Brian's Sermons

Philippians 1:1-2 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all of God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons; Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. When I was a senior in high school, I received a strange letter in the mail. Those were the days when mail carriers still brought something other than bills and circulars and announcements that “you are pre-approved” for “our plan to drive you into deeper debt” and other such junk mail. The thing that made this letter strange was that I recognized the writing on the envelope, but I couldn’t place it. There was no return address, but the writing was so familiar that I just knew I had seen it before. I just wondered: Who is this letter from?* When we read Greco-Roman letters, they make this matter a little easier; the writer identifies himself at the outset of the letter. So we know that Paul and Timothy wrote it. Paul was Timothy’s mentor ...

As we get started today, I want to give you a little background.  First of all, I’ve preached in different ways for different times.  My first experience preaching was simply to pick a scripture and go with it.  Do all the research, write a sermon, each one standing alone.  Then I preached from the Revised Common Lectionary.  The Lectionary is a three-year plan of scriptures, four per week, and the idea is that if you use all four scriptures, you’ll get parts of the whole Bible in three years (or, if you only use one scripture, you’ll hit it in 12 years).  As an associate pastor, I was once handed a sermon to preach on a particular Sunday (which I found out later had been plagiarized to begin with).  More recently, I have been doing a “series” style of preaching, where we follow a certain topic (we’ve done such series as the Lord’s Prayer, Emotional Health, the armor of God, signs and wonders from the book of John, the Fruit of the Spirit).  But I...