Feast and Follow with Knollwood

Sunday Night: I Believe in God the Father

Our continuing study on the Apostles' Creed, this evening focused on the section on God the Father. 

Sunday Night: Apostles' Creed Overview

We've added a Sunday time of study together going through the Apostles' Creed. In this introductory episode, we explore the Creed as a whole and define why we should study it.  

Brought Down

What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase, “God will be with you”? For many, I think, this is a phrase that has been heard so many times, it has lost its meaning. It has become part of the Christian language that we actually stopped thinking about a long time ago. What does it really mean for God to be with you? How does that make a difference to your life, particularly when things are going well? What difference might it make in other people’s lives that God is with you? We will explore these questions as we take a look at this chapter over the next two weeks. Today I hope that you will be convinced of our main point, that God’s presence in you impacts your world right where you are.

Veiled Sin

Genesis 38 doesn’t get nearly the respect and love it should. Many look at this chapter as an unnecessary and disturbing interruption to the story of Joesph, a generally positive story of redemption. Looking at the content of the story, it is easy to see why people think that. We all have some section of our lives we regret, and it would seem that we are looking at Judah’s season of regret here. Why dwell on the gross sins of one of the brothers when we could be focusing on the more positive portrait of Joseph? After all, this doesn’t describe most of our lives as good Presbyterians, so what is there even to learn from here?

 

But this is actually a critical chapter for the story of Genesis, our Christian lives generally, and even contributes to the overall story of Jesus.

 

Genesis 38 is critical to the book as a whole because Joseph is not the only character in this section of Genesis. Judah’s roles is arguably equally important. Rather than just focus on God’s redemption of Joseph’s circumstances, we are seeing in this chapter, the beginnings of God’s redemption of Judah’s character (Matthews). We can’t see how far God brings him if we don’t know where he started from, and this chapter shows us that sinful starting line. Hopefully, this will give you hope for what God can do in your life.

 

This chapter is critical because of what it has to say for your Christian life today. Because of the sexual misadventures aplenty we see here, we tend to focus on those and not look at all the foundational sins that actually lead to those moments. There are many “smaller” sins that are actually quite common to us all shot through this passage that we can learn a great deal from. Hopefully, this will make us more grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice for those sins after seeing them in their proper light.

 

Finally, this chapter is critical because of what it tells us about Jesus’ family.

 

We are going to tie all of this together under our two points, Little sins are big obstacles to family commitments, yet Jesus has died for the little sins, too.

 

 

Fatherly Failure and God's Mercy

We have come to the final turn in our story of Genesis. We’ve been on quite a journey. We have seen how God has been faithful to three generations of Abraham’s family, and now we turn the corner to see how the story of Genesis concludes. 

At first glance, it would seem that now we are going to look at the life of Joseph as the main character going forward, but that would be a mistake. For sure, Joseph is going to be featured prominently in the chapters to follow, but the story really is about three men, not one. By keeping that fact in mind, we are going to have a much better idea why God includes the details that He does in the upcoming chapters. 

Today, we are going to take an overview of the section ahead of us, and because it is Father’s Day, we are going to look at it through the lens of three fathers, Jacob, Judah, and Joseph. They are going to compare and contrast in general, and we will see deeper details as we much through in the coming weeks. We are going to look at two points today that while addressing fathers in particular are nonetheless applicable to everyone. Fathers have a deep impact on their children yet Our impact is not beyond God’s mercy and control.

Esau's Family

How do you think about your enemies? It can be a complex question. On the one hand we are to be kind to our enemies, bless those who curse you and all of that. But how do you get to that point? How are you able to bless your enemies, even if they come from your own family? This passage doesn’t directly answer that question, but the rest of the story that this chapter sets up, does.

 

We will look at two points today: Your enemies are under God’s control and Your enemies can be made family in Christ.

Arise and Go Up to Bethel

How do you meet with God? How do you have a soul satisfying, hopeful relationship with God in this world? The question of hope and happiness has never seemed more elusive in a culture as prosperous as ours. We have never had more of our immediate needs taken for granted as we do today, and yet we find ourselves in the midst of the most anxious, psychologically burdened generation we’ve ever seen. Every day I am seeing best selling books and articles acknowledging this problem, sounding the alarm that all is not well in a world that just 150 years ago would have been considered a paradise.

 

This revelation is a mercy from God. It’s a mercy because we now have the surest evidence that we can stop wasting time thinking we are just one more discovery from finding hope. The answer to hope is found in God’s Word, and we will see how this chapter displays that for us.

 

Wonderfully, that hope is found in the midst of real life. As you no doubt noticed in the back half of the chapter, there isn’t a ton to be happy about. The hard things of dying in child birth and a scandalous son cannot overshadow the hope that God offers. No matter how modern we get, these are among the worst problems we can imagine. Yet God’s promises ring through even this and point to how we, too, can have a hopeful relationship with God.

 

Let’s look at this together in our two points Hope in God requires exclusive worship of God and Hope in God requires eternal waiting for God.

Vengeance Is Mine

Some sermons are harder to make than others. Some texts you read and think, “Well, that’s a sordid tale. Not much to uplift the soul here. Let’s move on.” There are others where you encounter a story like this, and those brave souls who attempt to spend some time in there can see multiple ways of looking at the story.

Unfortunately, this is a story that isn’t unfamiliar to our culture. Versions of this happen every day. Something like this may have even happened to you in this room. Because this topic is so familiar, it can blind us on how best to see it, because our various cultures and upbringings crowd around us as we read.

A mistake that we can make in looking at this text (and really many others) is to try to find the main villain. We try to make it simple and reduce the story to pure good guys versus pure bad guys. And that’s just not what we see here. As one commentator put it, there is “ostensibly nothing…commendable” in this chapter (Matthews). He’s right. Yes, there are some actions in this chapter that are worse than others, but there is something that everyone in this room can identify with.

This is a hard story, but there are two points for us to draw from it that Tim Keller, I believe, famously said: You are worse than you think but You are loved more than you know.

Lift Up Your Eyes

Introduction

Jacob has had quite a life thus far. There have been a multitude of twists and turns, deceptions and deals, and they have been leading up to this point, this last (?) conflict. The eventual confrontation with Esau has been a long time coming. It has been twenty years since he’s seen him last, and at that time, Esau was just waiting to kill Jacob.

We happen to know how this story is going to shape out, so I must put on my imagination to try to feel what Jacob had to be thinking about here. How many pleasant moments were interrupted by the sudden remembrance that Esau is still out there? How did it feel to successfully tell off Laban only to remember that there was someone else way more upset out there? Now lets imagine just the last 48 hours. Jacob found out that Esau is on his way, with 400 men! He’s been bustling about getting camps ready, sending advance servants with gifts, reordering his family to protect his favorites, and then capping it all off with an all-night wrestling match with God! By the time we get to our passage, it can be tough to imagine how Jacob is even seeing straight.

Maybe you’ve been here. Hopefully you’ve not had conflict where you fear for your life, but perhaps you’ve encountered such conflict, you can’t imagine it ever going away. Maybe you are even the reason that the conflict is there. No matter which position you find yourself in, I think this passage holds out hope for you today.

As we will see today, and I’m leaning heavily on my old seminary prof, Alan Ross for this main point, Reconciliation is a gift from God.

He Will Not Forget

Mother’s Day is a mixed blessing for many. On the one hand, it is a wonderful occasion for families to show their appreciation for God’ precious gift to them. It’s a hard job, and setting aside time to honor and acknowledge such effort is a good and necessary thing to do. Mom’s deserve their honor, and today is a day of great blessing.

 

However, this can be a hard day for many. Today is a reminder to many not of what they had but what they lost, or maybe never got to experience. Even for those who did get to experience both sides of motherhood, today can be tinged with guilt for past or maybe even current failures.

 

The text that is before us today speaks to both of these categories and to the rest of us. Fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, regretful or rejoicing, we can all find comfort and encouragement from our text today.

 

Isaiah is a prophet in Judah about 700 years before Christ was born. He was confronting sin and warning of coming judgment to the nation of Judah, the southern part of Israel. Israel (the northern kingdom) had experienced an exile about halfway through Isaiah’s time. Judah wouldn’t experience their final exile for another almost 150 years. Isaiah alternates throughout the book between statements of coming judgment and future restoration after that judgment. That future restoration happened in part through God’s working through secular politics. They at one point got to return to their land, but the major fulfillment of the nation’s hope was in the coming of Christ which Isaiah also predicts. This coming of Christ isn’t just said in the famous passages that we read at Christmas and Easter time. Christ also figures in with this chapter as well.

 

We are going to look at two points this morning, God will never forget you and Jesus is the reminder