Sermons from August 2020
Losers, Keepers
Matthew 16:21 – 28 “Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.” We’ve all grown up with those words. Just an innocent little kid’s rhyme, right? Until you think about what those words actually mean, and what kind of lesson it teaches about how we treat each other. Finders, keepers; losers, weepers, boils down to something like this: You lose something of value (whether material or sentimental value) and that loss causes you grief. Losing it makes you a weeper. Then I have the…
Prevailing Against the Gates of Hades
Matthew 16:13-18 and Romans 12:1-8 The weather on this particular day of our Holy Land pilgrimage was uncharacteristically gloomy. Gray clouds hung ominously above us and the misty air dampened our enthusiasm for outdoor exploration. You couldn’t have asked for better weather for a visit to the Gates of Hell. In Old Testament times the place had been the site of a cult to the Canaanite fertility god, Ba’al. In a culture that depended on agriculture for its survival, fertility…
Like Oil and Water
Psalm 133 and Matthew 15:21-28 The 133rd Psalm is one of a group of Psalms in the Bible called Songs of Ascent. They are called Songs of Ascent because it is believed that these Psalms were sung by Israelite pilgrims traveling from their homes to worship in Solomon’s Temple; which meant literally ascending up to the city of Jerusalem where the Temple was located. The Ascent Psalms were mostly upbeat and hopeful in tone. They reverberated with praises to God,…
Out of the Boat
Matthew 14:13-22 In the Viet Nam war film “Apocalypse Now”, there is a scene when two crew members of an American gun boat have left the safety of the boat to scout some unfamiliar jungle along the riverbank. Suddenly, they are confronted—not by Viet Cong guerrillas—but by a man-eating tiger. They somehow manage to outrun the tiger back to the boat. As the boat speeds away from shore, one of the soldiers who just narrowly escaped keeps repeating breathlessly to…
Birthrights
Genesis 32:22-31 Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Bible is nothing but dull stories about fuddy-duddies and do-gooders. Anyone who says that has obviously never actually read the Bible. And they have certainly never heard about Jacob. Jacob was as cunning and calculating of a con-man as you would find anywhere. A scoundrel who never let a moral principle or a twinge of conscience stand between him and anything he really wanted in life. And he was that…