York Alliance Family of Churches Podcast

What does it mean to experience lasting peace in the midst of a broken world? The systems of the world are only able to produce temporary peace which will ultimately give way to difficulty and despair. The coming of Jesus brings us peace that isn't reliant on external circumstances, but on an internal presence. Jesus has come to be the Prince of our peace so that we can be people of peace.

The message of the angel to Mary represented the hope of Israel. However, that hope was not fulfilled as anyone expected. When faced with disappointment and even suffering, we are faced with the choice of either remaining in our pain or allowing Jesus to reframe our story around His story.

The coming of Jesus wasn’t so we would have a way out of the mess of this world. Rather, Jesus comes and meets us in the middle of the mess. When we encounter His love, we are changed to become people on mission, bringing his scandalous love to the mess of the world around us.

The Scriptures clearly played a central role in the life and ministry of Jesus. He didn't just view Scripture as a tool for teaching, an instrument to produce change, or a weapon for spiritual war.

Rather, the Scriptures were the way that Jesus interacted with God and with the world around Him. In the same way, if we are to interact with God and the world as Jesus did, we must be people who immerse ourselves in the Scriptures.

In a culture that repeatedly challenges authority,

how do we handle the subject of Biblical authority? As we wrestle with

our fear of authority, we must also wrestle with the claim that the Bible is authoritative, even though the majority of it is story. We are called to read the Scriptures as an act of trust in Jesus and his way of seeing reality.

We get frustrated when we approach the Bible as a guidebook, a rulebook, or a one-size-fits-all encyclopedia for life in the modern world. The reason for our frustration is that the Bible wasn't designed for that purpose; rather, it was given to us as a library designed for ongoing meditation. The ancient practice of Lectio Divina moves us much closer to the way the Bible was designed to be read.

We live in a story-shaped culture, and stories help us make sense of the big questions of life: Who are we? Why are we here? What’s wrong with the world? How do we fix it? The Bible presents a unified story that leads us to Jesus; but it’s also an alternative story that challenges the way we often see the world and challenges us to live in line with the true story of God’s world.”

Jesus didn't view what we call the Old Testament Scriptures as a historical narrative that had limited impact in either His day or in ours. Instead, He recognized the way the Hebrew Scriptures revealed Him as the Messiah and acted as a witness to Him. In the same way, we must read the entirety of the Bible through the lens of the gospel as we learn to see Jesus in every part of Scripture.

As we step into this practice series on the Scriptures, the first question facing us is what the Bible is and how we're supposed to read it. The Bible makes several profound statements about itself: That it is true, that it is written by humans, and that it is inspired. These truths help us to see that the right way to read is not literally but literarily. This posture allows us to read the Bible less as information and more in regards to spiritual formation.

As a recap to the two recent message series, “Building the People of God” and “YAC Vision,” we will take time today to hear God’s Word read over us, and to allow our souls to rest in the Scriptures that provided the setting for the Sunday sermons over the past several months.