Brian's Sermons

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. We have been talking about the Holy Spirit for months here. Ever since the Holy Spirit encounter, we at St. Marks have been focused on the Holy Spirit. Who He is, what He does. In John 14:12, Jesus tells his followers: I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these [new things!] , because I am going to the Father.  Jesus is promising us that we will do even greater things than he did because he is going to the Father and sending us the Holy Spirit.  His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of ...

Exodus 3:1-6 1 Samuel 3:1-10 Isaiah 6:1-8 Jeremiah 1:4-10 I read you four call stories from the Bible: Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. They are amazing stories. Moses already had an awesome start to life, being saved from death by his mother putting him in a basket in the reeds in the Nile, and he was saved by the Pharaoh’s daughter, of all people. But here he is, years later, toiling away in Midian, tending sheep, when God speaks to him through a burning bush. Then there is Samuel, whose mother prayed fervently for a child, and when her child was born, she brought him into the sanctuary of the Lord to be raised there. Though the word of the Lord was rare in those times and people just weren’t having visions, God spoke to the boy Samuel in an audible voice. Isaiah had an awesome vision in which God spoke to him, asking, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answered, “Here I am, send me.” And as for Jeremiah, we simply read that “the word of the Lord came to...

e are in the second week of our series Y.U.M. – as we discover what is unique and special about United Methodism. For a denomination that came about partially through the methodical nature of John and Charles Wesley, United Methodist doctrine is a slippery subject. Slippery because, if you ask 100 United Methodists, clergy and lay, we will probably have 200 descriptions of what constitutes our doctrine. And the differences between those descriptions are as different as the Methodists who make up our connection. One of the reasons this has happened is because United Methodist doctrine is primarily practical. Unlike other denominations with their well-designed creeds and affirmations and philosophical underpinnings, the United Methodist movement began as a practical movement within an existing denomination, the Church of England. John Wesley, in his methodical practices and through intense study of scriptures, simply figured out what works. “What works” is a loaded phrase, ...

In our hymnal are many amazing songs. Some are deep in theology, some have catchy tunes, and some have complicated and beautiful harmonies. There are some songs that we only generally sing at one particular time of year, like the Christmas section. I love it when we sing Christmas songs – there is something about the familiarity of these favorite hymns. One year I had the church in New Knoxville sing “Joy to the World” on Easter, partly to confuse the people who only come to church twice a year, partly to be obnoxious, but mostly because if you want something to bring joy, Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate joy bringer! But there are plenty of songs that I have never heard (and some I don’t ever want to hear again – God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale, for one). One year, the musicians decided we would do a “Christmas carol hymn sing” during the Sundays of Advent. Congregation members would pick a song and we’d sing the first verse. Someone chose a song I’d never heard: In the Bleak...

2 Peter 1:5-11 Last week we looked at 2 Peter 1:3-4, in which we were reminded that God is sufficient to supply all of our needs, that his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. God makes it clear that he gives us everything we need. As we yield ourselves to his spirit, we find ourselves participating in God’s nature, having our sinful nature replaced by God’s sinless nature. And so in that context, Peter writes: For this very reason, (by which he refers to our participation in God’s nature) make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control; perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our...

2 Peter 1:3-4 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.     This past week we experienced some amazing things in this church. Last year some of us gathered on New Year’s Eve to pray for the church, and one of the scriptures we focused on was from Isaiah 42:10: Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the ends of the earth. God has anointed us to sing to him a new song. This has nothing to do with worship wars between contemporary and traditional worship; it’s about God doing a new thing. While our God never changes, God is always doing new things. In Genesis 12, God did something he’d never done before when he called Abraham and told him he would bless him to be a blessi...