Sermon: Only It Wasn’t
The law is not given for legalism but for love.
The shape of the law is love;
The purpose of the law is love;
The essence of God is perfect love;
The goal of creation is…wait for it…love.
And not cheap love or toxic love or teenage love or any other kind of synthetic, dupe, knockoff, imitation love on the market. Love at its purest, most real.
These commandments are two sides of the same coin, mutually interpreting one another, constantly spurring the other side on to fidelity and steadfastness.
Sermon: Gods, Coins, and Glory
Caesar can have his coins because the earth is the LORD’s and everything in it.
Caesar can have his tax because the cattle on a thousand hills belong to the LORD.
Caesar can have his money because his power is neither absolute nor divine.
That all belongs to YHWH.
God's image has been imprinted upon humanity, and it is our holy task to let that divine spark shine to the glory of God's name.
From the Archive: Idols, Invitations, and the Immortal
Their God has been going before them, but they want something different.
Israel wanted images of their new gods. Their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses was invisible. The living God could be seen through fire and cloud, plague, passover and parting the sea, but the people wanted something they could look at. In their short-sighted haste, they trade the invisible for the visible, the one true God for a false idol, the omnipotent for the impotent.
From the Archives: Further Up, Further In
The Christian life, the redeemed life of salvation, is not about resting on our laurels or sitting on our blessed assurance. It is not about counting our blessings while people suffer around the world or by sitting back and turning a blind eye, mute mouth, and deaf ear to the problems, wrongs, and evils of this world. The Christian life is not about believing that all of the right people already belong to this church or the Kingdom.
The Christian life is a hope-filled, joy-filled, gratitude-laden response to the summons to go further up, further in.
Sermon: Is the LORD Among Us or Not?
Jesus tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into the kingdom of God ahead of them. His cousin, John the baptizer, came with the good news and the religious elite didn’t listen but the social outcasts did. Birthday parties for prostitutes, receptions for tax collectors, banquets for lepers and sinners and ragamuffins. The mercy of God has been on full display with all of the wrong sorts of people getting in like Flynn to the kingdom of God and it has not moved the religious crowd toward conversion, confession, or conviction.
Instead, their hearts have calcified.
He says: And even after you saw it, you didn’t change your mind and believe.
Again, I ask, Is the LORD among us or not?
Sermon: Are You Envious Because I am Generous?
And of all the audacious acts that Nineveh could conceive, it never occurred to Jonah that they just might accept the invitation. Despite his eventual willingness to see the mission through to completion, Jonah had not wrapped his mind around the great grandiosity of God’s graciousness or the magnificent might of his mercy.