Eternity Church PodCast Eternity Church

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.A few months back, Peter and I had a great time talking to Jim Singleton about the new book he and Kevin Ford had just completed. In a highly distractible world, their premise of attentiveness was intriguing. As they build their case they write:“Establishing healthy boundaries is essential to building long-term trust. We live in an intrusive world… Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries respects integrity and fosters authentic trust.”Looking back last week as we met Vashti, the resolute queen of the Persians, condemned for her actions, we also met Xerses her husband. Hungry to conquer Europe and expand his kingdom, with his inhibitions curbed by a weeklong bender, he decimates his integrity by dehumanizing his queen and foolishly listening to the men around him, worried how her actions could stir up trouble for them at home. Clearly, volatile moods and quicksilver erraticism made it impossible for those around him to create and maintain the kind of healthy boundaries needed to establish true respect and foster authentic trust. Because of this, Xerses lacks applied knowledge. Yes, the kingdom he inherited from his father stretches from Pakistan to Sudan, but he is tall on temper and short on wisdom.This week we will be looking at Xerses, known as Ahasuerus to the Hebrews, and wrestling with the immeasurable value of integrity and the importance of wise counsel. If you want to see the force of wise counsel, take 30 minutes this week to read or listen to the whole book of Esther. Contrast the hubris and foolishness of Xerses' decisions as he listens to the Memucan and Haman at the beginning with his sagacity and fairness as he heeds Esther and Mordecai at the end.

A Sunday sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.It seems everyone has a wild story around a family reunion! Sheesh, our shared meals have their own archetypes. The sullen teen. The exasperated mother. The exhausted sister who spends the entire time cooking and cleaning. The brother who watches football the entire time. The weird cousins and their cavalcade of conspiracy theories.It makes me wonder how our time around the table affects us. Is it the tryptophan in the turkey that makes us drowsy, or is it hearing the same story for the fifth time? Is it a requirement of every uncle in the world to sound crazy, or is there something mind-altering in that hip flask making the fish he caught bigger with each telling?This Sunday we are starting a new series exploring the dynamic lives found in the book of Esther. Esther’s story moves forward through a series of banquets. Rich within its pages we meet men and women with diverse and conflicting motivations slammed together around Xerses’ table and kingly courts. In her story we see people exercising positional strength from places of hidden brokenness, while others prayerfully seek wisdom as they navigate walking with mercurial people in power.Over the next five weeks, we will look at five profiles in power and search together for the ways God is offering us wholeness, transformation and integrity. To get ready for each Sunday (or maybe the next big family get together), I encourage you to drink in the book of Esther. Reading or listening to it from start to finish should take about 30 minutes. 

A Sunday morning sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.Christians around the world will gather this Sunday to celebrate the day of Pentecost! It is such a special day in the Church’s liturgical calendar. Just as we rejoice at the birth of Jesus during Advent and journey with Christ through Lent, so we have spent fifty days prayerfully anticipating the outpouring of His Spirit.Praying about this day of celebration, the word “saturation” comes to mind. We long to be saturated by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. During our service we will stand as witnesses to the profession of faith of three young people as they are baptized in water and testify with one of our families as we baptize two of their little children into our community of faith. In all these special moments, marked with water by immersion or sprinkling, we rejoice that we are sealed by His Spirit as followers of Jesus.As in Acts 2.1-13, we will emerge from the upper room out into the streets of our city, out on to the greens to spend time together and invite our neighbors into our joy with lawn games, food and fellowship. As you come to church on Sunday, with your side dishes to share and your folding chairs and blankets, also come with a hunger that goes beyond burgers and hot dogs but is a deep spiritual hunger to experience the Lord’s presence among us.

A Sunday sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.Have you ever met someone and after hearing a few life stories or witnessing an amazing depth of wisdom you found yourself saying, “You should write a book!” You imagine their adventurous stories chronicled in a biography or their wit and knowledge distilled into text to be passed down to future generations.This is what I imagine Theophilus must have said when he heard the good news of Jesus. He wanted to know more, to really dig deeper into the life and ministry of this man from Galilee, and Luke was willing to oblige. Luke set down the gospel stories of Jesus from birth to death, resurrection to ascension, and I imagine Theophilus with scroll in hand on the edge of his seat!But when he got to the end and read, "Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God,” surely he must have wondered, “How did the good news get here?! How did it get to me? I’m not in Jerusalem. I didn’t hear this good news in the Temple courts. There must be more to the story! Seriously, Luke, stop holding out! How did the gospel go from Jerusalem to Rome!?”So, with a new patch of papyrus, Luke set out of to give us the rest of the story. He dovetails his second book perfectly with his first:"I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1.1b-3). And then, Luke reveals how it all began. Not with the disciples rushing from the mountain of ascension to the four corners of the world, but to return to the upper room and wait for the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1.4).Friends, take some time and read Acts 1 this week as we return to the upper room this to watch and pray, to wait and prepare. Before we get to Acts 2 on Pentecost, there is some Acts 1 work to be done in our hearts and minds.

A Sunday sermon by Pastor Brett Deal.The Old Testament gives us two powerful images of creation and re-creation. The first is in the book of Genesis as God breathes life into humanity (Genesis 2.7). Imagine the picture the Torah paints for us of the dirt and clay of this earth being shaped and formed in the hands of God, then breathed to life and meaning and purpose by His Spirit. The same Spirit that moved over the waters filled the lung capacity of Adam and brought him to life.The second is long after the creation, long after the fall of humanity in sin, long after death has entered the world. Generations have come and gone since the time of Adam and Eve. Father to son, mother to daughter across the millennia. Dust to dust. And then, God takes the Prophet Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones and tells him to see the lifeless field around him and call to them to hear the word of the Lord (Ezekiel 37.5). In Ezekiel’s obedience, God promises to breathe His Spirit out over the creation that has wasted away, to bring about resurrection, re-creation.This makes what happens in the New Testament so profound! After the tragedy of Golgotha, where Jesus the Messiah was nailed to the cross and crucified; after His body was placed lifeless in the tomb, the disciples found themselves—much like Ezekiel—walking dazed and confused in a valley of broken dreams and breathless confusion. What had once been vibrant was now devastated. What they needed was to see Jesus, to be near Him. They needed to have their anxious and fearful hearts set to rest and feel the move of His Spirit.Friends, it’s the same thing we need today. May we find Jesus, full of life and speaking peace over our fears, as we gather this Sunday to read John 20.19-23.

Have you ever lost your keys? How about your wallet?  Mary and Joseph once lost Jesus, if that helps to make you feel any better.  But the reason why they lost Jesus was because of a cultural practice not seen much in 21st Century North America. Luke tells us the following: After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends (Luke 2:33-34). Mary and Joseph lost Jesus because they thought he was in their company. That is because back then, everyone in the community caravan looked out for everybody else. All the adults took responsibility for all the children. In this particular case, the adults dropped the ball. But thankfully, Jesus was never really lost. As he explained to his parents (as a twelve year old), he was simply about his Father’s business back at the temple, asking questions and listening to the teachers (Luke 2:45-46).  How can we cultivate an ongoing congregational life that fosters intergenerational responsibility, one where every adult is an aunt or uncle and every child is a niece or nephew in the family of God? I think it helps to move in this direction when we view the table of the Lord as a place where all generations can come together. Tables are often places that bring together young and old around a common purpose. This is more than just multiple generations in the same room. Intergenerationalism is when the generations mix and cross-pollinate in ways that enrich all parties and spur on spiritual growth. In the days leading up to the Upper Room, Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey while an intergenerational crowd shouted, “Hosanna!”  How do we know the triumphal entry crowd was a wide range of ages? Because Matthew tells us that the children kept shouting “Hosanna” all the way into the temple with Jesus (they outlasted the adults in their praises :). Their praises agitated the priests. But Jesus stuck up for the children and quoted the priests’ own Bible back to them: “have you never read, 'From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’”? (Matt 21:16).  This week, I want to challenge us to celebrate the praises of the children and view them as role models of faith, prayer, and worship. Find someone from a different generation than yourself and offer to pray for them and ask them to pray for you. Have a seat at the intergenerational table of the Lord and watch what He does in your life.