Courage Church

series: Problems with the Bible

title: Q&A with Shane Willard

teacher: Shane Willard

date: October 16, 2018

Here are a few of the questions that Shane answered during our Q&A session about how to best handle the problems that people have with the Bible.

The purpose for bringing Shane out was to equip you with better answers to some of the most difficult questions that people are asking about the Bible, as well as to inspire conversations about God. All of these questions & answers, as well Shane’s sermon “The Bible” are not all presented so that everyone will agree with everything he says, but, just as Shane said in his sermon - “sermons are meant to be wrestled with”

And our hope is that this Q&A may be the beginning of much wrestling with the most important book in the history of the world.

One of our Core Values at Courage Church is “conversation” - we believe that there will ALWAYS be more to learn, and much of what we learn is done through conversations with others. This sermon is meant to be a springboard to thousands of conversations about the most important book in the history of the world.

In the age of google, anyone can simply google “contradictions in the Bible” and they get a whole list. They can search “Bible verses your mom hopes that you never see” and they will get a list of verses that, when read in isolation and with no understanding of its context, make God sound awful, even evil.

Where most of us know that this is not the case, the reality is that we are losing the next generation to the Bible, because they are not willing to accept the way that we brush off or shut down their hard questions, and the truth is, they shouldn’t. We need to do better.

Pastor Shane Willard lays out, in one of the most practical yet engaging messages that you will ever hear, some ways that we can better understand the Bible, which will lead to ways of better talking about the Bible that actually make it more beautiful.

Before watching this important sermon, prepare in advance to be challenged in ways that are uncomfortable to how you may have grown up learning about the Bible. And remember, we value conversations. This message was created not to give us all of the answers, but to get us thinking and talking about the Bible differently.

Many conversations have been sparked by this teaching already, and we hope that you will join in on it as we wrestle with why the Bible says what it does, and how it still has the power to change everything even today.

series: Problems with the Bible

title: The Bible (inspired & inerrant)

teacher: Shane Willard

date: October 16, 2018

And why does the Psalmist pronounce a blessing on whoever bashes children’s heads against the rocks?

What kind of a God would give Satan permission to kill a faithful man’s entire family? Is God allowed to be random? Sometimes protecting people and other times allowing Satan to destroy them? And if He is, then why would we trust a God who is that random?

There are key verses throughout the Bible that atheists and others who attack the Bible love to point out to in order to ask the question: Even if God does exist, why would you want to serve a God like that? Another thing that they point out is the way that Pastors tend to skip over those verses when they are teaching, because they are unexplainable and would raise too many questions.

The problem with this is that it paints a picture, fairly, saying that the church manipulates certain parts of the Bible to say what they want it to say, while ignoring the parts that seem to contradict what we want it to say.

But we should not avoid the difficult passages, because even the passages that seem the most awful, when read in context actually shows us that God is not evil, He is on our side, and even though in our culture some of the things that the Bible says may seem awful, when read in accordance with its cultural context, we find that God’s people are the ones taking the largest leaps forward in all of human history for human rights.

People have problems with the Bible, because they don’t know how to read the Bible.

series: mission

title: Haiti (same mission, different places)

teacher: Kenny Jones

date: October 14, 2018

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Esther

teacher: Jacob Bender

date: September 30, 2018

scriptures: 2 Timothy 3:1-5, Esther, 1 Samuel 15

As I was working on this sermon and thinking through this story, I was just feeling like “man… I don’t want to ruin everyone’s childhood memories by sharing what really happened in the stories that Veggie Tales doesn’t always give all of the details on.” I fear that I have done that for some of you with a few of these stories in this sermon, and this one will be no exception.

this sermon will paint a picture for you that quite frankly is dark and gruesome and unexpected, its cinematic, its bizarre. its violent. and its sexual, because its telling us what happened even though just about all of it is NOT GOOD!

and before you watch or listen to this sermon, I want you to ask yourself the question that we started the sermon with, and I want you to keep this in your mind this entire sermon:

Do I trust God? 

Do you believe that God can do anything? That He can work through anybody… and that He can overpower even the biggest empires and overcome even the worst circumstances? 

Because this story is a story about a God who can do anything, even though it appears like he is not there at all.

series: ancient cliff notes

title: Ruth

teacher: Jacob Bender

date: September 23, 2018

scriptures: Ruth, Deuteronomy 23:3-6, Matthew 7:11, Numbers 22-25.

If you were to open up a commentary on the book of Ruth or do some research trying to figure out “WHY DOES THIS BOOK EXIST? Why was it written, and why did it stand the test of time?” 

“why would the short story about a woman who’s husband dies and her loyalty to her mother in law be so important that it would make it into the Bible?”

There really are two answers that stand out by Rabbi’s and scholars throughout the centuries of studying this book. 

One of the answers that the Rabbi’s give is  they simple say: “chesed” - that word we studied last week when we did Hosea. God is abounding in steadfast love. 

Remember the imagery for “chesed” - a mother swan who plucks out her own feathers and lines her nest with them so that her young can rest in comfort. 

Our daughter Fiona got a baby doll from my parents for her birthday, and she just absolutely loves this doll. They gave it to her last Sunday… and that night, after we put the kids to bed we eventually went up and checked on them and found that Fiona had laid her baby doll in her bed, and she was sleeping on the floor of her bedroom. 

Its amazing how that motherly inclination exists even in a 5 year old. 

That is exactly what chesed is. Steadfast love. Giving up your own comfort for the sake of something that means a lot to you. And I was just thinking about this this week… that if my daughter would do that for a baby doll, something that only in her imagination has life at all.

how much more do we as parents, do that for our living, breathing, flesh and blood children? 

And as Jesus says in the sermon on the mount that IF WE, BEING EVIL know how to give good gifts to our children… how much more does God our Father in Heaven shower us with love and give us good things? (Matthew 7:11)

This story, from front to back is the story of God’s faithfulness on a family that should have been forgotten. 

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Hosea

date: September 16, 2018

teacher: Jacob Bender

scriptures: Hosea 1, 2, 3, 6, 11. Exodus 20, Jeremiah 3:8, Matthew 9:12-13, Exodus 32, Exodus 34, Isaiah 57:15

Have you ever felt so far from God… you have just made your own way and the entire time you knew deep down that it was wrong but something in you just wouldn’t turn back… and yet in the most gracious, amazing way you get these subtle reminders that God hasn’t given up on you? 

and now, when you look back on what happened you see so clearly… clear as day that someone was paying your bills… someone was carrying you… someone had their hand on you even when you were running from Him? 

you don’t even recognize where the grace is coming from, yet you know in your heart that someone, somewhere is taking care of you even as you endeavor down this broken road? 

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Judges 17 & 18

date: September 9, 2018

teacher: Jacob Bender

scriptures: Judges 17, Judges 18, Ecclesiastes 4:10, Judges 21:25, Proverbs 27:20.

The story of a man named Micah, his mom, the weird god she had built for him, his weird wandering priest to that god, the Danites, and a place called Laish (a people quiet and unsuspecting, with no allies nearby). 

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Samson

teacher: Jacob Bender

date: September 2, 2018

scriptures: Judges 13-16, Matthew 5:7, Matthew 5:9, Psalm 23, James 2:13.

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Saul

teacher: Austin Young

date: August 26, 2018

series: Ancient Cliff Notes

title: Samuel

teacher: Austin Young