Hi! Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, you host for the daily challenges. These daily challenges are meant to help people explore what it means to follow Jesus even during our busy commuting lifestyle. If you’ve never looked into what that means in the first place, I’d really encourage you, check out our Christianity 101 course first. You can take it live in-person or through our mobile app; great introduction to the basic concepts of what it means to follow Jesus that we try to build on in the Daily Challenges.

Every day and week, we follow a rhythm to help us, as one community, learn what it means to follow Jesus even when we’re not physically together. Every Monday,we introduce the idea for the week. Every Tuesday, we see what the Bible has to say. Every Wednesday, we allow ourselves to be challenged in our thoughts. Every Thursday, we try to apply it and live it out in our lives. Every Friday, we take time to pray and reflect on the topic. Saturday is a day for rest and then Sunday is a day for community. We’re going to start gathering together as one community soon. We just recently had a great baptism service and celebration where a number of our members came together in one place to worship God. We’re going to do that more and more often over this year. So, stay tuned for some of our upcoming gatherings.

We’re in a series right now called, “Reset.” We’re looking at how deciding to follow Jesus resets everything in our lives. We’ve looked at a number of areas that it impacts. This week we’re going to look at how following Jesus impacts our views of food and the body. That’s why I’m here in a Chinese buffet, a place where people indulge, enjoy a huge selection of food and can have as much as they like.

This kind of a topic about food and the body might surprise you. You might expect Redeem the Commute to be focused more on spiritual things, not having much to do with what we eat and what we do with our bodies, but the two are very closely connected. Tomorrow we’re going to see how the Bible says that these two are connected, but it’s probably something that you know from experience as well. Think of those times in life when somebody’s struck with a serious illness. You almost immediately turn to prayer. We have this sense that spirituality and our physical bodies are both connected.

Just look at people’s interest in yoga today. It’s amazing to see how people are longing for a way to connect spirituality and physicality in a way that Christianity has maybe neglected. Christianity does connect body and faith in a lot of different ways through things like the Lord’s Supper, breaking bread and wine, connecting Jesus’ death on the cross with actual bread and wine. There’s a physical sign of something amazing that happened a long time ago. Or, baptism where somebody’s washed cleaned spiritually, symbolized with water washing them clean on the outside. There’s a huge connection between the two. Maybe you can think of some others. That’s what I want you to think about today.

Question: I hope you’ll join with some other friends from the train or bus, or from the neighborhood, somebody else you can discuss our Daily Challenges with. Discuss with them today’s question, “How else do you think the spiritual and physical are connected for Christians?” What examples have you seen?”

Well, have a great discussion. Don’t forget, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. So, check our website or app to see what today’s Bible reading is. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - July 17, 2013

Wednesday - Change It - Originality

I know a PHd student who asked this question on Facebook: "How do you cite Facebook?" Researchers like her live and breathe citations. It's critical that they learn how to quote someone properly. There are whole books written about referencing sources properly. Good teaching in Jesus’ day was the same. Rabbi Hirschel says this. Rabbi Hillel says that. At best, a good teacher might come up with some creative parallel, paradox or new insight into those ancient words. But to say something original, that was risky. Maybe you could get away with it at end of your career, or maybe after you'd died, people would say it about you. The Jewish people have such a long history – to make up your own stuff was as if you thought you were better, and could ignore the past. If you did, people would ask, "Who is this guy?" In this case, he was Jesus, a carpenter from a small town. He never went to the advanced schools of Judaism. Lucky he was literate. He was not where you’d expect original, profound teaching to come from. You might expect teaching that was original and trite, or profound and dated, but not original and profound at once. Yet, everyone, even his enemies, saw this profound, original teaching in Jesus. They said the same as these crowds. “He teaches as one with authority” meaning he wasn’t quoting the great teachers of the past, like other Jewish Rabbis always did. He just taught, and people recognized his words as good and true, despite his lack of citations. He hadn’t followed another rabbi, he just gathered a school of students around him. He doesn’t need to cite, because he is the source of all truth. He is called the "Word" of God - the "Word" being a Greek concept of the truth with personality. Question: How is Jesus different from other teachers in your life? What did he teach that no one else said before, or has ever improved upon since? We meet for coffee every Wednesday night at Starbucks in the Chapters Store in Ajax, in Durham Region just East of Toronto. Maybe we'll see you there?

Related Topics: Authority, Jesus, Originality, Teaching | More Messages from Ryan Sim | Download Audio

From Series: "Sermon on the Mount"

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