Category Archives: christianity

2010 Halloween Sermon…

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If you ever participated in a séance or watched a medium on television, you know they say things like: Grandma is glad you are living in her house. Dad wants you to know he loves you. Uncle Billy is glad you are working where he worked. Your daughter is happy that you remarried.

What are the chances that all those people would actually be happy about those things? I can imagine Grandma saying, “Why did you sell my teapot collection on eBay?” I can hear Dad saying, “Have you changed the oil in your car?” I can hear Uncle Billy saying, “Why are you working there? Go to college, you screwball!” And I can hear your daughter saying, “How could you remarry already? Mom’s only been dead for a year!”

Why don’t you hear that stuff? Because generally, the speaker is not telling you the truth. He’s either a fraud — making things up. Or he’s demonically motivated — lying because he wants you to believe in something other than God.

There are many reasons that Jesus is better than a spiritist. One reason is that while a spiritist will be glad to tell you want you want to hear, Jesus (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) will never lie to you.

This podcasts speaks of this and some other reasons Jesus is better.

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Harmonizing Prayer and Providence…

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Because we’re so smart, modern human beings have God pretty-much figured out. We know how he works. How he ticks. How he thinks. How he exists….  NOT!

One perplexing issue is that of how a God who has foreordained every day in our lives (Psalm 139) could hear our prayers and respond to them. C. S. Lewis addresses this by calling God The Eternal Now. Andrew Murray, who died almost a century ago said it this way.

…let us not forget that there is not with God as with man, a past by which He is irrevocably bound. God does not live in time with its past and future; the distinctions of time have no reference to Him who inhabits Eternity. And Eternity is an ever-present Now, in which the past is never past, and the future always present. To meet our human weakness, Scripture must speak of past decrees, and a coming future. In reality, the immutability of God’s counsel is ever still in perfect harmony with His liberty to do whatsoever He will. ….the Father-heart holds itself open and free to listen to every prayer that rises through the Son, and that God does indeed allow Himself to be decided by prayer to do what He otherwise would not have done. (Andrew Murray in With Christ in the School of Prayer, Lesson 17).

It seems when you face this seeming conflict you have a couple different ways you might respond. You can stop praying all-together and just let God do what God wants to do. Or you can pray in faith that while you don’t understand how God resolves this seeming conflict, you trust that he does.

The Return of Christ — in Jesus’ Own Words…

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I remember a good man named Fred who came and spoke to me just a few months after I started in my first church. He said, “The previous pastor didn’t preach enough on the end times!”  I am sure Fred was disappointed in me as well, as I didn’t spend large amounts of pulpit time speaking on Christ’s return either.

The fact is that the return of Christ is an important doctrine. It’s something every Christian needs to understand. However, the kind of information that most people want to hear about the end is not what the Bible gives. And the amount of data many people want is not representative of the content of the Bible.

When Jesus speaks of the end, he speaks about how we should behave, not just as The Day approaches, but every day. As always, Jesus’ emphasis is on loving God by obeying him and sharing the good news with our neighbor, whom we are to love as well.

This sermon addresses the first verses of Matthew 24 where Jesus begins to speak of his return. As he does this, Jesus gives at least four action verbs that help us know what to do as we await his return.

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