All the Sermons

Matthew 11:25-30 I have a picture for you, of a child trying to cross a busy street, that will help us understand how walking with Jesus makes our burden light and easy. In digging around for a picture, before I decided to make my own, I also found this, “New research from the University of Iowa shows children under certain ages lack the perceptual judgment and motor skills to cross a busy road consistently without putting themselves in danger. The researchers placed children from 6 to 14 years old in a realistic simulated environment and asked them to cross one lane of a busy road multiple times. The results: Children up to their early teenage years had difficulty consistently crossing the street safely, with accident rates as high as 8 percent with 6-year-olds. Only by age 14 did children navigate street crossing without incident, while 12-year-olds mostly compensated for inferior road-crossing motor skills by choosing bigger gaps in traffic. [i] A child may allow eagerness to...

Scripture Matthew 9:35-10:23 What is this doing in the Bible! The Bible is all about love and joy and forgiveness and peace, isn’t it? And how God is good and blesses us when we follow him right? But this message is hard! The disciples are being told to look forward to great difficulties and dangerous challenges! It was a great challenge to me just to find a way to talk about this difficult and uncomfortable set of instructions without discouraging us from wanting to reach the lost with the gospel of salvation. Why in the world would anybody want to follow a leader who is going to lead them into such hardship? The short answer is, because it’s worth it! Jesus the king of the universe loves us! He laid down his life for us. And in response we love him and become willing to lay down our lives for him. This portion of the gospel reminds me of those disclaimers you hear on TV commercials about new medicines. But it’s different too. In those commercials, they spend most of the time tell...

Relational God Scripture Reading: Matthew 28:16-20 The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Today is Trinity Sunday. Much of the Christian church around the world is celebrating the fact that our God has revealed himself to exist in the form of a trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The church keeps a special calendar we call the liturgical calendar. You may already know what I am talking about here, but every now and then I will review things to make sure that everybody gets it. The world “Liturgical” is built on the...

Acts 1:1-21 So, here I am and here we are. First Sunday as pastor of the Lake City Evangelical Presbyterian Church. What a journey it has been for me and my family. And what a time you have had in your search for a new pastor. I trust that the Lord has been in it all and always will be, for our bright future and for his glory and honor. And who knows what that might look like? God knows. And what can we do, work hard? Yes. Get new ideas to implement? Sure. But where does power and energy and inspiration for new outreach come from? From God! It’s his church. He’s in charge. And we do well to listen for his orders and wait for him to send us power from on high, just as the first disciples did on Pentecost Day, the birthday of the church. But before we get in to that, let me set the stage a bit and invite you onto a scene about 53 days before Pentecost.  Who knows what he was really thinking about as he sat there by the fire warming his hands?  He didn’t belong there. It wasn...