Brian's Sermons

I love history. I find it fascinating to go down to Buckeye Furnace and imagining what life was like back when this was a burgeoning iron production hub. I enjoy museums and historical sites. I even worked at a living history museum for two summers while I was in college. So when I went to Russia on a mission trip, I was really interested in the history of the city where we lived. Everything seemed to be named after someone named Minin, so I asked my roommate who he was. I found out later that he was a merchant, but he became famous for mustering a volunteer militia who expelled the Poles from Moscow, but my roommate couldn’t come up with that. He finally suggested that maybe he had been a famous warrior who had won a battle against France. I knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t know his story. Finally, Oleg said authoritatively, “Minin was a great man.”  It’s funny that many people can live somewhere for a long time but they don’t know all that much about where they live. This...

Sermon on the Mount Intro Matthew 5:1-12 Around a decade ago, there was a Christian fad where we were asked to frame our lives and experiences around a question: “What Would Jesus Do?” So in any given situation, we were urged to ask that question and to behave as we would imagine Jesus would have behaved. That is a good practice and proves helpful in our interactions with others, but the reality is that there are times when it’s not as helpful – for example, if I am in the stern of a boat sleeping during a terrible storm, what would Jesus do? He would calm the storm. Since I can’t exactly do that, what do I do? Of course, asking the question What Would Jesus Do? is of no use if you don’t know who Jesus is or what Jesus did! Now, most of us have known someone who lives by the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Part of the beauty of what Jesus said is that not only did he say it, but he lived it as well. He talked the talk and walked the walk. There are sometimes, however...