Brian's Sermons

Exodus 20:17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” We have come a long way through the Ten Commandments. We first recognize where they come from; the Ten Commandments are not just arbitrary rules; they are God’s handiwork to help us follow Him, not just outwardly, but in our hearts and attitudes as well. The last several commandments deal with how to get along with others, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not lie. These deal with our actions, but Jesus’ words show that they also deal with our hearts. One does not have to murder to be guilty; Jesus expands the concept of murder to include hatred. One does not have to commit adultery to be guilty, Jesus expands the concept to include lust. But the commandments themselves deal with specific actions.   Now we get to the la...

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory We have spent months studying the Lord’s Prayer. We begin by recognizing and acknowledging who God is. God is the Almighty in Heaven, but he has chosen us as his children, so we can address him as “our Father.” We worship him and lift up his name as holy. This must always be our context for prayer. We do not lift up our prayers to someone who is just one of us. God is love; he cares for us. But he is also all powerful; he can answer our prayers.  We begin our petitions of God by asking for his kingdom to come and for his will to be done; in asking this, we also humble ourselves and bend our will to his. We call upon Jehovah Jireh - God our Provider - to give us this day our daily bread. We entrust ourselves fully to his provision.  We continue our prayer by asking for forgiveness and for the power and grace to forgive others, and we ask for the power to resist temptation and deliverance from Satan and his tricks. As we com...

Philippians 1:3-11 I’m not really a collector or a saver – moving as often as we do, I know better than to try to save too much stuff . But one thing I do save – this I keep in a drawer in my desk, usually down to the left where it’s easy to access. It is a stack of letters, each of them encouraging. I am so encouraged when I see someone move from being a skeptic to a believer. I am so encouraged when I see someone who is a “pew sitter” become involved in ministry, sharing Jesus with others in real ways. As a pastor, part of the pain of moving is not getting to see the progress continue. We are in our second week looking at Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, a letter most of us have come to know simply as “Philippians.” The church in Philippi was very special to Paul. It was during Paul’s second missionary journey when he met Timothy and invited him to come along with him. In Acts 16, we read that while they travelled, Paul had a vision in which a man from Macedonia beg...

It started on his third birthday.   He immediately went from regular conversations to asking “why?” Everything was “why?” Many of us promised ourselves we would never use those old lines our parents used, but it didn’t take long until one of my mom’s favorites popped into my head: “because I’m the Mom and I said so.”   It can be frustrating to constantly answer the “why” question, especially as the parent of a toddler or when the question is simply a means to undermine authority (asking the police officer why the speed limit isn’t 75 in the school zone where you were pulled over is hardly profitable).   But in all honesty, it’s our job to ask why.   If we don’t evaluate, asking the “why?” questions behind what’s going on, we’re in bad shape. In the 1960s Yale psychologist Stanley Millgram conducted a famous series of experiments.   In these experiments, volunteers were instructed to give shocks when the test subjects got answers wrong.   In reality, the ...

While Jesus told his followers that they would be known by their fruit, Jude calls these troublemakers “fruitless.”   He says they are useless, even a burden on the church.  In the face of destructive false teaching, Jude warns the church to build their faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.  We looked at that briefly last week, but I want to reiterate it because there was so much in last week’s message that this part might have slipped by you.  Building yourself up in your most holy faith is extremely important.  Don’t just accept someone else’s faith – not my faith, not your parents’ faith, but build up your own faith.  Did any of you share your faith stories this past week?  How did it go?  Did any of you listen to anyone else’s story? If you were here for the Baccalaureate service, you got to hear some powerful stories of faith from our grads. Faith is rarely built when it isn’t tested.  One of my friends recently complained that his ru...

For the past five weeks, we have been asking Jesus to teach us to pray, just as he taught his disciples to pray. This prayer, which we call the Lord’s Prayer, is a fantastic model of prayer. We begin by acknowledging who God is . Though God is above all else, He is also our Father who loves us. As His children, we accept the responsibility to “hallow” His name, to set it apart as holy. One way we do this is by reflecting His character in our actions and nature. We call God “King” and thus accept his unconditional rule over us . In light of His love for us, and because of our subsequent love for him, we actually obey what he says and we live out His Kingdom here on earth. He is our King, and we are His ambassadors. When we ask for our daily bread, we acknowledge our dependence on God for everything . and as we ask Him to provide for our needs, both physical and spiritual. At the same time, we recognize that He might be using us to provide daily bread for others. As we reflect on th...