RUF at UNCW

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus in the New Testament book of Luke. How much is enough? In our world of abundance, it is easy to get distracted by the constant drive for self-improvement and life-optimization. Our restless inability to be content is deeper than a dopamine addiction or a lifestyle fad. It's a soul issue, something that the Church calls by a few different names— gluttony, greed, avarice, and the word Jesus uses here in Luke—covetousness.In this parable, Jesus wants to show us the futility and foolishness of hoarding all the fading feels of this present life. He tells this story, not to just shame us, or to scold us, but to warn us and persuade us to invest in what truly lasts. He wants us to rest in Him (not just in his benefits) and receive what the Apostle Paul calls "the life that is truly life" (1 Tim 6:19). Quotes: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” -Jim Elliot“Jesus warned, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15). To live a life that consists in the abundance of possessions is inconsistent with abundant life. Perhaps the most sinister aspect of covetousness is the way that it keeps our eyes fixed on the horizontal plane.”- Jen Wilkin“I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all. But whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess.” -Martin Luther"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise [...] If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. ... Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." - C. S. LewisQ. 147. What are the duties required in the tenth commandment?A. The duties required in the tenth commandment are such a full contentment with our own condition and such a charitable orientation of our whole soul toward our neighbors, so that all of our inward motions and desires relating to them tend to, and work for, the support of everything of theirs which is good.Q. 148. What are the sins forbidden in the tenth commandment?A. The sins forbidden in the tenth commandment are discontent with our own state and envy and grief at the good state of our neighbors, together with all excessive feelings and desires for anything that is theirs.- Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 147 & 148

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus in the New Testament book of Luke. In Luke 19 Jesus delivers one of his final parables, en route to Jerusalem, where he will be hailed as King (on Palm Sunday) then betrayed and murdered (Good Friday). And in the Parable of the Ten Minas, Jesus exposes our hidden roots of unbelief and fear that keep us from joyfully participating in the work of his kingdom.  That exposure, and the final evaluation of our thoughts and intentions is expressed in the Bible word "judgment." Judgement is central to the Bible, and for those who heed Scripture's warning to repent and rest in the finished work of Christ, judgement is actually good news. (*Thanks for Matt Howell, Ricky Jones and the folks quoted below for their insightful teaching on this topic!) Quotes:“While Jesus expounds God’s love and mercy again and again, he also hammers on God’s judgment more than any Old Testament prophet. And Jesus is clear: he is the one who will judge all humanity.”— Rebecca McLaughlin"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“We know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it. and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible­ ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger­ according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. "- C. S. LewisFurther Reading on God’s Wrath: https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-could-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell/https://bibleproject.com/videos/slow-to-anger/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wrath-not-attribute-god/

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus in the New Testament book of Luke.In Luke 14, Jesus shows the religious leaders of his day, that by rejecting his message, they are keeping themselves out of God’s end-times kingdom banquet. Jesus wants them (and us) to see the how important it is to receive him as King, and how tragic it is to refuse or ignore him when he calls to us. QUOTES: “From time to time … I have noted that a particular parable is difficult to interpret, and have mentioned several ways the details of the story could be taken. That problem does not exist with [this] parable …. On the contrary, it is all too clear. It speaks of God's gracious invitation to us in the gospel and of the indifferent and arrogant way men and women sometimes respond to it …. The unique element in the parable before us is the willful refusal of those who were invited. It was not that they could not come. Rather, they would not.“ - James Montgomery Boice“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done”, and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” — C.S. Lewis“At it’s worst, it was a toxic, political club used to make others feel miserable and left out. At its best, it planned parties." —Pam Halpert (speaking about the Dunder Mifflin Party Planning Committee, and also, perhaps, about a Pharisee social gathering)

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.This week, we're beginning a mini-series on the "Kingdom parables" in Luke. The Kingdom of God is a central theme of Luke's gospel, and tonight Jesus shows us why the Kingdom of God is nothing less than the transforming rule of God that is breaking into the world, and why we should do whatever we can to believe in this coming Kingdom and receive it. Quote:"The number-one thing Jesus talked about is the kingdom of God. It’s everywhere in the Gospels and impossible to miss. But if the theme of the kingdom is so significant, then we need to make sure we know what it means. A good starting place is to have a solid working definition. Here’s one: The kingdom is God’s reign through God’s people over God’s place." -- Jeremy Treat (read his article here!)“What these two parables ask of their hearers, then, is confidence in the little gospel. The gospel goes out as seed, little but alive, and it comes back with big things like food, shade, and shelter for the nations. We will be tempted to distrust the little gospel we bear when we compare it with contemporary "powers." ….  But where are all the ancient faiths, philosophies, and forces that once vexed the church? … The church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” - F. Dale Bruner"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”- Henry David Thoreau

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.This week we are looking at prayer-- a topic that, for many newer Christians, is like flossing or stretching. We all know its important, and yet nobody feels like they do it enough or are doing it well! Why do we struggle to pray? The reason we struggle to pray is that we struggle to trust God! Jesus knows this, and so he gives us these two parables to illustrate the incredible access and security we have when we come to God in prayer. When we really see the trustworthiness of our God, we will trust him with our troubles in prayer. QUOTES:“In prayer, we approach a loving, listening Father, and we are helped by the intercession of the Son and the groaning of the Spirit … When the Father promises to hear prayer, it is an assurance of his loving inclination to receive our prayer as acceptable and to answer it in his kindness. The Father’s desire to hear the prayers of his children is so radical that he says, “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear” (Isa. 65:24). By the time we clear our throats, the Father is already listening.” - Megan Hill“The human condition teeters on the edge of disaster. Human beings are in trouble most of the time. Those who don’t know they are in trouble are in the worst trouble. Prayer is the language of the people who are in trouble and know it, and who believe or hope that God can get them out. As prayer is practiced, it moves into other levels and develops other forms, but trouble – being in the wrong, being in danger, realizing that the foes are too many for us to handle – is the basic provocation for prayer. Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “I only pray when I am in trouble. But I am in trouble all the time, and so I pray all the time.”  -Eugene Peterson

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.This week's sermon is on the familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. Through this parable, Jesus shows us that we cannot separate our love for God and our love for others, because all those whom God rescues by his mercy, he enlists in his mercy-bringing mission to the world. Therefore, a lack of love for our neighbor is not a small matter of imperfect Christian practice. It may be an indication of something much more serious: that we have fundamentally misunderstood the heart of God, or have not yet truly received his rescuing, transforming grace. “Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love this person (because I need something from them).” Or, “I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.” This isn’t the fullness of love. Instead there is attachment—there is clinging and fear. True love allows, honors, and appreciates; attachment grasps, demands, needs, and aims to possess.”- Brené Brown“It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for it’s own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.”  - C.S. Lewis“The outcome, as it were, of God loving us is that we should also love God and love one another ... God has not merely loved us in order that we might be forgiven and saved from hell and thus be rescued from the punishment of sin. God's whole work in us was designed to produce a certain type of person. He has set out to produce a new race, a new generation, and we are all to be modeled on the pattern of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the firstborn among many brethren' (Rom 8:29); we have been 'created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them' (Eph 2:10).” -D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.In this week's message from guest preacher Jay Denton, Jesus shows us how God’s eternal word works in the hearts of those who hear it. We learn about the spiritual battles that come with listening, and about the incredible long-term fruit that comes when God, by his Spirit, causes his word to take root and patiently grow in our hearts. Quotes:“Thousands of things, which in themselves are innocent, become, when followed to excess, little better than soul-poisons and helps to hell…Except we watch and pray, these temporal things may rob us of heaven, and smother every sermon we hear. We may live and die thorny-ground hearers.” – J.C. Ryle

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.In this week's message, Jesus talks to us about the source of our security-- both in this life and the life to come. Everyone builds their life on some foundation, some ultimate source of truth. In this passage, Jesus warns against hearing his teaching but giving our ultimate commitments and obedience to something else. He tells this parable to invite us to examine the source of our deepest commitments, and to place the full weight of our lives upon him responding to his teaching in a life of loving obedience. We see that it's only in obedience to him that we find the security and stability we need. “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”-G.K. Chesterton“Glorifying God does not mean obeying him only because you have to. It means to obey him because you want to — because you are attracted to him, because you delight in him.”— Tim Keller“Obedience to Jesus’ words is not so much protection from troubles as protection in them, just as a rock under a house does not shield from storms but supports during them” - Dale Bruner

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke.In this week's message, we look at the second half of the parable of the two sons in Luke 15. Jesus's teaching in this parable confronts all of us with our lost state, and also invites us to be reconciled to God the Father through the costly work of our elder brother, Jesus. (*Thanks to Matt Howell, Brian Habig, and Tim Keller for many of the thoughts and illustrations contained in this message! )QUOTES:“Confession is not a transaction, not a negotiation in order to secure forgiveness; it is the after-the-last gasp of a corpse that finally can afford to admit it’s dead and accept resurrection.” — Robert Capon "The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay upon the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him, is not to believe that He loves you.”— John Owen"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful" – Flannery O’ Connor“Before you can have peace in your hearts, you must not only be sick of your sins, but you must be made sick of your righteousness, of all of your duties and performances …  If you have never felt the deficiency of your own righteousness, you can never come to Jesus … If you are not thus brought out of self, you may speak peace to yourselves, but yet there is no peace." —George Whitefield 

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke. In the parables of Luke 15, Jesus shows us the values of the Kingdom of God and exposes our own disordered priorities. In these first two "lost and found" parables, we see the deep joy that should result from the rescue and return of God's beloved image bearers, and how that joy should shape our relationships with the people we see as different, despicable, or wrong. Quotes:“Why carry out such a diligent search? Why go to such lengths and take such risks to secure just one more sheep or coin? Is it not because God places such high value on the soul that belongs to him? These are sheep and coins with owners. This one wandering lamb belongs to a shepherd. This one missing coin belongs to a woman. They are owned so they are valued.… God takes time to pursue every individual. When that individual repents, God takes time to celebrate, and he invites all heaven to celebrate with him. This speaks volumes about the value of every individual in God's sight. Heaven rejoices over every repentant sinner. Christians do too. Pharisees don’t.”— Thabiti Anyabwile“We tend to think that when we approach Jesus for help in our need and mercy amid our sins, we somehow detract from him, lessen him, impoverish him ... Christ’s heart is not drained by our coming to him; his heart is filled up all the more by our coming to him. To put it the other way around: when we hold back, lurking in the shadows, fearful and failing, we miss out not only on our own increased comfort but on Christ’s increased comfort. He lives for this. This is what he loves to do. His joy and ours rise and fall together.” – Dane Ortland“What Jesus offers in parabolic mode, therefore, is not cheap grace—the concern (we may surmise) of the Pharisees and scribes—but an altogether different economy of grace. The mood of this new economy is joy and welcome, not separation and self-justification. Furthermore, the repentance that it calls for is not cheap. It is not something narrowly bound to the preservation of the elect and the holy. Rather, it is something much more costly—not separation from "sinners," but being "found" by Jesus, God's Son and Servant, becoming part of his company and ... leaving everything behind for his sake.” - Stephen Barton

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 spring, we’re looking at the parables of Jesus from the New Testament book of Luke. In this parable, Jesus exposes our deep need to be “the right kind of person.” But he shows us that there is something even better than being the right kind of person. It’s knowing that we’re the wrong kind of person, and we are loved and welcomed based on the rightness of another. (*thanks to Matt Howell, Skylar Adams and Ben Robertson for their insightful observations and illustrations, which influenced much of the material in this sermon! )Quotes:“How do you get someone to love and accept you? You make yourself more attractive, right? You make yourself more lovable and appealing. That's what all the adverts tell us; it's the relentless drone of social media. Yet with God, it is the other way round. With God, failing, broken people “are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive”… In other words, God does not love people because they have sorted themselves out: he loves failures, and that love makes them flourish.” - Michael Reeves “My repentance needs to be repented of, and my very tears to be washed in the precious blood of my dear Redeemer. Our best duties are as so many splendid sins. Before you can know you are at peace with God, you must not only be made sick of your original and actual sin, but you must be sick of your righteousness, of all your duties and performances.”-George Whitfield“Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than somebody else— I think that we may be sure we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.”- 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. This week we're closing the series by looking at what I might be the most important earthly relationship of all. It’s our relationship with an institution. The institution Brad Edwards calls “the most counter-intuitive, universally cringe, and eagerly abandoned institution of the last 75 years: the local church.”1 Peter is a letter written by Peter the disciple of Jesus, to early members of christians churches– local assemblies of Jesus-followers– from all different backgrounds scattered throughout modern day Turkey.  Peter wants his readers to understand how to faithfully navigate all the challenges of life in this world. And the answer he gives is: we can only live wisely in this world, to the degree that we live together as God’s people.(*Thank you to Brad Edwards for his excellent book The Reason for Church which informed much of the content in this sermon! )“Why church? The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death … Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world ...Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines” -- Eugene Peterson“The church is not simply another voluntary society, like the Boy Scouts or the Sierra Club. It’s an embassy of Christ’s Kingdom….unlike the rulers of this age, Jesus doesn’t ask us to shed our blood for his empire; he instead gave his own life for his realm. Then he was raised in glory as the beginning of the new creation, and now he is gathering coheirs into his kingdom who belong to each other because, together, they belong to him. The visible church is where you will find Christ’s kingdom on earth, and to disregard the kingdom is to disregard the king.” --Michael Horton“The church is the church as a creature of God’s Word—a creature that finds its life outside of itself, that does not have faith in faith so much as faith in the God of covenant promise made known in Christ." -- J.Todd billingsRead: Is Church Membership Required?How to Be a Christian Without Going to ChurchWatch: Is Church Membership Necessary?Watch: How Do I Choose a Good Church?Watch: Do You Have to Go to Church to Be a Christian?

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’re looking at singleness. What does the Bible say to the unmarried, divorced, widowed or simply unattached among us? We see in Scripture that for all those who belong to Christ, your relationship status is never an accident. God--who is sovereign over all and good to all he has made--has you where you on purpose, for a purpose. *Thanks to Paige Brown, Marshall Segel, Dani Trewek and Rebecca McLaughlin for the articles, illustrations and research that informed this message!Links: Four Things God Says to SinglesMarriage is Very Good. Singleness May Be Even BetterSingled Out for GoodQuotes: “Am I a Christian single or am I a single Christian? The difference in mindset is profound. Which word is determinative and which is descriptive? . . . we singles are chronic amnesiacs-- we forget who we are, we forget whose we are. I am a single Christian. My identity is not found in my marital status but in my redemptive status. I am one of the 'haves,' not one of the 'have-nots.' "- Paige Brown"Singleness has the potential to be a garden—or a gym, or a kitchen, or a school—for undistracted devotion to Jesus unlike any other season of our lives …  We have to stop believing the lie that everything we have here is all we have, and start thinking of everything we have here as something to invest in what’s to come.  We develop those spiritual muscles now by saying, with everything we have and do now, that Jesus is our greatest treasure. Life is short, and everything we have and see here is passing away. Everything but Jesus.”— Marshall Segel“What is it like being single? I like it! I like starting each day with a sense of possibility. And I'm optimistic, because everyday I get a little more desperate. And desperate situations yield the quickest results.”- Michael Scott

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. As we wrap up this series we’re looking at the Song of Songs (also Song of Solomon)—a whole book of the Bible dedicated to love poetry. Tonight guest preacher Tim Inman from Christ Church in Dunn, NC talks about the biblical vision for covenant marriage. Links: Tim Keller on "The Meaning Of Marriage" Talks at GoogleMegan Hill- The Biggest Misconception About Marriage Among Dating CouplesQuotes: "In this fallen world, there are no promises that marriage, for all its capacity to be beautiful and enriching, will be a lifelong series of increasing physical delights. In reality, a healthy marriage will probably lean more on the Sermon on the Mount than on the Song of Solomon.” -James Eglinton“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24). This radically upside-down statement would have shocked the original readers of Genesis and should shock us too. I don't know of any culture where men are depicted as clinging to their wives. Certainly within a patriarchal world, this is getting things backwards. There the wife leaves her parents and is absorbed into her husband's family.” ― Carolyn Custis James"May all of your expectations be frustrated, may all of your plans be thwarted, may all of your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child, and can sing and dance in the love of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.” --Larry Hine

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. As we wrap up this series we’re looking at the Song of Songs (also Song of Solomon)—a whole book of the Bible dedicated to love poetry. The Song speaks about the delight, duties, and dangers of sexual love in this life, and hints at the future satisfaction of all of our longings when we finally see God face to face. In this week’s sermon, we see how God’s loving commands serve to guard, direct and transform our experience of sexual desire. Thanks to Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III for their amazing work on this topic! Links: https://gospelinlife.com/manual-paper/the-gospel-and-sex/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/consent-not-enough/Quotes: “I am sure that unless we are confident that the Scriptures tell the truth about sexuality, about being bodies, about being full of sexual longings and desires, unless it does all this, it is hard to believe that they are true when they speak to the rest of life.” -Steve Garber“Society tells us, simultaneously, that sex is no big deal and that it’s the most important thing in the universe. Sex is so meaningless that we can have random, casual sex with our next-door neighbor, yet sex is so hugely significant that we can’t possibly live without it.”—Lauren Winner“To be holy is to be without flaw, stain, or blemish. Evil desires for us to be sexually used and then discarded. It also works to make us feel dirty, fouled, and ruined. God's gift of holiness is the promise that he will clothe us in his most beautiful righteousness so that we are dressed to be stunning and arrayed in his beauty. What God increases in us through the gift of holiness is the desire for our sexuality to be caught up in wonder and joy. We are meant to long for our experience of nakedness and pleasure, to be freed from shame and made holy, good, and innocent … No one is sexually perfect, and our stains, flaws, and failures are used by God to intensify our surprise and wonder and to increase our gratitude for how his perfect love cannot be thwarted by our imperfection.”- Dan Allender“God loves sex. He conceived, created, and blessed the process by which our bodies know and are known through desire, arousal, foreplay, intercourse, orgasm, and rest.Sex is meant by Gad to be one of the bridge experiences between earth and heaven. It awakens and intersects our deepest physical and spiritual desires. Sex, like music, fills us simultaneously with notes of an intense immanent bodily pleasure and with the sonorous reverberations of another world that is transcendent and holy.It is no wonder that the enemy of God is relentlessly committed to fouling both immanent pleasure and transcendent joy. Evil hates sex and is ruthlessly committed to tearing down the bridge between desire and holiness.” - Dan Allender“We need an embodied experience of grace. God knows we cannot experience reality in our mind, but it must be experienced in our flesh. That is why the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” - Chuck Askew.

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: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/tim-keller-forgive/https://bibleproject.com/videos/character-of-god-grace/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: https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/christine-emba-dating-apps/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/10-things-young-singles-in-romantic-relationships-ought-to-know/

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: https://newsletter.oalannoble.com/p/violence-and-technologyhttps://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/whats-become-of-ushttps://journal.praxis.co/we-dont-need-superpowers-we-need-instruments-860459cfc165https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

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 God sets us free to live wisely and 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."-- SamQUOTES:“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:What is Biblical Forgiveness? (video) “The ubiquitous presence of revenge in contemporary culture makes the hope of forgiveness a startling wonder and a crying need ... Being able to forgive a deep wrong is both a choice and a gift. We can’t conjure forgiveness on our own. It’s just too hard. Getting even is our default. In the realm of revenge and forgiveness, psychology is of little help. Trying harder won’t get you there. The gospel uniquely provides the basis—and the power—to overcome our human inclination to return evil for evil”— Paula Rhinehart“There is always a cost to wrongdoing and it must fall on someone. Either the wrongdoer bears it or someone else must. This is true even if the wrong is not something that can be measured financially. The cost may be in reputation or relationship or health or something else. To forgive is to deny oneself revenge (Romans 12:17–21), to absorb the cost, to not exact repayment by inflicting on them the things they did to you in order to “even the score.” Therefore forgiveness is always expensive to the forgiver, but the benefits—at the very least within your heart, and at best in the restoration of relationship and a witness to the power of the gospel—outweigh the cost.” ― Tim Keller“How do you get someone to love and accept you? You make yourself more attractive, right? You make yourself more lovable and appealing. That's what all the adverts tell us; it's the relentless drone of social media. Yet with God, it is the other way round. With God, failing, broken people “are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive”… In other words, God does not love people because they have sorted themselves out: he loves failures, and that love makes them flourish. "- Michael Reeves “Relationships— [they're] easy to get into, hard to maintain.  Why are they so hard to maintain? Because it’s hard to keep up the lie! ‘Cause you can’t get nobody just being you. You got to lie to get somebody. You can’t get nobody looking like you look, acting like you act, sounding like you sound. When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them. You’re meeting their representative!”— Chris Rock. 

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 MackieThe Good News of the Empty Cuphttps://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 GuthrieThe 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 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory” (audio recording)

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

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 this passage. Jesus is talking to his disciples about what their lives are going to look like on the other side of his death and resurrection. And he’s going to tell them the secret to living a flourishing, fruitful life. For those who follow Christ, their growth is not just possible, it’s assured! You can live a fruitful, flourishing life because Jesus Christ came not just to live for you, but to live in you.Further Reading: https://www.crossway.org/articles/practically-how-do-we-abide-in-jesus/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-prunes-those-he-loves/Quotes:The skillful eye knows that there are no random strokes of the [Father’s] pruning shears; nothing is cut off that wasn’t a gain to lose because it would be a loss to keep– Tim Keller“He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into … a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God … His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and, in parts, very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.” — C.S. Lewis. “The might of heaven, the power that flung galaxies into existence, has swept you into himself. And you're there to stay. Amid the storms of your little existence-the sins and sufferings, the failure and faltering, the waywardness and wandering— He is not just with you. He is in you, and you in him. His destiny now falls on you.” — Dane Ortland“Christ is the redeemed man's new environment. He has been lifted out of the cramping restrictions of his earthly lot into a totally different sphere, the sphere of Christ. He has been transplanted into a new soil and a new climate, and both soil and climate are Christ. His spirit is breathing a nobler element. He is moving on a loftier plane.” - James Stewart

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.Now that they understand that Jesus is departing, his disciples are troubled. What does Jesus give to enable his close friends to face their troubles? Not a self-help manual. Not set of instructions. He gives them Himself. And we promises that when his work is completed, his people today will have the same resources available us! Because after he dies and is raised again, those who trust in Jesus don’t navigate life’s troubles by living alongside him, or by living for him. John 14 reminds us that Jesus died and rose again so that we could live through him.QUOTES:“We don’t go to heaven — to the Father — beside Jesus, assisting him; or behind Jesus, imitating him. We go to the Father through Jesus, depending on him.” —John Piper“Jesus Christ is the visible manifestation of the invisible God. In him we see heaven’s heart walking around on two legs in time and space. When we see the heart of Christ throughout the four Gospels, we are seeing the very compassion and tenderness of who God himself most deeply is.” -- Dane Ortland“There is thus no [different] God behind the back of Jesus Christ, but only this God whose face we see in the face of the Lord Jesus.” —Thomas F. Torrance"There is no other stream” — Aslan, in The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis

In this passage from John 13, Jesus demonstrates and describes the kind of love that is at the center of the universe. Agape love, the kind of love that spends itself in pursuit of another person’s good, shows up at the beginning and end of John 13. The passage starts by describing Jesus’s love for his people, and ends up with Jesus commanding his people to follow his example of love in such a way that outsiders and not-yet believers would see it and become drawn into faith and enjoyment of the God who loved the world into existence. In this passage, Jesus shows us that we will only have the power to love others as he commands if we first understand and experience the love God has shown to us through the life, death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus the Christ. QUOTES “The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss—the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value.”—Andy Crouch “What will show the presence of heaven itself among God’s people? What will show that God is alive and well and right here? It’s our love for one another. This isn’t an afterthought, as though what really mattered were other things and our love for one another was the icing on the cake. No, the quality of our relational life is to be an apologetic to the world around us. As Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “Jesus is giving the world permission to judge whether we are true Christian disciples on the basis of whether we love one another.”- Sam Allberry “What makes the Fourth Gospel's account so extraordinary is that there is no parallel in extant ancient literature for a person of superior status voluntarily washing the feet of someone of inferior status. Jesus' act therefore represents an assault on the usual notions of social hierarchy, a subversion of the normal categories of honour and shame... It is not just an honoured teacher who is performing a shameful act but a divine figure with sovereignty over the cosmos who has taken on the role of a slave.”- A.T. Lincoln  "There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love — this eternal Three in One — is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!" - Jonathan Edwards

In this world, there are all sorts of things that can totally upend our lives—violence, broken relationships, broken trust, sickness, physical suffering, disappointments … the list goes on. And try as we might, we can’t just live our lives avoiding suffering. How do we endure suffering, without getting overwhelmed by it?  Or, to put it a different way– how can we find a joy, a settled sense of secure goodness, that suffering and circumstances cannot snuff out?  The Bible has many words for that settled, secure sense of joy– eternal life, justification, redemption, assurance, holiness, righteousness, hope– but in this passage we see it called by another word – glory In this last public sermon before his crucifixion, Jesus shows us where real glory is found, and points the way toward us sharing in the unique, secure glory that he has experienced since before the world began.  In John 12, we see how the gospel gives us a secure joy that cannot be conquered by suffering or circumstances.  QUOTES: "Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance? … In Christianity, the moment we believe, God imputes Christ’s perfect performance to us as if it were our own, and adopts us into His family. In other words, God can say to us just as He once said to Christ, ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ You see, the verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them. I can help people to help people – not so I can feel better about myself, not so I can fill up the emptiness.“ — Tim Keller “A sense of personal beauty comes, I believe, only in the generous, self- giving gaze, the noticing regard, of another person … A sense of personal beauty is nevertheless accessible to all, in the life-giving noticing regard of Jesus Christ. If—when—human noticing regard fails to occur, any person may nevertheless experience it in the gaze of the Lord …. His alone is the face that will not go away, and his alone is our highest joy.” — Esther Lightcap Meek

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. Where you do you go when you're afraid? In the final passage from our fall semester, we learn why Jesus alone is worthy of our trust and attention-- especially when we are afraid. John deliberately included this miraculous sign in his gospel to show us the security we have when we place our faith in Christ in times of fear and insecurity. “Anxiety grows best in the soil of unbelief. It withers in contact with faith”— Michael Reeves “Trial, we must distinctly understand, is part of the diet which all true Christians must expect. It is one of the means by which their grace is proved, and by which they find out what there is in themselves. Winter as well as summer,—cold as well as heat,—clouds as well as sunshine,—are all necessary to bring the fruit of the Spirit to ripeness and maturity. We do not naturally like this. We would rather cross the lake with calm weather and favorable winds, with Christ always by our side, and the sun shining down on our faces. But it may not be. It is not in this way that God’s children are made "partakers of His holiness." (Hebrews 12:10.) Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, and Job were all men of many trials. Let us be content to walk in their footsteps, and to drink of their cup. In our darkest hours we may seem to be left,—but we are never really alone.“— J.C. Ryle  ‘You have listened to fears, child.  Come, let me breathe on you.  Forget them.  Are you brave again?’“— Aslan, in Prince Caspian by 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 examining the Gospel of John to learn about the words and work of Jesus. What kind of story are we living in? It is a tragedy or a comedy? The difference between tragedy and comedy is not the presence of death. It’s the placement of death.  A tragedy (like Romeo + Juliet or Hamlet) ends with everyone dying. A comedy contains death but ends with rejoicing.  In this climactic sign that closes first half of John’s gospel, Jesus tells us what kind of story his people are living in. Though our stories contain death, death does not get the final word.  John 11 shows us that true hope comes, not by avoiding suffering but by passing through suffering. And the only way we can endure suffering with hope, courage, and even peace– is by placing our story of suffering inside of Jesus’ gospel story.   “When you know how the story ends, you can face the most difficult part of your story, the hard and sad parts in the middle with hope and courage and peace …. specifically, my friends, when we know that death will not be the end of our stories, we can face the worst things that life in this world slings at us with hope and courage and peace”— Nancy Guthrie “All ancient myths and legends that deal with death depict it as an intrusion, an aberration, and a monstrosity. It always appears because something has gone wrong You will not find the accumulated wisdom of the ages insisting that death is perfectly natural. Death is not the way it is supposed to be … To insist that death is nothing to be frightened of is simply another illusion muffling the obscenity of death. We live in denial of it, but like all repressed facts, it keeps disturbing us, haunting us, and quietly (or not so quietly) draining our hope.” - Tim Keller  “After each of Jesus' great "I Am's" I can hear him turning to someone nearby in his entourage and asking, with genuine hope, "Do you believe this, friend?" This question is Jesus' unspoken appeal at the end of his every remark. I find Jesus' question of Martha, therefore, a poignant sentence. Martha doesn't say she believes "this" (which was Jesus' question), but she does say, more honestly, she believes him: "Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One Who Is Coming into the World." Who can believe something they can barely understand (like Jesus' just pronounced "I Am" with its mysteriously doubled promise…)? Believing Jesus, on the other hand, is something else - and is enough. Martha can do that.”— F. Dale Bruner “A God who never wept could never wipe away my tears”. – C.H. Spurgeon

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 this passage, Jesus makes the case for his shepherding-- and he shows us that unlike the teachers who claim to speak for God, Jesus leads us with the perfect words and perfect power of God himself. He invites us to abandon our attempts at self-shepherding, to humbly listen to his voice and to rest in his keeping. Jesus shows us that He must be our all-or-nothing shepherd, because nothing and no one can keep us like he can.  *This message contains a reading from "The Pirate Who Tried to Capture the Moon" by Dennis Haseley *For more information on the Old Testament and Jewish background of John 10, we highly recommend these messages from the 2024 TGC Women’s Conference from ⁠Vanessa Hawkins on John 10:1-10⁠ and ⁠Courtney Doctor on John 10:11-18⁠.  ___________________________________________________________ QUOTES: “We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else ... Since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.” - John Calvin “In reality, someone else is the center of the story. Nobody can make Jesus go away. The I AM was, is and will be, whether or not people acknowledge that. When you awaken, when you see who Jesus actually is, everything changes. You see the Person whose care and ability you can trust. You experience His care. You see the Person whose glory you are meant to worship. You love Him who loves you… Psalm 23 captures what life feels like and looks like when Jesus Christ puts his hand on your shoulder. — David Powlison “This is the fundamental lie of modernity: that we are our own. Until we see this lie for what it is, until we work to uproot it from our culture and replant a conception of human persons as belonging to God and not ourselves, most of our efforts at improving the world will be glorified Band-Aids. … At our core, we belong to Christ. This doesn't just mean that we give mental allegiance to Christ or discover our true identity in Him. The truth is deeper and more beautiful than these phrases convey. For one thing, our understanding of identity tends to be distorted by modern conceptions of image and representation. To belong to Christ is to find our existence in His grace, to live transparently before God.” — Alan Noble

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 chapter 9, we continue to see evidence of Jesus's unique authority as the light-bringing God, who has come into the world. The healing of a man born blind is another of the seven great Signs of Jesus' Lordship in the Gospel of John. In John 9, we have three instances of blindness, where Jesus corrects our vision. Each centers around questions asked of Jesus. The first question comes from his disciples about the purpose of suffering. Another is by the pharisees about spiritual blindness. And a final one is asked by the healed blind man about belief in God. We learn that we must admit our blindness if we want to truly see Jesus. And it is only when we truly see Jesus, that will we begin to see everything else. *I am indebted to the teaching of Tim Keller on this passage, whose sermon helped me with the outline and applications in this message! For more discussion about the purpose of suffering, see Keller's sermon on John 9, and this interview from the Gospel Coalition. “Our text begins with a frequent and consoling truth: Jesus notices especially hurting people. "Now as es was walking along, he saw a man blind from birth." One gets the distinct impression from the Gospels that it is people most hurting in any setting whom Jesus most quickly notices.” — F. Dale Bruner  "The deepest blindness is blindness to your own blindness."-Tim Keller “Spiritual blindness is a congenital disease afflicting every human being. It doesn't matter our education, our cultural savvy, our progressive politics, our religious upbringing, our exemplary moral record. We are all blind, and sin makes it impossible to see our need for God. Our morally crooked impulse is to let ourselves off the hook, to lay blame at anyone's feet but our own. The only way we can come to Jesus is by admitting our moral indebtedness—and that we can't heal our own blindness. Habits of humility pave the road to faith.” - Jen Pollock Michel 

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 chapters 7-8, Jesus shows up at the Jewish Feast of Booths and begins to teach. As he speaks, he radically reshapes our ideas about God’s presence, the source of truth, and the nature of reality. In John 8:12-20, Jesus debates with the Pharisees, showing them their own blindness, and his own divine authority. We see that we can only safely navigate this dark world by walking in the light of God’s revealed presence in Jesus.  (*Thanks to Jen Wilkin and Brian Habig for their excellent teaching on this passage! To learn more about the Biblical theme of God's fiery presence, see Jen Wilkin's teaching from the 2024 TGC Women's Conference. ) QUOTES: “The word of God which comes to us in Christ is a word of liberation and restoration for the whole man, for his understanding and his will, for his body and his soul. Sin entered the world, and for just that reason, "God so loved the world.” - Herman Bavinck “God's heart is greater than the human heart, God's mind is greater than the human mind, and God's light is so great that it might blind you and make you feel like you're in the night.— Henri Nouwen “We love lesser lights. We will set her settle for the lesser lights of the kingdoms of this world, instead of the great and glorious light of the kingdom of heaven, we will worship political figures. We will worship church leaders. Lord, help us. We place people on thrones on a daily basis. There’s only one seated on the throne. [He says], “I am the light of the world. I am the pure light that is true and shows truth in all situations”— Jen Wilkin “Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence — religious meaning — apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.” - Eugene Peterson 

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. It’s very possible to be doing the right things, but for the wrong reason. This is one of many times in the gospel where you have the outward appearance of great religious success, and a true culture changing moment, and Jesus cuts right through pious appearances. He asks some pointed questions that cut to the heart— to the place where our deepest longings, hungers and desires are. And Jesus asks– what are you really looking for? This passage reminds us that everybody is hungry, in a deep and profound way. And our hunger is beyond mere physical needs– as Augustine would say, “our hearts are restless.” And Jesus wants to satisfy us– by first revealing the inadequacy of what we think we want, and then by graciously offering us what we really need.” (*Many thanks to Brian Habig, Melissa Kruger and Matt Howell for their insightful teaching on this passage– most of the illustrations in this sermon came directly or indirectly from them!) QUOTES:  “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”― C.S. Lewis  “I believe Jesus is saying here, in so many words, "Please relax; just trust me; my Father is giving you, right now, by his Spirit, through my very speaking to you, by the power of my simple Words to you, the desire and ability to trust me. Out of this fundamental trust will come whatever other good works I will from time to time command you to do. But square one, the will and the work of God that you want to fulfill is simply to trust me as the One God Sent. This is the root out of which all other fruit naturally grows. Please plant this root: please trust 'the One That One Sent." —F. Dale Bruner ““it is very possible to have Christ-less Christianity, to do the actions of Christianity and not go after Him …  Jesus essentially says this, “I do not come to earth to dispense a gift from the Heavenly Father. I am the gift. There is a god, he lives in heaven, and he sent you a gift— but it’s not the thing that you carved out to make the hunger and thirst go away. I AM the gift.”— Brian Habig 

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. It's often said, "people don't care what you know until they know you care." Compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence are some of the top qualities people look for in a boss or leader. Before we're going to follow someone, we want to know that they are trustworthy, that they won't use their authority and influence for selfish ends. In this passage, John wants to show us that Jesus is utterly trustworthy and worthy of our following him. Because of all Jesus knows and all he can do, but also because of his bottomless compassion for needy people. Then, after encouraging us with a firsthand account of God's incredible generosity, John also wants to warn us against trying to shoehorn Jesus into our own vision of the good life. In other words, we need to follow Jesus, not try to make him follow us. QUOTES: “John's initial lesson in our text is surely this: In even realistically impossible situations, please give Jesus a little something, a little faith at least, a little credit for being able to do a great deal with the very little we have amidst "all these people." The Gospel Equation is 5 + 2 + X = 5000+. Jesus could have done (and, in fact, he will do) the following miracle with little or no faith from his disciples at all … Jesus is clearly saying to all listening disciples, as Andrew at least seems to sense, "Try me; give me whatever you have, even if it doesn't seem like very much or like enough to you." And though Andrew's little faith dies almost as soon as it is born ("Oh, but what are these things..?"), nevertheless, Jesus takes this even-less-than-mustard-seed-size faith and goes to work with it.” - F. Dale Bruner “Jesus is not discouraged, as we are, by what we have to offer. Indeed, if we will put it into his hands he will still 'give thanks' for it, a wonder in itself. Our instinct is to put ourselves down and demean what we have to give, particularly when measuring it against raw human need. But Christ is thankful for us! And if we will believe sufficiently in his gifting to trust him with our whole selves, he will take us, break us as need be (Mk. 6:41), and offer us to the Father as in his hands the miracle is repeated, the resource multiplied, and a multitude fed.” - Bruce Milne “The accounts of the ‘miracles’ in first-century Palestine are either lies, or legends, or history. And if all, or the most important, of them are lies or legends then the claim which Christianity has been making for the last two thousand years is simply false.” – C.S. Lewis, Miracles

The message from Saturday night of our first ever "StayCo" stay-at-home conference, where we studied the idea of justification from Romans 3. Our final message is about receiving and responding to our justification. Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 60, 61, 64. Q.60. How are you right with God? A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it al all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept the gift of God with a believing heart. Q.61. Why do you say that by faith alone you are right with God? A. It is not because of any value my faith has that God is pleased with me.  Only Christ’s satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness make me right with God.  And I can receive this righteousness and make it mine in no other way than by faith alone. Q 64 .But doesn’t this teaching make people indifferent and wicked? A. No. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ through true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude

The message from Friday night of our first ever "StayCo" stay-at-home conference, where we studied the idea of justification from Romans 3. Our first night's message is about the burden and beauty of justification. Q. 33. What is justification? A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace by which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, received by faith alone. (The Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English)

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. This week, in the “third sign” of John’s gospel we see Jesus bringing a healing to a helpless man, and confronting the narrow religiosity and unbelief of the Jewish leaders. This sign shows us that only Jesus can bring us the true Sabbath rest that will make us whole. Only Jesus shows us the merciful heart of the Father that never takes a day off from loving his people. And only Jesus can lovingly confront us in just the way we need. QUOTES: "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. [The gospel] is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him….Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer “Grace is not some abstract doctrine or theological construct. Grace comes as Christ does. Grace is as personal as he is. In fact, Christ is grace. The unmerited favor of God is what Jesus is about, but it is also who he is. We should thus see grace as a personal action by a personal God who saved us from our helpless condition out of pure love.”-- Bryan Chappel “There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself … Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.” –Sinclair Ferguson