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Category Archives: Sermons
“Allow Me to Introduce Myself” – Jesus
Imagine you are an actor, who has moved to Los Angeles, is sharing an apartment with four other people, working odd jobs, and waiting for your big break. One day your agent calls. A famous director is looking for someone to play a role in his new major motion picture. The audition is at 3:00.
So, you call your part-time employer, tell him you’re going to miss work today, and you go in for the audition. You’re given a script with the lines: “Don’t even think about it. Please. Please. You’ll ruin everything.”
You ask, “So what is this scene about?” and are told, “The Director isn’t telling anyone. Just do your best.”
You don’t know if your character is a scientist, working in a lab with highly explosive material or a spouse whose partner has threatened to file for divorce. How can you know how to act if you don’t know the story?
That is the same kind of problem many people have in trying to live as a Jesus-follower: They don’t know what story they’re in. This text will help us understand our story. This message is based on John 1:1-18, and is meant to open the new series, “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” -Jesus. Each week of the series, we will be introduced to a truth about Jesus from the Gospel of John, revealed in Jesus’s fascinating “I Am” statements. Continue reading
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Jesus Stories
Kevin Looper preaches from Mark 4 and 5, with insights into who Jesus is and what he is like. In the heart-pounding adventure of the turbulent night at sea and in the heart-stopping horror story centered around the tombs, Kevin points out the startling insight that the disciples (in the first story) and the demons (in the second) were afraid of Jesus and that Jesus was afraid of nothing! Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Sermons, Theology
Tagged Anxiety, Jesus and demons, Jesus rules the sea
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Now You See Me (John 14:1-12)
People read about God’s wrath in the Bible, hear how Jesus died in our place, and bore our sins, and conclude that an angry God just had to punish someone and Jesus (who is not angry) didn’t want it to be us. So, he deflected the blow and took the punishment. People don’t usually put it that crudely but that is how many people understand what happened.
This summary of the good news sounds a lot like bad news, but because there is truth mixed in with the falsehood, people swallow it whole. The worst part of it may be the heretical way it separates the Father and the Son into a kind of good cop/bad cop team. Instead of seeing a Father who is determined to rescue his children, we get a God who is determined to hurt them. Instead of the biblical understanding that sin is ruining us, we get a God who will ruin us. Fortunately for us, the Son, who in nicer than his Father, intervenes. Otherwise, we’d all be toast.
That is heresy. The Son is not the good cop and the Father the bad cop because they are both good and neither one is a cop. This teaching does one of the greatest disservices possible: it makes it almost impossible for a person to fully trust the God and Father of Jesus.
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Posted in From the Pulpit, Sermons, Theology
Tagged atonement, John 14, the Trinity, What is God like?
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Nevertheless: God’s Will and Our Will
http://www.lockwoodchurch.org/media (Listening time: 27:00) Jesus taught his students that God is good and kind and loving. He’s better than we ever dreamed! But what about when things go sideways? Is he still good, kind, and loving when the thing we … Continue reading
Posted in From the Pulpit, Sermons, Theology
Tagged free will, Gethsemane, Will of God
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The Emu and the Kangaroo (Matthew 28:18-20) – What Is Baptism All About?
Many countries have a national coat of arms, often featuring magnificent beasts and birds, like the majestic lion and the soaring eagle. They carefully chose such images to convey the idea that their people are courageous and strong.
The Australian coat of arms also features two animals: The emu, a graceless bird that can’t even fly, and a kangaroo. Courage and strength are hardly the first things one thinks of when seeing the comical-looking emu and kangaroo. Why did Australia choose those two animals?
Because they share a common characteristic with which the Australians identify: Both the emu and the kangaroo can only move forward, not back. The emu’s three-toed foot causes it to fall if it tries to go backwards, and the kangaroo is prevented from moving backwards by its large tail.
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Posted in Church, From the Pulpit, Sermons
Tagged Baptism, Why should people get baptized?
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The Forgiver
During the closing song at a special service in an Indiana state prison, Chuck Colson noticed one of the inmates, a man named James Brewer, singing out at the top of his lungs. Colson says the man’s face was radiant. James Brewer had come to know Jesus Christ in prison and his life had been transformed.
As soon as the song was over, the Prison Fellowship Team began shaking hands and saying goodbye. Brewer returned to his cell, walking shoulder to shoulder with a Prison Fellowship volunteer. Colson was meeting the governor in Indianapolis in just two hours, so he followed them and urged the volunteer to hurry.
“We’ve got to go!” he called to the volunteer, but the man answered, “Just a minute, please!”
Colson shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the plane is waiting. We have to go right now!”
The volunteer said, “Please, please, this is very important. You see, I am Judge Clement. I sentenced this man to die. But now he is born again. He is my brother and we want a minute to pray together.”
Colson said, “I stood in the entrance to that solitary, dimly lit cell, frozen in place. Here were two men – one black, one white; one powerful, one powerless; one who had sentenced the other to die. Yet there they stood, grasping a Bible together, Brewer smiling so genuinely, the judge so filled with love for the prisoner at his side.”
Forgiveness. God is the Forgiver: he can forgive anyone – even me; even you. And because we are the Forgiven, we are called to forgive, just as God does. “Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13). To forgive like God does puts us in a place where remarkable things can happen in our lives. Continue reading
Posted in From the Pulpit, Peace with God, relationships, Sermons
Tagged forgiveness, Is God Angry?
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The Giver
The singer Carolyn Arrends was warned by her friend not to make a purchase that seemed to be too good to be true. She ignored him and suffered the consequences. Then she began avoiding him because she didn’t want him to know what she’d done. She started thinking of him as someone who was against her, not for her.
The same thing happens between us and God. Our idea of him gets distorted. We start to see him as against us, not for us; as a taker, not a giver.
But God is for us, not against us (Romans 8:31-39). He is not just a giver, he is The Giver.
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The God Who Feeds the Ravens
Hypocrisy and greed are responses to a real problem: fear. Hypocrisy is the pathological response of a malfunctioning soul brought on by the fear of what people think of us. Greed is the response of the soul to the fear of not having enough. Hypocrisy and greed are ways of self-medicating. They alleviate the fear problem … for a while.
But hypocrisy and greed are only temporary fixes; they are stop-gap measures. And, unfortunately, the temporary fix makes the long-term solution less likely. Continue reading
Posted in Peace with God, Sermons, Spiritual life
Tagged greed, How to overcome fear, hypocrisy, worry
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PARTY-PLANNER: The Joyous God
God is not only a planner; he is a party planner. He is the party planner. He loves a good party. Continue reading
Posted in Sermons, Theology, Uncategorized
Tagged The Joyous God, What Jesus taught about God
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The Family Business: Doing the Work of God
How often we … miss what is happening around us. Because we don’t see it, we think nothing is happening, that God is on break. But Jesus helped us to see that his Father is working all around us, all the time. Continue reading
Posted in From the Pulpit, Sermons, Spiritual life
Tagged John 5:17-20, Where is God?
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