South Fellowship Church

Jonah | Prophetic Pagans | Jonah 1:4-17 | Week 2

Storms are an interesting deal, aren't they?  We're going to read about one in the life and story of Jonah this morning.  The book of Jonah is literary genius.  Please don't hear me saying it's fairy tale, or parable, but it's written geniusly.  It's intended to be funny.  It's prophetic, which means before it's parable, before it's literal, before it's either of those things, Jonah has a message for us.  It's prophetic.  That's the type of book it is in the library of the Scriptures.  
Jonah's going to encounter a storm.  I read about this storm in 1850, that battered against the northern island of Scotland.  The tide rose and then receded, and the storm revealed these ruins that were underneath.  Ruins that were buried underneath these grassy hills and nobody near they were there.  I think it's similar to the way storms work in your life and the way storms work in mine.  We often think the storm creates something.  I'd like to propose to you today that the storm typically doesn't create anything, it just reveals what's already there.  It reveals what's underneath.  It reveals the things that we're maybe good at keeping hidden, on normal days, but when the storm rolls in, and we get the call from the doctor about our health, or the call about the Stock Market crashing, or any other thing like that, when the storm rolls in, it has this tendency to reveal what we're actually holding onto.  It has a tendency of revealing what's underneath it all...  

Jonah | Life on the Run | Jonah 1:1-3 | Week 1

Over the next six weeks, we're going to have the chance to journey with Jonah, to allow Jonah to be our guide through the Lenten season. Our guide to the cross. Our guide to the resurrection. Metaphorically speaking, we're going to take Jonah's hand and we're going to go for a little bit of a walk. My guess is, even if you're not a follower of Jesus and you're here today, even if you don't know much about the Bible, you've heard about Jonah. Turns out the story about a person getting eaten by a fish and living for three days in its belly is ubiquitous. News about that travels. My guess is you have an opinion about the book of Jonah.
I can remember being a college pastor and walking onto a college campus in southern California, and having someone come up to me. We started a conversation about life, and faith, and Jesus, and it was almost like they hit pause and said, "You don't really believe in the whole Jonah story, do you?" How do you answer somebody who has no interest in faith, has no background in faith or maybe stepped away from faith? What do you say? Here's what I said, "Well, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth died, and was buried in the earth for three days, and walked out of the grave, so I guess believing that somebody survived in the belly of a fish isn't any harder than that." My goal was let me get to Jesus as quick as I can... 

Unexpected | Matthew 4:12-23

{Ryan Paulson:} Our teaching text is Matthew 4:12-23 today.  If you have your Bible, you can open up there.  I'm going to read it, then Larry Boatright is going to come teach it.  When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee.  Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali---to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:  "Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles---the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."  From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."  As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew.  They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.  "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people."  At once they left their nets and followed him.  Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John.  They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets.  Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.  Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.  This is the Word of God.
{Larry Boatright:}  Good morning.  Today is the last Sunday before we begin the season of Lent, as Ryan sort of shared.  It's really a season where we acknowledge our own mortality.  It's designed to help us to stare at that, and it's probably good to do that every year.  It's beautiful because we go into Easter, and Easter is just so significant because of that.  This week we kick off Lent with Ash Wednesday service.  I really hope you'll come to that.  I think it'll be a really meaningful time for all of us, and I'm excited about it...  

LIFE IS A MAZE(ing) | God's Voice or Bad Pizza | John 10:1-21 | Week 7

If you really packed the guys in, you could probably get 15 people in one of those boats.  These guys were pros and they'd been on this sea hundreds of times in their lives.  They'd been there in the middle of the night because some of the best fishing happened in the middle of the night.  As they started to go across that 13 mile journey from one end of the shore to the other in the Sea of Galilee, a huge storm just came out of nowhere and started buffeting against their boat.  You can imagine wind and waves and water rushing to your face.  You couldn't see anything anyway since it was pitch dark; three in the morning by this time.  Inevitably, the question had to come up, because all the disciples would have been asking it:  Whose idea was it that we cross the lake in the middle of the night?  You guessed it!  Jesus's idea.  You wonder if there was a conversation that happened back and forth:  Man, we've been trusting that guy with an awful lot, is he trustworthy, because it certainly seems like this little boat is going down?   It was at that point that they looked out, and shining through the darkness looked like a ghost.  A ghost!  Out of the darkness comes a voice:  Take heart!  It is I!  Do not be afraid!    If you're one of the disciples, you might have shouted back: That's easy for you, Jesus!  You're not the one seeing the ghost, or somebody walking on water!  Either way, it's a bit frightening!    Take heart it is I, do not be afraid. (Matt. 14:27)  The next thing that happens is shocking.  I for one am so glad.....Peter gets a bad rap, but I'm so glad Peter's there.  Any time you start to get down on Peter, just remember, he's one of only two people that have ever lived that have ever walked on water!  So don't slam him too quickly.  We wouldn't have nearly the humorous stories we have in the Bible if it weren't for Peter.  Lord, if it's you, if it's really you....I know that you've said it's you, but if it's you command me to come out on the water.  Come.  Come.  Not...Peter, I want to assure you this is Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah, the long-awaited King of Israel.  Here's my ID.  Here's my driver's license.  Let me give you just a few things only you could know about, Peter.  I want to assure you it's me.  None of that.  Just.....come.  I can imagine Peter getting up on the edge of this little 15-person fishing boat.  Pitch dark.  Wind. Waves. Getting ready to step out of the perfectly good boat, that seems to be holding up, even in the midst of the storm, into the middle of the sea.  I wonder if he's thinking as he's stepping out, "How sure am I?  Sounds like your voice, but I'm not so sure..."  

LIFE IS A MAZE(ing) | All The Feels | Matthew 6:9-13 | Week 6

February 13th, just this last week, flight 5763 took off from the Orange County Airport on its way to Seattle.  It didn't quite make it there, because over the High Sierras, it hit what you might refer to as a little bit of turbulence.  One of the passengers reported that, along with the flight attendant, the drink cart hit the ceiling of the aircraft.  Another passenger said that the plane did not one but two nosedives, sort of ninety degrees down.  Just imagine being at 34,000 feet, cruising altitude, having your plane, that's sailing through the air, immediately doing a ninety degree nosedive, and the flight attendant next to you in the air.  Five people were injured.  The plane had to land in Reno and didn't make it to Seattle because five people had to be hospitalized.
If you've ever been in a situation of turbulence, either in an airplane or in life, you know that you don't just have thoughts in your head that affect the way that you interact with that situation.  Your whole body gets into it, doesn't it?  If you were to take your pulse, it would be elevated, would it not?  Your palms might be a little bit sweaty.  You might be yelling things uncontrollably.  My parents were in a turbulent situation in an aircraft and somebody grabbed the hands of the people next to them and started praying "The Lord's Prayer."...  

LIFE IS A MAZE(ing) | Listen to Your Heart (?) | Philippians 2:12-13 | Week 5

I can remember when I was freshman in college and went and purchased the album that song (Obsession) is off of.  It was written by Martin Smith, but recorded by David Crowder.  I remember lying in my bed in my dorm room at Colorado State, having my Discman next to me.  I was listening to the song and thinking to myself, "My heart does burn.  Jesus, I want you.  Closer than my skin, yeah."  All that stuff Crowder's singing, I want it.  I was going onto high school campuses and telling people about Jesus; people that didn't want to hear about it...it didn't matter to me.  My heart burned.
Around that same time, I started to want a Jeep CJ-7.  My heart burned for that too.  I went out and bought one, not knowing anything about car mechanics and having zero propensity for repairing anything.  It was a 1985 CJ-7 and it didn't have a hardtop (just a soft top) and soft doors.  I remember driving away thinking, "This is my freedom."  I was on my way home---it was a 45 minute drive from where I purchased the car to my parent's house---and one of those Colorado thunderstorms formed.  I was in this Jeep with no top, living it up, when a thunderstorm of epic proportions came right over my head.  It was a deluge!  I remember getting absolutely destroyed by this thunderstorm, and people in cars next to me were absolutely laughing.  It was coming down so hard I had to pull over and I had this thought almost immediately, "Not everything my heart wants is good!  Not everything my heart wants is worth wanting!" because I wanted this...and maybe I shouldn't have...

LIFE IS A MAZE(ing) | Discerning Doors and Detours | Acts 6:6-10 | Week 4

Last weekend as the elders were headed up to Estes Park for our retreat, our middle school group was also heading up to a retreat at Buena Vista.  They had left at 5:00 p.m. and were heading up 285 and there was a sign over the road that said, "Road Closure in Fairplay," which isn't a good thing if you're headed to Buena Vista.  Through a few radio calls back and forth to the various vans, they decided to take a little bit of a detour.  They eventually found themselves at Wadsworth and Chatfield, right near where they left from!  From there, they headed up I-70 to miss the road closure and what was suppose to be a two-and-a-half hour trip up to the mountains ended up being a five hour excursion.  
Isn't it interesting how we spend most of our lives trying to avoid situations like that and they're the very things that stick with us?  Have you ever thought about that?  The perfect trip isn't usually the one you remember the details of, it's the one that was a total mess.  You remember that trip where nothing went right?  Wasn't that great?!   We spend a lot of our lives trying to figure out what's the right way to go and what's the right thing to do.  It's oftentimes in those in-betweens, in those detours, in those closed doors, that life actually starts to come alive.  That's why we've called this series "Life is A Maze(ing)."  Because it is!  It's both...

Exam Time | Matthew 15:21-28

Dr. Scott Wenig - Guest Speaker

Life is A MAZE (ing) | A Holy Hunch | Acts 15:1-29 | Week 3

It's a bit of irony that some of the greatest movements in the history of the church have been birthed out of some of the sharpest disagreements.  Some of the things we celebrate most started off as.....well, a fight.  They started off as people on two sides of the aisle unable to come to a conclusion and having very different opinions about the way that things should progress.  In Acts 15:1-2, we see one of those situations.  But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, {The brothers---the church in Antioch) "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."  And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the other were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.  What follows, in Acts 15, is what we will refer to as the Jerusalem Council.  It was one of the church's first ever business meetings. You didn't want to miss a business meeting in the early church though.  Some business meetings ended with your teachers being sent on the very first ever missionary journey.  You don't want to miss that one.  This one you didn't want to miss either.  This Jerusalem Council, this church business meeting, actually set the trajectory for the New Testament church.  I think what's decided in Acts 15 is the biggest decision the church has ever made.  
Can you just imagine what this 300 mile---probably fifteen to twenty day journey---was like?  What do you talk about on the way up to Jerusalem from Antioch?  Three hundred miles.  Paul.  Barnabas.  Some other people.  There might have been some men there that had a vested interest in what this council would decide.  Do I have to have a surgery to be part of the church or not? That's part of what's being decided here.  But at the core of what they're going to figure out at the Jerusalem Council is what does it really mean, at a very base level, to follow the way of Jesus?  What does Jesus ask of us?  Is it Jesus AND Moses?  Is it Jesus AND surgery?  Is it Jesus plus fill-in-the-blank, whatever law you want to fill in from the old covenant?  Is it Jesus plus or is it just Jesus?  That's what they're going to figure out.  A three hundred mile journey and they walk into this meeting where they're going to make the biggest decision the church has ever made.  Here it is in verse 5:  But some believers who belonged to the part of the Pharisees rose up {Notice: These are believers who are part of the party of the Pharisees, so they got a little residual, okay?}  and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them {Gentile believers who have come to faith in the Jewish Messiah, his name is Jesus.}  and {This is a big 'and.'} to order them to keep the law of Moses.  

LIFE IS A MAZE(ing) | Guidelines and Guardrails | Ephesians 5:1-21 | Week 2

Last week we started a series we're calling "Life is A Maze....ing."  We're talking about discovering God's will.  It's these questions we all have ---- What job should I take?  What city should I live in?  What relationship should I pursue?  We all have these questions, don't we?  God, what do you want me to do with my life?  If you're God, and I believe that you are, and you have a plan, and I believe that you do, how do I align myself with it?  We spend a lot of time, and we might lose a lot of sleep asking that question?  At times it can be laborious and at times it can be a little bit annoying to go God, I just don't know.  That feeling of 'I don't know' is also the very feeling that makes us feel like we're alive.  If we did away with that, if we knew exactly what to do at every moment and time and we were just robots being controlled, life wouldn't be nearly as amazing as it is.  The reality is that God has given us choice.  He's given us freedom.  If you came last week, that's why you're back today, because you believe that your choices matter.  You have the ability to choose between a myriad of different options and what you do with your life.  If you didn't believe that, you wouldn't be here today.  If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be giving this sermon!  
We'll talk about this each week because we want to give a little bit of framework.  Last week, we said that if you were to read through the Scriptures, you're going to find three different types of wills of God.  You can't go through a single passage and find these, you need to sort of dig and mine a little bit.  Let me give you the first one:  It's God's sovereign will.  That's the 'thus saith the Lord,' this is going to happen.  God is in heaven and he does whatever pleases him, the psalmist says.  But that's different than saying 'everything that happens is God's will' or 'that God wills everything that happens.'  Within his sovereign will, God says to some things, I'm going to give you freedom.  You're going to have to use your brain.  It's not a decoration.  It's not a hood ornament for your life.  You should actually use it.  We're going to talk about that today.  Within God's sovereign will there's a lot of freedom.  We said last week:  God gets everything he wills, but he doesn't get everything he wants.  There are some moments that God says to us, I've given you free choice and you've chosen to go one direction, but I wish you would have done something else...