Ruf At Ole Miss

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. 

This week we take Galatians 4 in whole as we try to understand what it looks like to live into the reality that through faith in Christ we have been adopted as sons of God and are no longer slaves to our idols. We contrast the experience of a life of a slave with one of a son and apply it to our own lives today as we try to walk in faith with Jesus.

If we are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone then what do we do with God's law? This week we learn why God gave the law, and how he is inviting us to relate to it in view of the Gospel.

(We didn't get last weeks recording) This week we are continuing to look at Paul's argument against the Jewish false teachers heresy they were spreading around the church in Galatia. We find out that not only does Paul argue that grace is what gets us in to God's favor but it's also the thing that keeps us in God's favor. Becoming a Christian and being a Christian have the exact same fuel source, grace.

For the last three weeks Paul has been illustrating his doctrine of grace found in the Gospel through real life stories. This week he has a confrontation with his friend and fellow-Apostle Peter when he divided with a diverse group of believers out of fear. Paul calls him back to the freedom found in the perfect love of Jesus.

We continue our walk through the book of Galatians this fall trying to understand why the Apostle Paul is fighting so hard to protect what he calls "the freedom we have in Christ." This week he takes us through a story that helps illustrate what it looks like to have full assurance in the grace of Jesus Christ and how that changes how we relate to God, ourselves, and one another. 

The Apostle Paul defends his Gospel to the church in Galatia that is in danger of believing a false gospel. To do this he shows how the Gospel of Jesus Christ transformed his own story by the way God graciously drew Paul to himself, saved him, and equipped him for ministry. This text invites us to see how God can transform and use our own broken stories through his grace. 

This semester we are going through a series on Galatians where we are looking at how Paul is showing us that the Gospel provides for us a freedom that is worth fighting for. A freedom in Jesus Christ that liberates us from our enslavement to sin and all of the burdens it places upon us. 

God loves us enough to show us the ending of this story we live in.  And we are all invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.  As for so much of this series, thank you specifically to Ricky Jones for the insights, illustration and application. 

Satan is trying to battle the church and Jesus kingdom in a last ditch effort and one of the main weapons Satan uses is the allure of the world.  As has been said so much in this series, big thanks to Ricky Jones for so much insight into this as well as Way Rutherford and Alex Watlington.