Word Of Life Church Podcast

We are called to fight the good fight of faith. Last week in Part 1, Pastor Derek Vreeland described in detail the three primary enemies of our faith-secularism, individualism, and nationalism. This week, in Part 2, he continues by describing how the resurrection of Jesus delivers the final blow to these enemies. Our fight is with defeated enemies, which requires us to live a certain way, namely as sacred people, communal people, and intentionally Christian people.

The world did indeed change after that first Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul identifies baptism as the doorway into this new world, a world without condemnation, a world of peace, adoption, beauty, and love. In this new world we find our old selves being replaced by our new selves, new identities formed in the image of Christ. Baptism does not wash away our sins as much as it breaks the power of sin from us, enabling us to walk in newness of life free from the old world dominated by sin and death.

We are called to fight the good fight of faith and the enemies of our faith include secularism, individualism, and nationalism. In this message, Pastor Derek Vreeland spends time defining and illustrating what these enemies are like. Secularism is any attempt to do life without God. Individualism is the preoccupation with putting ourselves first. Nationalism is the love, devotion, and allegiance to your nation above you love, devotion, and allegiance to God. Being able to recognize these enemies is the first step in the fight against them.

Jesus told a Samaritan woman, "Salvation is from the Jews, but it is for the whole world." Although the Gospel began in Jerusalem, it must journey to Rome because in the world after Easter the nations are now called to surrender their sovereignty and confess their allegiance to Jesus Christ. Rome was the Capital of the Empire, and the Roman Empire stretched across the whole world. When the Gospel was delivered in Rome, it was a revolution! It changed the whole world! Taking the Gospel to Rome was not a private announcement to private individuals about how to go to heaven when you die. The Gospel was and is a public announcement to the whole world proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven has come and that God is now reigning over the nations through his Son Jesus Christ!

If you want to read the Bible right, you read from the perspective of the cross. If you want to get God right, you understand him as revealed in Christ. On Good Friday, where do we found Christ? He is stretched out upon a cross, dying, imploring his Father to forgive. God is not the one who demanded crucifixion. nor is he the one doing the crucifying. God is the one who was crucified! All of humanity, bound by sin and satan, killed Jesus. The crucifixion is not what God did, it is what God endured. He is The Crucified God.

Pastor Brian Zahnd has been teaching from the Gospel of Luke for nearly four months, as we examine the stories of Jesus. We have arrived at Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus' triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. Palm Sunday is confusing. It is a combination of both joy and sorrow, of celebration and of suffering. It contains Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but shadows the impending doom of Calvary. Should we celebrate on Palm Sunday or do we lament on Palm Sunday? The crowd cheering and praising Jesus as he entered into Jerusalem was right to celebrate, but they did it with a wrong understanding. This is a warning for every Jesus follower about: Getting Jesus Right... Getting Jesus Wrong.

Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus moves from table to table, meal to meal, announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God as radical hospitality. In the 19th chapter of Luke, Jesus is on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples have arrived in Jericho, just a day before they will arrive in Jerusalem and ride through the gates in what will become known as the Triumphal Entry. As Jesus made his way through the city of Jericho, the chief tax collector Zacchaeus made his way to see Jesus. Zacchaeus was rich and corrupt, as consummate moral outcast, who had been excluded from worship at the temple. He would be the last person you'd expect to find the Messiah with. But we must not be so quick to dismiss those who appear to be far from the Kingdom of God just because they don't presently participate in the accepted forms of religious life. What Zacchaeus has going for him is that he is intensely interested in finding out who Jesus really is. Discover the radical hospitality of Jesus towar

In our modern age, "Hell" has become a catch-all word. It includes everything from the grave to an afterlife-destination to Dante's Inferno to a minor swear word, and much inbetween. Many modern English translations of the Bible don't even use the word "hell." It is important to actually listen and hear what Jesus says about hell, rather than try to force him to fit your particular theological system. In the parable of "The Rich Man and Lazarus", Jesus reveals a little about Hell... and how to get there.

The greatest and most famous Jesus' parables is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is the gospel found inside the gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is a story of the Kingdom of God being announced and enacted. Jesus gave it to those who were angry about how he was ushering in the Kingdom of God. The actions of the father in the parable are the actions of Jesus in his ministry. In his table practice and in his parables Jesus is showing us what God is like. Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God, not to change the mind of God about humanity. Jesus does not save us from the God; Jesus reveals to us what God is like. Jesus and God always act in unity. Jesus unconditionally receives the sinner who comes to him, because this is what God is like!

We have all heard the famous parable of "The Good Samaritan". It has become so famous in our culture that it has unfortunately lost its meaning. Despite popular belief, the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan is not to be "a good Samaritan." Jesus crafted this parable to answer a question about eternal life and love of neighbor. Jesus was speaking to Jews, and Jews and Samaritans hated one another like poison! In his parable, Jesus reveals that it is not one of 'us' (the Jews) loving 'them', but rather, 'them' loving one of 'us'. He has turned the tables and asked a very subversive question: What do you do when your enemy acts in love and treats you like a neighbor? Who proved to be a neighbor to the Jewish victim? It was the enemy, the Samaritan, who showed the Jewish victim mercy. And Jesus us commands us to do the same, for to show mercy is to enact eternal life.

The Samaritans were a separate ethnic group from the Jews, with different theological views. These differences often translated into violence between the two groups. Most Jews would thus travel around Samaria instead of traveling through it. But on his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus journeyed right through the middle of it. During their travel, a Samaritan town refused him and his disciples hospitality because they were Jews. In response to this insult, the disciples James and John wanted to burn them up with the fire of God, and found scriptural evidence to support their argument. In their desire to burn the Samaritan 'them' with the fire of God, James and John cite the Bible to support their desire. This is exactly what Elijah did when the Samaritans opposed him. James and John (and the rest of the disciples) obviously think violence is an option, and they believe Jesus will ultimately turn to violence in order to usher in the Kingdom of God. But they are wrong! Jesus is not Elijah! Jesus' way of changing the

To follow Jesus is revolutionary. That's not hyperbole; it's the absolute truth. To live the Jesus way is the most revolutionary thing a person can do. To follow Jesus' practice radical love, forgiveness, hospitality, and humility, and to join God's alternative society that is formed around Jesus Christ is life-changing. It's revolutionary! in the 1970′s, the Jesus Revolution was a genuine move of the Spirit of God. It was a real revolution. It's strength was that it was a return to radical focus on Jesus. It's weakness was that it was largely separated from the church. When the Jesus Revolution finally did connect with the church, it was swallowed up by conventional evangelicalism and lost its radical edge. We are at the brink of another cultural Jesus Revolution. We can't settle for a tame, domesticated, conventional Christianity. We need to be a little bit rebellious, a little bit dangerous. We should dare to be a Jesus revolutionary!

We would prefer to think there is never any conflict between our family and our faith. But this is not always the case. Sometimes we find the family we're born into is in conflict with the kingdom we have been reborn into. Jesus himself experience this conflict. His family didn't really get what he was doing. They did believe that he could be the Messiah, they simply didn't think he could be the Messiah the way he was going about it. They didn't believe he could be Messiah and preach "love your enemies" at the same time. And although Jesus' family didn't immediately understand the gospel of his kingdom, they eventually understood. They were all present at Pentecost. His brother James became the first pastor. Jesus' love for his family never waned, but he also knew he had to subordinate his natural family to his kingdom vocation.

By far the most common way we're formed in faith is we receive it from our parents. There are Christian conversions from other religions and non-religious backgrounds, but these are more rare. Many of us are Christians because are parents were also Christians. We are all formed by tradition with choices made by parents, in our language, in our culture, etc. But we don't just give our kids a Bible and expect them to be Christian. They need the understanding and experience of Christian tradition!

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to speak the truth lovingly, to speak words that build up, to put away anger, wrath, and slander, and to forgive one another. How do we live this out in our homes particularly in the context of marriage? In this message, Pastor Derek Vreeland offers a helpful tool to empower couples to communicate in such a way that brings resolution to conflicts and forgiveness to torn relationships. Following these guidelines, couples can express the peace of God at home.

The greatest challenge that we face in passing on our Christian faith to our children and our grandchildren is the growing tide of secularism in America. Secularism is the idea that stemmed from the Enlightenment that God must be restricted to the private realm. But the private spirituality of the solitary, self-styled Christian will not withstand secularism. To live as a Christian in the 21st century West will require the organized faith community of the Church with its sacred traditions. The Enlightenment that introduced the modern age taught us to think individually. But the Biblical way of thinking is corporately and generationally. Christian tradition is how Christian faith is passed on from generation to generation. It is true that tradition must be kept alive by the Spirit. But rejection tradition wholesale leads to the evaporation of faith. This is why at Word of Life Church we are recovering and rehabilitating the word "tradition." Our grandchildren will not be Christians because of an emotional expe

In life, it's easy for us to assign labels to people. It's how we identify ourselves inside a group. But often, even without realizing it, we put label on other people in order to negate them. We reduce them to a category. We put labels on ourselves that we have to live up to (or down to). Once you adopt a "pressure group label" you have to live up to the expectations of the group. Self-adopting a pressure group label is pledging allegiance to group-think hostility. When we, as Christians, label people and view them as a category rather than a person, we misjudge them. Our self-righteousness can require us to categorically exclude a sinful person from our presence. When viewed as a person however, our righteousness compels us to receive and forgive sinners.

The degree to which the Sermon on the Mount has been ignored by Christians is scandalous. We want Jesus to die for us, but leave our world alone, especially if we are on top of the world. But Jesus has no intention of leaving our world alone- he fully intends to change it! What Jesus preached in his sermons and what Jesus did on his cross are one in the same! In the Sermon on the Mount and on the cross Jesus re-oriented the world from an axis of power enforced by violence to an axis of love expressed in forgiveness. To critique the enforcement of violence in our culture will draw the ire of many. And often, it's hard to be truly compelling about loving and forgiving our enemies when we don't have real and deadly enemies. But Martin Luther King, Jr DID have real, deadly enemies. But he taught, and practiced, the Jesus way of loving and forgiving your enemies. It was a message that would ultimately bring his death, but he changed the world!

Jesus is forming a movement of people who will join him in announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God. An important understanding about Jesus is the way in which he selects his followers. Jesus does not seem to be very concerned about our categories of "good people" and "bad people". Instead, he divides people into the proud and the humble. The shocking thing is who joins Jesus' new movement. It's not the insiders, but the outsiders. It's not the righteous, but sinners. The moment Simon self-identified as a sinner, he qualified to become a disciple. Jesus spent very little time condemning moral transgressions. The emphasis of Jesus' ministry was to be with people, to share a table with them. Teaching people how to encounter Jesus Christ and live in his presence will do far more to produce real transformation than trying to apply the law. Christianity is not a Bible study or a moral code, it's an encounter with Jesus Christ!

After Jesus completed his 40 days of prayer and fasting in the wilderness, he soon returned to his hometown of Nazareth. Initially, Jesus was well received by his own people. They were brimming with excitement and great anticipation that their hometown kid might really be the long foretold messiah. But Jesus quickly realizes that the people in his hometown really just want to see him do miracles. They want Jesus to be a spectacle and do tricks for them. Jesus also knows that it is virtually impossible to be a prophet in your hometown. The prophet always challenges the idea of "us vs. them". When the hometown crowd hears one of their own challenge the idea that God is not on their side, they quickly turn on him.