Eden Teachings Podcast

Service has always been a defining characteristic of those who apprentice under Jesus.In the first century, this obscure group, who called themselves “followers of the Way,” took their Rabbi Jesus’ teachings and example seriously. They called the marginalized “brother” and “sister,” cared for the sick at the cost of their own health and reputation, and willingly lived with less so that the needs of others could be met.In a time when humble service was seen not as a virtue but rather as a duty of the powerless, ordinary people following Jesus chose a wholly different way of relating to those around them. This kind of life is the result of true spiritual formation — that we would be transformed into people of self-giving love. Maturity, according to Jesus, is not primarily measured by our current emotional state, the consistency of our spiritual practices, or even the quality of our moral decisions, but by a life given in loving service to the world around us.This makes service not just a practice for those of us in Jesus’ Kingdom, but a gauge of how much his Kingdom is truly in us.Teacher: Will SolomonText: Various

Among the words the New Testament writers used to describe followers of Jesus, perhaps none hit quite so close to home as the Apostle Peter’s description: “foreigners and exiles.”Walk the streets of most cities in the post-Christian West as a follower of Jesus, and you’re likely to feel the force of those words — this sense that you don’t quite “belong” in the surrounding culture; you’re a kind of spiritual refugee. For many of us, that feeling can turn our faith into, at best, an awkward conversation, and at worst, a personal hobby we would rather hide away. In the midst of that very real experience, it can be helpful to remember that the gospel is good news. And while there are those who will be turned off by it, others’ hearts might leap to believe it. They might even say, “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”Because, after all, it’s “good news … for all people.” (Luke 2v10) Jesus invites us to both show and tell this good news — for our deeds and our words to testify to the beauty of the life we have in him.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

To be effective witnesses in the world, we have to be pained by the things that pains God. In fact, we cannot offer the gospel of hope to people whose grief we cannot acknowledge. But in our culture, we tend to treat grief like a disease that might infect us if we let it get too close.But this is not the way of Jesus. Jesus was a man well acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53). He was not indifferent or unaware of our pain, but “empathized with our weaknesses.” To love others and move towards them in compassion, we have to feel their pain. So we must start by being honest with our own.Teacher: Brittni RatliffText: Various

The invitation to witness to the good news of Jesus can give rise to many different emotions — excitement and expectation, but also anxiety and, at times, overwhelm.Often, that particular feeling of overwhelm can come from feeling like: “It is my job to bring God to people.”Now, if that were true, we would have good reason to feel overwhelmed. But what if the practice of witness isn’t about bringing God to people, but about joining Him where He’s already at work in a person’s life? What if it’s about growing in our ability to hear and listen to the Holy Spirit’s nudges in our everyday interactions with others?Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Acts 8

Yesterday, we took a look at three things that keep us from loving our neighbor and expanding our circles: 

01  Embracing Discomfort

02  Inattentional Blindness

03  Implicit Bias 

To love others well requires looking inward and becoming aware of prejudices present in our hearts— becoming aware of the things keeping us from love.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: James 2.1-9

While our witness should take many shapes and forms, in a post-Christian culture that is often apathetic to the Gospel, confused about the gospel, or at worst hostile to it, our method for joining Jesus in his mission to “seek and save the lost” must become more about compassionate presence.How can we bear witness to Jesus in a time like this? In a very ordinary setting — one shared meal at a time, around a table with the lost.Teacher: Will SolomonText: Various

Who is your neighbor? 

We have to start here if witness + service, or justice and evangelism, is going to make sense.  We’ve got to define and redefine neighbor. 

For Jesus, it appears it’s any image bearer.  Any other human.  And to be a good neighbor means making other people's problems and concerns your own.  It's to do right by others through embodying the love, understanding, curiosity, kindness, and care of Jesus.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Luke 10

Many of us may admittedly experience a certain allergic response to the idea of “evangelism.”

It brings up images of uncompassionate preaching on street corners, unsolicited conversations, or perhaps more painfully, well-meaning invitations and interactions that are met with hostility.

But what if our witness to the person of Jesus could be more ordinary and less forced than what we may initially imagine?

And what if the starting place for this practice was not pressure, fear, or obligation, but love?

Teacher: Brittni Ratliff

Text: Various

The church bears witness through practicing justice and righteousness. We bear witness to the Kingdom in what we say and how we live. Meaning, not only is it unkind to preach the gospel without demonstrating the gospel (justice and righteousness), but biblically speaking, you actually are not witnessing if you neglect practicing justice and righteousness.What if we shared and lived the gospel in such a way, that even if our friends didn’t believe it, they walked away wishing it was true?Teacher: Caleb SprinkleTexts: Various

Robert Mullholland defines spiritual formation this way: "Spiritual formation is becoming like Jesus for the sake of others”.

Spiritual maturity is not measured by how much we know, but how we love others. The invitation into a life of apprenticeship to Jesus is to come and die. An invitation to be with him, become like him, and do as He did.

What did he do? He preached and demonstrated the gospel of the Kingdom.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

In Jonah 4, God’s call to Jonah was a kind of love towards people that don’t deserve it.  One that would cost Jonah something: releasing bitterness and contempt in his heart towards Nineveh. It was a call to love his enemies.

The book ends with a question: should I not care for them? Jonah doesn't answer, so the question is for us.

Can we love our enemies?

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Jonah 4

In Jonah 3, we see that Jonah does the bare minimum of what God asked him to do, doesn't even mention God in his gospel presentation, goes in reluctantly and angry, and the entire city repents.

What is going on here? Remember, Jonah is satirical. This passage shows 1) How little the mission of God depends on us, but it does still seem to depend on us…? and 2) God is not static. He responds to faith and repentance. He changes his mind (yup, that's what it says).

Somehow, God's will of the “renewal of all things” will come to pass. Somehow, the timing of His will is determined on the work and intercession of His image bearers. And somehow, God changes his mind.

Maybe we can't really understand Him like we thought we could? And maybe that's for the best?

Teacher: Will Solomon

Text: Jonah 3

** Sorry for the audio quality

In Jonah 2, we wrestled with the reality that Jonah may have been just paying lip service; not really repentant of his tribalism and racism and disobedience.

And while the author is not clear, in the context of the entire book, it would seem Jonah is simply regurgitating (no pun intended) Scripture. Especially when you juxtapose his story with Jesus' similar storm stories in the gospels.

It seems the author is leaving us with a question to ponder for ourselves: In our prayer life, are we reluctantly paying lip service? Or as the maxim goes: “going through the motions”?

Or is there earnest struggle, honesty, and ultimately trust, that is grounded in a real relationship with Jesus?

Teacher: Brittni Ratliff

Text: Jonah 2

Jonah 1 is a sobering passage because he is depicted as a human who is fully bought into the serpents lie — you don’t need God.  In fact, you’re better off without him.  You can have the life you want without God.Jonah has lost the plot.  He has heard the screams of Nineveh, and chooses to run the other way.  Instead of partnering with God to put the world to rights, he descends further and further into madness.  And a deformation takes place in his soul.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Jonah 1

Jonah has long been misunderstood as the focus is put more on Jonah being swallowed by a great fish. Because of this, a fight has broken out within the church over 1) did this actually happen, 2) if you don’t believe it happened as it is laid out, then you don’t believe in the authority of the Bible. This is the wrong starting place. If we focus on the things the author chooses not to focus on, then we miss the entire point of this beautifully crafted, satirical, literary masterpiece.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Jonah 1.1-3••••••Music: Replay by Qlowdy https://soundcloud.com/qlowdymusicLicense: Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: https://audiolibrary.com.co/qlowdy/replayMusic promoted by Audio Library: https://youtu.be/Ggm961-u__8

In contemporary Western Christian culture, most people engage the Bible by themselves. Typically referred to as “quiet time,” there is richness and beauty to be gained from a time of personal reflection on the Scriptures. However, that method has not been the norm throughout most of Church history. For the majority of Church history, people heard the Scriptures read aloud in a group or saw Bibles displayed graphically in their churches.Reading the Scriptures alone is beautiful, but the Bible is aimed at shaping and organizing a community of Jesus followers, of kingdom people, to put on display the wisdom and love of God in real, practical, and powerful ways. It was designed to help communities of people to see the world a certain way and to live in the world a certain way.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Various

The Bible is not a book; it’s a library. And it was written thousands of years ago, in three different languages, by dozens of different authors and in multiple genres of literature. As you would expect, it can be very hard to understand at times, and we can easily get lost or turned around as we work through it.

But by reading the teachings of Jesus, it becomes clear that if we misunderstand Scripture it can do great damage to our souls and society. Jesus himself spent a lot of time correcting common misreadings of Scripture. But the reverse is also true: If we understand what thelibrary of Scripture is saying to us, it can enlarge and enrich our lives in profound ways.

But for that to happen, we need study.

Teacher: Will Solomon

Text: Various

In the Bible, the word for "Remember” is used 352 times in the scriptures. When its variants are counted, that number jumps to more than 550. In John 16, Jesus promised his apprentices that the Holy Spirit would remind them of his words. But to do that, we have to have Jesus’ words in our memories!

God’s part is to bring the right Scripture to our minds at the right time, but our part is to build an inner library of key passages for the Holy Spirit to access day and night.

All of us are prone to spiritual amnesia — to forget what we need to hear again and again. Memorization and repetition trains the mind to focus and anchors the soul. We hear over and over “I love you. You are mine.” We need this like we need air to breathe and food to eat.

God has spoken his Word of life to us. That’s His part. Our part is to remember.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Various

In our current day and age, we read things quickly, scanning and scrolling, and mainly for information. But the Scriptures were not designed for fast reads and immediate understanding. They were meant to be meditated on. Scripture assumes you will come back to it over and over; it does not give up its secrets that easily. The goal is not information, but formation. To become the kind of person who thinks God's thoughts after Him; who sees the world the way He does. Because if we really believe the author is in the room with us, then ultimately, Scripture is a means to a deeper relationship with Jesus.Teacher: Brittni RatliffText: Various

Historically, there are four practices the church has done that we believe are essential to life with God in the Scriptures:

01 Reading through the entire Library of Scripture

02 Meditating on the Scriptures (Lectio Divina)

03 Studying the Scriptures

04 Putting the Scriptures to Memory

We believe you should aim to find a healthy diet of all four practices over the course of your life and apprenticeship to Jesus.  Finding balance helps us be able to wisely and humbly understand Scripture and the story it tells, and to be able to find ourselves in that story.

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Various

The Biblical authors actually believed that wisdom (or HOKMAH) and knowledge of what is actually true and going on in reality can be found in a person.  That God himself is the access point for all reality, and salvation is that awakening to reality. 

By living under the authority of the Bible, we are living under the authority of God himself.  In not doing so, we therefore live in conflict with reality itself.  We live out of alignment with how things actually are.  And we suffer the tragic results in our soul and in our society.  

The choice is clear.  It is the wisdom of God that leads to flourishing, or the wisdom of human autonomy, of the self, that leads to chaos. Do you really want to trust yourself?  

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Texts: Various

Everything in our culture screams quick, fast, efficient. But the Bible is the opposite. It’s designed for the reader to go slow, with ongoing consideration for a lifetime. It's designed to be meditated on.We delight in what we meditate on, and vice versa, we meditate on what delights us. In the process, we become like the things on which we give our attention to.And so Bible's ideal reader is one who digs deep, who returns to the text over and over, who journeys with the Spirit through all questions, doubts, frustrations, and ultimately trust. One who meditates.Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

Human beings are wired for story. We are narrative animals. We can’t help but ask the questions who are we? What does it mean to be human? We cannot function without some story to make sense of reality. So the question is not are we religious or have a story. The question is what story do we live by? And how do we know we are living by the right story? This is where the Bible comes in.The Bible tells a better story to all other stories. By following the story of the Bible, you begin to find yourself in the story it is telling, and in doing so, we come into alignment with reality and God Himself. Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various

This past Sunday, we started a new teaching series on Scripture, exploring what it is, and what it is not. Scripture is NOT:- A systematic theology, or theological reference book- A moral handbook- A "devotional grab-bag"We see a lot of problems surface when we approach the Scriptures in these three ways. So for us, we believe the Bible (or Scripture) is a library of writings both divine and human, that tell a unified story, leading us to Jesus. But are the words in this strange, ancient library still relevant? Do they still mean anything to us today?To Jesus, the Bible is trustworthy. To Jesus, the Bible has authority. The scriptures were designed to be read for formation. To shape us into the image of Jesus. In this library, we find life. In this library, we find a new way to be human.

Teacher: Will SolomonTexts: Various

In the West, many people have deconstructed from their "Christian upbringing" because they are seeing a wide gap in what Christians "believe" and how they actually act. The root cause for this gap is how the gospel is being preached today. The gospel has been ripped away from the story the Scriptures are telling, and reduced to a simple formula to get people out of hell. This inevitably produces consumers of Jesus' merit, rather disciples of Jesus' way.But to understand why Jesus dies, and what exactly God is up to in the world, we need to not skip the 39 books of the Old Testament (Israel’s story). Because Jesus very much saw his coming and death as a climax to their story. Without Israel's story, Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension doesn't make much sense. Teacher: Caleb SprinkleTexts: Various

Many have chosen to focus on the gore of the crucifixion. But when we read this scene, this isn’t what the gospel writers choose to focus on. Certainly, it’s sobering what was done to Jesus. But the focus was not blood and guts, but his enthronement. The focus is how God became king. At the center of allegiance and apprenticeship for Jesus is a cross, a Roman torture device meant to cause excruciating pain and slow suffering death. For Jesus, apprenticeship to Him looks like what He did: "take up your cross and follow me. "Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Mark 15

In this passage, Jesus is arrested and put on trial. There's much that could be said in this narrative, but specifically what's striking is the way Mark contrasts how Jesus handles suffering verses how the disciples did. 

For Jesus, suffering led to honest prayer and ultimately trust.  For the disciples, it led to betrayal and fleeing.   When suffering comes, where will you turn?  Will you do what you can to control your life, or will you yield and trust?  Will you curse and abandon God, or will you show up honestly in prayer, giving God your feelings, desires, and ultimately your trust? 

Trusting God is not a cheesy “Christian t-shirt”, or callous words given to those suffering in order to spiritually bypass real pain; it's a new way of being on this side of the resurrection.   Trusting God in suffering is, in fact, the way of Jesus.  

Teacher: Will Solomon

Text: Mark 14. 27-72

This past Sunday, we looked at the Last Supper.  It was in the final meal with his disciples that Jesus gave us one of His greatest gifts to the church: Communion.  It was here that Jesus modeled life around a table, with Him at the center.  And every time we participate in this meal, we share in His life, and recommit to Him and to each other.   

And while this was done in the context of a meal around a table, Communion does not look like that in the modern church.  So what happened?  How did it transform from a joyful meal to a somber moment with crackers and juice?

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Mark 14.12-26

This past Sunday, we looked at the entirety of Mark 13.  Many have taken this passage to be a proof text for the end times, as if Jesus was laying out a scene by scene movie of what will happen.  This interpretation, though relatively new in the scope of church history (i.e. the 19th century), has become the dominating view of modern Evangelicalism.   And unfortunately, it's created a lot of fear and panic among Christians.  

It's led to a justification for war in the Middle East because "God is on Israel's side” and it "has to happen" for the end to come.  Or, we spend our days trying to predict the end of the world, and we live with a fearful, escapist mentality and don't see what we do now as important as a way to care for the poor and contribute to human flourishing, or we don't see the need to care for the earth because it's “going to all burn anyway”.   

But what if Jesus wasn't talking about the end times?  And what if his intention wasn't to create fear for the present, but hope for the future?  

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Mark 13

In Mark 12, Jesus is being interrogated from the leaders of his day as they are trying to trap him in his words and either start a revolution against Rome, or side with the oppressor.  Jesus does neither, and instead challenges them on where their allegiance actually lies. 

It's a scathing discourse, one that challenges us in our own allegiances.  Jesus says the leaders have misunderstood the Scriptures and the power of God, and their vision of reality and the future is off.   What we think about the future informs how we live in the present.  And how we live in the present ultimately shapes the future, for better or worse. 

Teacher: Caleb Sprinkle

Text: Mark 12

In the final week of his life, Jesus enters Jerusalem to pronounce judgement on the Jewish leaders who were supposed to shepherd God's people.  Instead, they were extorting the poor, making a mockery of the temple, and making it impossible for Jews (and Gentiles) to know the One true God.   

Jesus came as the true Shepherd; one who does not exclude the marginalized or outsiders from the presence of God, but brings the presence near.

Teacher: Will Solomon

Text: Mark 11.12-25

There’s an ancient proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”You can’t follow Jesus alone. Not you shouldn’t; you can’t. The way God does this work of healing is through healthy relationships, through familial love. Why? We are both hurt at the deepest level by relationships, and we are healed at the deepest level by relationships.

Teacher: Caleb SprinkleText: Various