Good Shepherd 2 (John 10:11-18)

Posted on August 16, 2026 by salooper57

This is encouraging! What we learn about the Good Shepherd is GOOD NEWS for us! That Jesus is the Good Shepherd means that we are known, loved, and safe. I hope this 24-minute sermon will bring long-lasting encouragement.

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Why Didn’t He Just Say No? (Acts 7)

Posted on August 15, 2026 by salooper57

At the end of Acts 6, St. Stephen has been dragged before the Sanhedrin, Israel’s highest court, on serious charges. The outcome of the trial, should Stephen be found guilty, would be life changing. To add to the drama, witnesses have been called who falsely testify that Stephen publicly stated that Jesus would destroy the temple and change the customs handed down by Moses.

After such serious charges had been leveled against him, and witnesses had lied about what he had said, we might expect Stephen to be at least a little anxious. But Stephen is not biting his fingernails. He stands calmly before his judges with a face like that of an angel.

The meaning of this last line is unclear. In our culture, when someone says, “He looks just like an angel,” they are almost always talking about a child, usually a sleeping child. They are implying that he looks sweet and innocent. But in the Bible, angels are never described that way. They often appear dangerous and perhaps fierce. Those who see them cower, or run, or faint dead away.

But whether Stephen looked sweet and innocent or looked dangerous and imposing, it is what happened next that I find so interesting. When (Acts 7:1ff) he was called to testify on his own behalf – Israel did not have a Fifth Amendment – he did not say, “Those witnesses are lying. I have witnesses who heard what I really said!” That is what I would have done. He did not even deny their accusations. Instead, he launched into a long recapitulation of Israel’s history, beginning with Abraham and continuing through the books of Genesis and Exodus and then skipping ahead to David and Solomon in the historical books.

That has always confused me. Why not deny the allegations, expose the false witnesses, and get back to life and ministry? When the high priest asked if the charges were true, why did Stephen not answer, “No”? Why launch into a rambling sermon on the history of Israel?

First, I think, it is a mistake to call Stephen’s defense a “rambling sermon.” He is providing the court with the context it needs to find in his and, frankly, Jesus’s, favor. Secondly, he does not deny the false witnesses’ allegations because at least some of what they claimed was based in fact, a fact he wanted to explain.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The men who testified against Stephen were false witnesses, intentionally distorting his words in order to get him in trouble and bring the Christians into a negative light. Nevertheless, Stephen had said things that were similar to what the false witnesses claimed, and untangling the truth from their skewed testimony required a full and careful explanation. Hence, the extended review of Israel’s history.

As I’ve already said, Stephen’s testimony always seemed to me to be a rambling sermon through unrelated biblical events. But this was not the case at all. Stephen chose the events he narrated because they would provide the context for what he had really said and help distinguish his teaching from the caricature the false witnesses presented.

A careful examination of Acts 7 reveals a connection between Stephen’s defense and the charges that were brought against him. Stephen takes his judges through the early history of the Jewish people, from Abraham to slavery in Egypt to Moses’s leadership in the wilderness. And at this point, Stephen does two important things: he reminds the court that Moses promised the Israelites that God would send a prophet like himself. Stephen is preparing them for the revelation that Jesus was that prophet.

Next, Stephen reminds his judges that their ancestors turned away from the true God and began to worship idols even though they had the tabernacle where God met with them and lived among them. This is a key point. God was among them. They had the tabernacle where they could always come to God, and yet they turned away from him. The tabernacle, as wonderful as it was, could not keep the people of God faithful.

Stephen continues. After David came along, things changed. Rather than a portable temple made of a frame covered by skins, David wanted to build a permanent, stationary temple in Jerusalem to the glory of God. He did not build it, but his son Solomon did. This temple was the pride of Israel, the center – the heart of – Judaism on earth. A smaller building had replaced the original temple after the Babylonian army destroyed it, but in the past century that smaller temple had been renovated – really, it had been entirely rebuilt by Herod the Great – and was now an architectural marvel. Yet, this beautiful temple in which the Jews took such great pride had not been the answer to Israel’s problems. Stephen says bluntly, “The Most High does not live in houses made by men.”

If you missed the connection between Stephen’s defense and the false witnesses testimony, let me make it clear: it was the temple. The false witnesses said that Jesus claimed he would destroy it and that Stephen constantly spoke against it. Stephen did not deny their testimony outright because there was a grain of truth in it. He believed the Jerusalem temple had ceased to exist as the meeting place with God. The early Christians had come to see Jesus himself as the new temple, the place where God and man can meet. What would lead them to think such a remarkable thing? The answer: Jesus’s own – and his apostles’ – teaching. Next week, we will explore that teaching as it was passed down from the apostles.

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When Jesus Looks at You, What Does He See?

Posted on August 8, 2026 by salooper57
Photo by Sony Dude on Pexels.com

Were one of my Methodist friends to write an article with the same title as this one, I might expect he or she would say something about how Jesus sees a cherished friend, even his dearly beloved, when he looks at you. On the other hand, if one of my fundamentalist friends wrote such an article, it wouldn’t surprise me if he or she said that Jesus sees a sinner when he looks at you—a sinner whom he loves, of course, but a “sinner” nonetheless.

The first response could be maudlin, even sappy, and the second could be manipulative and is certainly incomplete. (I hope my Methodist and fundamentalist friends and readers will forgive me for the reductive stereotyping in the paragraph above. All Methodists are not alike, and neither are all fundamentalists, and none that I know is exactly as I have misrepresented them above.) I am painting with an intentionally broad brush, hoping to block in a background that will prepare us for what I hope is an authentically biblical answer to the question raised by the title. It is a question, I have no doubt, that some of my Methodist and fundamentalist friends could answer more insightfully and eloquently than I.

Fortunately, I needn’t depend on my own intuition to suggest an answer to the title’s question about what Jesus sees when he looks at you. We have sufficient information in the Gospels themselves to formulate an authentic biblical answer. There are fifteen verses in the Gospels that either mention Jesus’s eyes or explicitly state that he looked at someone or something, and two additional verses that imply that he made eye contact with someone.

There is, for example, the account of the rich ruler to whom Jesus extended the offer/challenge to become his disciple. When Jesus looked at this man, St. Mark says that he “loved him.” So, what did Jesus see when he looked at the rich young ruler? He saw someone he loved. (Chalk one up for the Methodists!)

But he also saw a sinner who would reject the priceless offer to be discipled by Jesus himself. The ruler turned Jesus down. We are not told that he said anything, only that he “went away.” (Chalk one up for the fundamentalists!) Nevertheless, Jesus is explicitly said to love this troubled man.

In the numerous verses in which Jesus looks at a person or a group, he is described as seeing people with compassion, love, and discernment. He might, after looking at someone, make a generous offer (as in the case of the young ruler) or issue a stern rebuke (as in the case of St. Peter). But whether a rebuke or an offer, Jesus actually saw the individuals. He did not look past them to the next big event on his calendar. He looked at people, saw them, and knew them (John 2:24-25).

St. Peter is a case in point. More often than with any other person, Jesus is said to look at Peter. When he first met the Galilean fisherman, the text says that Jesus “looked at him” (John 1:42). How long this lasted, we do not know, but he apparently did more than look at him; he looked into him and saw his character, his strengths, and weaknesses. Only then did Jesus speak to him: “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas,” which means “Rock” (as in “Rock Hudson” or “Duane-the Rock-Johnson”).

Jesus was neither maudlin nor manipulative. When he looked at people, he saw them for who they really were and responded appropriately. Even when that response was stern, it was loving. This was true, for example, when “Jesus turned and looked at his disciples” and “rebuked Peter.” He saw the disciples, who they were and what they needed, and he responded accordingly.

On the night preceding his execution, Jesus was interrogated by a hostile government official. After the first stage of the interrogation was completed, “The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter,” who had only minutes before denied even knowing Jesus. I do not think that look conveyed anger or even disappointment. Perhaps I am becoming maudlin myself (which sometimes happens), but from what I know of Jesus, I expect it conveyed compassion and genuine love. Even after Peter had disavowed the Lord, Jesus could still see Peter for who he was—and who he would become.

So, I think an authentically biblical answer to the question posed in the title of this article, “When Jesus looks at you, what does he see?” would be: “He sees you.” He sees you, with your past failures and present flaws. He sees you with your present strengths and future successes. He sees everything you are – the good, the bad, and the shameful – and seeing all, he does not turn away.

Few people actually “see us.” Most don’t even try, and some who do are only looking for faults and weaknesses to ridicule or exploit. Some people go through life without ever being seen. It is an injury that inflicts lasting damage.

But Jesus sees us, and he does not look away when he finds ugliness inside. And his look heals and beautifies. It is capable of reversing the injury and healing the wound left by our long invisibility.

Just one look sets angels singing, trembling with delight. Just one word sets our hearts burning, shining with his light.

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The Good Shepherd, Part 1 (John 10)

Posted on August 7, 2026 by salooper57

We preachers usually go to the Good Shepherd passage looking for whatever good news we can find about us – and that is not wrong. But it may miss the point. John included the Good Shepherd passage primarily because of what is has to say about Jesus, and especially that he is the Messiah (John 20:31). This sermon answers a question that leaves many readers puzzled. Jesus claims that he told the Jewish religious leaders that he was the Messiah. But when did he tell them? That is what we discover in this first look at the Good Shepherd. PS. We’ll also find good news in John 10 about us!

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The Light of the World, John 8:12 (video)

Posted on July 31, 2026 by salooper57

This 26-minute sermon explores another of Jesus’s remarkable “I am” claims: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

The roots of Jesus’s claim are in the Old Testament. Understanding this can help us appreciate what Jesus means and what how his promise can be experienced in our lives.

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The Art of Living Backwards

Posted on July 25, 2026 by salooper57

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story he titled, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” (His story formed the basis for a 2008 David Fincher film of the same name.) In the story, Benjamin Button is born, to the horror of his father, looking and talking like a 75-year-old man. As the story progresses, Benjamin ages backwards, becoming younger and younger until he becomes a baby and then disappears – or so it seems – from the scene.

Before the Benjamin Button film debuted, Star Trek: Voyager’s writers played around with the idea of moving backwards through time. In an episode from 1997, Kes awakes to find herself a wrinkled, dying woman, surrounded by a family she does not know. She has no memory of a past that led up to this moment. She is, in fact, a woman without a past, only a present; and in that present, she is dying.

As the story progresses, Kes repeatedly loses consciousness only to awake and find herself younger. Unlike the rest of the crew, she knows what the future holds. The crew, unlike her, knows what the past held. For them, the future is the great unknown; for Kes, it’s the past. She guides her actions by what she knows of the future; they guide theirs by what they know of the past.

The story idea could illustrate an important biblical truth: The good life God has in mind for us to live is predicated on a knowledge of the past and the future. Christians have inside information on both.

To the degree we misunderstand our past, which we all do to some degree, we cannot be wise. And without some firm knowledge of our future, we cannot be secure. Understanding our past gives us wisdom. Understanding our future gives us confidence.

All of us have known people who are chained to the past by their sorrows. They cannot get beyond their suffering. We’ve known other people who are bound to the past by their successes. They get stuck in some ancient triumph and fail to grow to become the person God wants – and others need – them to be. The first group is filled with regret. The second is void of hope. Neither gets much out of the present.

For Christians it is different—or it should be. Their past, whether pleasant or tragic, was transformed when they were united to Jesus Christ by faith. In that miraculous moment, their story was fused to his story and what happened to him became more important to their lives than anything that ever happened to them. Their past and his past were indivisibly joined.

Not only that, their future and his future were linked. If you are a Christian – I’m not talking about someone who has a vague belief in God and a positive opinion of Jesus, but about a person who has committed their life to God in the belief that Jesus is the savior of the world and the Lord of all – the most important thing in your life happened in someone else’s life. It happened to Christ. His story is your story. His past is your past, and his future is your future. Knowing that will change your present.

When I was 16, I was a newish believer. I had been instructed to read the Bible, which I was doing, but I didn’t know much about it. On most Sundays, our old (he was younger than I am now) pastor’s sermons worked on me like a tranquilizer. I was just muddling along the best I could. But I believed in Jesus and I understood that my future was all wrapped up in him. 

I was willing to endure – or rather, I willed to endure – in order to experience the future God had for me. Many were the times I said to God, “Whatever it takes” (and because my faith was so small I would imagine the worst things a teenage boy could), “I want to be all that you can make me.” Do you see what was happening? The future was altering my present. I was not just living out of my past with its hurts and losses; I was living into my future. You could say I was living backwards. Living backwards is a skill every disciple of Jesus needs to learn. The better we become at it, the better we will be at making the most of the present.

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Come, Eat, Believe and Live (John 6)

Posted on July 22, 2026 by salooper57

The teaching of Jesus in this passage is crucial for his disciples to understand. How do we come to Jesus? How do we eat Jesus? The latter question perturbed his first hearers and still troubles us today. This message is not intended to answer all our questions but to help us respond joyfully to Jesus’s invitation and instruction.

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Think You Know What Christians Are Like?

Posted on July 18, 2026 by salooper57

A family of four recently started attending our church. Neither husband nor wife grew up in church and, although the wife briefly attended youth group when she was in middle school, they knew almost nothing about the Christian faith. Individually they felt a desire to learn about God and rightly relate to him, and that desire led them to our church, for which we are grateful.

This past week, I asked them what their parents and family members thought about their decision to follow Christ. They told me that family members said things like, “If it helps you…” and “Just don’t get weird.” So, I asked them what they had thought Christians were like before they started coming to church. Their answer was interesting.

The husband had not known a Christian personally, so his opinion had been formed by what he saw on TV and in the movies. What he saw there, which he assumed was an authentic representation of Christians – was nothing like what he found when he actually met some.

Thank goodness! The way TV and films represent Christians is misleading and often malicious. For example, my wife really enjoyed E.R., which ran for 15 seasons on NBC’s “Must See TV” lineup. After watching it with her for a few seasons, I stopped watching it because of its blatant bias against Christians. When a Christian character appeared on E.R., you could automatically assume that person would be a sexual predator, a greedy fraud, or an abusive bully.

Of course, E.R. first aired in 1994. Perhaps things have changed in the way television has portrayed Christians in more recent years.

They haven’t. HBO’s comedy, The Righteous Gemstones, features John Goodman as a Southern televangelist who preaches purity, modesty, and tithing, while his children lead ridiculously opulent lifestyles that are funded by gifts to the ministry. The long-running Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit featured an episode in season 21 that portrayed the deputy chief’s close friend, the Reverend Delman Chase, as a serial sexual predator. Criminal Minds portrayed Reverend Marcus Drake, highly regarded for his loving intervention in the lives of at-risk teens, as a manipulative abuser of runaway children.

Rev. Jim Jones (1977)

My new friend saw Christians portrayed like this and assumed that this is what they were really like. At the movies, he could have seen Robert DeNiro playing Max Cady in Cape Fear. Cady is a self-styled servant of the Lord, but in reality he is a sadistic, brutal fiend. Or he could have watched serial killer and faithful church member Carl Henderson in The Devil All the Time. Or he might have seen Steven Spielberg’s, The Fablemans, which featured an apparently earnest Christian teen who uses private prayer sessions as an excuse for sexually aggressive behavior with boys.

It is not that one cannot find examples like these in real life. There are plenty of them. But if every time a TV show writes in a Christian character, it represents them as a hypocritical, money-grubbing sexual predator, it has become the administrator of agitprop – the agitation of people with propaganda in order to condition their thinking.

If all people know of Christians is what they see on TV or in movies, their perspective will be grossly imbalanced. There are about 50 million people in the United States who are in church every Sunday. There are about half-a-million clergy. On average, these people are more generous than the average American. They are more forgiving. They care about doing what is right and good.

Evangelical Christians are more generous by far than the average American. In 2023, they gave 29% more per capita than the non-religious. Even with the decline of Evangelicals on the American scene, they still give more than any other group. I would suspect that they, along with serious Christians from every denomination, forgive more than any other group. They volunteer more often. They take the lead in worldwide humanitarian efforts.

Of course, there are notorious Christian preachers and hypocritical church members, and their representation in the media is a stinging rebuke of the church’s failure to effectively teach people to obey all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:19). But what we find on TV and in the movies is a prejudicial depiction that has become the instrument of anti-Christian indoctrination.

Before my new friend came to church, all he knew about Christians came from the media. (It is amazing – an act of God’s grace – that they came to church at all.) But now they are getting to know real Christians and are discovering that they are not weird (at least, not weirder than anyone else), but they are kind and giving. If all you know of Christians is what you’ve seen on TV or picked up from the media mill, it is time you met one for yourself. Go see them in their natural habitat – go to church – and find out what they are really like.

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Jesus: The Bread of Life (1) – John 6

Posted on July 16, 2026 by salooper57

The Centrality of Jesus

This sermon on John 6 links the miracle (the feeding of the 5,000) with the surprising teaching that follows: That a person who eats Jesus’s flesh and drinks his blood will live forever. What on earth could that mean? Was Jesus speaking of Holy Communion? Was it something else? And what are we supposed to do about it?

This is the first of two sermons on Jesus’s claim that he is the bread of life. Sermon time: 26 minutes.

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The Great Recycling Enterprise

Posted on July 11, 2026 by salooper57
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Reading time: 3-4 minutes.

It bothers me to waste things. After pouring a few chips on my plate, I immediately seal the bag. If those chips get stale sitting open in the July heat and humidity, they will go to waste, and I hate that. Wasting time, money, food, coffee (because I made it too weak), or anything else of value is anathema to me.

I notice that Jesus did not waste things either. After the stupendous miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, he ordered his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” After the similarly remarkable miracle of the feeding of the 4,000, he gave the same instruction. Here is a savior after my own heart! (How I desire to be a servant after his!)

I suspect that “Let nothing be wasted” amounts to something like a principle with Jesus. It is not just food that he refuses to waste. It is opportunities. It is people. It is even tragedies.

What do I mean by saying that Jesus did not waste opportunities? Here is an example. As he and his disciple were headed to Jerusalem at the front of a throng of Passover pilgrims; the atmosphere was electric. His apostles would soon be flushed with excitement over the reception their master received on his entrance into Jerusalem. Before that happened, Jesus took the opportunity to draw his disciples aside and warn them of his coming arrest, rejection, and execution. It was the perfect time to remind them of what was important, and he would not waste it.

The same Jesus who would not waste leftover barley bread will not waste people. The word that is used regarding the leftover bread in John is “apollymi” in Greek, “to waste, to ruin, to perish, to lose.” It is a fairly common word in the New Testament, used 90 times. The New Testament writers recognize that many things are wasted, including people, but that is never God’s desire.

For example, one’s “soul” or “life” (Greek, psyche) might be wasted: “Whoever finds his life will lose” (apollymi) “it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). Likewise, Jesus told people that “unless you repent, you too will all perish” (apollymi). “You too will all ruin, lose, waste your life.”

God does not want anything to go to waste, especially people. So, we read in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish” (apollymi, “go to waste”) “but have eternal life.” Likewise, in 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord … is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

If people’s lives are wasted and they “perish” or are “lost,” it will not be because God wanted it that way. He is, as Jesus represented him, careful not to waste anything, especially the people he made in his own likeness.

Jesus, and the God he perfectly images, will never waste a trial, a hardship, or a tragedy (nor a good time) that his people experience. (Note: This is not to say that God engineers our hardships and tragedies. It is to say that he is so capable, so sovereign, that he can use hardships and tragedies, however unjust, to bring about some good. That tragedy itself may be a purely evil occurrence, but that will not stop him from using it to bring about something good.)

In my own life, my older brother’s death when I was in 6th grade was a tragedy. It was not good in any way; it was horrible. But God nevertheless brought good out of it. I do not know how my parents or I would ever have come to Christ if it were not for my brother’s death. That does not make his death a good thing—far from it. But God used this evil thing to bring about a genuine good. While I am still sad about my brother’s death, I am profoundly grateful that God brought good out of it.

Of course, we have a part to play. God works together with us in making good come out of the evil (and morally neutral) things that happen in our lives. (See Romans 8:28.) Even bad things will not be wasted if God has his way. He will recycle them and make something good come from them, like the Cambodian landmines that locals melted down and, with the help of NGO’s, transformed into prosthetic limbs for victims of war.

Father God and Son Jesus do not willingly allow anything to be wasted. That includes you and me. It includes the things that we have suffered, sometimes unjustly. It includes the tragedies that have befallen us. But we must choose to be God’s coworkers in this great recycling enterprise, and that can only happen if we trust him.

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