Tag Archives: salvation

Sermons and Preaching

Take it to the Lord in Prayer

Read Luke 10:38-42 and Psalm 69: 1-5 to start, see also “What a Friend We Have in Jesus“.

This morning I’m going to do something a little different, or maybe a lot different, in a few different ways. First, I’m going to start at the end, which might sound crazy but I think it will make sense once we get going. Second, this is probably going to feel more like three small sermons that are linked together, rather than one cohesive sermon. And the reason for that is the third different thing, that even though we started with a scripture reading, and we heard an entirely different passage earlier, my sermon is not really about either of those passages, but it’s about a hymn. We sang it a few minutes ago, number 517 in our red hymnbook, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

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Sermons and Preaching

Deadlines, Known and Otherwise

Read Luke 12: 16-21 to start.

Last week at work I had a deadline to meet. It was on a very specific timeline, for a large project that we were working on, and it had to be in by a specific hour on Wednesday. There was no wiggle room, no extension, if everything was not completed by that time, then the project would not go ahead. Any work done to that point would not matter, and be of no value. If we missed the deadline, then the project, or at least our part in it, would be over.

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Sermons and Preaching

Five Questions

Read Matthew 2: 1-15 to start

Let’s talk for a minute about the news. And I’m talking about real news, not the fake news which has become so often discussed in recent years, and ranges from satire, to intentional slander, to any news that someone in authority doesn’t like, regardless of how real it might be. In the reporting of actual news, a journalist will almost always attempt to answer five basic questions. You’ve no doubt heard these before, they all happen to start with the letter W – Who, What, When, Where, and Why, and generally in that order.

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Sermons and Preaching

Why Doesn’t God Just Fix Everything?

Read Job 38 to start.

We’re probably all reasonably familiar with the story of Job, how God allowed Satan to test Job, how Job remained faithful even when faced with severe personal loss, physical anguish, an unhelpful spouse and critical friends, and how eventually Job needed to learn that God is in control, and that Job was not quite as righteous as he first assumed. That’s where we joined the story, at the start of God’s reply from the whirlwind, where God lists the various marvels of creation, of the earth and indeed of the heavens as well. You might be wondering why I started there, near the end of the story, if I was going to preach about Job. There’s a good reason for that. It’s because this is not a sermon about Job. His story simply serves as the background.

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Sermons and Preaching

Measuring Up

Read Daniel 5: 1-6, 17-27 to start.

A week and a half ago I spoke at Awana. There’s only I believe at most two people here this morning who were there that night, so for them this might sound a little bit familiar. The topic that evening was straight lines. I asked a few of the kids to come up and draw a straight line on the whiteboard, in order to demonstrate that without a guideline, it is almost impossible to do so. The lesson proved a few things, yes, it’s not easy to draw a straight line freehand, none of them could do it. And I also discovered that kids will go really slowly when they are trying to draw this straight line, like really slowly, I think an ant moving along the whiteboard would be quicker. If you’re wondering, going slowly didn’t help much at all.

Someone did figure out a way to do a pretty good job, though. He drew his line at the very bottom of the board, and thereby used the frame itself as a guide. That worked better, at least until he reached the point where the marker and brush holder caused his line to bump up.

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Sermons and Preaching

Substitutes, Poor and Otherwise

Read Exodus 32:1-8 to start.

I’d like to start this morning with a question. Actually, there are two questions, one leads to the other. The first one is who here still eats toast? Between those who are on low carb, keto, or gluten free diets, probably lots of people don’t eat toast much anymore. I don’t eat toast all that often, it’s not my breakfast go-to, but my wife and a couple of my kids opt for toast fairly often. If you eat toast, or for that matter if you eat popcorn, or corn on the cob, or baked potatoes, or steamed carrots, odds are pretty good that you use butter on at least some of those foods. Maybe all of those foods. Maybe you use a little butter, maybe you use a lot.

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Sermons and Preaching

Binary States

This morning I’d like to talk about binary states. No, we are not going to have a lesson in technology, although you would be entirely within reason to think that. Computers use binary code in order to store information. That’s how computer storage works, it’s all ones and zeroes. Every piece of data on your computer, on your phone, on the entire internet, in fact, it is all stored as ones and zeroes. A bit is a one or a zero, and from that single piece of information, from millions and billions of ones and zeros, we store information.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. A binary state is something that is an either/or condition. Ones are zeroes are hardly the only examples. Look at the lights above you. Those are all LED bulbs, they are either on or off. These bulbs don’t dim, but even if they did, they are still on or off, because on-but-dim is still one. The windows on either wall, those are either open or closed. They’re closed right now, but if it was summer the windows would probably be open. A window might be open a little or a lot, but it’s still either open or closed.

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