Dranesville Church of the Brethren: Recent Episodes
Joey Moss
We lose all control when we trust in anything else, but Daniel's trust in God gives us the way forward.
Giving God our body, mind, and heart will conflict with what the World demands from us.
Apocalyptic gives us the ability to see the world from a God's eye view, and the result is surprising.
The key to maintaining your identity as a Christian in the midst of the kingdom of this World is the wisdom that comes from God.
This message reflects on: Why accepting grace can feel like a kind of death The contrast between doubt and trust in Luke’s Gospel What the resurrection really proves about humanity and God “Confused rejoicing” as the Christian response to God’s work How new life begins when we surrender control
We regularly try to tell Jesus who he is. This Holy Week, we should allow Jesus to tell his own story.
We should prepare ourselves for God to tell us to change during Lent, which means building time in our lives for repentance.
Pastor Joey answers a question about the difference between the Old and New Testaments.
If God has saved us by his grace, we have no right to question how he's done it and for whom.
Our reaction to what God does can reveal our real gods to us, and requires us to decide whether to go on worshiping idols.
The meaningful action in the first century was between God, a teenaged woman, and her baby, and not the strong Empires that vied for power. That means Christians view power very differently from the rest of the world.
Pastor Joey answers a question about exactly what kind of angel Satan was (if, in fact, he was an angel?)
The coming of Christ spells the end of long suffering and futility, but it happened before we got our act together.
It is very difficult to maintain your identity as a Christian in the kingdom of this World.
Until Christ brings the whole truth, many things will be a matter of perspective. This includes our relationships with others. But Christ will one day bring purity and simplicity.
Cover Credit - “A picture of an optical illusion. Taken at the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg.” Diarb2008. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
In Christ, all our sins are forgiven. Including the sins which your brother or sister has committed against you.
God calls us to wait on him for vengeance, or we will be just like all the other kingdoms of the world.
The kingdom of this World is an enemy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but we are called to love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us.
Love and Obedience in the Church are the only necessary conditions for God to use us for his victory in our community.
Something important happened at Pentecost which can only be explained by the Holy Spirit.
We have a choice of whether to serve the Kingdom of Jesus Christ or the Kingdom of this World.
We are not saved from suffering, but saved in order to suffer for the sake of this world.
To have God as your father you must recognize your fellow Christians as your brothers and sisters.
For the Church to be the center of the community it must take on the responsibilities of the center of community.
False humility is thinking less of yourself, true humility is thinking of yourself less.
We could not live justly on our own, so Christ has brought us out of darkness and into light.
Often the best way to know God's will is to do God's will in the ways you already know.
We have every reason to rejoice and hope because Jesus Christ is Lord of Heaven and Earth
Sometimes the decisions we make about who we trust after a crisis are more important than the decisions we make during a crisis.
Truly believing something requires us to act on those beliefs and to see the world through those beliefs.
In the cross, God showed a new wisdom and a new way to live, which happens to be the way of life of the trinity since the beginning
We are called to a particular vocation, which may seem small but is huge in the grand scheme of things.
If Christ's kingdom is a different kind of kingdom, then we are different kinds of citizens.
It's easier to love your brother or sister when you remember that they were once "far off" and now have been brought "near"
During Lent, it is easy to get discouraged, but the hope of the Resurrection is the guarantee of what we are promised.
Work and providing for ourselves and others is a major contributor to human dignity in the image of God. Economic activity has major spiritual impacts that we should attend to.
The Early Church had to make peace and figure out its place in a world turned upside down, and the modern Church needs to do the same thing.
The arrival of the Messiah causes us to make difficult choices about where our loyalties lie
The death of Jesus has been in view from the very beginning. It is the revelation of God's glory
Jesus' parents foreshadow the character of Christ himself, who bore our shame and brought reconciliation
For the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Dranesville which took place on the Church's property.
We see money as a way the raw material that we use to turn physical things into spiritual things, and lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
The purpose of the law is the love of God and neighbor, but we can easily lose sight of the forest for the trees.
If we are all justified and saved in the same way, then there is no legitimate division between us.
Jesus made peace between God and the world, but it was not easy. Oftentimes when we make peace it is costly.
It is easy to lose our wonder at how incredible God’s love really is. We should take time to get lost in that love every once in a while.
The enemies of God are “paper tigers” which fall away when challenged. We are tasked with stumbling around the world and blessing it, almost by accident.
At the heart of repentance is the decision that the presence of God is more important than even our success. Will we be a Church that prioritizes God being with us over other ways of defining success?
At the heart of repentance is the decision that the presence of God is more important than even our success. Will we be a Church that prioritizes God being with us over other ways of defining success?
Humans have an instinct to use whatever levers necessary to exclude people from their "inner circle," including God's Law. But we are called to use God's law for love.
God’s instructions for us are simple. We have the responsibility to be a neighbor even when it means crossing boundaries that might make us uncomfortable.
Simply trusting Jesus with your own life is a far better way to live than to be constantly comparing ourselves to others.
The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of what the kingdom of God really looks like, but it means relinquishing your privileges that allow you to judge others.
Jesus is a conquering king and we are his royal priesthood, but that looks very different from the way we would imagine it at first. He conquers by being slain and we are his representatives by holding fast in faith and by loving others.
The perfect object for all our desires is God and the New Heavens and New Earth that he is creating. But very often we find ourselves satisfied with things that are far smaller and less worthy. In order to cultivate the right desires in ourselves, we need to practice them through worship, prayer, and lament.
Even through difficult circumstances, God is the one who is ultimately in control. He is the only one that is worthy of our worship because he is the source of all beauty. He is a far better master than any human one.
God’s law is the manifestation of his wisdom, which was fully embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. Living in accordance with God’s law and obeying him makes life run smoother and it bears witness to God’s kingdom
Isaiah’s commission to be a prophet resembles our commission to the preach the gospel to the Earth. Our responsibility is to the truth of the Gospel and to obey God, even if it doesn’t look like it’s productive.
God’s holiness is totally inapproachable, which reflects how we are unable to live a life that is worthy of his presence without his guidance.
Our vision for the future of our congregation comes from our work together as a church. But living the Christian life is the only way to keep our minds open to the will of God.
We will one day see those that we have lost, and our Church family is the most lasting impact that we have on the world.
People tend to think that we can think ourselves into new ways of behaving. But a far more effective way to begin to live the Christian life is by imitating more mature Christians. The Church has a lot of these role models in our family.
We often underestimate the difficulty that ancient people would have had in not worshiping idols. Many idols have a serious hold on us. Idolatry is slavery to something intent on destroying you.
Many of the Thessalonians had to leave their families to follow Christ, since they were disowned for not worshiping idols. As a result, Christians found a surrogate family in the Church. In Christ, we have been baptized into the enormous family of God, and this should be a part of our witness.
Our church won’t be able to offer flashy light shows and a concert-like atmosphere, but what we can offer is ourselves. The content of our message is carried in the way that we live as a family, showing the world that we have a different way of being human.
Jesus was the second Adam; the beginning of a new humanity as part of the beginning of the New Heavens and New Earth in the Church.
In Christ’s resurrection, the long-awaited hope that God’s faithful dead would rise again began to be accomplished. Now an entirely new nation of people is born from the dead, and given a different kind of life patterned after Christ’s new body.
Jesus was the promised King who finally trusted God, but humans found the beauty and glory of God intolerable. But God will overlook our sins for the sake of Jesus' righteousness.
Jesus was the long awaited king of Israel, who saves them from their sins and sets them free from captivity. But it wasn’t done in the way they expected. Instead, Jesus came to make peace.
Christ’s death is the perfect expression of God’s faithful love for his people, and it is the culmination of God’s plan for creation.
In Jesus we gain access to the unfailing love of God, which is not based on anything that we have done but based on God’s own perfect loyalty and faithfulness
Paul Stutzman serves as a special guest speaker to help us consider the future of our congregation.
Trusting God is the most wise thing to do, but it is really hard to do since it doesn’t look like it makes sense to worldly eyes. But trusting the world in many cases means trusting people who don’t have your best interests at heart.
Part of the difficulty of worshiping a God that is merciful is that sometimes he is merciful to your enemies, but we still have to forgive them. The Gospel is for everyone, not just for the people we like.
The world has its own ways of judging people, but generally these are really foolish. Judging people with the eyes of Christ is way better, because you get the chance to know people the world rejects for no good reason. The people you serve can bless you in surprising ways.
God is incredibly faithful to his covenant with his people, to a degree that it almost looks like magic to outsiders. But through Jesus that covenant has been extended to us. We can count on God coming through and providing for us.
The mission that God has given us can be difficult and we’re never sure whether we will succeed, or even if we're doing the right thing all the time. But serving God is an adventure which is better than anything else we can do, so it is worth doing.
God has called us to be the search party for our lost brothers and sisters to bring them back into the family of God.
During Epiphany, we celebrate when people from all nations came to worship Jesus, which was a greater fulfillment of Israel’s role in the world to bring blessing to the nations than anything Israel had done to that point. If Jesus is king of the world, then worldly distinctions are obliterated.
Unlike the other kingdoms of the world, the kingdom that Jesus was ushering in was one based on suffering. God showed a different kind of love, which is the one that is demonstrated most in suffering for another person.
The kingdom of God was entering into the world, and already it was showing a different kind of power. Rome was flexing their muscles with their census for the purposes of taxation, but the tiny child would be their undoing.
Just like Mary carried God into the world and gave it hope and salvation, we are also called to bear God into the world, because wherever we go God is with us. The certainty of miraculous signs is something we often crave, but we will never get. And that’s okay and kind of beautiful.
During advent, we celebrate that God has returned suddenly to his temple in Christ, and that now we can live with him and experience his blessing. We also look forward to the day when we will also experience God’s presence fully in the New Kingdom that is coming. The guarantee of this is the day that Zechariah walked hopelessly into the Most Holy Place and found that God came back to it.
In a hopeless situation, the Israelites were promised that their city would become the center of the universe and a beacon of peace for the future. We look forward to its complete fulfillment during Advent.
Repentance is really important when we come to worship, but we need to use our resources when we do. Without good instruction, we might end up making the same mistakes and learning the same lessons over and over.
If our words in worship are not backed up by our actions, then we are fooling ourselves. Worship that does not transform us is sinful.
Sometimes worship can be so bad that it actively makes things worse. The way that you live informs the way you worship, and worship can be dangerous because it can confirm your delusions. Repentance and self-examination is crucial when you go to God in worship.
It is easy to get lost in the beauty of the story of the return of the younger brother and miss the older brother entirely. In order to be called a son or daughter of God you must have fellow Christians as your brothers and sisters. Feasting together is a way of celebrating that "this my brother or sister was dead, and is alive again."
Jesus' forgiveness is available to even those who sin horrifically through their own fault. That means our forgiveness needs to be, too.
Persistence in prayer is key to aligning ourselves with God's will, and this is difficult because God's will is so different from our own.
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and Give to God what is God's, but what is Caesar's and what is God's?
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" is a seemingly obvious prayer which is nevertheless hard to pray. While we are sometimes led into sufferings and temptations, it is God who always delivers us from it, as he did with Christ.
In the Lord’s prayer, we pray so that we can be equipped to keep God’s name holy. This is a humble prayer of repentance, not a showy prayer of self-flattery. We also pray for God’s kingdom of heaven to come to Earth as in Revelation, in hope that the world would be set to God’s good intention.
The fasting of the Jewish people over the continued exile is no longer necessary because the kingdom is here. Whenever we feast together, we do so just like Jesus did because of our joy that God is here with us. God’s forgiveness was available for anyone to join that feast, but Jesus invited all the wrong people. The kingdom wasn’t for the self-righteous but for sinners and tax collectors.
Jesus’ new kingdom doesn’t just involve following the small, easy, minutiae of God’s law, but instead makes massive changes to a person so that they can actually follow the most important and difficult parts of the law. They’re no longer play-actors, but actually genuinely have a pure heart. This allows them to make peace in the world, so that it looks the way it was supposed to. However, these people will face persecution, not from the expected Gentiles, but principally from their fellow Jews.
The Israelites wanted the end of exile to mean that they can exact vengeance on the Gentile nations that oppressed them. Instead, if the exile was going to end, they would have to be gentle and merciful to those that showed them no such courtesy. Gentleness is harder work than fighting, since it means taming your angry impulses. But God’s new kingdom is not based on anger but on love. Jesus was meek, poor, and mourning in a way that we could not, and so he fulfilled the end of the exile.
Jesus shows a new way of being Israel, and says that the promised end of exile is not going to come through revolution or through the Law but through meekness, mourning, and gentleness. This was not the message anyone really wanted. Gentleness is harder work than fighting, since it means taming your angry impulses. But God’s new kingdom is not based on anger but on love. Jesus was meek, poor, and mourning in a way that we could not, and so he fulfilled the end of the exile.
God’s presence finally returns completely to his people, and all the chaos and evil of the present world is defeated. God gives his first orders as the undisputed king of creation, and justice is finally provided to his creation. Where once Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, it now becomes the capital of the Universe. This vision should inform the work we do on Earth, as we hope to make it look more and more like the beautiful city of God.
Since God has proven faithful to all his promises, even when they seemed impossible, we can be certain that he will continue to be faithful. If God has given up his own Son, we can be certain that there is nothing that will keep him from saving the world. The Church lacks all the power necessary to do what God has called them to do, but they have God backing them, and all of history is leading toward God accomplishing the salvation of the world through them. The weakness of Israel is fixed by the strength of the Church through God’s power.
Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has enacted a kingdom. The Old Testament hope that “All Authority in Heaven and on Earth” would be given to the Messiah in chapters like Psalm 2 is finally fulfilled. But this didn’t result in the immediate “end of history” as many of the prophets might have thought, but instead the kingdom of God coexists with other evil kingdoms, and it’s the Church’s job to represent that kingdom. We are also tasked with spreading that kingdom to all nations, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that all nations would be blessed through his family.
John’s crucifixion narrative is stylized as the coronation of Christ on Earth, which is a totally countercultural message. The powers of the world are completely oblivious that they are accidentally telling the truth about Jesus (he actually is the king of the Jews, the crown of thorns is a real crown, etc.), because they are unable to understand anything other than raw power. The cross exemplifies the “upside-down kingdom” that God created, and also calls all Earthly powers to account because God triumphs over them. Through Christ’s victory on the Cross, the blessings of the covenant come to us all and we are set free from bondage to Sin.
There is an important pun which foreshadows the crucifixion, the Son of Man must be lifted up/exalted so that the nations would be healed. Jesus was lifted up on the cross, but that was also his exaltation which gave him glory. This turns the idea of being “exalted” or respected on its head, since true glory comes from sacrifice and apparent shame rather than grasping for power. Understanding this allows us to recognize the “messianic secret” that Christ’s death really did accomplish the righteous reign of God over the whole Earth, through completely unexpected means.
Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River, and the return of God to his people, which ends the exile, is evident both in the opening of the heavens and in Jesus himself. Matthew re-tells the story of Israel in his narrative where Jesus takes the place of Israel e.g escaping persecution in Egypt (Passover), being tempted in the wilderness for 40 days (Israel’s wandering in the wilderness for 40 years). Thus Jesus completes the role of Israel in the world with obedience so that God’s plan to bless the peoples of the Earth is accomplished. But the day of the Lord’s coming also means judgment for God’s enemies, which is prophesied by John. The kingdom of God isn’t for the people that everyone expected, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Jesus comes as the rightful king of the world, but the Jews must make a choice between following God’s Messiah or following Rome. While the Jews decide to follow Rome, the Gentiles in the story follow Jesus. The coming of the Messiah necessarily forces you to answer the question of whether you follow him or follow the scary powers of the world. A new law emerges for the new people of God, which is to follow King Jesus. God begins to draw the Gentiles into his new covenant, which is the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham that all the nations of the world will be blessed. Meanwhile, Joey tries not to cough. It's a blast!
When Israel was finally finished with the exile, the full reign of God on Earth would finally be realized. As opposed to before, when the glory of God was hidden from humans, now all flesh would be able to see it together. The reign of God means that all the blessings of the covenant come to God’s people and all the curses of the fall are eradicated in a New Creation. Israel’s sins meant that they were really in exile until Jesus came, and God was literally present with humans. Not only is our suffering meaningful in fulfilling our role in the world, but we can look forward to the end of suffering because God is coming to be with his people.
When God sent Israel into exile, it wasn’t merely punishment but a plan to bring the blessings of the covenant to the whole world. Since Israel was dispersed, the knowledge of God was able to spread through the whole world. In doing so, Israel was tasked with bearing the suffering of the whole world. Since they failed, Jesus instead bore that suffering and exile on the cross (“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”) and so fulfilled the role of Israel in the world. As the new Israel and those who are in Christ, it is our responsibility to bear the sufferings of the world on its behalf. Suffering for the sake of other people has always been the most effective way that the Church bore witness to the Gospel.
God’s plan and Israel’s hope for their kings was that they would be extremely powerful and obedient to God. When they were at their best, opposing Israel’s king was the same as opposing God, since the king was the manifestation of God’s rule in the world. Since Jesus was Israel’s perfect king, Psalm 2 became one of the Early Church’s favorite scriptures. The fact that God through Christ has complete authority means that there is objective moral reality and that our lives are meaningful. The reign of God is the thing the world needs most, and we get to be agents of that kingdom.
God makes a covenant parallel to his covenant with Abraham with the kings of Israel, represented by David. God is far more generous to us than we think we can be to him. The King of Israel became the representative of the people to God, and since Israel was the representative of the World, the king was the representative of the World. It makes sense then that Jesus’ righteousness becomes the righteousness of the world. Just like with Israel, God is incredibly patient with his kings (who are mostly terrible) until Jesus comes. Because of Jesus, God’s love for us is 100% set in stone forever.
The best way to bless the world and secure blessings for yourself is to do what God says. However, Israel’s continued disobedience to the law would ultimately lead to their exile from the land which God gave them and from God’s presence. Just like in the Garden, sin leads us to be distant from God. Even then, God would bring them back from exile and allow them to enjoy the blessings of the covenant despite their incomplete obedience. Just like Israel, God sticks with us even when we ignore him.
God's blessing for Abraham's family becomes more obvious over time with passages like this. Random Israelites have a stronger relationship with God than even the most talented professional religious people could have dreamed. This passage begins to hint at a Messiah coming that will expand God's blessing to the whole world. As Christians, we have been grafted in to that family, giving us the same benefits as Israel had.
God made an unbreakable covenant with his people through Abraham. God maintained his end of the covenant even when his people completely messed up their end. This reversed the pattern of curses that began in the Garden, and started God’s plan to unite the peoples of the earth after Babel. Through this covenant, we have access to God and his blessings. We don’t know the future, but we do know that wherever we go, we are blessed and God blesses the world through us.