Brian's Sermons

When I was a little boy, I learned at church that the plan of salvation included recognizing our sin, confessing, repenting, being baptized, and living the Christian life. It was presented as something easy, and for the most part, it looked to me like the adult Christians around me never struggled. We even sang a song that went “I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time. Since Jesus Christ came in and cleansed my heard from sin, I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time.” I often wondered why living the Christian life was so much more difficult than I thought it would be.   Part of the problem, I found, was not a problem with the Christian life. The problem was within. We have been looking at the root causes of poverty. Poverty is not about not having enough money. Poverty is at its core, about broken relationship. Last week we looked at broken relationship with God. Today we are looking at another relationship, one that w...

1 Samuel 1:12-18 I have grown up in an achievement-oriented society. We are known by what we accomplish. We want to be known as competent and strong.   Last week we looked at the story of Hannah, and we met Eli, the high priest of Israel, who loved to sit in his chair at the entrance to the Tabernacle in Shiloh. We saw Eli in direct contrast to Hannah — she was a nobody, yet she knelt in the presence of Yahweh. Eli was the high priest, yet he had no real relationship with Yahweh! Eli would have been the competent and strong man; he was the high priest.   But the contrast does not end here. Hannah dedicated her child to God, quite literally; he was raised in the Tabernacle. But look at Eli’s own sons — 1 Samuel 2:12 describes them this way: Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. Worthless. Can you imagine? In 1 Samuel 1:16, Hannah pleads, “please don’t think I’m a worthless woman.” We remember that it was she who was in positio...

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...

Philippians 1:27-2:11 I had a lot of misconceptions as a child, but one of the most insidious was the thought that living a Christian life was going to be easy. I’m not sure exactly how I came to think this, and it sounds really nice – but there is only one little problem with it: it doesn’t fit with scripture. Paul is writing to the church in Philippi to thank them for their gift, which is sustaining him while he is in prison for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, and to encourage them during their own struggles. He just told them that he wants above anything to die and be with Jesus Christ face-to-face, because this is better than the best things on earth, but that because he still has a job to do for the church, he is still alive. He really wants to come and visit them again so their joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of him (Philippians 1:26). In the meantime, Paul exhorts the Philippian church to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Chri...