RUF at UNCW

Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW
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Reformed University Fellowship is a Christian campus ministry at UNCW. RUF exists for the "convinced" and the "unconvinced," the lost, and the found. Our weekly Large Group helps students come to understand, know, and follow Jesus Christ as they walk through their college years. RUF seeks to lay a foundation for a lifetime of loving Jesus and serving him in all areas of life. Whoever you are and whatever you believe, you're welcome at RUF! For more information, visit ruf.org/uncw or follow us @rufuncw.

  1. 3d ago

    Loving God Without LARPing (Deuteronomy 5:11, Matthew 23:13-28)

    Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast. Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW is a community of students learning to love Jesus, to love others, and love our campus. We’re a group for the convinced and the unconvinced, the confident and the doubting, the struggling and the seeking.  Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This fall, we’re focusing on the book of  the Ten Commandments in the book of Deuteronomy. In this message, we see that the Third Commandment against taking God’s name in vain, is about more than just cuss words! In fact, it calls us to a continual posture of reverence and worship for God’s character, word, and works. The third commandment shows us that Jesus is zealous for his reputation of God and his people, and calls us to the dignity and responsibility of bearing God’s name in the world.  What is the Third Commandment? (Bible Project Video) “We ... misuse the name of the Lord by speaking hallowed words while living hollow lives. When we preach a moral code that we ourselves do not strive to uphold, we become like those Jesus railed against during his ministry—a people who honor God with our lips, but whose hearts are far from him.”- Jen Wilkin “And it ought to be more carefully considered that all men promiscuously do homage to God, but very few truly reverence him. On all hands there is abundance of ostentatious ceremonies, but sincerity of heart is rare.”— John Calvin “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot 288. How might you use God’s Name carelessly? Cursing, magic, broken vows, false piety, manipulation of others, and hypocrisy all cheapen God’s Name. These treat God’s Name as empty of the reality for which it stands. Q. 289. How can you honor and love God’s Name? I honor and love God’s Name, in which I was baptized, by keeping my vows and promises, by worshiping him in truth and holiness, and by invoking his Name reverently and responsibly.   - Anglican Catechism, Q.288-289

    Loving God Without LARPing (Deuteronomy 5:11, Matthew 23:13-28)

  2. Sep 9

    Loving God With Our Worship (Deuteronomy 5:8-10)

    Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast. Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW is a community of students learning to love Jesus, to love others, and love our campus. We’re a group for the convinced and the unconvinced, the confident and the doubting, the struggling and the seeking.  Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This fall, we’re focusing on the book of Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments. Tonight’s message looks at the second word which prohibits us from using anything less than the true God to worship and serve him. As we will see, God is fiercely jealous for his people to truly love and honor him. For this reason he commands us to seek to fully know and worship him through both his written word and the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. https://bibleproject.com/videos/2nd-commandment-no-idols/ “God has chosen to reveal himself through the Scriptures and through Christ. We know the truth about who God is by becoming acquainted with this revelation, by learning the Bible, and by measuring all teaching against his word. And we know the truth about who God is through Christ, the spiritually undiminished image bearer.”- Jen Wilkin “The jealousy of God is the measure of his zeal for our happiness in him. His anger at our spiritual adultery, at our having other lovers besides him, is a reflex both of his zeal for his own worth, but also of his zeal for our joy. If we turn away from him as the greatest treasure, we turn away from our own greatest pleasure.”— John Piper “I need Christ, not something that resembles Him … My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”- C.S. Lewis “Every human, male or female, rich or poor, slave or free— every human is an image of God, the unique vehicle of the way divine goodness is present in our world. So don’t make an image. Be a faithful image of God.”— Tim Mackie

    Loving God With Our Worship (Deuteronomy 5:8-10)

  3. Sep 2

    Loving God With Our Whole Lives (Deuteronomy 5:6-7; 6:4-9)

    Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast. Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW is a community of students learning to love Jesus, to love others, and love our campus. We’re a group for the convinced and the unconvinced, the confident and the doubting, the struggling and the seeking.  Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This fall, we’re focusing on the book of Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments. Tonight’s message looks at the first word, or first command: “You shall have no idols before me.” Notes and Quotes: What is Covenant Theology? - Ligon Duncan “Our security in our relationship with [God] is not fundamentally based on our deserving or our acting, but on his initiative, his acting, his upholding.”— Ligon Duncan.  “We are made for single-minded allegiance… We are made in the image of the one God to bear the image of one God. We cannot conform to both the image of God and an idol.”- Jen Wilkin “At least in public, we might think, our secular society has scoured the idols. That's wishful thinking. Modernity manufactures as many idols as any age. Mammon rules the market. We kill to keep ourselves comfortably surrounded by more and new stuff. "Follow your heart" replaces "Thus saith the Lord" as the unquestioned cultural imperative. Nations claim authority over our bodies and souls, demanding patriotic sacrifice on the altar of the nation. --Peter Leithart  “God is the ultimate presence, the one who is closest to us, the one with whom, of all persons, we have the most to do. He is not far away from us; indeed, he is always inescapable. We live coram Deo [before God’s face]. So God sees all we do, and he evaluates all we do, in blessing and in judgment. Yet he not only evaluates our conduct, but also draws near to give grace, undeserved favor, beyond anything we can ask or think. He sent his Son to dwell among us (John 1:14) and to die the death we deserve. He sends his Spirit to comfort, sanctify, and lead us into all truth. Our ethical life is a deepening of that relationship, a walking together with God.” -John Frame  "Q. What does [the first commandment] mean?  A. We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” — Martin Luther, Small Catechism, Q& A 1

    Loving God With Our Whole Lives (Deuteronomy 5:6-7; 6:4-9)

  4. Aug 26

    Learning to Love (Deuteronomy 5:1-6)

    Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW is a community of students learning to love Jesus, to love others, and love this campus. We’re a group for the convinced and the unconvinced, the confident and the doubting, the struggling and the seeking.  This fall, we're exploring the Ten Commandments in the book of Deuteronomy. In this message, we learn about the nature of our relationship to God. The preface to the 10 Commandments tells us the Christian Life is not about achieving love, but is instead about remembering, repenting and resting in the love that God has secured for us through his costly work of redemption. ______________________________________________________________ https://bibleproject.com/videos/torah-deuteronomy/ “Remembering a history of a costly liberation … reminds us that we all owe our duty to an authority greater than ourselves … [this] explains why the giving of the Ten Commandments doesn't actually begin with the utterance of the first commandment. Instead it begins with a brief history lesson recalling a costly liberation and establishing who is in charge.” - Jen Wilkin “The heart of Christianity is not a set of doctrines to believe, even though sound doctrine is vital. Nor is the heart of Christianity an activity to pursue, even though the Christian faith is necessarily active. Nor is it essentially a set of disciplines, even though without reading the Bible and praying we will not get far in the Christian life. The heart of Christianity is ..."to live upon God." You were made for God. To know him. Enjoy him. Revere him. Draw strength from him. Trust him. Love him.”— Dane Ortland "The preface to the Ten Commandments is, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” In this, God manifests his sovereignty as being I AM, the eternal, immutable, and almighty God, having his being in and of himself and giving being to all his words and works, and manifests that he is a God in covenant, as with Israel of old, and so with all his people. As he brought them out of their slavery in Egypt, so he delivers us from our spiritual slavery, and therefore we are bound to take him as our God alone and to keep all his commandments" -Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 101 “[The] Christian Life is a response to the love of God” - Kelly Kapic

    Learning to Love (Deuteronomy 5:1-6)

  5. Apr 22

    "A Parable About Life-Maxxing" (Luke 12)

    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. Lewis Q. 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

    "A Parable About Life-Maxxing" (Luke 12)

  6. Apr 17

    "A Parable About Judgement" (Luke 19:11-27)

    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. Lewis Further 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/

    "A Parable About Judgement" (Luke 19:11-27)

  7. Apr 11

    "A Parable About Our Priorities" (Luke 14)

    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)

    "A Parable About Our Priorities" (Luke 14)

  8. Apr 3

    "A Parable About the Kingdom" (Luke 13)

    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

    "A Parable About the Kingdom" (Luke 13)
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About

Reformed University Fellowship is a Christian campus ministry at UNCW. RUF exists for the "convinced" and the "unconvinced," the lost, and the found. Our weekly Large Group helps students come to understand, know, and follow Jesus Christ as they walk through their college years. RUF seeks to lay a foundation for a lifetime of loving Jesus and serving him in all areas of life. Whoever you are and whatever you believe, you're welcome at RUF! For more information, visit ruf.org/uncw or follow us @rufuncw.

Information

  • Creator
    Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    123
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW
  • Show Website
    RUF at UNCW