Brian's Sermons

The Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:4-6 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.   One of the things I love to do is to play games. I especially love strategy games. But one of the hardest things about strategy games is learning the rules. Once you know the rules, you can figure out how to play the game. God gave his people rules to live by. We call them the Ten Commandments. The first five of the Ten Commandments help us know how to love God. The final five help us know how to love one another.   We are now on the third sermon in our series o...

Sardis: Revelation 3:1-6 We have been through four of the letters to the seven churches in Asia as found in Revelation 2 and 3, and today we continue with Sardis. Before we get to the letter, a little about the city of Sardis. Sardis was a city of wealth and fame. They were the first to make gold and silver coins, as gold was mined there. They claimed to be the first to discover the art of dyeing wool.                       So they were wealthy. They faced the opposite trouble as the church in Smyrna, who was told, “I know your poverty, but you are rich.” In Smyrna, as is often the case here, there were money issues. The church didn’t have much money, but what they had was more important spiritually. So much that in spite of their lack of monetary wealth, God considered them rich. But this wasn’t the case for the church in Sardis. They were comfortable. They lived in a pla...

When I was in Kindergarten, our class took a field trip to the police station. I only remember one aspect of that trip; our class, teacher and all, went into a large cell and the officer closed that door. It was terrifying. As a pastor, I have had occasions where I’ve visited people in jail – it seems like the process is different everywhere you go. In Wapakoneta, I had to go up to a two-way mirror and show ID and who I was coming to see. Then I would go through a metal detector and the first door would open. I would go into a short hallway with two-way mirrors surrounding me, and the door would close behind me with an ominously loud clang. There is something very scary and permanent when the jail doors close behind you. It is easy to recognize that someone in jail is imprisoned. There are physical bars, locked doors, and sometimes razor wire and guard towers. But what can be harder to recognize is the fact that imprisonment is our basic human condition. Last week when I talk...