Contribution understands that everybody has a role, and there is room for us here. We know that the gifts we are given matter to the body of Christ, and we so seek to discover where we each fit.
We honor the contributions of others, knowing that God perfectly crafted each one of us, and only together are we truly the church.
series: Red Letter City
title: The Law
teacher: Jacob Bender
date: April 24, 2016
scriptures: Matthew 5:17-20, Luke 24, John 16, Matthew 11:29, Romans 7:7, Romans 7:13, Galatians 5:4, Matthew 23, Acts 15, John 1:14, John 19
Is it coincidence that Jesus first gave us the beatitudes, speaking a blessing over the broken people who were there with him, before telling them that they were salt and light?
I am not sure, but I don’t really get an image of Jesus going into his sermons with an outline. I think its probable that everything he said was incredibly timely and that he discerned what it was the the people needed to hear next, and I think that its very likely that he said what he said here about the law, because he realized that these people were beginning to go somewhere in their minds.
again, you have to consider the crowd. Just take the disciples… the bible says that they were often slow to understand. they were uneducated fishermen… beyond the uneducated fishermen were a group of outcasts who had just been told that they are blessed… that they are salt and that they are light.
Could it be that these things were already getting to their heads?
Jesus has brought a brand new, upside down Kingdom, and with it he has promised the marginalized crowd on the outskirts of the mountain and his ragamuffin group of disciples, that they were ultimately going to be the image bearers of hope.
Could it be that these people began to think in their minds, that everything he was teaching meant he was replacing the law with himself… and that in the new role he had just given them, of being salt and light, meant that they no longer needed to follow the law, but instead needed follow this new teaching.
I am sure they were thinking, okay, awesome, glad we got that out of the way. Now lets go back to our beards that we can’t cut, our side burns we can’t trim, the foods we can’t mix together, and the 613 laws that we have spent our whole lives trying to keep even though we know that it is impossible for anybody to ever keep them all perfectly… Why would we have thought that he came to do away with those laws? Silly us.
He only is claiming that he will fulfill them.
"oh... much better... and to think I actually thought he was saying........"
and then its likely they had another moment… one of those “Wait a second!” moments.
The law was not something that the Hebrew people thought needed to be fulfilled. They thought the law was a book of rules that they were bound too. They didn’t understand that they all pointed, as did the rest of the bible, to the coming Messiah. and so for him to come here and say, “I am going to fulfill the law” they would have been totally, utterly, shocked.
but not only the law… but the prophets as well! For those of you who have been joining us at Equip as we have been studying each beatitude in depth, we have been talking a lot about Luke chapter 4, when Jesus said that he had fulfilled the first half of what the Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 61… and how the crowd was shocked by that statement.
But here, Jesus is making, without a doubt, the boldest statement anybody could ever had made in that culture.
Series: Realities
Title: Thou Shall Covet
Teacher: Jacob Bender
Date: November 8, 2015
scriptures: Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19:10, Psalm 68:16, Proverbs 5:18, Philippians 4:11-14, Romans 7, Hebrews 12:2
I have heard it put this way, it is an inward grasping for something… something that is not yours... It means you don’t have something, and you yearn for it. Maybe we think we are nothing without it. We hear that word, and right away we default to the Ten Commandments. Right away, we think, this is a bad word. This is something that we must not do. Ever. Under any circumstances. I think that the word we typically associate to it is the word jealousy. Or the word envy… and where the command as a whole may be getting at that, those things are not the same as coveting, in the way it was written on the tablets. Not at all.
I covet my children.
Honestly, you should covet (chamad) your friends. Your friends carry a lot of weight. They are very valuable. You should delight in the fact that you have them. You should delight in your relationships. They are gifts.
To say you chamad something does NOT mean you are jealous of it, it means that you delight IN IT.
What you should not do, is covet your friends house.
God has given you specific things in this life that are tailor made just for you.
For your life.
For your family.
and to not delight in those things would be a slap in the face to the God who gave them to you.
You see, the problem lies in when you covet what is not yours. The command does not say Thou shall not covet.
series: Realities
title: The First with a Promise
teacher: Jacob Bender
date: October 25, 2015
scriptures: Ephesians 6:1-3, Exodus 20, Numbers 13:30, Numbers 14:6-9, Numbers 14:10, Numbers 14:12, Numbers 14:20-24, Proverbs 18:21, Matthew 7:2, Matthew 16:19, 1 Peter 3:7, Mark 6:1-6,
I don’t have to agree with someone to bless them. I don’t have to agree with someone to honor them. And if I do honor them even when maybe they don’t seem very worthy of that honor, then there is a blessing for me which we will talk about later.
But the natural instinct of man is not to bless. It is to curse. Now let me explain, because you probably would say “I would never curse someone!”
All of us in this place have been cursed. We have been belittled. We have been made to feel like we have no value. And I don’t know about you, but when someone makes me feel that way, I shut down. I have a very hard time pulling myself back together and refocusing. It hurts really bad.
On the contrary, the Hebrew word for blessing (Ba-rak) means something very interesting… you would think it would be the opposite of cursing, but its not. Blessing, in Hebrew, means “to bend the knee.”
Think about it. When a King walks into a room, what do people do? They get on their knees. Why? Because they want to show honor, because that person holds a position of great authority. Showing honor blesses people.
We need to set our social default mode to blessing.
Its the best way to honor one another no matter what the circumstance.
But what is honor?
The most simple way to put it is that it is how you treat people. When you are around them, when you are not. Thats the simple way to put it. But there is so much more to it than that.
Honor is the Hebrew word “kavod” (ka-vode) and it means “heavy or weighty.”
It means to place weight on something. It is literally the opposite of cursing. Cursing is to make light, honor is to give weight.
Now, as you probably know, in the time of the Old Testament, value was based on weight. If you were measuring how much money you had, it would be determined by the weight of the gold in your possession, not the number of pieces, so what it is talking about is “giving something value.”
That is why people bow before the King. Because his job carries weight.
We would have no problem honoring a King, or honoring someone who has already accomplished what we desire to accomplish.
Now, we have been looking at the word picture for each number in the ten commandments, and we will get to that in a minute, but first… there is also a word picture for the word “honor” itself, you have possibly heard this phrase but this is where it comes from… for the Hebrew word “kavod” – If you take away the vowels (because there are no vowels in Hebrew, we add them so that we can say them in English) the letters are K-V-D
If you look at your life, and you look at the people you let in and the people you keep out, does it not always come back to the ones who honor you?
The ones who make you feel like you matter?
Like your words matter? Like your opinion matters?
That is a natural instinct in us, we are drawn to honor, and that is why.
Series: Realities
Title: giving & taking
Teacher: Jacob Bender
Date: October 4, 2015
scriptures: Mark 12:29, Malachi 3:6-15, Psalm 119:36, Matthew 7:21-23, Matthew 25:32, Matthew 25:41-46, Ephesians 4:28, Luke 12, Acts 5:1-11, 2 Samuel 13
The word “vain” is the Hebrew word “shav’” and it means “to not be real.”
Most people think that the third commandment is telling us to not swear. Or to not say “God – blank”
But the third commandment literally says “You must not take the name of the Lord in unreality.”
You use his name in a way that makes it not real.
There is something about the name of God, is there not?
And man, there is something about the name of Jesus.
Something powerful. Something everlasting. Something that just makes you feel, in the darkest hour of your darkest day, like there is light. When it feels like everyone everywhere has abandoned you… that Someone still has your back. Someone still cares. God’s name can heal, it can redeem, it can provide, it can bring peace.
It is incredibly powerful.
But because of its incredible power, it also can be incredibly manipulated. If that wasn’t the case, then it would not be in the ten commandments.
It is a name that carries weight. A lot of weight.
But throughout history, various religions and religious leaders have misrepresented that name and have used it for selfish things. Wars have been started in the name of God. People have been killed. People have been robbed. People have been hurt. All, in forms of manipulation by people taking the Lords name in vain.
If you use the name of the Lord for selfish reasons, you are stealing. You are taking his name, and manipulating it for your purposes. You are not associating it to the power that it has, and that is why so many will be crushed by it.
series: Realities
title: idols & adultery
teacher: Jacob Bender
date: September 27, 2015
scriptures: Exodus 20, Judges 2:1-5, Psalm 37:4, Judges 2:11-13, Jeremiah 5:7, Jeremiah 3:8, Exodus 32, Exodus 34, John 8:1-11, Isaiah 45:2, 2 Corinthians 5:17
Exodus 34:14 says this: “(For you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),”
Now, when the Ten Commandments were given the first time, the second command said this same thing… I am a jealous God. But the second time it is given, it actually says “the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
That seemed like grounds for digging a little deeper.
The word Jealous, is a peculiar name for God. It is the Hebrew word qanna’ (can-ah), it is a word that only speaks of God and is not used in human terms, and it means that “God doesn’t bear any rivals” another translation puts the verse this way: “For you must worship no other gods, but only Jehovah, for he is a God who claims absolute loyalty and exclusive devotion.” (The Living Bible)
Its like in a marriage. If my wife says, “Hey, I am going out with Steve today.” Heck no, you aren’t going out with Steve today. Who is Steve? It doesn’t even matter. You aren’t going to be spending time with other dudes. She could say to me, “we are just friends, and you hate going shopping and Steve is cool with it.”
Now, She would never do that, but that would be the automatic response from me if it ever came up. I wouldn’t even need a moment to think about it. The answer is no. I am jealous for her… but it is not because of this Steve guy, or anybody else. It is all because of Dawn.
I am jealous for her, no matter what she is doing. Because I do not bear competitions. I do not bear rivals. I already won this one, and nobody else even has a chance.
It is obvious that most people would never deal with a marriage to a spouse who was constantly unfaithful, yet that is exactly what God continuously went through over and over and over again with the Hebrew people.
The word adultery, in Hebrew as it is used in Exodus 20:14 is the word na’aph (nah apth) and it means “to break wedlock.” or the obvious translation is what it is translated as, simply, “to commit adultery.”
But what is fascinating is that it is the same Hebrew word used in Jeremiah 3:8 and Jeremiah 5:7 when it says that Israel “committed adultery” against God by their idol worship.
And I also thought that this was interesting:
Most people (who have put any thought into it) assume that the English word adultery comes from the word adult. Like, “maybe this is a bad thing, but we are adults, so if it is consensual…”
But it actually comes from the Latin word adulterare, which means “to alter, or corrupt.”
This is not an “adult” thing to do, in fact it is incredibly immature. You are altering the design that God created… You are corrupting what was supposed to be. You are corrupting what God created it to be.
Adultery is an incredibly hard top to talk about. Its a hard topic to study, or to even convince yourself that you need to study it, but God put it in the Ten Commandments for a reason… because this hits home, in one way or another, for just about everyone. And God himself is not excluded from that.
Title: gods & murder
Series: Realities
Teacher: Jacob Bender
Date: September 20, 2015
scriptures: Mark 12:28-34, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Psalm 82:4, Ezekiel 33:6, Luke 22:36, John 18:10-11, Matthew 5:22, James 1:22, Matthew 3:16, John 10:30, Genesis 2:24, John 17:6, John 17:21, Colossians 1:15-17, Luke 23:21, 1 Peter 2:24, Hebrew 12:3,
Observing Jews wake up every single morning, and they quote this verse.
“Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” They say it at everything. Of course, they aren’t quoting Jesus, they are quoting the verse that Jesus is quoting, which is Deuteronomy 6:4-5.
Jesus answered the scribes question here in Mark, by quoting an old testament passage known as the SHEMA.
They ask him, “What is the most important thing?”
and he quotes Deuteronomy. He says, what is most important? Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ But Jesus adds the second part: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
and the scribe responds to Jesus, and says, “you are right. He is one. God is one. And there is no-one else besides him. You know the scriptures. We can move on now.
It seems this would sum it up. If we could just grasp this concept fully, with all of our hearts, it would solve just about all of our problems. God comes first. People come second, and you are included in the second, but you are not above it. You treat people just like you would treat yourself… If you believed this, and we lived this, we wouldn’t need the Ten Commandments. We would already be doing them.
But the problem is that we don’t grasp this. And that is why we are still hurting each other. We are still talking bad about each other, we are still gossiping and slandering, and belittling each other.
We can’t even get our mind around “love your neighbor as yourself” – and if you can’t love your neighbor as yourself, could you possibly love God with all of your heart?
Moses wrote the SHEMA in Deuteronomy six…. its the chapter right after he gives us the Ten Commandments… Its almost like he was doing the same thing that Jesus does… he is saying, “Here are Ten words to live by.” But if ten is too many, here is one.
If we understand the principles behind the SHEMA, we would automatically do the Ten Commandments.
We hope you will join as we explore the SHEMA, and why that is the way that he responded the the scribe.
Date: September 6, 2015
Series: The Fruit of the Spirit
Title: Self Control
Teacher: Jacob Bender
scriptures: Proverbs 25:28, 1 Corinthians 9:25, Joshua 6, Nehemiah 1:4, John 14:26, Hebrew 4:14, Romans 7:19, 1 Peter 5:8, Nehemiah 2:17, Proverbs 16:32, Luke 4:1-15, 1 Kings 3:1-15, John 1:1, John 1:4, Luke 23:34, Luke 23:37, Psalm 91:11-12, Luke 3:21-22, John 14:16, 2 Corinthians 3:17
Perhaps a better, more applicable way to say it is like this, that your “self” does not have lordship over you.
You are not controlled by the quick impulses, the fleshly desires, or even the first instincts.
Jesus had to demonstrate incredible self control when he was being tempted by the Devil, and he is our ultimate example of “Self Control” as well as every other fruit.
Date: July 26, 2015
Series: The Fruit of the Spirit
Title: Peace
Teacher: Jacob Bender
scriptures: Philippians 4:6, 1 Corinthians 12:4, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, Isaiah 53:5, Psalm 112, Psalm 51:10-12, Proverbs 12:25, Proverbs 10:28, John 16:33, Hebrews 10:5-7, Ephesians 6:12-15, Hebrews 12:2
note: There was an audio issue during the first ten minutes of this sermon. This does not continue through the entire message.
DATE May 17, 2015
TEACHER: Jacob Bender
SERIES: Intentions
TITLE: The Sinful Heart
SCRIPTURES: Proverbs 20:6, Matthew 6, Romans 2:16, Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5, Matthew 5:27-30, Matthew 5:17, Luke 13:10-17, Philippians 4:8, James 1:14-15, Matthew 5:21-22, Ephesians 4:26-27, Hebrews 12:15, Isaiah 53:5, Hebrews 12:2, Isaiah 42:3, 1 John 1:9, James 5:16,
Most people believe that when Jesus came to earth, he made things easier for us. He came and died for us and saved us by grace, and now we don’t have to worry about the letter of law or anything like that. He came that we may be free. and he did.
But a closer examination of the sermon on the mount will reveal to you that in a lot of ways he actually made it harder, before making it easier. He made it easier because he took the weight for us… because he knows that there is no way to live up to the law… but he did not come to abolish the law, but to sustain by properly interpreting the law (Matt. 5:17)
And then he goes on to start saying things like, “you have heard it be said not to murder… BUT I SAY…” and suddenly he takes it further beyond the letter of the law and addresses the Spirit of the law… what is going on in your heart?
Matt: 5:21-2 – you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder… but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment…
Matt: 5:27-28 – You have heard it said, “you shall not commit adultery… but I SAY that everyone who even looks at a woman with lustful INTENT has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The key word is intent. What is going on inside your heart? Do you have secrets? Do you have a part of your life that you don’t want anybody else to see? Jesus understood that transgression (outward actions) ALWAYS begins with iniquity (inward motivations)
And with this thought, we are embarking on our intentions series. Looking deep into the depths of our hearts, to work out the things that we know are in there… the things that we don’t even realize are in there… the things that we know are in there but don’t want anybody else to know are in there, and even the things that we know are not in there but want other people to think are in there.
I want to invite you to join us over these fives weeks that we really begin to work out ourselves, before we look at what is next for our church.
Because “you have to have intent, before you can have content.” (Ravi Zacharius)
