Pastor's Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, July 20 is online.

Listen to the Sermon Here

Read the Sermon Here.

Labels: Pentecost, PodCast, Sermon

Pastor's Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, May 25 is online.

 Listen to the Sermon Here

Read the Sermon Here.

Labels: Pentecost, PodCast, Sermon

The text is:

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Lk 9:51-62 (ESV)

From the Sermon:

We heard also from Paul in the Second reading: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1, ESV) The freedom that Paul is talking about, the freedom Jesus won for us, isn’t the kind of freedom we often think about, especially as we think about last weekend’s celebration of our Nation’s independence. It’s not a freedom to do whatever we want. That kind of freedom is self indulgent. Christ set us free from our need to earn our own salvation. We don’t have to work to make our place with God. We don’t have to do good works to earn anything. Jesus has earned it all for us. In fact, Jesus freed us from the slavery to sin, death and Satan, so that we could be his servants. Just like the Declaration of Independence didn’t mean that our forefathers were free from dependence. They were just dependent on each other instead of the King. “Take my life, O Lord, renew, Consecrate my heart to you;” Disciples of Jesus are dependent on him. We are dependent on Jesus. We are free to serve. Free to follow Jesus… full time, with our whole heart, soul and mind.

Labels: Pentecost, Sermon, Worship

The text is:

When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she lamented over her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” Then Nathan went to his house. And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick. (2 Samuel 11:26-12:10,13-15, ESV)

From the Sermon:

There is sin in your life. I know there is because there is sin in my life too. We will struggle with sin until our dying day or until Jesus returns again. As Jesus says it comes out of our hearts. But, it doesn’t have to rule our lives; it doesn’t have to control us. God had made a way of dealing with it. “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse of from all unrighteousness.” That is what we are doing here today isn’t it; receiving the gift he brings, forgiveness of sins, being cleansed from all unrighteousness. In this wonderful building God comes to us in Word and water, Body and Blood and Bread and Wine for the forgiveness of our sins. It’s not God forgetting the things we do, but God restoring our relationship to him through the punishment and death of another; God declaring us “not guilty” of sin, even though we are sinful.

Labels: Pentecost, Sermon

The text is:

1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1-9 (ESV)

From the Sermon:

Back at the Tower of Babel, God broke up the people’s pride by breaking up their communication. He scattered them across the face of the earth to prevent greater evil. He breaks our pride by allowing trouble and pain in our lives. That trouble and pain show us that we are fully and completely dependant on Him. Death shows us how helpless we really are. How scattered we become when we push God away.

But the God that scattered is also the God who gathers. The same God who took away the ability to communicate gave it back again. That’s what happened on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came and turned dis-unity, scattered people, dis-united, scattered language, into unified people who each heard “the mighty works of God” in their own language. It was a return to Babel, actually it was “Babel undone.” But God didn’t bring this unity so that those people could once again build a tower, a monument to their own interests. He did it to bring the true unity in Jesus Christ. Remember the “mighty works of God!”

Labels: Pentecost, Sermon, Worship