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The StoryFormed Way
StoryFormed: Beginnings and Separation 02/14/10
Genesis 1-3
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Mark Coski
What do we learn about God, humanity, and ourselves as we read Genesis 1-3? First, we learn about God. He is the Creator of all that is, who fashioned the universes with simple but powerful words. As Creator, he is also the rightful King of Creation. Everything that is made belongs to him and finds its fulfillment in Him. Second, we learn about humanity. God creates humanity in his image - they are to find their life, identity, and source of significance in relationship to Him alone. They reflect him. Humanity is made in community, not as single isolated human beings, but as a family. This family is given the task of cultivating the earth God has made, bringing forth a God honoring culture in every sphere of life. Third, we learn the sad story of the brokenness of the world. As we hear the Story of Adam and Eve spurning their loving Creator in pursuit of the self-sufficiency, we learn the source of all the brokenness in the world. We learn that sin is not so much breaking laws as it is mistrusting God’s good intentions. They’d learn that running from God is humanity’s natural bent, and they’d see their own participation in that rebellion. Thousands of years later, in another garden, another man would experience the temptation to mistrust God’s heart. Jesus Christ would see the cross, understand the full implications of taking the Sin of the World upon his shoulders, and willingly step forward in obedience to his Father. To Adam God had said, “Obey me and live;” to Jesus God says, “Obey me and you will die.” And in the obedience of Jesus, God opens the way back into the Garden of Eden, back into fellowship with God. The Bible’s main theme is “God saves sinners.”
StoryFormed: A People Of God 02/21/10
Genesis 6:5-15:21
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Scott Cooley
Out of this world gone mad, God calls a man named Abram. Abram his not a righteous man by any means, but God graciously chooses him, commands him to leave his land, and gives him a wonderful promise: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” God is making a promise that he will restore all that was lost in Eden through this one man and his family. God is not hoping Abram will do something amazing and heal the world. Rather, God is telling Abram that He will heal the world through him, by blessing Abram and his family, growing them into a huge nation, and bringing his blessing back to all the nations through them.
StoryFormed: Exodus and the Law 02/28/10
Exodus 1:1-4:1
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Marty Goss
We pick up the Story this week with God’s people multiplying rapidly in Egypt. They are well on their way to becoming the “nation” that God promised. Unfortunately, their hosts, the Egyptians, also see them multiplying, and are afraid that Israel might easily rise up and conquer them. So they force them into hard labor, and begin to kill all males born to Israelite women. Under the pres- sure of slavery, God’s people cry out to him, not realizing that he has already set a rescue plan in motion in the birth and rise of Moses.
Judges and Kings 03/07/10
2 Samuel 7
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Scott Cooley
The sad story of Israel’s failure to hold faithfully to God sets up a new devel- opment in the Story. The repeated refrain of the book of Judges is, “There was no King in Israel in those days; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Israel begins to long for someone who can keep her faithful to God, unite her as a nation, and make her useful to God again. The first King, Saul, though hu- manly speaking a perfect choice, proves to be just as unfaithful as Israel ever was. So God chooses a humble shepherd, a boy named David, and proceeds to raise him into the kind of King Israel needs. David is far from perfect - he commits adultery and murders the woman’s husband - but he understands that God is after the heart, not just the outward actions. David truly loves God and wants to live dependently on him. Can David be longed-for King?
Prophets 03/21/10
Hosea 1:1
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Matthew Green
We pick the story up this week in the midst of this slide toward total rebellion against God - again. Israel’s kings, rather than mediating between God and his people and keeping his people faithful to Him in grateful worship and missional obedience, lead the charge toward idolatry, unrighteousness, and using the nations for Israel’s own gain! The nation does almost the exact opposite of what God created them to do. God’s response is to send prophets.
Life and Mission of Jesus 03/28/10
Luke 4:1-21
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: John Holtz
Jeremiah 31 predicts that God will come to his people, his creation, and he will finally and fully deal with the heart issue - he will fully remove sin, and he will give them new hearts that love Him and want to obey him. And he will recreate the world like Eden, where everyone knows him and enjoys him forever. In the life and ministry of Jesus, we begin to see the threads of the Old Testament story break into reality.
Death and Resurrrection 04/04/10
Luke 24:13-35
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Steve Hart
In Luke 24, Dr. Luke recounts the story of a couple of bewildered disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus a few days after Jesus’ crucifixion. As they walked, they discussed the recent events, trying to put it all together in a way that made sense. As they talked, they were suddenly joined by a stranger. Luke tells us it was Jesus, but the two disciples don’t recognize him. As they recount the events to this stranger, it is clear they could make no sense of Jesus’ death: “But we had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.” The death of Jesus had thoroughly dashed their hopes. Adding to their sorrow was a confusing piece of the puzzle: some of the women of their group went to the tomb and found it empty and the body gone. At this point the stranger speaks up: “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” N.T. Wright says it well: “The response of the stranger is to tell the Story - differently.” Jesus opens the Scriptures and takes these two disciples on a whirlwind tour of the Story, from Genesis to the Prophets, showing the necessity of the Messiah’s death and resurrection. Jesus had to die and then enter into his glory. The death of Jesus was no hope-dashing conspiracy; it was the climax of the Story! The Messiah, as the new Adam and the Servant of Israel, had to take on the full weight of creation’s rebellion. It was the only way God could destroy sin without destroying the people that he loved. “On the cross he drew the full force not only of that despoiling [of creation], but of his own proper, judicial, punitive rejection of it, on to himself. Read in this way, the multiple strands of idolatry, sin, evil, wickedness, oppression, violence, judgment and all the rest throughout the Old Testament come rushing together and do their worst to Je- sus. He takes their full force, and does so because that was God's purpose all along.” All along, this has been God’s purpose: to destroy sin and rescue his creation by putting himself in our place and taking the punishment we deserve.
The Mission and Power 04/11/10
Acts 1:8-14
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Scott Cooley
The rest of the book of Acts traces the powerful advancement of the kingdom through Jesus' disciples. As they preached, shared their lives together, served the needy, and performed miracles in the power of the Spirit, the church grew rapidly. The Story was told again and again, and many people repented of sin, believed in the Lord Jesus, and were baptized into the new people of God. That which God had promised to Abraham was being fulfilled now by this new, gospel-formed people - the church! Did these disciples have any idea what they signed up for?!
The Church 04/18/10
1 Peter 2:9
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Steve Hart
Above all, what we see in the early church - both in the book of Acts and in the New Testament letters - is that the church is a Rescued People. Each and every person who is a part of this new community called the Church is a part not because of their commitment to God, their desire to be obedient, or their eagerness to serve in ministry. All of these are good things, but they do not make someone a Christian, do not make someone a part of God’s rescued people. If you are a Christian, you are so because God has rescued you from sin, guilt, shame, and rebellion in Jesus Christ.
Life in the End 04/25/10
Revelation 21:1-8
Series: The StoryFormed Way
Pastor: Mark Coski
The entire Old Testament points forward to the coming of Jesus Christ and God’s great rescue mission. The first four books of the New Testament tell the story of Jesus, intermixed with theological reflection and commentary on how the early disciples of Jesus came to understand what it all meant. The rest of the New Testament essentially looks back on the person and work of Jesus, drawing out the implications of his Rescue for the people he rescued! But one book in the New Testament does something different. Rather than look back at Jesus incarnation, his death, and his resurrection, the book of Revelation is a forward looking account of the end of the Story. One of Jesus’ closest friends, John, has a vision in which he sees into the heavenly realm, and is enabled to see how the Story turns out in the end. We know by looking at the cross and resurrection that the victory has been won: sin has been forgiven and done away with, and people can be reconciled to God right now. But the book of Revelation reminds us that God’s rescue of a people is going somewhere, it has a purpose, a final end where the Story finds resolution. This week we look at the end of the Story.