Eternity Church PodCast

A Sunday morning sermon by Jordan Crews.

Today is Rosh Hashanah. Since the giving of the Law in the wilderness, around this time of year, we are invited once again to enter into His rest, to remember He is God and we are not. In Leviticus 23.23-25 we read: “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food offering to the Lord.”

In the last few weeks, we’ve had so many new sons and daughters born into our fellowship. In birth, they’ve begun a new year, their first year. Next year this time we will celebrate once again their emergence in our lives. We commemorate it with rejoicing, with special food and song, with games and laughter. Today is like a birthday for all of us, no matter how old or young we are. It’s a call to rest and remembrance. It’s an invitation to rejoicing and awe. It’s a celebration we share with one another.

Today, is a cloak we pass from generation to generation. It is the words of Leviticus lived out by the children of the Exodus. It’s a new opportunity to hear, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Deuteronomy 6.4b). It’s a new day to live out our faith by loving the Lord our God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” in such a way that His command is on our heart (6.5). It’s a new change to pass the thing most precious to us on to our children, sitting together at home, walking together through life, and embodying our belief all the days of our lives (6.6-9).

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor David Singh.

Leviticus is a prelude to the work of the Cross. It is a call to be a holy people who reflect the holiness of God. This is the attractiveness of mission that God’s people who are sinful by nature are being redeemed and renewed.  Mission is an invitation to belong to a holy God and to move from death to life. 

I am in India right now and it was here, exactly 53 years ago to the day on Sept 16th 1972, that I knelt next to my bed and accepted the offer of Christ to give my life to him. I can never forget the amazing feeling of being forgiven and of the love of Jesus that washed over me repeatedly like the waves of the sea.

The Mission of God is two-fold in Leviticus. One is to constantly purify me from sin and to make me more holy like Him. The other is my call to the world and to reflect a life of holiness which, invites all peoples back to God. 

Be Holy as He is Holy!

A Sunday morning sermon by Mike Godzwa.

Have you ever watched someone work a loom? For thousands of years, diverse peoples and cultures have created clothing and tapestries using looms. These looms make it possible to weave vertical warp and horizontal weft threads. It’s mesmerizing to watch. And it doesn’t even have to be fast to be impressive. All it takes is one attempt to work a loom—like a novice musician attempting their first chords—to realize how impressive a skilled artisan truly is.

When we view the Torah as a single tapestry, we recognize the designs of the exodus already woven in from the beginning. Long before we arrived at the first chapters of Exodus, we foresaw the pain and persecution of Israel interlaced with the compassionate character of God (Genesis 15). This, of course, flies in the face of our preferred view of life. We struggle to see the love of God in the midst of our suffering. We knot up trying to see how the warp of our experiences—good and bad—are sewn into place by the weft of God’s presence. When we read the book of Exodus with Genesis in mind, as we see the warp of Israel’s suffering our eyes should immediately start anticipating the weft of God’s redeeming power for His people. 

The tapestry of time and space reveals our loving God who compassionately moves toward His image bearers. This is not a utopian, unrealistic revelation. On this loom, we see the reality of human suffering and the Red Sea parted (Exodus 14). On this loom, we see the firepot of God’s presence making a covenant with Abram and the burning bush before Moses (Genesis 15; Exodus 3). 

Friend, looking at this Torah tapestry, we begin to recognize the patterns present in our own lives. Today, where does God want you to see the weft of His presence passing through the warp of your experience?

A Sunday morning sermon Pastor Brett Deal.

Each generation is capable of passing on gifts to the next. At first, the value of those gifts often those gifts go unnoticed. For example, it was really important to my mother that I learn to sew. Perhaps it was because growing up on a farm to parents who’d gone through the Great Depression made basic skills and frugality paramount to my mother. She was surely right, as my little hyperactive body was set on pushing my shorts and shirts to their breaking point. My childhood was held together by a stitch and a prayer!

People might think choosing the right stitch or where to join the pieces of cloth might by the trickier part of sewing, but for me, it’s always been threading the needle. I’ve got to slow down enough to get the thin thread through—what can feel like—an impassible needle’s eye. The hardest thing to do, most of the time, is starting out well. I think this is equally true of how we read the Bible and understand the mission of God. If you’ll allow me a moment to mix my metaphors, when we rush our reading of Scripture, we start sewing before the thread's through the needle. We weave the disconnected needle through the material, in and out of pages and passages, but no seam emerges; no connection is made.

Together, we are going back to the beginning, back to the book of Genesis. We are going to pick up the thread of God’s mission and see how it reveals the character of God and our calling as His image bearers in this world; and as we unpack this gift given to us, let’s make sure we keep passing it on to the next.

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.

Before the start of my Senior year, I had a surprise chance to come to the States, so I set out from the island of Bioko in Central Africa for far off middle America. The whole way across the Atlantic, I had almost exclusively one thing on my mind: new music! I was barely settled in my room at a small hostel for missionary kids in college, and I was looking for a ride to record store. It might be hard to remember what it was like in the days before streaming and clouds and the digital revolution we’re currently in, but back then, unless I wanted to buy grainy knock off cassettes in Nairobi, the land of music was America. Barely had my feet touched the ground and I was loading up sample CDs at the store.

One of those CDS has become one my favorites, one I go back to time and time again. It’s Purpose by Design by Fred Hammond & Radical for Christ. This album sprints out the gate on the first track, with "I Want My Destiny." You can feel the theology of the song as much as the funky slap bass. This song is a time capsule in my journey of faith. It sings of a life redeemed by Christ. It rejoices in a life recreated for purpose. It shouts of a passion to serve the One “Who brought me and is able to keep me” and to follow Jesus “to the place where He has need of me.”

These lyrics provide the surround sound of Apostle Paul’s album to the Philippians. His entire epistle, according to G. Walter Hansen is Paul “urging them to join with him in his own journey to know Christ.” Hearing his epistle, set to this soundtrack, we are challenged to recognize, in Christ, our eternal citizenship has current blessing bearer responsibilities. Our salvation is fire insurance. It’s calling. It’s purpose. We must start living out our citizenship now. Enthusiastically awaiting Jesus’ return, “with the time we have / Let’s waste not all on selfish reasons / But we must seek to please Him first / Find His will upon the Earth” so that “When they look back from death to birth / They’ll say they've seen Him.”

A Sunday morning sermon by Peter DuMont.

It is a truism in our culture that non-reciprocal giving can make people uneasy. People don’t always like the thought of others receiving what they have not earned. Extravagant generosity like this can seem a disruption to the moral order.

 

 This was part of the criticism levelled against Paul’s message of righteousness given apart from the keeping of the law. If people are simply given righteousness as a free gift, what becomes of their motivation toward Godliness?

 

 Paul answers this critique in our passage for Sunday. Yes, he puts no confidence in his own human accomplishments to make him worthy before God. Yes, he surrenders everything to receive from God a righteousness that rests only on faith in the Giver. But how Paul uses that gift is the key factor – he does not see himself as perfect by virtue of the gift of God; rather he responds to God’s empowering gift by using it to pursue the full working of Godliness within himself that his own efforts could not accomplish. The free gift enables the accomplishment of what his own efforts could not achieve – movement toward “the upward call of God in Christ.”    

 

 Paul gives his own life as an example and invites the Philippian brothers and sisters to imitate him in doing so within their own lives.

 There is a profound witness for us as those on a spiritual journey toward God. God meets us, gives us what we cannot secure ourselves, and invites us through his messengers to put that gift to use pressing further into the goodness and life of God.

 

 Let’s come to worship this week eager to receive the good gifts of God and put them to beautiful usage within our lives before God.

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.

A striking parallel emerges as we move further into Paul’s epistle. In chapter 2, we heard Paul singing his great Christ hymn (Philippians 2.6-11). Now, following the worthy examples of Timothy and Epaphroditus (2.19-30), “Paul's own story bears the imprint of Christ's way of self-emptying and exaltation” (Daniel Migliore).

  

 Hearing Paul’s personal story in chapter 3, alongside Christ’s hymn in chapter 2, we find a kind of call and response, a divine voice and human echo. In both, we find a movement first to the depths then to the heights (Migliore). We sing of the profound self-emptying of Christ "who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant,” (Philippians 2.6-7a). This is the glorious humility of Jesus toward us. In Paul’s story, we see someone who discovers that all the things he held dear, all the pieces of his former piety, were useless, refuse, loss. His descent is discovering his life has been upside down. All the bona fides became meaningless when Paul, having fallen to the ground, heard the voice of Jesus (Acts 9).

  

 This led to the parallel upswing of movement to the heights. In Christ’s obedience to the Father, enduring the cross, dying in our place, God the Father “highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” (2.9-11). For Paul, it is in knowing Christ that he found himself drawn upward. It is in Jesus he found the goal to press toward, “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” (3.14).

  

 Friend, as we increasingly identify with Christ in His suffering, we find ourselves embraced more completely in His glory. Our salvation becomes more secure as we are justified by Christ, sanctified by the in-working of His Spirit and look hopefully for the eternal day we are glorified in resurrection (3.9-11).

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.

In the eye of the hurricane, swept up in the majesty of God, Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you,” (Job 42.5). That must be one of the most striking verses in the Bible. It confesses a heartfelt belief, something held, something heard; and confirms it to be true.

Naveen Rao interprets Job’s confessional words through the cultural lens of smriti and shruti. Rao sees God’s arrival in the whirlwind, asking questions and pressing Job’s positions, as the Lord showing his servant—and us—the difference between smriti and shruti. Smriti is what we remember. It’s human memory and traditional understanding. It’s our Sunday School theology. Shruti goes beyond smriti. Shruti is divine revelation. It is the personal experience with God that transforms us.

Drawing to the end of the book of Job and the many smriti takeaways we will carry with us, bits of information, scraps of new perspective, what we need most of all is shruti. As followers of Jesus (who will experience pain and suffering), we need a divine encounter with God that transforms us more and more into His likeness (2 Corinthians 3.18). 

One place we can start is to recognize that the Lord answers our humble prayer. Through the entire book, we’ve heard Job crying out for his day in court with God. We’ve heard the voices of his friends, weighing him down with condemnation. In the whirlwind, we not only hear the Lord, but we see His presence. Centuries later, a group of disciples would gather in an upper room to join their voices in humble prayer, not knowing what was to come after, they obediently waited for the promise of God the Father. There, among men and women, young and old, gathered in humble prayer, the whirlwind of God’s presence swept into the room, and the disciples, empowered by the Spirit of God, were never the same (Acts 1.4; 2.1-4). 

Friend, what was true for Job and for Jesus’ disciples is true for you and me. Smriti got us here, but only shruti will guide us where we’re meant to go. So, the question is: are you ready?

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.

In the eye of the hurricane, swept up in the majesty of God, Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you,” (Job 42.5). That must be one of the most striking verses in the Bible. It confesses a heartfelt belief, something held, something heard; and confirms it to be true.

Naveen Rao interprets Job’s confessional words through the cultural lens of smriti and shruti. Rao sees God’s arrival in the whirlwind, asking questions and pressing Job’s positions, as the Lord showing his servant—and us—the difference between smriti and shruti. Smriti is what we remember. It’s human memory and traditional understanding. It’s our Sunday School theology. Shruti goes beyond smriti. Shruti is divine revelation. It is the personal experience with God that transforms us.

Drawing to the end of the book of Job and the many smriti takeaways we will carry with us, bits of information, scraps of new perspective, what we need most of all is shruti. As followers of Jesus (who will experience pain and suffering), we need a divine encounter with God that transforms us more and more into His likeness (2 Corinthians 3.18). 

One place we can start is to recognize that the Lord answers our humble prayer. Through the entire book, we’ve heard Job crying out for his day in court with God. We’ve heard the voices of his friends, weighing him down with condemnation. In the whirlwind, we not only hear the Lord, but we see His presence. Centuries later, a group of disciples would gather in an upper room to join their voices in humble prayer, not knowing what was to come after, they obediently waited for the promise of God the Father. There, among men and women, young and old, gathered in humble prayer, the whirlwind of God’s presence swept into the room, and the disciples, empowered by the Spirit of God, were never the same (Acts 1.4; 2.1-4). 

Friend, what was true for Job and for Jesus’ disciples is true for you and me. Smriti got us here, but only shruti will guide us where we’re meant to go. So, the question is: are you ready?

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.