All the Sermons

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25, Fourth Sunday of Advent focuses on love. One inspiring illustration of what love really looks like is the response of Joseph when he found out that Mary, his betrothed bride to be, was pregnant and he knew that he was not the father! Since this is a human story, the most effective way to explore the issues is to let Joseph tell the story himself. So using some Holy Spirit inspired imagination to expand upon the available information, I am turning into Joseph. All I need is a bathrobe, a towel for my head and a beard! I am Joseph, and man do I have story to tell! It’s about my son, well my step son, but he’s mine since His birth and I am one proud papa! Well, I am now anyway. I wasn’t at first. But let me tell you the whole story from the beginning. You’ll see what I mean. First, you must know that I am no one special. Well, except that I am born of royal blood, a direct descendant of King David! But that had become a family joke really, because by right...

Isaiah 35:1-10 Traditionally, the primary color of Advent is purple. It is a royal color because it used to be that only kings could afford the very expensive dye that made purple. But it is also the color of repentance. Purple is linked to repentance because of its appearance in painful bruises. We say we have a black and blue mark. But in the old days when these traditions were formed, bruises were seen as purple. I have seen purple in bruises. So, purple became the color the church used to stand for royalty and for repentance. In the earlier days of Christendom, when these traditions were formed, the Church used to encourage a season of repentant prayer and fasting to lead up to the joy of Christmas, much as we still have the season of Lent that leads up to the joy of the resurrection at Easter time. Before the legend of St. Nicholas overwhelmed the way we do Christmas, the Church had two seasons a year, Advent and Lent, in which to mourn and weep over sin and death before rejo...

Isaiah 11:1-10 Second Sunday of Advent focuses on how Jesus, our hope, brings the kind of peace God calls shalom. Everybody wants to live a peaceful life. But what kind of peace? The dictionary says, peace is freedom from disturbance. Peace is quiet and tranquility. This is why so many people like to worship God in the great outdoors. They find it more peaceful to worship God in the great outdoors where all is quiet. Many of these folks don’t like organized religion because conflicts in the church so easily disturb the peace. But in the great outdoors it’s peaceful because there are not so many people around trying to get some work done together. Now I’m certainly not saying never get alone with God. Solitude is good for you. Just not all the time. We are created to be united in the body of Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Peace is also freedom from or the cessation of war or violence. We pray for peace. We don’t like conflict at all, especially not violent conflict, but we even shy...

Isaiah 2:1-5 ‘Tis the season. The Advent season. The whole world is getting ready for Christmas. Many people are looking for the magic of Christmas. A lot of the preparation focuses on getting the best shopping deals at sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Getting ready for Christmas means getting all the shopping done, the presents wrapped, the lights and trees up, and the decisions about where the families will gather and who’s doing the cooking and baking. Some despise the commercialization of Christmas and yet they are also caught up in the expectations of others to celebrate Christmas. But the Church has historically and traditionally had quite a different perspective on what it means to get ready for Christmas. We can escape the oppressive forces of the commercialization of Christmas when we find the magic of Christmas in the miracle of the gospel. Christmas as you know, is all about celebrating the first time Jesus came into our world. That first time, he came as a bab...

Luke 17:11-19 As soon as we got through Halloween, the Christmas decorations came out, right? Where are all the shelves and shelves of decorations for Thanksgiving Day? Deer Day gets more press than Thanksgiving! We don’t exactly skip Thanksgiving. Most of us will spend the day with family and extended family. We’ll have a good time talking and eating and maybe watching football on TV. But how much of that time will really be focused sincerely on giving thanks to the Father God? Our Bible says, in James 1:17, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” We owe him everything. And he gives us everything we need, all freely from his gracious hand, without obligation and knowing we can’t pay him back because anything we would offer to him came from him. The only thing we really have to offer him is our gratitude, expressed in worship of him and obedience to him. When we come together for ...

Luke 19:1-10 Today we’re going to look at what happened to Zacchaeus when he met Jesus. Zacchaeus ends up being an example of what it looks like when a person loves the Lord their God with all their strength. But first he had to get saved. We get to see his life on both sides of his relationship with Christ. We get to see who he was before he became a believer, what God did and who he became as a result of faith in Jesus. It’s interesting. We can relate to most of the people Jesus talked to in the gospels because they were either ordinary, decent people or people who had great need for some kind of physical healing or deliverance from demon possession. It looks like Jesus came to give people meaning and purpose or to relieve them from suffering. We like that. It’s nice. Jesus likes to help people out. In the gospels we don’t meet many really bad people who aren’t demon possessed. If they are possessed, we see them as helpless prisoners of spirits. We assume they can’t help being...