preach-itSermon Archive

Click on the sermon title for access to “Sermon Notes”

 

May 2020

Excellence

Pastor and author, John MacArthur posed the following exercise:

Imagine that you are granted the amazing opportunity to build a new church from the ground up in a community that needs a good church. From the following list you can pick three things to start with, which three things would you choose? Rank them by putting a “1” next to the one you think would be most important, a “2” by the next most important, and “3” by the third. Think big!

_____ a brand new, state-of




Weak Man

Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, once said, “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people.” Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.” Thomas Jefferson said, “Religions are all alike…founded upon fables and mythologies.” You can find similar quotes from others like Larry Flynt, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ted Turner, Christopher Hitchens, Karl Marx and others. The view being ex



April 2020

Don’t Beg A Dime

This Sunday we will continue our study through the prison prayers of Paul by doing a deep dive into Ephesians 3:14-21. Much like the previous prayer that we studied in Ephesians 1, a major emphasis of this prayer is focused on the idea of “power.” It contains the famous line, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.” I pray that the Holy Spirit will use this study to expand our horizons to catch a glimpse of what is possible if we, God’s people, turn to Him in prayer.



Faith and Love

In James 5:17-18 we find a short but very instructive passage about prayer. It says, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” It seems to me that James is communicating two important truths in these verses. One, Elijah wasn’t anything special. James says he was a man with a nature like ours. IN oth



Palm Sunday

Matthew 26 begins with Jesus telling His disciples, including Judas presumably, “The Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified,” and just a dozen verses later we read, “Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the Chief Priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?”

I think that Judas may have been the only one of the twelve who understood that Jesus intended to literally die on a cross. Perhaps the others thought that Je




March 2020

Where Is Your Refuge

Once there were just a handful of people who were infected and they were all congregated in one city. That represented the best chance to completely isolate and eliminate this new contagion before it could spread. The Government tried to do just that, but they botched the whole operation and their bumbling efforts only caused it to spread further afield. Infected people fled into other cities and neighboring regions causing the number of exposures to multiply exponentially. Soon it was raci



Don’t Waste Our Time Apart

During the past week the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19, both in Maine and across the country, has continued to rise and in response the state and federal government have offered stronger recommendations for social distancing. This past Wednesday morning Governor Mills issued an order that, in part, prohibited groups of 10 or more from gathering. As part of a coordinated regional effort to slow the spread of this virus it is our intention to comply with this order. As such, we will b



David’s Strength in Crisis

Lots of times when I read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, it makes me wish that I could peek through the veil of time and share in the story, or at least witness it with my own eyes. However, as I read 1 Samuel 30 this week, the very thought made me feel soft and unprepared. Like a lap dog running with wolves, I think I would be too spoiled by the age in which I live to even think of going toe to toe with the kind of people we encounter in this chapter.

Imagine the scene, I




An Unhappy Man

If I mentioned witches and ghosts and people in costume coming around after dark to a stranger’s house you would probably think I was talking about Halloween, but I’m not. All this and more can be found in 1 Samuel 28, which we’ll be studying together this Sunday.

It has been quite a while since we spent time in our study through the life of David, but as we rejoin it in chapter 28 we find a nation and its king in crisis. An existential threat hangs over the countryside in the




Believer’s Baptism

I was baptized at the now defunct Advent Christian Church in Hyattsville, MD. I was only 9 or 10 years old at the time but I remember well sitting down in my Dad’s office (he was the pastor) to question me if I had sufficient personal understanding of the Gospel and to instruct me on the meaning and symbolism of baptism. I had just made a decision for Christ recently, and despite my stage fright I was determined to obey Jesus’ command to be baptized. I remember that the baptismal was a larg





 
PPL_G_006