All the Sermons

Matthew 6:10 , Luke 11:2 Key Verse: "Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10 The key is that in heaven, God's Will is done. It's here on earth where it may not be done, because of our ability to choose. Do you really want to do His will? "But," you say, "I don't know what that is!" Maybe you know more than you are willing to admit. Consider these for a start. "God has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and "love your neighbor as yourself." Luke 10:27 This is what the Lord almighty says: "Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poo...

Matthew 6:9 , Luke 11:2 , Revelation 4:1-11 Key Verse: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." Revelation 4:9 In Leviticus, the book of the law, God repeated over and over to his people, a command along the lines of, "You are to be holy to me because I, The Lord, am Holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own." (Leviticus 20:26) The Lord is Holy. He calls His followers to be Holy. Now, in this prayer, Jesus calls us to proclaim that even His name is to be regarded as "Hallowed," or "Holy." But what does that mean, really? A quick dictionary definition says, "sacred, or dedicated to God." A quick definition of sacred, could be, "secured from violation." To be Holy is to be set apart. It is to be something completely other. God is Holy. In Leviticus, the high priest was ordered to wear a plate on his turban which read, "Holy to the Lord," because the ...

Psalm 73:25-26 , Matthew 6:9 Key verse: "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:25-26 This statement, "in heaven," leaves no doubt as to who Jesus is addressing. While "Father," can be misunderstood, since we also have earthly fathers, Jesus adds God's address, "in heaven," to eliminate any confusion. God is out of this world. He is not like us. He is above us. In appealing to Him, we are appealing to a Being beyond us. The Psalmist helps us to see the distinction. Our hearts, our flesh will fail. As dependable as we think we may be, there is a limit to our abilities, our strength and our understanding. When God is our portion, our food, our strength and our shield, he cannot fail us because He is not made of the same, weak stuff that we are. While it is true that we are made in His image, we are on...

Matthew 6:9 , Luke 11:2 , 1 John 3:1-3 Key Verse: "Our Father" When His parents, Mary and Joseph, found twelve year old Jesus in the Temple, after three days of searching, Jesus responded to Mary's rebuke by saying, "Why were you searching for me?  Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"  (Luke 2:49) Now, Jesus is using inclusive language to address His Father.  He does not teach His disciples to open their prayer with, "Jesus' Father," or "Father God," or, "My Father," but rather, Jesus teaches His disciples to use an intimate, but corporate term, " Our Father."  Jesus is beginning to teach His disciples that they too can be a part of the family.  We are not only children with individual relationships.  We have a relationship with our heavenly Father, but we also have siblings. In the religious, idolatrous cultures of Jesus' day, such as that of the Greeks and Romans, the gods were ...

Matthew 6:5-15 , Luke 11:1-4 , James 5:13-18 , Key Verse: One of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." Luke 11:1 B Such an odd request from those immersed in the religious society of Jesus' day. They saw prayer all around them. They participated in uttering formal prayer, such as the Shema, a prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one," found in Deuteronomy 6:4.  Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation as a  mitzvah  (religious commandment). It is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, and for parents to teach their children to say it before they go to sleep at night. All good Jews would pause each morni...

Matthew 6:1-4 , James 1:27 Key Verse: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27 We miss the true meaning of Jesus' teaching here, unless we understand the culture into which He is speaking. In Jesus' day, the people were used to seeing their religious leaders, who were also, usually pretty wealthy, make a big show of distributing gifts to the poor. Tossing coins to peasants and proclaiming loud blessings from the, "holy men," was an everyday occurrence. The commoner was left to praise and admire their generosity while the poor were shamed by having their condition pointed out. In referring to these show offs, Jesus uses the word "hypocrite," to describe them. In our culture, we immediately think of hypocrites as those who say one thing, but do another. Jesus, however, is using the word that referred to a Gr...

Matthew 5:43-48 , Luke 6:27-36 , Romans 12:17-23 , 1 Peter 5:6 , Proverbs 21:2 , Proverbs 25:21-22 Key Verse: Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. 1 Peter 5:6 Just as yesterday's instructions from Jesus called for grace, today, Jesus calls for humility toward others, even those we may consider to be our enemies. Pride calls us to hate our enemies. Humility calls us to pray for them. Pride calls us to exact revenge upon our enemies. Humility calls us to still seek their welfare. Again, Christ is calling us to rise above our human nature and do what would be impossible with man and only possible with Him. He is calling us to become like Him. Did you realize that at one time, you yourself were an enemy of God? In Romans 5:8, the Apostle Paul tells us that, "God demonstrated His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, (enemies of a Holy God) Christ died for us." We did not ask Him to do ...

Exodus 21:22-25 , 22:21-27 , Deuteronomy 24:10-13 , Proverbs 19:11 , Zechariah 7:9-10 Matthew 5:38-42 Key Verse: This is what the Lord almighty says: "Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Zechariah 7:9 Here again, Jesus is finding another way to tell His listeners that it's all about grace. He is still referring to the law that they are all too familiar with, but helping them to see what His intent was when He gave it to Moses so many years ago. Even the original, "eye for an eye," was a command of grace, though that may seem hard for us to believe today. God's original call was for His people to practice self-control by limiting themselves and not giving in to the desire to vent full fury upon another. God was setting limits on His people. He especially called for restraint against the poor for whom He has a special ear. Now, Jesus calls His disciples to not only exercise restraint, but practice grace, as He would one...

Deuteronomy 23:21-23 , Ecclesiastes 5:4-7 , Matthew 5:33-37 , James 5:12 , Key Verse: Above all, my brothers, do not swear, not by heaven or by earth or by anything else.  Let your "yes" be yes, and your "no," be no, or you will be condemned. James 5:12 This takes us back to the fifth day in this devotional series, when God made His first Covenant with Abram.  We had realized that Abram was only an observer of this covenant.  Only God walked between the divided halves of the animals because God knew that, as devoted as Abram might be for the moment, neither he, nor his descendants would be able to keep any promise of commitment, as God would.  God keeps promises; man breaks them.  God understood too well what He was dealing with in our sinful nature, therefore, He does not ask us to do what we will not do. Jesus, here, is telling us to realize this sad fact about ourselves and treat each other accordingly.  We are sinful creatures, dealing wit...

Numbers 5:11-31 , Proverbs 5:16-19 , Malachi 2:13-16 , Matthew 5:27-32 , Luke 16:18 , Mark 10:2-12 , Matthew 19:3-12 , Ephesians 5:22-33 Key verse: This is a profound mystery but I'm talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33 As you can see, Jesus, that is, God, had much to say about marriage. So in a year of your life getting to know Jesus, it is good to learn how he feels about marriage.  After all, marriage was His idea in the beginning with Adam and Eve. Many books have been written about marriage; books of advice and wisdom on how to do marriage better. Many authors share their experience of what worked for them in the hopes of helping others. As a result, I realize that trying to tackle such a huge subject in a few short paragraphs is next to impossible. Therefore, I thought it best to content myself with a few simple thoughts and let the reader exp...

Matthew 5:23-26 , Luke 12:57-59 , James 4:1-10 Key Verse: What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. James 4:1-2 It’s an act of the will. At first, it seems as if Jesus is changing the subject. He had been talking about murder and now He has moved on to quarreling. James, however, helps us to see that Jesus is continuing on the same theme, murder in the heart. James and Jesus help us to also consider how much control we have over many given situations when we are in disagreement with another. Jesus warns us that it is better for us to take the initiative to do what we can to seek reconciliation, before the situation gets out of our control and we become victims of the consequences of our desires. James assures us that if we, “resist the devil,” and the impur...

Exodus 20:13 , Matthew 5:21-22 Key Verse: “You shall not murder.” Exodus 20:13 Well, there you have it! Just when you thought that this was one commandment that you would probably never be found guilty of, Jesus raises the bar and, “guilty as charged!” Wow! That’s a hard pill to swallow. Even children have been known to yell, “I HATE YOU!” in a fit of temper. Is Jesus serious here? As drastic as it may sound, yes, I believe that He is serious when He equates our human fits of hatred, or passionate anger, to murder. In fact, I believe that it is probably safe to assume that this was Jesus’ original intent when He first gave this command to Moses centuries earlier on Mt. Sinai. This command right here demonstrates for us just how seriously Jesus still takes His law. It also demonstrates for us the contrast between religion and relationship. A religious person, such as the Pharisee of Jesus’ day, could easily be proud of the fact that they hadn’t ever lifted a finger to hurt...

Exodus 20:1-20 , Matthew 5:17-20 Key Verse: "I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished." Matthew 5:18 More than fifteen hundred years before, on Mount Sinai, the creator of all things gave ten simple laws to one man He could relate to. He trusted this man to teach the others of the nation of Israel what he would learn. These laws were basic. They taught the people of Israel how to relate to God the creator, and to each other. For much of the history of Israel, the people did not take these laws seriously. They disobeyed and ran away from the life that God had intended them to live. As a result, God had to punish the people by destroying their homeland and sending them into exile, in Babylon, to learn their lesson. After seventy years, the people of Israel returned home from Babylon. They had learned their lesson well...

Matthew 5:14-16 , Mark 4:21-23 , Luke 8:16-18 , & 11:34-36 , 1 John 1:5-7 & 2:8-11 Key Verse: "You are the Light of the world." Matthew 5:14.A " This little light of mine , I'm gonna let it shine.  "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine." Many of us are familiar with that little song from Sunday school during our early childhood.  Oh, if we had only been taught just how accurate that little song is.  When we think of lights or lanterns today, our minds immediately turn to thoughts of bright, electric bulbs, flashlights or street lamps.  We imagine bright lights that can illuminate an entire room or keep us safe, outside, in the dark.  In Jesus' day, however, lamps were small affairs that gave off little light in comparison.  A lamp was a small bowl or flask shaped container, with a rag or string for wick and oil, such as olive oil, for fuel.  True, in a world th...

Matthew 5:13 Key Verse: "You are the salt of the world.”  Matthew 5:13 A With today's emphasis on healthy eating, it may be hard for some of us to understand that Jesus is actually saying a good and positive thing here.  In the guidelines for healthy eating, we've been told by modern nutritionists that salt is bad.  People who have a problem with either high blood pressure or water retention are told to cut salt out of the diet altogether, or at least as much as possible.  Knowing this about salt leaves us with the question, "How can being compared to salt be a good thing?”  In Jesus’ day, salt had some interesting uses.  Part of a soldier's wages would be paid in a salt allowance, or "salarium,” from which we get our word "salary.”  I say this to explain just how valuable salt was in Jesus’ day.  Jesus was ascribing great value to His listeners.  A not so positive use of salt was when armies would use it to scatter over a fie...

Luke 6:24-26 Key Verse:  "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.  Luke 6:26 Wait a minute.  Jesus must have it all wrong here.  What's wrong with being well fed?  What's wrong with having plenty of money?  What's wrong with a little laughter?  Why, right in the declaration of our independence, here in America, none less than Thomas Jefferson himself said that "we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” and the three listed are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Is Jesus saying that's all wrong?  It's understandable that these words would be comforting in Jesus’ day.  Back then, most of his audience were poor, oppressed by the rich religious rulers and also by the Romans.  It may be understandable that the poor of Jesus' day would want those who were seen as the oppressors, to get what's coming to them.  Here in modern time...

Matthew 5:10-12 , Luke 6:22-23 , Psalm 17 Key Verse: "I call on you, O God, for You will answer me; give ear to me and hear my prayer.”  Psalm 17:6 There's a chorus to a popular song from a few years back that says: Where can I go when I need a shelter?  Where can I go when I need a friend?  Where can I go when I need some helpin'?  Where can I go, back on my knees again!     (Amy Grant)  In Psalm 116, another Psalm written by a persecuted believer, the Psalmist says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”  ( Psalm 116:15 )  But that leads us to ask, "why is that?”  While in the case of this Psalm, the Psalmist was obviously rescued, we know that isn't always the case.  Why didn't Jesus say, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted because God will rescue you in miraculous ways!”  Why are some people allowed to continue to suffer in this world, "for His name's sake?”...