Brian's Sermons

Last week we introduced an important and difficult concept. Poverty. We often think of poverty only in financial terms, but in reality, poverty is based in broken relationship. Broken relationship with God, broken relationship in ourself, broken relationship with others, and broken relationship with all creation. In the beginning, God created humanity to be in perfect relationship with him. But very quickly, we find Adam and Eve disobeying God. The response, as found in Genesis 3:23-25 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life . Now, instead of living in the Garden of Eden in perfect relationship with God, they have been banished, never to return. Never to walk together in the cool of the morning. Never again to speak face to face. Our relations...

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one . Matthew 6:13 Over the last two weeks, we looked at forgiveness. To get to forgiveness, we must recognize that we have sinned. We ask for forgiveness from our past sin. Now that we have done so, we ask for protection from future sin. The reality is, temptation will always be with us. The closer we draw to Jesus Christ, the more the devil will tempt us. Our goal as Christians is Christ-likeness, and so we should expect the same things that Jesus experienced. Right as he was to begin his ministry, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Hebrews 4:15, in describing Jesus as our high priest says this: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Jesus has been tempted in every way, but he did not give in to temptation. Sometimes Christians believe that temptation itself is...

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. After we give God the proper respect, Jesus instructs us to pray for our daily bread, remembering that we rely on God for everything. This is a prayer for our physical needs as well as spiritual, remembering that Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never go thirsty.” (John 6:35)  We continue today, asking for God’s intervention. Today we will begin looking at forgiveness. Forgiveness means freeing someone from guilt and its consequences, including punishment, usually as a act of compassion or love, with the aim of restoring a broken relationship. Forgiveness can involve the cancellation of both punishment and debt. Manser, M. H. (2009). Dictionary of Bible Themes: The Accessible and Comprehensive Tool for Topical Studies. London: Martin Manser. We ask God to forgive our trespasses. Now, I don’t know how it works going from ...

One of two "tamed" cheetahs at Chaminuka Game Park This week I got to see an amazing sight. I got to see two full grown cheetahs. They were big, majestic, and muscular. There was only one unfortunate thing. They were shut into a fenced-in enclosure. Now, that was probably a good thing for me and my family, but the reality is, a cheetah was not created to be fenced in. A cheetah was created to run free, to use its speed to take down prey in the open grassland. God also created us to be free. But when we live to please our flesh, our sinful nature, we make ourselves slaves to sin. Romans 6:16 poses the question: Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?  Jesus says in John 8:34 Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.  Everyone. Jesus didn’t offer qualifications. He dem...

Have you ever met your hero? When I was fourteen years old, one of my heroes was American football star, Jim McMahon. In January he had led his team, the Chicago Bears, to the championship, and in March, he came to my hometown to sign autographs. I stood in a long line with thousands of other fans, and bought an overpriced poster. Finally my brother and I were face-to-face with our hero. I had watched many of the Chicago Bears’ games that year, including the championship. I knew all about Jim McMahon and the disciplinary trouble he’d gotten in. I even knew what kind of treatment he had gotten for his injuries. So how do you expect he greeted me when I walked up the steps to the table where he sat autographing pictures? After all, I knew all about him. If you’re wondering, he didn’t greet me at all. He didn’t even look at me. He just scrawled his name on my poster. I could tell you that I met Jim McMahon that day, but I really didn’t. And there are a lot of people in our world ...

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...

Thyatira: Revelation 2:18-29 It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but when I was here last, I had started going through the seven letters written to the seven churches in Asia, as recorded in Revelation 2-3. As we started through them, it’s amazing how relevant these words are today, even though they were written nearly two thousand years ago to a people far from us physically and culturally. Thyatira was founded as a military outpost by the Greeks, but fell to the Romans and enjoyed stability and prosperity. It was known as a center of manufacturing and marketing. In Acts 16, we meet “a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira.” It’s often good to live in a prosperous city, but there was a problem. The manufacturing sector was dominated by trade guilds whose membership was intertwined with religious observances. Think of trying to serve pork in a closed Muslim nation. It’s not going to happen. You can try, but you’re going to have trouble. At b...

The Second Word: “Very Truly, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) We are part of a culture who says one thing but does something else. Zambia is a Christian nation, but daily, we all see corruption, abuse of power, abuse of women and children, misuse of money, stealing, lying, and all sorts of other sinful behavior. Our politicians promise us heaven but don’t deliver. People attend church, or at least claim allegiance to a church, but their lives do not demonstrate the Fruit of the Spirit. We are just like the people to whom Isaiah prophesied when he said, The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” (Isaiah 29:13) As Jesus hung on the cross, he was mocked by the religious leaders and the soldiers. He hung between two criminals, and one of them, even while being crucified himself, also mocked Jes...

e are in the second week of our series Y.U.M. – as we discover what is unique and special about United Methodism. For a denomination that came about partially through the methodical nature of John and Charles Wesley, United Methodist doctrine is a slippery subject. Slippery because, if you ask 100 United Methodists, clergy and lay, we will probably have 200 descriptions of what constitutes our doctrine. And the differences between those descriptions are as different as the Methodists who make up our connection. One of the reasons this has happened is because United Methodist doctrine is primarily practical. Unlike other denominations with their well-designed creeds and affirmations and philosophical underpinnings, the United Methodist movement began as a practical movement within an existing denomination, the Church of England. John Wesley, in his methodical practices and through intense study of scriptures, simply figured out what works. “What works” is a loaded phrase, ...