Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning. Ben and I were on a drive yesterday together, and we were just talking about all the good life that's happening here at Westside as we head into the fall. And I made the remark. I'm like, it's amazing the people I see week after week that come to our Sunday services to hear.
[00:00:22] I was talking to Ben. You and I talked at them 30 minutes at a time. We monologue, and they keep showing up.
[00:00:31] This is absurd to me.
[00:00:35] And by the way, we don't always go every other week. We shake it up sometimes. Sometimes I'll go two weeks in a row or Ben will go two weeks in a row. So you can't tell who's going to be preaching next because we don't want to start seeing trends.
[00:00:52] Ben's so fun. You love Ben so much. So we're going to keep it, you know, secret who's preaching so that you all show up. But here's the point. You actually don't come every week to this place just to hear Ben and I's opinions on the world. We have opinions. Right. And yet that's not why you're here.
[00:01:10] Ben's hilarious. You don't just come for the jokes. What we're here for, actually, is to hear God's word.
[00:01:18] That's what we have found as valuable as people of faith, as people who are reaching for and searching for the way of Jesus and for God's peace to break through in a world that is oftentimes not peaceful at all.
[00:01:34] We are coming here to hear from God. And so I believe that's why you're here today. You're not here just to hear my opinions, but we're here to hear God's word. And what we are given as our starting point to understand God's word and hear him and see him is the Bible. Right.
[00:01:50] And it's really important that we understand how we read the Bible is as important as if we read the Bible. There are bad readings of the Bible that will take you so far away from the whole point of what Jesus came to do that it would be better if you just stayed away altogether.
[00:02:05] But of course we don't stay away, because in the Bible, we are pointed towards Jesus.
[00:02:12] But it is not enough just to flip open the Bible and read it and just assume that's all the way that is required. Because it is so critical how we read the Bible, how we apply it to our lives here in 2025.
[00:02:25] Because in the application and the contextualization of what is in here, we actually either are drawn towards the image of Jesus and who he is, or we can oftentimes get the wrong impression about who God is.
[00:02:40] And Jesus made this point, if you don't believe me. Jesus made the point himself.
[00:02:44] He was talking to some of the most studious Bible studiers anywhere, right? He's talking to the Pharisees, the religious leaders and teachers of the law.
[00:02:54] And it's to these most educated about the Bible, these people who knew the Bible backwards and frontwards better than anybody. This is what Jesus himself says to those experts in Scripture. John 5:37. And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself. You have never heard his voice or seen him face, and you do not have his message in your hearts because you do not believe me, the one he sent to you. You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the Scriptures point to me.
[00:03:29] Fascinating.
[00:03:31] Jesus is looking at the most biblically literate people of his day and he's saying, you know everything about Scripture and yet you've missed God altogether because you've missed me.
[00:03:43] This should serve as a sobering warning to any of us who pride ourselves as being so knowledgeable about God's word. It should sober us to think that it is possible that we would spend our whole lives reading this front to back and miss the point. I don't want to miss the point.
[00:04:03] I think you're here because you don't want to miss the point.
[00:04:07] And so today, as we start this new series called Sunday School, we're looking at some of the Old Testament stories. If you grew up in church, in Sunday school, in classrooms where these Bible stories were taught, the stories we're going to share again maybe are familiar to you, but we're going to take a second look and not just say, you know what happened in this story, but how is Jesus revealed in the stories of the Old Testament?
[00:04:35] How is Jesus the one that all these stories are pointing us to? I think the reading of the Old Testament, those books of the Bible, before we get to the story of Jesus and the Gospels, the best reading of the Old Testament is when you get to the end, at the end of Malachi, you say, we need a savior.
[00:04:57] Everything I just read tells me that we cannot get to God unless something breaks through. And what breaks through is the one that all these stories are pointing to and prefiguring and giving us a glimpse of, which is the coming of a savior, Jesus.
[00:05:13] And so we are a church, and this is core to our values. We are a church who is centered on Jesus life, love Jesus. Jesus at the center of our faith and practice. That means that we don't worship the Bible.
[00:05:29] It's not the Father, Son, and the Holy Bible, as they say. Right.
[00:05:33] We don't hold the Bible up on a pedestal and sing songs to it and say, you're all I want and you're all I need.
[00:05:40] Actually, it's Jesus who we worship, and the Bible serves to point to him. So that's our foundation. Okay. As we talk to all these stories and look again at these maybe familiar, maybe not familiar stories, we are looking for how Jesus is revealed in these scriptures. Okay. Are you with me?
[00:05:58] Oh, yeah. You're with me. It's so good, Evan. It's so good, Pastor Evan. Good job. All right, here we go.
[00:06:06] Not only does scripture point to Jesus, but also holds up a mirror to our humanity.
[00:06:11] It shows us and reveals the parts of us that maybe we would gloss over or not want to admit.
[00:06:19] Oftentimes, the stories that are told in scripture have a people who are struggling to find their way to God. They're full of mistakes or sins.
[00:06:30] There's violence and anger in their hearts. They screw up and they mess up. This is not a storybook filled with perfect people doing perfect things by any means.
[00:06:42] It shows the need and the depth of the human condition that we can't do this on our own. We can't find peace on our own.
[00:06:51] If you look at the state of the world that we are in today and ever feel a level of anxiety or fear or uncertainty and about the future, we are in good company that the world is and continues to be a place filled with violence.
[00:07:11] As I think we all saw in the news this week, just the heartbreaking, disgusting, horrible shooting of Charlie Kirk.
[00:07:22] Whether you agree with his politics or not, I think everyone was in agreement. This is not acceptable.
[00:07:33] And this comes on the tail end of story after story. And this is what is so, I think, disturbing to me is that because of how this assassination, this shooting happened, it is understandably and as it should be, shocking to us. But what is not shocking is the violence that happens almost every week.
[00:07:57] That on the same week that this assassination happened, we had another school shooting in Denver where two students lost their lives. The 47th school shooting of the year in our nation.
[00:08:09] And yet that because of the frequency and the regularity in our news cycles of stories like this, we become desensitized to it. And this is not a critique of Our becoming desensitized. This is just a critique of the level of violence that is now normalized in our society.
[00:08:26] This is something that we should not shrug off and say, well, I guess this is just how it is. It should break our hearts and it should drive us to the feet of Jesus and say, jesus, God of peace, bring your peace to a broken world.
[00:08:41] For the sake of my kids and your kids and our future as a society, we need the God of peace to break through in a world of violence.
[00:08:52] We are desperate for it.
[00:08:55] And it's fascinating to me, as we were preparing this series even months ago, today we're starting with Noah's Ark. And the impetus for this story of Noah's Ark, where God looks out on the world, is not just sin in general that he brings judgment against, but it's specifically violence.
[00:09:16] Genesis chapter six.
[00:09:18] Now, God saw that on the earth that the Earth had become corrupt and filled with violence. And God observed all this corruption in the world for everyone on earth was corrupt. What was the sign of the corruption of the Earth? It was the violence that was spiraling.
[00:09:32] It was this cycle of violence, starting with the story of Cain, where he kills his brother Abel. And then generation after generation, the violence just grows and grows until we get to Genesis chapter six. And the violence is so much that God is like, I'm going to wash my hands of this.
[00:09:46] This is not working. They're going to destroy my entire intention for humanity, which was to live in the beauty of the world I created, and it's being ruined. And so the answer to this violence in humanity long before Jesus would come, the answer to this violence is divine violence. That's harsh.
[00:10:07] That God's judgment is poured out in the form of a flood that wipes away everything and everyone except Noah and his family.
[00:10:16] He's this man who is deemed to be righteous in his family that they would be carried in safety through this boat, this ark that Noah had created that would carry them through the storm into a new world where everything could start again.
[00:10:32] And it's fascinating.
[00:10:35] Over the last century or so, there's been these expeditions of people that go up onto the mountain mentioned in the story, where they.
[00:10:42] The ark, the boat landed after the floods.
[00:10:45] And there's been several expeditions of these archaeologists and these Bible enthusiasts that go up on Mount Ararat, which is still there today, and they look for the remnants of Noah's Ark, which seems unlikely to find anything.
[00:11:05] There's also been a push to. To try to figure out how you could fit all the animals into the ark, all species on the Earth. And there's some really wacky ways that you have to do math to make that work. Right.
[00:11:19] There's been studies to discover how much water would actually have to fall in 40 days and 40 nights, as the story tells, to fill the earth 20ft above the highest mountains. It's about 30ft an hour everywhere on earth for 40 days and 40 nights. That's a lot of water.
[00:11:37] Like, an impossible amount of water. Right.
[00:11:39] And so when we go down this rabbit trail, like, if we could just prove that Noah's Ark happened exactly historically as it is written, then somehow that's going to really be the thing that solidifies our faith. And can I tell you that our faith is not in the historic nature of a story.
[00:11:58] In Genesis, chapter six, our faith is in Jesus.
[00:12:03] So what we actually do is we look at this story and we don't say, okay, get your boots and your Indiana Jones hat. We're going to Mount Ararat.
[00:12:11] Instead, we say, how can we see Jesus and redemptive work that he brings at play in this story?
[00:12:18] And if you think this is, like, out there and Pastor Evan, how dare you. This is how the early church did it. Check this out. First Peter, chapter 3, verse 18. Peter the Apostle writes this. He says, christ suffered for our sins once and for all time. He never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God. Verse 21, the water through which the ark safely passed symbolizes now the ceremonial washing through baptism that initiates you into salvation.
[00:12:48] So all the way back in the early church with the disciples of Jesus, they're looking at stories in the Old Testament, and, by the way, a lot of wonderful, brilliant Christians that hold fast to a historic view of this story. There's a lot of wonderful, brilliant Christians who say this story is telling a bigger picture and we shouldn't lean on it for historic facts and details. You can believe either way on that because, again, our faith is in Jesus, not in Noah's Ark.
[00:13:16] Amen. So because of that, we actually turn, much as the early church did, to these stories, and we say, could we find the boat on Mount Arat or not? Actually, that's not our concern. Our concern is what it is telling us about the nature of God. When he sees a world that is given over to violence and corruption and decay, what is the response of God? Well, before Jesus, it is a violent push against that violence.
[00:13:43] It is destruction and death and the waters of judgment that wipe away humankind in their sin. But because of Jesus, Peter would tell us that now Noah's Ark represents something new. It represents the baptism that Christ brought about, that now we can be cleansed not of our life through destruction and judgment, but through what he purchased for us on the cross. Now we can be cleansed through baptism and carried safely through the waters of chaos and violence into a new world where everything can be made new. Through him, he gives us a new picture.
[00:14:18] And this is a taste of what we should do. Every time we open Scripture in the Old Testament, we should say, where is Jesus in this story?
[00:14:26] Where is the redemptive movement that takes us from a place of hopelessness and violence and decay and anxiety and uncertainty into a place where we are carried safely by Christ into a new creation?
[00:14:40] It is 2nd Corinthians 5 where Paul would write this. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone and the new is here.
[00:14:51] Maybe you've heard that. I think we've read that a lot in our sermons. But I want you to think of it in terms of this picture of Noah's Ark, that if you are in the ark that is salvation through Christ, the new creation has come and the old is gone and the new is here. There is so much in my life that looks like the old world, the old places of violence and anger and frustration and lust and angst. And what I need is I need to be found so wrapped up in Christ that I'm carried on the waters not of judgment now, but of the cleansing work of Christ into a place where all things can be made new.
[00:15:28] And that's not my hope just for me or my family. That's my hope for you, for this church, for our communities, that we look out in a world that is marked and broken by violence and decay. And we hold on to hope that there is an ark in. In troubled times. That is Jesus.
[00:15:48] Our hope is found in him. I was just sharing with a couple at the end of the first service, and they're just expressing, like, you know, there's real anxiety, there's fears, there's fears for safety. It just feels like the world is so uncertain. And I was reminded of that scripture in the book of Hebrews, where the writer of Hebrews says, we have this hope as an anchor for our souls. Jesus, who has gone through the veil for us.
[00:16:13] And I want to tell you that if your hope is anchored to circumstances or peace in the world or everything going right or your health being good, that peace can be taken in a moment. But if our hope is anchored to the person of Jesus. It is a hope that cannot be shaken.
[00:16:31] And so in this troubled world, we have a steady and a strong ark that is Jesus.
[00:16:43] This is not only for our personal renewal or our personal hope of salvation, but it is the hope for a hurting and violent world that the peace of God that would guard our hearts and minds, as Paul would say, would step in and it would overflow from us. And this is how God has chosen redemption in the world today. It's actually through us.
[00:17:08] This is the instructions he left us as his church when he stood with his disciples. And he said, now go out into all the world.
[00:17:19] Make disciples of everyone, every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and I will be with you to the end. He was saying, baptize the world and not the judgment of God that ends in their death and violence, but baptize them in the hope that is an anchor for their souls, a cleansing work that cleans the conscience first. Peter says that takes us from a place of guilt and shame and hiding from God and lashing out at one another into a place of newness in Jesus.
[00:17:55] How do we do this? How do we practically act out this hope that we have?
[00:18:02] Here's some ideas.
[00:18:03] One, we gotta reject a spiral of violence in our words, our thoughts and our attitudes.
[00:18:10] It can be real convenient to think, well, I never act out at anybody. I would never, you know, get aggressive.
[00:18:17] But man, my thoughts can be really angry.
[00:18:22] My posts on social media can be pretty ugly.
[00:18:27] My attitudes towards certain groups or people that disagree with me or that are on the other side of the aisle on some issue, man, those can look like violence and anger and hatred.
[00:18:38] And it starts with how we think and how we allow ourselves to lash out long before it comes to violence. But it's in our thoughts and our attitudes. Number two, I think we would do well to practice less compulsive scrolling of news and social media.
[00:18:54] Is that too practical for Sunday morning?
[00:18:59] Do you want me to do some soaring rhetoric?
[00:19:02] Church today? Let's stop scrolling your news feeds. Hallelujah. Is that better? But seriously, we have to control and not give over control to a tech company or a media company or social media company.
[00:19:19] The habits of what we take into our lives and our souls, we have to, I think we are compelled by our faith to not allow external stimulus to take the place of what Christ calls us into in a place of prayer and communion with him.
[00:19:38] And when we allow that compulsive checking of whatever your favorite outlet is Whether it's the news site or Facebook or Instagram or whatever you tend to go to.
[00:19:53] I just feel like as a church, we have to set ourselves apart and that our focus and our heart should be centered on the way of Jesus. And not that we become uninformed, not that we necessarily shut it all the way off, but that we put guardrails around the intake so that our hearts and minds can be centered around Christ.
[00:20:15] And then we guard against becoming desensitized to violence.
[00:20:20] This is, as I shared, it's so difficult with the constant stream of violence that comes into our awareness, to not become desensitized. And so I think this is something to where we go to a place of prayer and we say, holy Spirit, would you sensitize me again to the hurting of the world? Because what happens is we begin to hear really horrible things as background noise. And then we lose the ability face to face with those in our community and those that are close and even in our families to really connect and empathize and feel anymore because of the desensitization.
[00:21:01] And we need to be resensitized by the Holy Spirit. I think that is the renewing of the mind that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 12, that it's not only how our faith or our conscience is clear before the Lord, but it's actually a renewing of our mind and a resensitization towards the hurt of the world.
[00:21:22] And then finally, we need to step into Christ's rest in the storm.
[00:21:30] Oftentimes we can't choose how certain or uncertain the world will be. We can't choose how trouble will come to us or will stay away from us. But we do have the choice in what we will respond to in doing when trouble comes.
[00:21:45] And Jesus was with people that were.
[00:21:52] They were poor, destitute, often struggling under the thumb of Rome, pressured by their religious duties.
[00:22:03] And it was to them Jesus said In Matthew, chapter 1128, he said, Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest and take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. There is rest to be found in Jesus.
[00:22:25] There is rest to be found when we put all of our eggs in the basket of his salvation.
[00:22:33] When we anchor ourselves to Jesus in the storms of life. There is rest when Noah and his family finally see the flood waters recede after 150 days, as the story goes, they land on the mountain, they get out. It is then that God makes a new covenant with them. And I believe this, that for us, Jesus offers a new covenant, a new promise that he invites us into a new kind of relationship with God through the cross.
[00:23:05] And in this covenant, this new covenant given to us through Jesus and his work, he has done all the work to save us.
[00:23:14] And what he invites us into is to receive and trust in his rest.
[00:23:20] And so in just a moment, we're going to move into communion as we do every week. And this is a wonderful opportunity. We're going to stand and we're going to get out of our seats. And I think even the physical movement and response to this moment is wonderful.
[00:23:35] Because as we're moving with our feet, we're moving towards spiritually, we're moving towards the rest of Christ.
[00:23:42] As we take this cracker and we dip it in the juice, we are saying, jesus, we remember that you paid a great price and a great sacrifice to carry us safely across the waters of judgment and chaos and violence, safely into the new creation and the hope that we have as we are anchored to you.
[00:24:02] So, Lord Jesus, would you come close to us today? For us who feel anxiety or fear or are just weighed down by heaviness today, Lord Jesus, would you buoy us and lift us that we would be found in Christ today, in every storm, in every situation, in every moment of fear, that we would be so housed in the hope of Christ, that we would have a confidence and faith not rooted in our circumstance, but rooted in Christ, that you're going to carry us safely to the other side.
[00:24:47] And Lord, as we move into communion, we receive the covenant purchased for us by Jesus, you on the cross covenant signed by your blood, giving us full and free access to the Father, salvation through grace alone.
[00:25:08] Lord, we love you and we worship you in Jesus name, Amen.
