Jesus, Savior
In Pastor Jessica’s excellent message yesterday, she made it clear that salvation has more than one meaning in the Bible. We 21st century Christians almost always use the word to describe spiritual salvation, by which we mean being saved from our sins and their consequences. But it is a much fuller, richer, and more complex idea than just that.
Let’s Hear It For the Lambs!
Sunday, I talked about two titles for Jesus that seem to point in opposite directions: Lion of Judah and Lamb of God. In fact, they are flip sides of the same coin, representing the hard as well as the soft sides of God’s love for each of us. I talked about how much we tend to prefer Lion-like leaders today, but that many of the key aspects of Jesus draw on his role as Lamb of God. Here’s a few paragraphs that I didn’t have time to include Sunday:
In Sunday’s sermon, I closed by thinking through what a real worst-case scenario might look for us leading up to Christmas. I offered the following:
What would Our Worst Case Scenario be this holiday season
if we had to imagine it?
I Just Wish It Were Obvious
It really is frustrating that understanding the Bible as it demands to be understood takes so much on our part. It’s not that we’re lazy, it’s just that we think it ought to say what it means and mean what it says. We begin to resent the word, interpretation in all its forms because of it.
Archived Posts
Not Just for Parents
Our current sermon series is about How To Talk Parent, but it doesn’t require any of us to be parents to appreciate the bits of wisdom OUR parents shared with us growing up.
If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.
What just missed the cut for Sunday’s Sermon
Naaman’s servants may actually become one of the hidden gems of the sermon. They say, essentially: “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it.”