Category Archives: Bible

Promises, Promises: The Promise of Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2020 by salooper57

(Text:Micah 5:1-5. If you prefer to listen rather than read, you can find a link to this sermon below.) Do you have one of those friends – maybe you have more than one – who is always making, but rarely … Continue reading →

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What’s He Doing Here? Why John the Baptist Shows Up at Christmastime

Posted on December 19, 2020 by salooper57

Religious people can be odd. Saints can be downright strange. If there are any contemporary saints trending on Twitter or YouTube, it is more likely because of the weird things they say and do than in spite of them.

During the third week in Advent Season, the Common Lectionary’s Gospel readings are all about John the Baptist, whose life is celebrated each year in preparation for Christmas. If one of the qualifying marks of sainthood is strangeness – and such a case could be made – John must be at the head of the class.

He was born to aged parents. Were his birth to occur today, we would call it a miracle of modern science. When it occurred, friends and family simply called it a miracle. At some point, John moved from his Judean countryside home to the rugged desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. His diet was odd – he ate locusts and honey. His wardrobe was odd – he wore camel hair clothing. His life work was odd – he dunked people in the Jordan River for the forgiveness of sins.

John’s was a strange life and also a strange death. When he stuck his prophetic nose into the king’s so-called private affairs, the king cut it off. Well, not just his nose but his whole head. The king only did this because his stepdaughter – at her mother’s request – put him up to it.

Even John’s burial was unusual. His grieving friends had to go to the authorities – not the coroner but (quite possibly) the executioner – to request his body. As far as we know that body still rests in some ancient grave, absent its blessed head.

Why is this man, so odd in life and in death, renowned among Christians? Continue reading →

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ADVENTure: A Time to Rethink Your Life

Posted on December 16, 2020 by salooper57

Research shows most people don’t respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead of leaving a building immediately, they stand around and wait for more information. In 1985, a fire broke out in the stands of a soccer match in England. When the television footage was examined, it showed fans took a long time to react. They didn’t move towards the exits until it was too late. 56 people died.

Research also shows that when we do move, we tend to follow old habits. For example, most people try to exit through the same door they entered, even when a nearer exit is available. A fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky left 177 people dead. Forensic experts believed that many of the victims tried to go out the way they came in, even though there were fire exits. They got caught in a bottleneck and couldn’t get out it time.

What is there for us today in this strange prophet’s ancient message? I’ll mention three things. First, there is a fire coming, a fire of judgment and a time of change, and John sounds the alarm. That warning is at the heart of the Christian gospel and our hearts tell us it is true. Don’t try to escape it by going back the way you came. There is a nearer door, the only one that works: Jesus. Go through him. He once said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved…” (John 10:9). Go to him. Join him. Ask him to take you in. Continue reading →

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ADVENTURE: Mission Inevitable (Luke 3:1-6)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by salooper57

Between now and Christmas, I will post audio of the Adventure sermons from 2018. The series is meant to prepare worshipers to celebrate Christ’s birth and anticipate his return. This first sermon finds striking similarities between the world in our … Continue reading →

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Finally Some Good News: Raised on the Third Day

Posted on December 8, 2020 by salooper57

All writers – whether they are writing plays, novels, essays, textbooks, comic books, cookbooks, or the First Epistle to the Corinthians, it doesn’t matter – write with an awareness of what is coming. When the Apostle Paul started this section we know as chapter 15 – but really, when he penned the first words of this long letter to the Corinthians – he knew where he was headed. He knew he was going to write about the resurrection.

It was one of the chief reasons Paul wrote this letter in the first place. There were people in Corinth who were distorting the teaching of the resurrection and misleading church members – quite possibly in the public meetings Paul described in the previous section.

Paul knew that people who get the resurrection wrong will get lots of other things wrong too. If you are working on the most complex differential calculus equation ever and get 2+2 wrong, you will get everything else wrong as well. What basic addition is to mathematics, the resurrection is to faith in Jesus.

Yet it is worth noting that Paul, while taking the Corinthians’ error very seriously, does not condemn people for their wrong thinking. He doesn’t tell them that they will be accursed unless they get the doctrine of the resurrection right. It is not Paul does not use that kind of language; he does, just read Galatians. But he reserves it for people who abandon Jesus, not for people who get their theology wrong.

On the Sunday before Easter, a Sunday School teacher asked her class of four and five-year-olds: “Does anyone know what today is?” A little girl’s hand shot up and she said, “Today is Palm Sunday.”

The teacher said, “That’s right, Kara! That’s very good. Now does anyone know what next Sunday is?” The same hand shot up again. After waiting to see if any of the other children wanted to answer, the teacher said, “Yes, Kara?” And Kara proudly answered, “Next Sunday is Easter.”

“That’s right,” the teacher said. “And does anyone know what happened on Easter?”

Of course it was Kara who answered. “Jesus rose from the grave.”

But before the teacher could congratulate her on yet another right answer, she went on: “and if he sees his shadow, he has to go back in for seven weeks!”
Continue reading →

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“According to the Scriptures”: What does that mean?

Posted on December 1, 2020 by salooper57

I know that means going out of order, which will drive some of you to distraction, but the inclusion of the burial here powerfully illustrates a truth we looked at several weeks ago, so going there first will serve as a brief review before we move on. Besides that, the line about Jesus’s burial frequently gets skipped over altogether. But Paul included it, as did each of the Gospel writers and, what’s more, Paul even mentioned it his evangelistic preaching,

But why? What is there to say? He was buried. Stuck in a hole in the ground. There is not a lot of color commentary to go along with that. When preachers go to their illustration files for something to highlight the burial, they usually come up empty-handed.

In the recent past, historically speaking, some preachers and apologists have focused on the empty tomb as proof that Jesus rose from the dead. Those who deny Jesus’s resurrection, they say, need to explain the empty tomb. And people have tried. Some suggest that the women, confused and overcome by grief, simply went to the wrong tomb. When they didn’t find Jesus’s body, they recalled something he had said and jumped to the conclusion he had been resurrected.

There are all kinds of problems with that theory, starting with the chauvinistic assumption that women are overly emotional and directionally challenged. But even if these women were…
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Deuteronomy and the Root of Bitterness

Posted on November 25, 2020 by salooper57

When I have preached on Hebrews 12 in the past, I have taken the “root of bitterness” that “grows up and defiles many” to refer to personal bitterness harbored toward another for real or imagined ills that have been done. I have warned people against harboring bitterness and urged them to forgive those who have wronged them.

If a person misses the grace of God (I have said), “there will be a price to pay – or, to be more precise,there will be hell to pay: a bitter root will grow up, a root that springs from the very soil of hell; and it will ’cause trouble and defile many.’”

Many years of pastoral experience have led me to this conclusion, and I believe it is an accurate one. I have seen people’s lives, marriages, relations to children and parents, and mental health destroyed because they harbored bitterness and refused to forgive.

I believe this warning remains true. I further believe it has biblical support. I have begun to doubt, however, that this is the point Hebrews 12:15 is making. Continue reading →

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Christ Died for Our Sins

Posted on November 2, 2020 by salooper57

(This is the fifth sermon in the series, “Finally … Some Good News.”) (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that … Continue reading →

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What Will You Be Doing on Election Night?

Posted on October 31, 2020 by salooper57

I think I’ll watch a movie on election eve, probably “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and has a stellar cast, including the great James Stewart.

In the movie, an unlikely replacement is chosen for a recently deceased U.S. Senator. He finds himself surrounded by corruption, taken advantage of by a worldly-wise press, and pictured as a dumb ox to the nation.

Senator Smith runs afoul of some corrupt senior members, who determine to ruin him, vacate his seat, and replace him with a more compliant member. Plans are made and steps are taken to humiliate the young senator, break him, and drive him out. In spite of the temptation and corruption, Smith manages to remain true. It is, in many ways, a story for our time.

“Mr. Smith” is my plan for election night. I won’t be watching the results into the wee hours of the night. I will pay no attention to the exit polls. By election night, I will have already done what I can do to influence the election – pray and vote – and what I cannot do, control the outcome, I will leave to God.

Perhaps this seems too laissez-faire. This is, after all, the most important election in our lifetimes – or at least that is what people keep saying. Even if they are right, fretting about the outcome will not change it. Worry will accomplish nothing, as Jesus explicitly taught. I will pray and vote, but I will trust God with the outcome.

The Bible pictures God as big enough to handle circumstances, even ones that are as volatile as ours. The psalmist says that God brings down one person and exalts another. The prophet adds that “he sets up kings and deposes them.” I think the same could be said of presidents. This election will not and cannot undermine God’s supreme authority.

Still, what if America gets it wrong? What if we, confused by fake news and misled by spin masters, choose the wrong person?
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Bullet Point Gospel

Posted on October 27, 2020 by salooper57

A few weeks ago we started on an exploration of the gospel and we are continuing our adventure today with a journey into First Corinthians. Someone might wonder why we are jumping from the Old Testament directly to the New Testament letters without stopping in the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Surely the Gospels are important. After all, they give us the word “gospel” more than twenty times, most frequently from the mouth of Jesus himself.

Nevertheless, there is good reason to go to 1 Corinthians next. The Gospels are the good news story full-blown. 1 Corinthians 15, on the other hand, is the gospel in brief, a summary that was well-known and oft recited by early Christians. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul bullet points the big story of the Gospels and gives us something we can get our arms around.

This is not the only gospel summary in the New Testament. You can find others in Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 2, but it is important to remember that these are summaries, not full accounts. They bring to mind the events recorded in the Gospels, like the Cliff Notes on Romeo and Juliet bring to mind the events in Shakespeare’s tragedy. They remind, they do not replace.

Sometimes people say that 1 Corinthians 15 is the gospel, but that is like saying the Cliff Notes are Romeo and Juliet or that the blurb in the TV Guide – American bar owner becomes embroiled in wartime intrigues in Morocco – is Casablanca.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul takes the big story of Jesus, bullet points it, and gives us something we can memorize and repeat. There are four points in this summary but that number could be expanded. That’s the problem with a summary: if you don’t stop somewhere, it ceases to be a summary and becomes a copy. Paul could have added, for example, the day of judgment, which he says in Romans 2:16 is part of the gospel. But he resisted the temptation to give us a longer summary and stuck to four points.
Continue reading →

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