Sermon Archive
November 2023
Thanksgiving Dinner
It was 160 years ago, at the height of the Civil War, that President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving. In his Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued on October 3, 1863 and published a couple days later in the New York Times, he spoke of the many ways that God had blessed and helped the United States. Speaking of those many blessings he wrote, “No human counsel has devised, nor has any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracio…
Grace Be With You
We turn our attention to the final greetings that mark the end of the letter (Colossians 4:7-18). At first blush these verses might strike us as being not particularly worthy of study and reflection. The main body of the letter, with its weighty exhortations and deep teaching, concluded in verse 6. These verses, by contrast, seem breezy, perfunctory and not nearly as momentous as what came before. There is a rush of names, a smattering of final instructions and then “Grace be with you.”
October 2023
Final Greetings for Colossae
We turn our attention to the final greetings that mark the end of the letter (Colossians 4:7-18). At first blush these verses might strike us as being not particularly worthy of study and reflection. The main body of the letter, with its weighty exhortations and deep teaching, concluded in verse 6. These verses, by contrast, seem breezy, perfunctory and not nearly as momentous as what came before. There is a rush of names, a smattering of final instructions and then “Grace be with you.”
Gospel-Shaped Community
We continue our study through the New Testament book of Colossians by studying Colossians 3:18-4:1. This passage describes a number of relationships and how they ought to be lived out within a Gospel-shaped community. I hope you can join us as we spend time in this challenging portion of scripture together.
Church Family
We will be continue our study through the New Testament book of Colossians by studying Colossians 3:12-17. In these verses we will see the important role that our church family holds as a means of grace in our lives to help us put on the new self.
Put On Christ
At the heart of these verses is the command to put off the old self and to put on the new. That sort of talk from Paul raises questions in my mind. Like, how would one do that precisely? And, why does Paul use the analogy of putting on new clothes to describe our transformation in Christ? Wouldn’t there be better ways of describing the transformation of our inner world than to speak of clothes which only adorn our outward appearance? I mean, if I put on a dress it would not make me a woman. Can we “put on” the new self while remaining, deep down, our old self?
Things Above
I remember a time when Sarah and I moved out of a crummy apartment and into a better one. While we were living in the old apartment, we had been full of energy, ideas and enthusiasm to improve the place, but once the decision had been made (or even nearly made) to move into a new apartment I stopped seeing the place as it might possibly be some day and began to see it only as it was. My mind became full of the new place and its potential, and it wasn’t that it made me look on the old apartm…
September 2023
The Siren Song of False Teaching
In ancient Greek and Roman mythology, the sirens were creatures who would sing in such an alluring way that sailors would be lured in and become shipwrecked on the rocks. In Homer’s Iliad, Odysseus saved his ship and crew by plugging his sailors’ ears with beeswax and giving instructions for them to tie him securely to the mast. Thus, restrained and deafened they were able to avoid being shipwrecked. However, in The Argonautica, written several hundred years later, a character named Orpheus…
Learning to Walk
The Colossian church to whom Paul wrote the letter that we find in our New Testaments would have been comprised almost entirely of new believers. Most of them were likely recent gentile converts who were probably not even very familiar with the Old Testament scriptures of Judaism. In the language of Colossians 2:6, they had received Christ, but were just learning to walk in Him. They were rooted in Christ but had not yet been built up into maturity. This represented a vulnerable time for th…
Christ’s Afflictions
During my recent vacation I read through the book of Colossians in my personal devotions. On July 31, I made the following entry in a journal of sorts that I keep, “This morning I spent time with God in Colossians. I struggled to concentrate though. I had to read portions over and over again because my mind kept drifting. I had no excuse. There were no distractions. How is it that I can read while simultaneously thinking about other things? I might marvel at the capacity of the human brain …
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