Ruf At Ole Miss

This week we look at Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. We consider that being a Christian involves both knowing Jesus personally and communing with him corporately in the church.

We continue our study in the book of Acts by looking at the amazing story of the Spirit at Pentecost. We seek to connect God’s growing kingdom then to how he is inviting us into his kingdom now, and why God is a reliable place for us to rest our faith in.

We kick off our series on Acts looking at how Luke plans to show us how God is at work through King Jesus by virtue of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.  What we find is that this work is a bit unexpected. The unexpected King is building an unexpected Kingdom. 

As we look to see how the New Testament relates to the 10 Commandments, we go to the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Here he opens the Bible with some disciples to show them how all scripture, including the law, points to him and his redemptive work in his life, death, and resurrection.

This week we dive into a story about Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees over his supposed lack of observance of the Sabbath.  Jesus uses this conflict to reveal the heart of the law and the heart of God.

We end our series on the 10th commandment looking at how the prohibition of coveting is actually an invitation to love and give ourselves away like God did for us in Jesus Christ.

We forgot to record last week! We are back this week talking through how God invites us in the 9th commandment to be people that speak life and blessing into others lives instead of death and curse. He changes our speech through the better word of Jesus Christ.

The 7th commandment addresses the complex relationship of marriage as Gods casts a vision for his sexual ethic. We see that Jesus cast a high view of marriage, and an even higher view of his transforming grace for the sexually broken.

This week we looked at not only what the 6th commandment prohibits, but what it invites us to. Also, there was a big storm hitting at the time so forgive the interjections of me asking if we are okay.  

This week we started the second table of the law by trying to figure out what it looks like to honor your father and mother.

Our intern Walker taught us about Gods invitation to rest in his finished work as the foundation for the Sabbath command. We learned what rest is, why we can’t rest, and where rest is found.

The third commandment God protects us from using his name in vain. We explore why and what that looks like to break it. We also see the beauty of why we should protect God’s name.

In the second commandment God commands us to not reduce him to an image of our own making. We talk about what it looks like to do this in our pride and our shame, and are invited to see Jesus as he truly is. 

We start off our series on the Ten Commandments by framing them as God’s invitation to us to “let good things run wild.” We see this in the context of the commands and the details of the first commandment in the way love is foundation for how God relates to us and how we are called to relate to him and his world. 

At our last Large Group of the Fall semester we finish our series on Galatians by looking at the subversive tactics of false teachers and the subversive grace of Jesus Christ. We try to consider about how this grace can turn the world upside down with its beauty and power. 

As we near the end of our time in the book of Galatians, Paul starts to get really practical. The invitation of life in the Spirit is an invitation to participate in the tall task of love of God and one another. We look at this in the context of how we often misunderstand what being spiritual really means in the modern world.

This week we took a pause from our series on Galatians and heard from our intern Walker Crow as he talked about the parable Jesus told about Pharisee and the Tax Collect. 

Les Newsom, senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Oxford, joined us to help us think through a biblical and Gospel-centered approach to dating. He also answered some questions from the audience after teaching. 

The Apostle Paul continues to apply the freedom of the Gospel to our everyday experience of life.  This week we explore battle for our spiritual lives is often inside of our own hearts instead of determined on outside conditions. In the life of the believer Spirit and the flesh wage war against one another, and engaging in this battle is what the process of sanctification is grounded in. 

This week we look at how Paul starts to apply his doctrines of grace to the life of the believer and the believing community. We consider three ways the cross of Jesus Christ changes how we relate to God, ourselves, and our neighbors.