Eden Teachings Podcast

Paul is concerned about the divisions within the church as the Corinthians were dividing over leaders, theological issues, etc. It's a strong warning, one that is very much for us today.   Because we do this, don't we? 

Denominations, factions, church splits, and so on.   We divide over secondary and tertiary theological issues, preaching styles, worship sets, whether there is a robust kids ministry, etc. And not only is it disruptive and hurtful to the body, Paul goes so far to say it robs the gospel of its power.  

Because in division, we look no different than the world. But when there is unity, respect, reconciliation, and a willingness to sit at the table with those you disagree with, there is real power there.  A kind of power the world is unfamiliar with.     

A kind of power that looks a lot like the “saltiness” Jesus had in mind for his apprentices in the Sermon on the Mount.  

Teacher: Will Solomon

Text: 1 Corinthians 3

In Chapter 2, Paul spends the majority of his time communicating how their understanding of what it means to be human is insufficient, and it can only come through understanding the story of Jesus and the work of the Spirit.It's a bold claim, because Paul is saying they (and we) do not understand why we are here and where all of history is heading apart from the Scriptures and the Spirit. Because to be human is to be filled with the Spirit.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: 1 Corinthians 2

(We apologize for the audio quality)

In Chapter 1, Paul's main concern is Corinth's understanding of wisdom. What is it? Where does it come from? How does one get it? Does everyone get it? The dominating understanding in their day was wisdom comes from within. That we can be our ultimate authority, and there is no higher calling than to pursue wisdom, be a good person, and die. Sound familiar?

This is the ethos of our culture. It is the air we breathe.Paul says this is deficient. He says Jesus is the wisdom and the life. Defining good and evil for ourselves is what got us into this mess to begin with. But true life is yielding to what Jesus says to be true about all things.

And attaining this wisdom (and life) comes only through death. Through a cruciform/ cross-shaped life. We recover our humanity through following Him into death. And in doing so, we finally, truly, live.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: 1 Corinthians 1

Yesterday we started our journey into 1 Corinthians, situating the text into its moment in time. To understand letters, like 1 Corinthians, we first have to understand something right off the bat.  Each letter in the NT is written to a specific group of people, with a specific set of circumstances, questions, problems, pain points, etc.  A moment none of us are familiar with.  In a language none of us speak. But the beauty of Scripture is that all of it is revelatory. It is a unified story that shows the nature of God and His purposes for His people. It is both particular to a moment in time, and has universal import.Truly, there are things in 1 Corinthians that are wild, and will make no sense to us. We may not be sacrificing food to idols, but we are addicted to our iPhones. We may have “evolved” some, or advanced intellectually, but the human heart is the same. We, like the Corinthians, love Jesus. But we also tend to love the things that make Him grieve.Nevertheless, Paul doesn't start his letter to them (and us) with scathing comments. He addresses them as saints. Cleaned up by Jesus. He recognizes first who they actually are, then invites them to live into what's already true of them. He extends the same invitation to us, too.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleTexts: Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians 1

We would have to ignore large portions of Scripture to avoid God’s concern for the poor and his desire for his people to care for them. In the first century, the poor or “the needy” would have included widows, orphans, or those in prison.Today, this could be children in the foster care system, a single parent, the sick, the elderly on a fixed income, or refugees. While our societal order often overlooks these individuals and keeps them on the margins, Jesus’ order — or the Kingdom of Heaven — moves them toward equal ground at the center. Jesus so identifies with and cares for the poor that, to follow him, means we must also brush shoulders with the needy. And more than that, we must see in them a brother and a sister.This is what distinguishes service in the way of Jesus: we are invited beyond charity from afar into love up close; to leave ourselves open to the reality that service may not only turn strangers into neighbors but into family. This is the dignifying destination that true service leads us toward — kinship.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

Jesus lived a remarkably interruptible life. More than 30 stories in the Gospel of Mark alone hinge on Jesus’ ability to see an interruption as an invitation. And these are just the stories that were recorded from his life. We can never know just how many people received Jesus’ loving attention and service in these unplanned moments.This way of being in the world is about more than our personality — whether we consider ourselves more planned or spontaneous. It’s about practicing radical availability — to consider that seemingly annoying distractions in life may actually be holy disruptions.Some of the most beautiful opportunities for service pass us by unknowingly in the ordinary movements of our days, while our attention is fixed on our plans rather than the people God loves right in front of us. The invitation, by God’s grace, is for us to become the kinds of people who increasingly see the needs around us and stop to serve them.That, like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ famous parable, we might be those who choose not to walk by on the other side but to cross over in compassion.Teacher: Brittni RatliffText: Various

Where does your imagination go when you consider where you can serve?Perhaps it leads you to your local church, the care home nearby, or the low- income neighborhood in your city. For some of us, these very well could be the places Jesus is leading us to give more of ourselves — more on that in the sessions to come. But if we consider Jesus’ life, and specifically the environments where he chose to serve, we see a recurring theme: Jesus often served in very ordinary spaces — in homes and marketplaces, at water wells and dinner tables, even in what we could call his “daily commute.”What if our greatest opportunities to practice loving service are not in places we have yet to enter, but where we already are? Familiar places like our offices, homes, and neighborhoods — among people who know us and whom we know in return. For most of us, serving in these environments is much more challenging than picking up a ladle at a soup kitchen or mowing a stranger’s lawn. But when we choose to serve in them anyway, these environments become places of deep formation where we can be transformed into people of love.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

Service has always been a defining characteristic of those who apprentice under Jesus.In the first century, this obscure group, who called themselves “followers of the Way,” took their Rabbi Jesus’ teachings and example seriously. They called the marginalized “brother” and “sister,” cared for the sick at the cost of their own health and reputation, and willingly lived with less so that the needs of others could be met.In a time when humble service was seen not as a virtue but rather as a duty of the powerless, ordinary people following Jesus chose a wholly different way of relating to those around them. This kind of life is the result of true spiritual formation — that we would be transformed into people of self-giving love. Maturity, according to Jesus, is not primarily measured by our current emotional state, the consistency of our spiritual practices, or even the quality of our moral decisions, but by a life given in loving service to the world around us.This makes service not just a practice for those of us in Jesus’ Kingdom, but a gauge of how much his Kingdom is truly in us.Teacher: Will SolomonText: Various

Among the words the New Testament writers used to describe followers of Jesus, perhaps none hit quite so close to home as the Apostle Peter’s description: “foreigners and exiles.”Walk the streets of most cities in the post-Christian West as a follower of Jesus, and you’re likely to feel the force of those words — this sense that you don’t quite “belong” in the surrounding culture; you’re a kind of spiritual refugee. For many of us, that feeling can turn our faith into, at best, an awkward conversation, and at worst, a personal hobby we would rather hide away. In the midst of that very real experience, it can be helpful to remember that the gospel is good news. And while there are those who will be turned off by it, others’ hearts might leap to believe it. They might even say, “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”Because, after all, it’s “good news … for all people.” (Luke 2v10) Jesus invites us to both show and tell this good news — for our deeds and our words to testify to the beauty of the life we have in him.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

To be effective witnesses in the world, we have to be pained by the things that pains God. In fact, we cannot offer the gospel of hope to people whose grief we cannot acknowledge. But in our culture, we tend to treat grief like a disease that might infect us if we let it get too close.But this is not the way of Jesus. Jesus was a man well acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53). He was not indifferent or unaware of our pain, but “empathized with our weaknesses.” To love others and move towards them in compassion, we have to feel their pain. So we must start by being honest with our own.Teacher: Brittni RatliffText: Various