Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships.
Whether you are the one doing the breaking up, you are the one who is being broken up with, or you are somehow around in the crazy war zone of a breakup— ending a relationship causes pain and confusion. But the reality is that the Bible gives us incredible resources to deal with the emotional and relational fallout from breakups. It is possible to break up well, and even to break up in love. This week we look at Romans 12 and Luke 6 to apply the Christian ethic of enemy love to our relational conflicts.
(Thanks to Simon Stokes for his assistance with this message)
LINKS:
QUOTES:
“Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.”― Tim Keller
“Think of how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships… Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys ... The fact is… anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.” – Rebecca Pippert
“All you are is mean/And a liar, and pathetic/And alone in life, and mean/And mean, and mean/ and mean.” - Taylor Swift
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships. In both this week and last week's talks we looked at our modern practice of dating, and seek to find some Biblical wisdom that will us give help and hope.
(*this message contains material from several wise friends: Simon Stokes, Matt Howell and Mac Holt. It also contains an amazing poem by Wendell Berry called "Over the Edge." These wise men deserve any and all credit for the clear illustrations and insightful observations herein.)
Quotes:
“Most people, when they are looking for a spouse, are looking for a finished statue when they should be looking for a wonderful block of marble. Not so you can create the kind of person you want, but rather because you see what kind of person Jesus is making.”- Kathy Keller
“When we are in love with someone we often appear to attend to [them] when in fact we are doing the very opposite. Instead of being attentive we are acquisitive. We use the other for our own glorification, we bask in the presence of our beloved because we enjoy the image of ourselves that is reflected back . . . This is the opposite of Christian love . ”-- Lauren Winner
"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.
Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?
There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie." -- Jonathan Franzen
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.”— C.S. Lewis
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships. In both this week and next week's talks we look at our modern practice of dating, and seek to find some Biblical wisdom that will us give help and hope.
(*this message contains material from several wise friends: Simon Stokes, Ethan Brown, Stewart Swain and Mac Holt. They deserve any and all credit for the clear illustrations and insightful observations herein.)
Quotes:
“I think … the way we find love is treating people like objects in a marketplace and then we're expected to commit to someone and handle that right … think it's kind of the system is set up against young people pursuing meaningful commitment because we're just not trained to do it. There's all this kind of age-old advice that you need to have experience and try out different people, but what if that just adds to your mindset of … treating people like they're replaceable and upgradable? Then when you do find someone meaningful you don't know how to commit to them properly." — Freya India
“I just want to be friends, plus a little extra. Also I love you.”- Dwight Schrute to Angela.
Further Reading on Modern Dating:
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're talking about how the gospel sets us free to live wisely and beautifully in God’s world, redeeming all of our relationships. In this week’s sermon, we talk about the foundation of all relationships— friendship.
*Much of this material was drawn from the thoughts and writings of Tim Keller, Rebecca McLaughlin, Justin Early, C.S. Lewis and Matt Smethurst on this subject. I am grateful for their hard work. For more on friendship, I especially recommend Rebecca McLaughlin’s No Greater Love and Justin Early’s book Made for People.
Quotes:
“If we had to take all eighty-four years of [research] and boil it down to a single principle for living,... it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”- The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
“We were made by God for more than God. Our fullest spirituality is only possible with others. Our intended existence only works in a community. Our highest call is only realized when we pursue it alongside others. In other words, you need friends to be who God made you to be. Friends are the anatomy of your soul. They are at the core of your longings. This is why you feel the way you do.— Justin Whitmel Early
“In modern Western culture, we are primed to think of friendship as a nice-to-have, while sexual and romantic love and parent-child love are vital to our thriving. But Jesus flips this script. Instead of telling His disciples that they must get married and have children, Jesus tells His followers that they must love each other, even to the point of death. When Jesus said there was no greater love than laying down one's life for one's friends, He wasn't being hyperbolic or naive. Instead, He was inscribing the good news of His unfathomable love for us onto Christian friendship with indelible ink.” -Rebecca McLaughlin
“Erotic attraction and family relationships push themselves on you in various ways, but friendship will not. It must be carefully, intentionally cultivated through face-to-face time spent together. And in a busy culture like ours, it is one thing that is often squeezed out.” - Tim Keller
“People who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends ... Friendship must be about something … Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travelers.” -C.S. Lewis
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're talking about how the gospel sets us free to live wisely and beautifully in God’s world, redeeming all of our relationships.
In this week’s message, we examine our relationship to technology. Do digital tools and apps help or harm our ability to relate to each other? How are they forming and de-forming us? And what do we need to remember in order to learn to relate wisely in this digital world? We look at Proverbs 4 and Jesus’s teaching on the Great Commandment in Mark 12 to remind us that even though we are prone to distraction and deception, we are deeply loved by the God who made us. And resting fully in that love sets us free to love others wisely.
Quotes:
“Christian wisdom is about living a life that responds correctly to reality.”-- Samuel D. James, Digital Liturgies
“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” – Andy Crouch, author of The Life You're Looking For
“Most of the time when we talk about social media being bad for us we mean for our mental health. These platforms make us anxious, depressed, and insecure, and for many reasons: the constant social comparison; the superficiality and inauthenticity of it all; being ranked and rated by strangers. All this seems to make us miserable. But I don’t just think it makes us miserable .... over time I’m becoming convinced that our most pressing concern isn’t that social media makes us feel worse about ourselves. It’s that social media makes us worse people.” - Freya India, GIRLS
*Thanks to Samuel D. James, Andy Crouch, Freya India, Jonathan Haidt, Alan Noble, and Jean Twenge for their writing on this topic. If you’re curious to learn more, check them out!
Links:
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships.
This week we are looking at what the Bible says about our physical bodies. Modern people (even many Christians) tend to think the important, valuable part of us is tucked away and hidden on the inside, and our physical selves are just disposable and unimportant. That our bodies don't say anything important about who we really are. But the Bible says, no– every part of you is valuable to God. Every part of you is important to him. Body and soul. And He has a good plan for all of you-- body and soul.
The gospel story is good news for our bodies. And seeing this good news, seeing how valuable our body is to God, transforms our relationship with our body from one of pain and shame to love and hope.
*Correction: in the sermon I misquote a statistic about people reporting unhappiness with their bodies after using Instagram. I said it was 70% of women and 48% of men. The accurate statistic was 60% of women and 48% of men, and it was taken from this article on the After Babel Substack."-- Sam
QUOTES:
“In the Bible, our body is not an accessory to who we are; it is part of who we are. We can't properly understand who we are apart from our body. Your body is not other than you. It is not just a receptacle for you. It is you. In the Bible it's not just that you have a body; you are a body.- Sam Allberry
“Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body-which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty and our energy!”— CS Lewis
"I haven't been cheated out of being a complete person—I'm just going through a forty-year delay, and God is with me even through that. Being 'glorified'—I know the meaning of that now. It's the time, after my death here, when I'll be on my feet dancing. "-Joni Erickson tada
“Christianity assigns the human body… much richer dignity and value. Humans do not need freedom from the body to discover their true authentic self. Rather we can celebrate our embodied existence as a good gift from God. Instead of escaping from the body, the goal is to live in harmony with it” -Nancy Pearcey
The message from the Sunday Morning Service at our 2025 Southeastern Fall Conference at Camp Greystone, where we looked at the Gospel in the Psalms. Our speaker for the weekend was Rev. Thomas Kuhn, Assistant Pastor at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC. Here's his final message, on Psalm 87.
Session 4 Discussion Questions - Psalm 87:
1. Think of a place where you are sure you belong. What things can you point to that assure you that you belong there?
2. Think of a time when you entered a situation in which you weren’t sure you belonged. How did that uncertainty affect the way you behaved?
3. The church is a “divine creation.” How does this change our view of what sort of person belongs with God and his people?
4. If we were to truly believe that our community with one another consists “solely in what Christ has done to us” - how might that change the way we handle difference and conflict?
The message from Satuday night of the 2025 Southeastern Fall Conference at Camp Greystone, where we looked at the Gospel in the Psalms. Our speaker for the weekend was Rev. Thomas Kuhn, Assistant Pastor at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC.
Session 3 Discussion Questions - Psalm 38 :
1. What comes to mind when you hear the word “sin”? Are you comfortable with referring to yourself as a “sinner”? Why or why not?
2. How would you describe the emotions of this psalm? Do the emotions feel familiar to you or foreign to you?
3. Think about how you feel when you mess up in a way that you can’t explain away. How do you respond? Do you blame others, self-condemn, avoid it, or something else?
4. God lovingly draws near to us in our sin. How is that different from what you think you need in your sin or failure?
The message from the Saturday morning Large Group of the 2025 Southeastern Fall Conference at Camp Greystone. Our speaker for the weekend was Rev. Thomas Kuhn, Assistant Pastor at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC.
Session 2 Discussion Questions - Psalm 23:
1. To say “the Lord is my shepherd” implies “I am his sheep.” How does the image of being the Lord’s sheep comfort you? How does it challenge you?
2. Think about the past couple of weeks. Where do you feel that you most needed the shepherding guidance of God?
3. God is our provider, yet we often operate from a scarcity mindset. Where do you see this tendency in your life?
4. How might your life be different if you rested in the truth that, because of Jesus, God’s “never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love” is pursuing you at all times?
The message from Friday night of the 2025 Southeastern Fall Conference at Camp Greystone, where we looked at the Gospel in the Psalms. Our speaker for the weekend was Rev. Thomas Kuhn, Assistant Pastor at Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC. Here's his first message, on Psalm 13.
Session 1 Discussion Questions - Psalm 13:
1. How do you deal with sadness? Do you tend to express it, numb it, or avoid talking about it? Why?
2. Oftentimes our sadness is the result of a stifled “how long?”. Are there any areas in your life where you are avoiding crying out “how long”?
3. This Psalm invites us to name our sadness, cry out to God, and move forward in trust. Which of these three feels most natural for you? Which feels most difficult?
4. In Jesus we see God “scraped and torn.” How does knowing Jesus as the man of sorrows enable us to have hope in our sadness?
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships.
Tonight we look at how to grow in our relationship to God’s grace, by following him in his world. The message of the Bible is that God loves us where we are, but also loves us too much to leave us there. God rescues us into a new way of living, a good life– a life of discipleship. The good life comes not simply by living for God, but by living through God. The good life is a following life. The following life is described in Psalm 1. I want to explain what this Psalm is saying about how God intends us to grow as we walk with him.
QUOTES
“Now, once again, what God cares about is not exactly our actions. What he cares about is that we should be creatures of a certain kind or quality—the kind of creatures He intended us to be—creatures related to Himself in a certain way.” -- C. S. Lewis
“Sanctification-making someone holy—is the work which God does: to separate his people from what they were by nature in sin, and to transform them so that their lives reflect his own being and character... God is restoring in our lives the image which we were created to reflect.”— Sinclair Ferguson
“God is the only one who never changes— he’s always changing us.” -- Jen Wilkin
"Sanctification-making someone holy- is the work which God does: to separate his people from what they were by nature in sin, and to transform them so that their lives reflect his own being and character. This is why sanctification is so central to the New Testament's teaching. God is restoring in our lives the image which we were created to reflect.” — Sinclair Ferguson
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships.
Last week we looked at how to relate to God himself– by placing ourselves under his loving Word, to be taught by Him. Tonight we look at the next central part of relating to God– receiving and resting in his forgiveness.
In a world where unforgiveness, shaming, and revenge are the norm, we are often tempted to edit ourselves and hide the less presentable parts of our lives. Instead of this image management, the psalmist wants to point us to a better way to relate: the freedom and security that comes from resting in the forgiving Redeemer.
Psalm 130 reminds us that while we have a great need for forgiveness, we have an even greater forgiveness for our need!
QUOTES & LINKS:
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're going to talk about God sets us free to live wisely, beautifully in his world, redeeming all of our relationships.
To relate with wisdom, we need more than superficial Christian cliches, or advice from influencers and chatbots. We need solid answers. We need to hear from God himself. When we understand how to relate to his teaching in Scripture— that fundamental relationship of listening and learning begins to transforms every other relationship in our life.
This is the starting point. This is the beginning of wisdom. This is the beginning of living skillfully and beautifully. When God teaches— we listen and we learn, recognizing that his words are eternal, powerful, and personal.
"The great paradox of the Bible is that the commands of God make spacious places of our lives. They don’t limit our freedom so much as they make true freedom really possible.“— Jen Pollock Michel
“Whether anyone in the world is inspired by the Bible, the Bible is still inspired itself. It’s God’s Word to us. It’s God exhaling, God opening his most hallowed lips and speaking to us … Really, in its simplest form, we ought to come to the Word of God with the same sort of attitude with which we’d come to God himself. If God spoke to you, which he does in the Scriptures, if God opened his mouth to us, how would we approach him? Well, I think we would listen carefully. We would listen diligently. We would listen submissively. We would listen expectantly. And we’d listen with an aim to love and obey.”— Kevin DeYoung
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
Many of us struggle with decision paralysis—-we don’t want to move forward until we know exactly where we’re supposed to go. In relationships, in work, we fear setting out on a new stage of life. Or at least we want to make moving forward as risk-free and painless as possible. But what if the way you discover your calling is not by standing still, but by moving forward and letting God correct your course as you go? What if getting it wrong is part of the plan? What if success at the first try isn’t the plan? In this final chapter of John's gospel, Jesus sends his church out into the world with a commencement ceremony. John wants to reassure us that Jesus will continue to guide and direct his people as they live in this world, waiting for his return. In other words— Jesus has given the church a job to do as they reflect his heart to the world, and respond to his grace in the world.
QUOTES:
“When Jesus rose from the grave, it was a public declaration that nothing could stop God's reign from advancing on earth, not even death. Jesus is the resurrected king who brings God's mercy and majesty to a world marred by sin. Through the gospel, God not only draws people to himself, but he draws us into his kingdom mission. Jesus, after he ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Spirit to continue his work in and through the church as the community of the kingdom.”- Jeremy Treat
“A relationship with Jesus begins when, in his presence, we face up to all that grieves and contradicts God's holy will in our lives, whatever this may cost us…no matter how desperate our failure, or how deep-seated our shame, he can forgive and renew us and then use us in his service. Failure is never final with God. “- Bruce Milne
"You ask me what forgiveness means; it is the wonder of being trusted again by God in the place where I disgraced him”—Rita Snowden.
“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians--when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths. But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though very easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them. Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity--and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order” ― Sheldon Vanauken
“When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God’s glory.” — Timothy Keller
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
At the very beginning of the gospel of John we read, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it … The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” It's no accident that John reminds us in chapter 20 that Mary comes to the tomb early on Sunday morning, while it’s still dark. The new day of God's victory is here, but it doesn’t feel like daytime yet. The reality of the new day is not yet experienced and felt. In John 20, John is proclaiming a new reality– the fact that because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead… Jesus reigns over everything– he has conquered and is fully in control over creation in a way that we haven’t yet seen. But that fact of Jesus’s Lordship takes time to sink in– both for his followers and also for us. In this passage, John shows us how Jesus meets his disciples in their unbelief and calls them into deeper trust in him.
QUOTES:
“Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven …The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.” — N.T. Wright
“The resurrection introduces something radically new into the fabric of the universe and into our understanding of the possibilities and limit of our world, transforming the Christians way of inhabiting reality . . . The resurrection of Christ is not simply proof that there is life beyond death, nor again is it simply proof that the cross was effective and that all those who trust in Christ can have their sins forgiven. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first glimpse of the shafts of breaking dawn that will one day flood the sky with brilliant light in the new heavens and the new earth.” - Tim Keller
‘Grace is a provision for men who are so fallen that they cannot lift the axe of justice, so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures, so averse to God that they cannot turn to Him, so blind that they cannot see Him, so deaf that they cannot hear Him, and so dead that He Himself must open their graves and lift them into resurrection.’- G.S. Bishop
“In most cultural narratives, the problem is "out there" and we are the answer. In the story of Scripture, we are the problem and Jesus is the answer.” — Jeremy Treat
“The resurrection means not merely that Christians have a hope for the future but that they have a hope that comes from the future. The Bible’s startling message is that when Jesus rose, he brought the future kingdom of God into the present … In the resurrection we have the presence of the future. The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history now and is available— partially but substantially—now. When we unite with the risen Christ by faith, that future power that is potent enough to remake the universe comes into us.”— Tim Keller
“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.”― G. K. Chesterton
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
As we come to John 19, the crucifixion sounds like a description of Jesus’ deepest and most profound moment of humiliation. But for John, this moment of suffering is actually Jesus’s coronation. It is the public announcement of a new king, a new kingdom, and a new administration, coming into power.
John is trying to provoke a response– of trust and obedience to Jesus’ loving rule. To receive and rest in Jesus as king. And he gives us three images in this chapter that show us what kind of King Jesus is and how his kingly rule moves into this world. Jesus the King is a mirror, a sponge, and a fountain.
LINKS & QUOTES:
https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-shock-of-the-cross/
https://www.apu.edu/articles/the-science-of-the-crucifixion/
“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism … Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” — David Foster Wallace
“Christians are free to take or leave money, power, recognition, and status. How? These things at the top of the kingdom of this world don’t have to control them the same way anymore. When you understand what Jesus has done for you, it frees you. When you realize that you are made righteous by his grace and not by your achievement, and that you are loved in Jesus Christ, it changes the way you look at power, money, and status; they don’t control you anymore.” — Tim Keller
“Nothing would have been achieved if Jesus Christ had simply endured bodily death. It was necessary for him to feel the severity of God’s judgment, that he might step between and, by satisfying God’s wrath, somehow prevent it from falling upon us.” — John Calvin
“All of these verses highlight the fact that this is happening according to the scripture. Jesus is playing out many themes of the biblical text and fulfilling its prophecies. This is what ought to have taken place. Now it may seem that everything has gone wrong, but at this time when everything seems to be going wrong, we get this litany of fulfillments of scripture. This highlights that this is no accident. Step by step, what is happening in this chapter is fulfilling what God has declared in the past. Jesus is here carrying out the mission that was set for him. He's not rejecting or swerving from it, nor has he stumbled and fallen.”— Alastair Roberts
"The blood and water signified the two great benefits which all believers partake of through Christ— justification and sanctification. Blood stands for remission, water for regeneration; blood for atonement, water for purification. The two must always go together. Christ hath joined them together, and we must not think to put them asunder. They both flowed from the pierced side of our Redeemer.”— Matthew Henry
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
Why did Jesus have to die? Did he live and die and rise again just so he could be our "co-pilot?" In John's gospel we see that Jesus didn’t come to be our handyman, or our co-pilot. He came to rescue us from judgement and suffering beyond anything we can comprehend--from the cup of God's wrath. If we misunderstand what Jesus came to do, we will miss enjoying the deep security that he intends us to have. Or, even worse, we might miss the good news of the gospel message altogether. In this passage, we see two necessary truths about the good news of God's wrath-- Our sin is serious, but the Savior is generous.
“God’s wrath is God’s war of love against everything gratuitously hurtful. God’s love would not be love if it did not work to remove all that ungraciously hurts. The wrath of god … proves the love of God.” — Dale Bruner
“The doctrine of propitiation is precisely this: that God loved the objects of His wrath (the world) so much that He gave His own Son … that He by His blood should make provision for the removal of His wrath. It was Christ’s so to deal with the wrath that the loved would no longer be the objects of wrath, and love would achieve its aim of making the children of wrath the children of God’s good pleasure.”—John Murray
“God’s wrath is God’s war of love against everything gratuitously hurtful. God’s love would not be love if it did not work to remove all that ungraciously hurts. The wrath of god … proves the love of God.” — Dale Bruner
“Jesus fulfills and reveals the true nature of God’s anger. At the cross, God’s anger and God’s love meet together to rescue humans and provide them life on the other side of death … Instead of thinking, “I’m bad, and God is holy, so he has to kill me unless I believe in Jesus,” we look at it this way: If we continue in sin instead of accepting the gift of grace and eternal life offered freely to all through Jesus, God hands us over to the self-destructive path that ultimately ends in death. But our fate is something we ultimately choose ourselves.” - -Tim Mackie
The Good News of the Empty Cup
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/good-news-god-hates-sin/
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This week, we are hearing from a special guest speaker: Rev. Jay Denton from Downtown Pres Church Plant here in Wilmington!
QUOTES:
“No man can be said to be truly converted to Christ who has not bent his will to Christ. He may give intellectual assent to the claims of Christ and may have had emotional religious experiences; however, he is not truly converted until he has surrendered his will to Christ as Lord, Savior and Master.”- Billy Graham
“Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude."- Dallas Willard
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
What would you do if you only had 24 hours left on earth? When every minute counts, you wouldn’t waste time, you wouldn’t waste words. We would think that the way Jesus spends his time and his words during this period would show us what is most important to him. So its amazing to realize that, Approaching the most difficult 24 hours of his life, Jesus prays. The good news of this prayer is that the glorious life we long for, God has delivered to us in Jesus. It was prayed for, and paid for, 2000 years ago. And Jesus wants us to know how to enjoy it right now.
QUOTES & LINKS
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.”— Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
“Taking hold of the glory of the future transforms your sense of shame now. A settled sense of the security of the future soothes your fear of death now. A growing sense of identity as a citizen of heaven changes how you see yourself now. Truly taking in the love relationship we’re going to enjoy forever warms our hearts toward Christ now.” ― Nancy Guthrie
The biggest barriers to effective evangelism according to the prayer of Jesus are not so much outdated methods, or inadequate presentations of the gospel, as [they are] realities like gossip, insensitivity, jealousy, backbiting, "root of bitterness', failure to appreciate others, self-preoccupation, greed, selfishness and every other form of lovelessness. These are the squalid enemies of effective evangelism which render the gospel fruitless and send countless thousands into eternity without a Savior.” — Bruce Milne
Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus.
In John 16, we see why it is better to have the Spirit inside us than a physical Jesus beside us. Jesus tells the disciples that it is an “advantage” for him to go, because then the Father will send “the Helper." This Helper isn't just some assistant, but is the regenerating, sanctifying presence of God Himself! Jesus is assuring his disciples that this Helper, God the Holy Spirit, will continue the work that he has started in and through the Church.
“Every time we say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," we mean that we believe there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.”--J.B. Phillips
"He who supposes that Jesus Christ only lived and died and rose again in order to provide justification and forgiveness of sins for His people, has yet much to learn. Whether he knows it or not, he is dishonoring our blessed Lord, and making Him only a half Savior. The Lord Jesus has undertaken everything that His people’s souls require not only to deliver them from the guilt of their sins by His atoning death, but from the dominion of their sin, by placing in their hearts the Holy Spirit; not only to justify them, but also to sanctify them."- J.C. Ryle
“Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be inconceivable."-John Stott
