Brian's Sermons

Exodus 20:13: You shall not murder. Through the past weeks, we have been looking in depth into the Ten Commandments, God’s rules for living. We started with God’s introduction — the commandments come only in the context of who God is. After God’s people had disobeyed God and experienced the consequences of disobedience, we read God’s response as recorded in Isaiah 48:17-18: Thus says the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go. O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waters of the sea.   There are rewards for following God’s will, and there are consequences for not . God gave us the Ten Commandments, not to beat us into submission, but to teach us how to live in right relationship with Him and in harmony with one another.   Last week we shifted from the first commandme...

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...

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die There’s an old song that says “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” and nowhere is that more true than in our own culture. We don’t even talk about death; when someone we like dies, we say they “passed away” or “went to be with Jesus,” or for someone else, well, they might have “kicked the bucket” or they might be “pushing up daisies.” Death seems to be the one big enemy, the one that we will all succumb to at some point or another. Sometimes we ignore the fact that every day of life is another day closer to death, but it is inevitable. We are not immortal. In Romans 8:13, the phrase that the NIV translates “the sinful nature” is in Greek “the flesh.” The mortal life, the flesh, is bound for death. Though that is bad news, it’s not new; it’s almost as old as the earth itself. When Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, the punishment was death, and we’ve lived in death’s sha...

Death has a good way of putting life into perspective. We generally accept the myth that we’re immortal until we have a brush with death. When you come face-to-face with death, things come clearly into focus, and priorities are re-evaluated. Followers – unlike fans – are  dying  to live.  Fans who refuse to die to sin and self are stuck trying  to live, but end up frustrated and defeated.   There are those among us who are very committed sports fans. Some of you have Buckeye Rooms in your houses. You watch every game, and attend as many games as you can – of course all the home games; you wouldn’t want those season tickets to go to waste. You paint your face. You bleed scarlet and gray. Your heart was broken last week when the Buckeyes lost to Kansas. But the problem is, there comes a point when you realize that a fan is just a fan. You see, the fan is just a committed enthusiast. The fan isn’t in the game. And often, when the going gets tough, the fa...

John 11:1-44 They say that the two things we can count on in this life are death and taxes.  And although it’s almost taboo to talk about death in our culture, I’m sure not touching taxes with a ten foot pole.  So we’re stuck talking about death. Think about how hard it is to talk about death; we have all sorts of phrases we use to avoid even saying the word.  “passed away” “passed on” “went to be with the LORD” or (Tara’s grandfather’s old favorite) “six feet under.”  We have our bodies embalmed and we say things at funerals like “oh, she looks so natural!” – and sometimes it’s true.  Our culture is obsessed with looking younger and staving off old age.  Just ask a woman how old she is… or maybe don’t!  But here’s the deal: we’re mortal.  We will all die.  The only thing we can be absolutely certain of is that this life always ends with death.  And I don’t think we like that much.  So we do everything we can to avoid even the t...

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...

John 20:1-18 1 Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 2 She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” 3 Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. 4 They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. 6 Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, 7 while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. 8 Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed—9 for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. 10 Then they went home. 11...