Sermons on Spiritual Growth
Let All the Earth Keep Silence
Habakkuk’s struggle is a classic one: where is God when wicked people and evil nations flaunt his ways through oppression, violence, and arrogance? God answers with a series of “Woes” that he puts into the mouths of the nations Babylon was oppressing. He says a lot, but his message could be distilled to this: Evil will not have the last say (if you have time, read the whole passage: Habakkuk 2:4-20). We’ll talk about that some tomorrow, but because that…
Loving the World
“Don’t love the world,” John writes in the passage above, but in another place he tells us that “God so loved the world . . .” So God loves the world, but we’re not supposed to? You already know the solution to this “contradiction” . . . the words “world” and “love” are used in different senses, and we’ve got to be careful that we understand their nuances. Tomorrow we’ll explore them a bit, focusing more on the “loving the world” part…
Look at it and Live
If you’re following the church’s Bible reading plan this year, you’ve just begun the book of Numbers, so you’re about to read about a series of rebellions that culminate in an event at Kadesh-Barnea that seems to be the tipping point (the 12 scouts, Israel’s disbelief, etc.). God turns them back toward the wilderness where they’ll spend almost four decades. Our story today falls into this period of time–after the Kadesh rebellion and during the wilderness wandering. It’s short, but…
The Temptation of Christ
There’s an obvious connection with Israel’s temptation in the wilderness in this story. Israel experienced “baptism” in the Red Sea, then went into the wilderness for 40 years, while Jesus was baptized by John then went into the wilderness for 40 days. Jesus’ response to the devil with each temptation was to quote from Deuteronomy, the book of the Torah that in many ways summarizes and completes Israel’s wilderness experience. Israel failed, while Jesus did not. That, in itself, helps us…
Surprised on Judgment Day
This is a familiar story to most Christians, and it’s been preached many times over the years to help people realize how much Jesus cares about our attitude toward those who are disadvantaged. And that’s certainly a needed emphasis. Tomorrow I plan to focus on an interesting nuance in the text, something that I’ve never thought that much about. For the most part, I’m going to ignore the last part of the story–about the ones who ignored the needs of…
Our Daily Bread
We come to the part of this beautiful prayer where Jesus leads us to express our needs. There are three requests–Give us our bread, forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation–and we’ll consider the first one tomorrow. The one about the bread is the only one that has to do with physical needs, and it’s very brief. You’ll notice there’s nothing extraordinary there–no requests for luxuries, obviously, and not even a request for something more than simply…