Gluttony

Attention Funnel: Good Things Becoming Bad Things – Trampoline, Skateboard, Snow, Diving

 Introduction:

• Good things can quickly turn bad.
• This is something we know from experience… (Story from your own life).
• This can also be a way for us to understand sin. Sin is often taking something good and using it for the wrong purposes.
• It’s often not just “doing bad things,” but it is good desires that run wild. And go off the tracks.
• We could say this with what we have covered the past two weeks: comfort, and money.
• This week we will say the same thing about food (and many other categories of things we enjoy in this world)

 Big Idea: Enjoy God’s gifts, but don’t worship them.

Main Points

• Food is a gift from God.
• We can turn food into a god.
• Idolatry is absurd and offensive to God.
• Fight back with fasting and feasting.

Woodworking, Cooking, Writing Papers, Lady GaGa, The Fault in our Stars, and Martin Scorsese

 Attention Funnel: Mashup Movie Trailers – Taking Pop Culture and Making More Pop Culture out of it.

Where are we going with this series?

• Biblical Understanding of Culture
• What’s in a Worldview
• An Approach for Critiquing Culture
• Movie Night
• Movie Critique and Small Group Song Critiques

Introduction:

• Why do a series on Pop Culture??
  • Because it’s influence is universal!
    • I would be willing to bet you all listened to music this week, watched a TV show or movie, or read part of a book.
  • Because our Faith should affect every nook and cranny of our lives.

Judges

 

 Attention Funnel: Name that Judge (Gameshow in which Contestants compete to name the Judge)

Introduction:

• Locate the Story
  • There are many movies that have capitalized on reliving the same moment over and over again.
  • Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, was one of the first to follow this design.
  • In this movie, Bill Murray plays a character who finds that he is forced to live the same day over and over again as a weatherman covering the festivities at Groundhog Day.
  • More recently, Source Code starred Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier who wakes up in someone else’s body on a train and has 8 minutes to locate a bomb and the bomber.
  • The idea in these movies is that the same cycle plays over and over again with small changes happening each time.
• The book of Judges follows a similar concept… it is made up of a double prologue, main section, and double epilogue. The main section is basically a cycle that repeats itself 6 times.
  • The people disobey God by worshipping idols, they are oppressed and enslaved by surrounding nations, they cry out to God, God sends a deliver (a judge), the people have rest and peace, and the cycle starts all over again.
  • The book shows us how the people of Israel sink further and further into moral depravity and chaos as each cycle gets a little worse.
  • The Judges start with Othniel – a godly man and gifted leader and end with Samson – who is basically your drunk uncle with superhuman strength.
• The book of Judges is mainly a book about God, his unfaithful people, and how he responds to their unfaithfulness.

Big Question: How will God respond to the idolatry of his people?

 Passage: Judges 2:11-19; Jeremiah 2:11-13; Psalm 115:4-8; Romans 12:1-2

Main Points:

• Idolatry is to worship what does not deserve to be worshiped.
• What we worship will control us.
• God’s grace can be severe.
• God delivers us so that we will worship him. 

Consider the Birds

Attention Funnel: My Most Anxious Moment Over the Summer

Big Idea: Trusting in God dismantles anxiety in our lives.

Main Points:

1.Anxiety changes nothing.

2.Trust in God’s provision and promises.

3.Our anxiety can reveal what we trust and value.

4.Reorient your priorities to God and His kingdom.

5.HOPE: Jesus took away our greatest reason to be anxious.

Read Matthew 6:25-34

Let’s Be Clear

Attention Funnel: Top 15 Odd Warning Signs

 Introduction:

• Last week we talked about marriage. And we just shortly mentioned sex in that lesson. I said that marriage is the only safe place for sex because it the only relationship that is protected by a covenant.
• This week we’re going talk more about sex. I want to be clear about the dangers and the foolishness of sex outside of marriage while at the same time celebrating sex within marriage and putting it in it’s proper place.
• We are going to look first at a passage from Proverbs tonight that actually does this exact thing.
• Much of Proverbs is a book written from the perspective of a father to a son (but we could also include daughter in there). It is not just meant to be for men but also for women.
• The son seems to be just on the verge of adulthood. Some commentators think the son is in his mid to late teens.
• The father is talking to this teenage son (and daughter) and he is encouraging him to pursue wisdom and turn away from foolishness.
• He’s offering two paths of life – wisdom or foolishness, good or false good.
• In Proverbs 5, the father is addressing the issue of sex..
• The Father warns us about the foolishness of sex outside of marriage while highlighting the wisdom that confines sex to within marriage and celebrates the gift that it is.

Big Idea: Sex is a good gift from God.

Passage: Proverbs 5; John 4:10-18; Isaiah 1:18

Main Points:

• Sex outside of marriage is dressed in lies and followed by consequences.
• Sex within marriage should be celebrated and enjoyed.
• Sex is good, but sex is not God.
• Hope: In Christ, there are NO damaged goods.

SCANDALOUS Lesson #2: In the Storm of God’s Grace

Attention Funnel:

• Best Boat Videos/ Magic Video

 Introduction:

• We left Jonah last week on a boat, and that’s where we pick him up this week.
• He has rejected God’s call to go preach to Ninevah and instead has made his way to a boat to head for Tarshish.

Big Idea: There’s more to sin and grace then meets the eye.

• Like an illusion

Passage: Jonah 1:1-16

Main Points

• Sin has a downward drag.
• God’s anger links arms with his grace.
• Storms can be idol crushers.
• Hope: Jesus is the true and better Jonah