bread church

By breadReligion & Spirituality Christianity

bread church episodes

March 16 Live the revolution: treasures.
Matthew 6:19-24
The Revolution Jesus is leading us into has to work its way into our
systems of valuing - exposing what we treasure.
Jesus presses this issue because He is fully aware of the duality resulting
from trying to live in both Kingdoms - of Mammon and of God - at the same
time. The result will be crippling anxiety and paralyzing worry. So… His
solution is to choose relentless focus on the Kingdom of God and to let
that choice inform our attitudes and behaviors around money, time, and
other measures of value.
By Bill Dogterom
36 min
March 09 Live the revolution: The Lord’s Prayer.
Matthew 6:5-15⁠
Today we focus in on The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’s teaching on what is called
prayer in Matthew 6:5-15, and how prayer is for everyone at all times. We
also learn about the radical state of practicing the presence of God
through prayer without ceasing as exemplified by the life of Brother
Lawrence.
By Paul Maertens
37 min
March 02 Alpha Holy Spirit Sunday
In a break from our 'Live the Revolution' series, and at the conclusion our
most recent Alpha Course, we dedicate our Sunday Service to the subject of
the Holy Spirit: Who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit do? How
can we be filled with the Holy Spirit?
The Christian life is not just about faith in Jesus - who He is and what He
has done. Putting our faith in Jesus is the vital first step. But the Holy
Spirit is the one in whose dimension of life we go on to experience God
throughout the rest of our lives. So without Him we have nothing. But with
the power of the Spirit in our lives, we can live the fruitful, meaningful,
joy-filled, empowered lives we were made for.
By Ed Flint
48 min
February 23 Live the revolution: for the audience of one.
Matthew 6:1-8, 16-18
Having shown what a kingdom heart and the kingdom life looks like, Jesus
concludes His Sermon on the Mount with a series of warnings about
inhibiting the kingdom life.
The first concerns the desire for approval from anyone other than God our
Father. When our motivation to give, pray and fast is clouded by what
others think of us, we need to beware. Kingdom People are called to devote
themselves to the audience of One - our loving Father in heaven. When we do
this we receive the greatest of rewards - more of him - his presence,
peace, love, and power.
By Ed Flint
36 min
February 18 Live the revolution: love they neighbor.
Matthew 5:21-48
What does this revolution actually look like in real life? Torah Law was
always about love — love of God, self and neighbor — but somewhere along
the way it had became something to manage, manipulate, and weaponize. In
six startling case studies, Jesus takes Israel’s Law, and traces the
trajectory from the seed in the heart to the fruit in the world, and brings
his focus to the image of God in every one of us.
Jesus goes after contempt, objectification, power abuse, image-management,
retaliation and tribal loyalty. This is not moral tightening or any sort of
new rules: it is relational restoration, the root of all kingdom justice!
With bonkers (and so misunderstood!) contextual wisdom, turning cheeks and
walking extra miles actually become ways of expressing agency, calling out
injustice and inviting even our enemy into relationship. Challenging
teaching, for our challenging times!
By Hannah Flint
Books referenced in talk
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas
Willard⁠ ⁠
The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls⁠ by
Rich Villodas
48 min
February 09 Live the revolution: beyond the goodness of Pharisees.
Matthew 5:17-20
Having announced his kingdom, invited all to enter it, and described that
people of the kingdom as salt and light, Jesus elaborates on how kingdom
people live.
Our goodness is to surpass that of the Pharisees. This is life beyond
legalistic righteousness. So, Jesus hasn’t come to tell us to live
righteously, he has come to make us into the sort of people who live
righteous lives. His interest is in the heart, not outward appearance.
The challenge to us is this: does following the law come naturally? We
become such a person only when we allow the power of God’s love to
transform us daily into the kingdom people we have become.
By Ed Flint
33 min
February 02 Live the revolution: salt and light.
Matthew 5:13-16
Jesus turns things upside down when it comes to who is invited into his
kingdom - it’s everyone, really everyone. What’s more, the invitation to
receive the blessing of his kingdom is not dependent on anything that we
might deem a qualification or a disqualification. But Jesus doesn’t end his
teaching there. And neither must we. Entrance into his kingdom is just the
first step.
Jesus continues his Sermon on the Mount by painting a picture of what
Kingdom people look like. Fundamentally, they are ontologically changed.
Kingdom people are salt and light. They don’t try to be, or should be, or
can be salt and light. They are. Such a radical change only happens when we
allow God to resurrect us. And we can only be resurrected if we’re willing
first to die to what we were.
Salt stops things decaying, makes things pleasurable, and helps things
grow. Light is the presence of Jesus shining out of us and redeeming the
world. The world needs us to be who we are - salt of the earth and light of
the world.
By Ed Flint
33 min
January 26 Live the revolution: blessedness.
Matthew 5:3-12
When it comes to "living the revolution" the question arises - for whom is
the revolution good news? Who gets to join in - and who is excluded? So,
from the outset of His revolutionary invitation, Jesus makes it clear -
even those who have been discarded and set aside socio-culturally are able
to join Him in turning the world right side up.
But, it will come at cost - they, once joined, can no longer define
themselves by exclusion! Qualification is in Jesus' hands - not theirs. And
so is the mission to which He sends us.
By Bill Dogterom
38 min
January 21 Live the revolution: introduction to the sermon on the mount.
Matthew 5-7
Many of Jesus’ most familiar teachings come from the Sermon on the Mount,
the aim here is not to treat it as a list of moral instructions, but to
understand the new day Jesus was announcing. Set against a deeply divided
and oppressed Israel, Jesus’ announcement that “the kingdom of heaven has
come near” was not a threat of judgment, but a declaration that the long
wait for God’s action was over. The Sermon re-centers the Law, not as a
path to salvation, but as a vision of life under God’s reign—and Jesus’
rhetoric shows it was never meant to be achievable through human effort.
From the opening line of the Beatitudes onward, He makes clear that the
kingdom is available to all who can admit they can’t do this on their own
(spoiler - that’s all of us - that’s the whole point!) Rather than driving
us to despair over our shortcomings, the Sermon on the Mount trains us to
live within a reality Jesus opened up to every one of us, through God’s
presence and the power of His Spirit.
By Hannah Flint
Books referenced:
The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas
Willard
The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls by
Rich Villodas
42 min
January 13 Jesus fantastic.
In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (⁠Colossians 1:15-23)⁠ he presents Jesus
as so attractive as to be utterly compelling. We’re called to do something
similar, in our similarly pluralistic context of Los Angeles: to present
Jesus as he is--unapologetically the center of the universe.
Jesus is the one everyone is looking for: he’s the only one who fully
satisfies us, the only one who is supreme over us, and the only one who
continues to sustain us. In a world that is so obviously broken and in
pain, let us invite everyone we know to meet him; the one who makes us
whole. He’s fantastic.
By Ed Flint
37 min