The God of Abraham Praise
God’s promises to Abraham are not given in a vacuum. These promises represent the outline of fulfillment to a promise God made in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. The first humans sinned but God promised salvation. There would be enmity between the woman’s offspring and the serpent, and there would be toil when working the ground and pain in childbirth…but God promised to set the world to rights. The promises to Abram in Genesis 12 are the beginning of that process!
"A Sermon a Day Keeps the Heresy Away"
In the last year I have taken to the adage, “A sermon a day keeps the heresy away.” I have committed to reading and/or listening to a sermon every day and it has paid dividends in my own preaching life. For the preacher, or for preaching student-practitioners, there is something particularly formative about reading a sermon manuscript or listening to a sermon preached.* When I see how someone else interacts with a difficult text or moves seamlessly from exegesis to application, or who has mastery over language, cadence, and tone it sets my heart on fire.
You’ll Never Walk Alone
The Trinity means that you are never alone. It means that you are never without promise, presence, or purpose. It means that you always have provision and protection, peace and power. It means that your response is always to be praise and proclamation.
Beyond Expectation
We are called to be Spirit-filled people because we are on a Spirit-led mission. The mission is to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ to everyone we meet that they might come to believe in the saving love and amazing grace of the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and exalted One.
God is Not Dead!
The God who is known, who knows, and who loves is also the God who hears. This is what we find out in Psalm 66:17. God hears our cries, he hears our prayers, he hears our hearts, and he acts on our behalf. In the Bible, to hear is not to receive sound into the ear but rather to hear and to do. God has heard our cries and in Christ he has acted decisively on our behalf.
How Now Shall We Live?
Friends, we woke up today with one question in front of us: how now shall we live?The good news is that Jesus is still seated on the throne. The cosmic king of the universe, the one who is reigning and ruling over all things, is still firmly in charge, in control, in command.
Lyke Lost Shepe
All we lyke lost shepe have gone astray, but praise be to God that the Good Shepherd’s mercy is more, his forgiveness is stronger, his grace is amazing, and his love is unrelenting.
Were Not Our Hearts Burning Within Us?
In all of his gracious goodness, Jesus is willing to travel miles with his disciples to show them who he is and what he has done. Jesus always draws near because he is Emmanuel, God with us and he is always near to us. He meets the disciples in their grief and walks with them through it, turning their broken hearts into burning hearts.
Do You Know What I have Done To You?
Maundy Thursday is charged with so much historical electricity, such thick theological meaning that you can’t take a step or two without bumping into a significant biblical theme. It’s like a one-pot meal: Passover, Eucharist, sacrificial lambs, foot washing, stripping the altar, pain, passion, servitude, glory, forgiveness, and divine love all mixed together.
Substitutiary Locomotion?
On this Fifth Sunday in Lent, the final Sunday before the Sunday of the Passion and the commencing of Holy Week, the lectionary offers us up a heavy and necessary dose of hopeful fortification for the things to come. After the pomp and circumstance of next week’s procession of palms, we will be thrust into the depths of the crucifixion, into the agony of the cross and tragically tremendous terror that is the fallenness of humanity. It will be so easy for us to enter into the narrative and lose sight of the fact that Jesus is not helpless in his hour of need, but rather the Powerful One has allowed himself to be powerless that humanity’s perpetual propensity for sin might extinguish and exhaust itself upon his life and body.
All Rise: The Passion and Killing a Mockingbird
The Sunday of the Passion isn’t about palms or donkeys or songs, beloved, it is about the cross. And in the shadow of the cross we come to the sickening understanding that we can sing, “All glory, laud, and honor” and then cry out, “Let him be crucified,” days later.
Give Up: An Ash Wednesday Sermon
want you to know that there is hope at the end of this, there is light at the end of the penitential tunnel, there is peace to be found, there is joy to be embraced, there is glory in our midst. In order to find the hope, light, peace, joy, and glory we must have a shift of perspective and discover the remedy to our heart condition and sin-sick souls.
Miraculous Ministry and the Making of Disciples
What we are learning from Jesus this morning is that the eschatological banquet table–the wedding feast shared between Jesus, the bridegroom, and his people, the bride–will require us to put leaves in the table rather than take them out.
Sermon for Advent 1C
The news cycle, the tragedies of the world, and the Covid pandemic do not, cannot, and will not have the last word: the last word belongs to the Suffering Servant who has redeemed his people.
Sermon for Christ the King Sunday
When Christ is King, the lame walk, the mute talk, the deaf hear, the blind see, the sick are healed, the lepers are cleansed, the demons are cast out, the dead are raised, and broken lives are made new.
Jesus, Greatest Of All Time
Jesus is greater than the sacrifices of IsraelJesus is greater than the angelsJesus is greater than Moses, Abraham, Aaron, and MelchizedekJesus is greater than Israel’s high priestsOne could argue, in contemporary language, that Jesus is the Greatest of All Time. Our image, painted by James Tissot, shows Israel’s “all stars” welcoming Jesus into heaven after the crucifixion. Jesus is the GOAT.
Stay Salty, My Friends
nature of a covenant. No wonder Jesus is a priest in the line of Melchizedek forever and that he will reign on David’s throne, forever.
The Baptism of our Lord - Sermon
John isn’t here to simply immerse people in water…he’s here as a herald of the eschaton; he baptizes in the Jordan as a proclamation that YHWH is on the move once more.
Christmas Eve Sermon: Questions and Answers
There will be a time when darkness is replaced by light, when death is replaced by joy, when oppression is replaced by deliverance.There will be a day when peace will reign over the throne of David and his kingdom.There will be a day when the yoke of burden, the rod of the oppressor, and the bar across their shoulders are broken.