TEACHING
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SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 2022
10:30 AM (in-person + kids + communion) The Seeking Father with Andrés Pérez, Luke 15:11–32 There are many different tools that try to summarize the Gospel (eg. The Four Spiritual Laws, The Road to Romans, Steps to Peace with God, etc.) These tools are sometimes useful but they all fall short on one thing: they propagate separation from God as our fundamental reality. Instead of relying on these, why don't we turn to one of the stories of Jesus? This Sunday, we celebrate Father's Day and dive into the image of the Father that Jesus portrays in Luke 15: The Seeking Father! 1. Brief History of Father’s Day
1.1 My Father the Hero (not the father in Luke 15!) 1.2 Summaries of the gospel: How to evangelize: 14 steps 2. The Image of the Father in Luke 15 2.1 A bit of context on how families worked in the NT 2.2 : The two blowouts (N.T. Wright) 2.3: Splitting of the land 2.4 “I wish you were dead!” 3. The point of the story 3.1 Understanding the broader context 3.2 The parable of the lost sheep (Lk. 15:1-7) 3.3 The parable of the coin (Lk. 15:8-10) 3.4 The parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-24) 4. The God who seeks us out until he finds us 4.1 John 3:17 4.2 Luke 19:10 4.3 Why didn’t the father seek for his son? (Except he did! – Jersak) 5. Conclusion 5.1 Will you too be found? 5.2 The illusion of separation (what the summaries miss!) 5.3 The real message of the Gospel: God with us 5.4 Invitation: turn your arrow toward Jesus and let him run to you (Nouwen) “For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair. Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” It might sound strange, but God wants to find me as much as, if not more than, I want to find God” – Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 221-222. |
