Sermon Archive
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August 2021
Prejudice
I don’t know about you, but along the way I have related to Jonah’s mistakes.
When he tried to quit his job as prophet and run away from the Lord’s calling on his life, I thought of times when I’ve been out of the Lord’s will and resisted doing the things that He wanted me to do.
When Jonah was on the ship and the sailors were terrified because the storm was threatening to break the boat up, I thought of times when my disobedience has affected others.
As he was sinkin…
Fitting the Messenger
What do the biblical accounts of Noah’s ark, the destruction of Sodom and Gommorha, and Jonah all have in common? In all three we find a wicked people living under the imminent threat of divine judgment, and we also find a servant of God who goes out with foreknowledge to warn the wicked to flee the coming day of wrath. But Jonah differs from these other two in that Unlike Noah and Lott, whose warnings landed on deaf ears, Jonah’s one-sentence sermon results in what was likely the great…
From A Dark Place
One of the interesting things about the book of Jonah is that, unlike other prophetic books, it focuses on the prophet rather than on the prophet’s message. Throughout Jonah is the object of God’s concern rather than the mouthpiece through whom God speaks His concerns as would normally befit a prophet. This Sunday we will be covering the second chapter of Jonah which is brief and filled almost entirely with the prayer that Jonah offered from the belly of the great fish. It is one of many ir…
Go On Back
Have you ever heard of Roy “Wrong Way” Riegels? He was an All-American center from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1929, his team, the “Golden Bears,” were facing the Georgia Tech “Yellow Jackets,” in the Rose Bowl. Riegels was playing both on both sides of the ball, offense and defense, that game. It was toward the end of the first half when a Tech player fumbled the ball. Roy picked it up and started running toward the goal some 65 yards away. There was only one pro…
July 2021
Mind the Gap
My wife hates it when I go grocery shopping with her. I always thought it would be a good time of fellowship and connection as we sauntered down the aisles looking for things to buy to eat for the week. Inevitably though, the grocery bill is often much more than it would be if she went on her own. My wife is a planner. She thinks about the meals we will eat, snacks, what days we are home or away, who we might be inviting over and often strikes a near perfect balance come the end of the week…
Exalted Humility
Pride and humility both have the same motto, “Look out for #1.” The difference is that pride and humility have different ideas about who precisely is numero uno. So in a sense both Orpah and Ruth were looking out for #1 when they made their respective decisions in the first chapter of Ruth. In the second chapter we are treated to another display of amazing humility as Ruth heads out to glean among the workers in the barley harvest. That Ruth would set out to glean indicates the extreme …
Steely Resolve
Verses 16-17 of the first chapter of Ruth are undoubtedly the most famous lines of the entire book. They contain Ruth’s determined vow to remain with her mother-in-law no matter what forces tried to separate them. She said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more…
June 2021
Bitter
Down through the years people had some interesting reasons for changing their names. For example, in 2015 a young man named Adam Armstrong legally changed his name to Adam West because it was cheaper to change his name than to change his flight booking which had been made under the wrong name by his girlfriend’s stepfather.
Fashion designer, Ralph Lauren, was born with the name Ralph Lifshitz, but he changed it because kids used to make fun of him.
A man named Tim Price legally …
The Wrong Well
In today’s day and age the copious amount of information, both secular and Christian alike, inundates the consumer culture that it is born from. Even as Christians we must be in the practice of effectively discerning the truth, as it aligns with the scriptures, within the materials we consume or else we run the risk of falling prey to the agendas of man and not God. And so for the remaining culture around us, the amount of philosophical arguments and ways of life may just about seem endless…
Brought Low
The Great Commission is not just a to-do list item. It is not a command that can be obeyed in the same way as taking out the trash or paying our taxes. It can’t even be done as someone might deliver a letter. We might be tempted to think of it that way.
For example, someone might think, “God wrote this message and I am commanded to deliver its contents to the lost. So in obedience I will go out like a postal worker and deliver this message to them, and in so doing I will have ful…
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