November 20, 2022
Colossians 1:11-20 and Luke 23:33-43 I want to start with that text from Colossians this morning. This is one of the richest texts in the New Testament and an excellent choice for Christ the King Sunday. It begins with Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church. He reminds them of all that Christ has done for… Read More »
November 13, 2022
Isaiah 65:17-25 and Luke 21:5-19 Jesus’ disciples could not help but be impressed by the Temple. And with good reason. From the accounts that have survived from antiquity, it was quite an impressive structure. Now, this was not Solomon’s Temple, the one we read about in the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles. That… Read More »
November 6, 2022
Luke 20:27-38 This is part of a section in Luke’s Gospel where the religious elites are trying to trip up Jesus, catch him in his words. Jesus’ triumph over their scheming is meant to show him to be a true prophet, one who knows the truth. And now it is the Sadducees who are out… Read More »
October 30, 2022
Luke 19:1-10 Before we get into the text, let’s pause to remember the context. Last Sunday’s sermon was on Jesus’ parable in Luke 18 about the Pharisee and the tax collector, in which the surprising conclusion is that the humble tax collector is justified before God, not the oh-so-sure-of-his-own-righteousness Pharisee. This story should be seen… Read More »
October 23, 2022
Luke 18:9-14 We often give the Pharisees a hard time, and not without good reason. They certainly had their faults. But it’s important to remember they were seen as “spiritual rock stars” by most first century Hebrew people. The Pharisees emerged as a religious group in the middle of the second century BC. They were… Read More »
October 9, 2022
Jeremiah 29:1-14 I think this is one of those cases where it is necessary to talk about the history of this passage first to understand what is going on here. Throughout the 10th through the 7th centuries BC, Assyria was the bully of the ancient Near East world. Assyria’s capital was at Nineveh, which is… Read More »
October 2, 2022
Luke 17:5-10 and 2 Timothy 1:1-14 Paul reminds Timothy that salvation is a gift. It is undeserved. We don’t do something to achieve it. It only comes because God is gracious. And salvation is received through faith. Now there’s something important for us to understand about faith. We use the word faith to describe what… Read More »
September 25, 2022
Jeremiah 32:1-15 Many people call Jeremiah the “Weeping Prophet.” He certainly had a hard go of it. He was called by God to minister to Judah at one of the most difficult times in their history, the years immediately before and after the destruction of Jerusalem and the start of the Babylonian Exile. The Exile… Read More »
September 18, 2022
Luke 16:1-13 I think this is one of the most difficult parables of Jesus. For starters, it seems to be encouraging dishonest behavior. And there was a tradition in Hebrew story-telling of the “shrewd hero,” the character who outwits others and gains the upper hand. This goes all the way back to Jacob, who “outwitted”… Read More »
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