Brian's Sermons

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...

Luke 13:1-8 Why do bad things happen to good people? This is one of the most important philosophical questions the Christian can answer. In seminary, this question is known as theodicy, and it deals with what is called “the problem of evil.” Simply stated, the problem of evil is, how can an all-powerful, all-loving God allow evil to happen. It is a valid question. Before we deal with this question, we have to look at the context in which it is asked. In the passage in Luke, this question is being brought up for a specific reason. It is a distraction. Jesus’ preaching is making people uncomfortable. Luke 12 records Jesus preaching, first to his disciples, then to a crowd of many thousands, so many, the Bible records, that they were trampling on one another. Jesus warns them to “ Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15). He also warns them against worry – reminding them that G...

It’s not my fault. Someone else is to blame. I would never have done that. I’m the victim here. These are not new claims; in fact, they are the oldest excuses in the book – the Bible, that is. They go all the way back to Genesis, when Satan tempted Adam and Eve and Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake… It seems like the same thing gets repeated again and again and again and as we repeat it, we get better at it. We even start to believe it ourselves! The more we tell a story, the truer we think it is. And one story we tell a lot is “it isn’t my fault.” If you don’t know the back story behind Psalm 51, in 2 Samuel 11, King David was at the height of his power, but in the Spring, when kings go to war, David was lollygagging around the palace, spying on a neighbor woman bathing. He acted upon his urges, got her pregnant, tried to cover it up by bringing her husband home from war, but when he wouldn’t sleep with her, David had the husband killed in the war. He felt pretty ...

You can’t go on a journey without stepping through the door. Last week we started our preparation for the Journey, recognizing the Holy Spirit’s voice calling us before we ever called to the Spirit. We wouldn’t even know that there’s a journey to go on were it not for the Spirit, who calls us to Himself.   We call this “Prevenient Grace” – the Holy Spirit calling us to Himself, awakening the image of God in us. One of our most important recognitions is that we are helpless on our own. In our sinful state, we cannot even think of going on a journey toward perfection. The best we could hope for would be “good enough” and, to be frank, “good enough” isn’t good enough. Without God’s direct intervention, we are doomed. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus makes a radical command: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect . Think about it: if the aim is perfection, unless you’ve already been perfect for all of your life, that goal is unattainable. Think of a baseball pitcher: supp...

Luke 3:1-20 What are you looking forward to? Christmas?  The New Year?  Heaven?  Most of us are looking forward to something.  When I think of Christmas time as a child, the one word that I would use to describe it would be anticipation.  I would generally just ask for just one thing for Christmas, and then I’d have to wait and wait.  Christmas Eve was the hardest night to fall asleep, because the anticipation was so great. So what are you looking forward to?  What are you anticipating? And what are you doing to prepare for it?  As a child, we were told that Santa would know if we’d been naughty or nice, and that our Christmas haul depended upon our behavior.  So we would ostensibly prepare for Christmas by being “nice.” When we look at scriptures, the Bible works to prepare us for Christmas, for the coming of Jesus Christ.  The entire Old Testament works together to let us know why it was necessary for God to take on flesh and to...