking about Judges in our current series.
Questioning God
To begin our series on Judges, we looked at the life of Gideon. Remember: he was born in a time when Israel had been conquered by the neighboring kingdom of Midian. And even among a people who had been conquered, he was the least impressive. When God showed up, Gideon was skeptical.
And, truthfully, I have a tough time blaming him.
His faith was full of all these stories about God doing miracles. But he’d never seen a miracle.
Sound familiar? How many times have you wondered why God doesn’t heal the sick or part troubled seas anymore?
Haven’t you ever wanted to just walk across the surface of all your problems when it feels like you’re just drowning?
That’s what Gideon felt. So he questioned. His doubt was born from a sense of God’s absence.
But that absence wasn’t real; God hadn’t abandoned Israel. Israel had abandoned God.
They’d started worshiping Ba’al and other foreign gods. They forgot God. So it’s no wonder they couldn’t find Him, even when they were looking.
So if you’re in a place of doubt, if you’re wondering where God has gone, consider:
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Doubt is a natural feeling. It doesn’t make you weird or unspiritual. So don’t beat yourself up over it.
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The remedy for doubt is memory. Sound strange? It’s true – remember who God is. Remember what kind of god He is. He is the God who heals the sick and parts seas, who walks on water.
He’s the God who raises the dead.
So what do you need to remember about God this week?
Downward Spiral
Have you ever noticed that we all tend to think our experiences are unique? And yet we’ve all heard that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This series explores the very human pattern that emerges when we confront challenging times in our lives, a pattern we find in the Old Testament book of Judges.
The events in Judges took place in the middle of Israel’s story.
God came to a man named Abraham and made a covenant with him – that through his descendants, the world would be saved. Abraham’s descendants, the Israelites, moved to Egypt, where they were then forced to live as slaves. God sent a man named Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery and to the Promised Land. His successor Joshua settled the Israelites in the Promised Land.
And that’s where Judges picks up. The 12 tribes of Israel all settle into their territories. They didn’t have any strong connection to each other – a lot more like the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution.
And once they’d settled in, they got comfortable.
That begins a cycle that we see over and over in Judges. After they get comfortable, God’s people start ignoring God. Because they quit relying on God, they’re conquered by neighboring peoples. When they get miserable enough, they remember God and ask to be saved, so God raises up a champion who saves them, and thus the cycle begins again.
The champions are called ‘Judges’ (don’t think Wapner, Judy or Joe Brown).
The cycle isn’t perfect; it’s actually a downward spiral. Throughout Judges, we watch as the Israelites gradually forget more and more God is. They want so badly to be like the cultures around them rather than who God called them to be that they spin further and further out of control.
We want to study this, to learn as much as we can about what it looks like to spiral out of control.
So we can escape the cycle before it consumes us. So think about your own life… where are you? Are you comfortable? Or are you suffering? See you this week in EPIC when we learn the basic human pattern the book of Judges reveals in our lives… and how the Gospel meets us there!
We start our series with Gideon, whose story you can find in Judges 6-9. Read his story. What strikes you? Pay special attention to Gideon’s relationship to God. The questions he asks. Where do you connect with him?
Flicker or Flame?
Turns out, God wanted to forgive Nineveh. And Jonah couldn’t handle it. He took the light of God that had been burning inside and tried to squelch it.
But he couldn’t quench God’s fire. Not completely.
And neither can we. We might dim it down. We might end up with just a flicker of what God wants for us, what He intends. But God will not be denied.
Where is your Nineveh? Who are your Ninevites? And most importantly,
Are you a flicker? Or a flame?
Only Nixon Can Go to China…
We’re right in the middle of our series on Jonah. We saw two weeks ago that God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, to ‘cry out against’ their sins. But for some reason, Jonah didn’t want to be a part of what God wants to do in Nineveh.
But God relentless pursued Jonah when he ran.
And last week, we saw that even though Jonah finally gave in, he still didn’t repent. He still didn’t admit that God’s plans for Nineveh were right. But that begs the question,
What does God want to do in Nineveh that’s so bad?
Read Jonah 3 to find out, and ask yourself if you would have agreed with Jonah or God…
…and make sure you join us in EPIC on Sunday at 10:45. You won’t want to miss it!
