Brian's Sermons

Message #2 in the series: the Lord's Prayer Matthew 6:5-13 ( look it up here ) What do you do when you don’t understand something? What do you do when someone uses a word you don’t understand? Admit it; you either figure it out from context, you smile and nod and back away slowly, or you incorporate that word into your daily vocabulary. Nobody asks “what do you mean by that?” Thus we end up as an ignorant generation, all because we didn’t want to look stupid by asking a question. Ironic, isn’t it? I believe that when it comes to talking about the Kingdom of God, we have ranged from smiling and nodding to incorporating kingdom language into our conversation without having a really good handle on what it means. Last fall we studied Matthew 5:3-12, the Beatitudes. Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, those who recognize their absolute need for God and their inability to succeed on their own . The Beatitudes are part of a larger sermon, the Ser...

Message #1 in the series: The Lord's Prayer 5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 "This, then, is how you should pray: " 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' Matthew 6:5-1...

John 20:1-18 We all read them. Oh, don’t deny it. You know you do. We read them for different reasons, but it’s hard to skip them. I’m talking about the obituaries. I know several people who have told me that the first thing they do in the morning is check the paper for the obituaries. As long as they don’t find theirs, then they need to get up and go about their daily duties! A few years ago, a technical glitch on the CNN web site revealed obituaries for several famous but not-yet-dead people. Here’s the story, according to Snopes dot com , a web site for debunking urban legends and myths. It should come as no surprise to those who follow the media that most news outlets prepare obituaries for many prominent political and entertainment figures (especially those advanced in years or in poor health) well before their deaths. The passing of a famous personage is always big news, and nobody wants to get scooped by losing time scrambling to compile an obituary for someone who has di...

Isaiah 53 It’s not popular to talk about this Jesus. We like our Jesus to be neat and tidy, like he was in his senior picture, wearing that clean white robe. We like to see him happy, playing with children, healing people, feeding thousands, walking on water and turning water into wine. It’s another story to look at Jesus suffering. I have a theory as to why we often don’t look at this side of Jesus. My theory is this: if we think about a happy, smiling Jesus, we can ignore the cross. We can bump him straight from earth to heaven without a struggle. Without suffering. Why would we want to do that? Recognizing Jesus as the suffering servant from Isaiah, the one who was despised and rejected, leads to the realization that: Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and b...

6th message in our series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship*. The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the King of Israel!" Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written, "Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt." At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. John 12:12-16 It is a fantastic scene: Jesus coming into Jerusalem triumphantly: for as humble as it may seem, this was the answer to prophecy from Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See...