Tag Archives: truth

Back to School Sermon: Five Lies I Learned in School…

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It’s that time again…. Back to school shopping. Back to school parties, and the highly anticipated back to school sermon.

school02You may feel this is a bit early, but usually, when I wait until later, many of the students are already gone. In the past some of them have listened online or on their iPods. That’s great. But I want to speak to the students before their brains shut down for the first day of school. 😉

This sermon is about Five Lies I Heard in School. Lies that can be extremely damaging. Lies like these are not limited to the school setting. Even young Timothy was warned by the Apostle Paul, to guard against such things. The last two verses of the first letter Paul writes to him say this…

Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you. — 1 Timothy 6:20-21 (NIV)

So as Paul warned Timothy against wandering from the faith, I am warning my students: Guard what has been entrusted to you.

The manuscript for this sermon is available by request. Email me at:

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Leave No Bitterness…

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I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians — what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30 or 40 years (or for 50 or 60 years in a son’s memory) — is not the issue of doctrine or belief which caused the differences in the first place. Invariably it is lack of love — and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. These stick in the mind like glue. And after time passes and the differences between the Christians or the groups appear less than they did, there are still those bitter, bitter things we said in the midst of what we thought was a good and sufficient objective discussion. It is these things — these unloving attitudes and words — that cause the stench that the world can smell in the church of Jesus Christ among those who are really true Christians. ~Francis Shaeffer in The Mark of the Christian.