22-Aug-21 II Samuel 11 Joab is a bad man. Usually when we think of the sordid episode of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba, Joab doesn’t even cross our minds. Joab? Who’s he? Well, Joab is actually a rather significant character in this whole, terrible drama. Usually we think about David. We know better, but David […]
Author: Rev. Wayne Sawyer
Sacred Terror!
15-Aug-21 II Samuel 6:1-19 The ark of the covenant is a box. Most of the time that we encounter it in the Scriptures, it is a very fancy box, but it is a box none-the-less. Once or twice, in the Scriptures, it is not much more than a box made of wood. At other times, […]
08-Aug-21 1 Samuel 17:1-11, 24-27, 31-51 Well, we’ve had the set up. There’s a monster named Goliath out there. He is huge. Many years ago in Sunday School, I was told that Goliath was over 9 feet tall. That is unusually large by anyone’s standard; it is clearly an anomaly of human genetics. Our texts […]
Love Conquers All
18-Jul-21 1John 5:1-5 Who are we in this world? Where do we fit on this tiny, round chunk of rock, that is spiraling its way through God’s massive universe? These are not bad questions to ask, because the answers can be as varied as the number of people here this morning. And that’s because that […]
We Didn’t Love God
11-Jul-21 I John 4:7-21 There’s a really easy way to make a very short sermon out of this passage. It really only needs to be a couple of sentences long. When I first began here as pastor, lo these many years ago, Laf French used to tell me that the secret of a good sermon […]
Offensive Food and Drink
04-Jul-21 John 6:48-59 It would be better for us if we did not have to think about it at all. In fact, it is so offensive, that after Jesus uttered these words, many of his followers abandoned him. The thought of having to eat this man’s flesh and drink his blood was too strange, too […]
Facing Forward in Faith
27-Jun-21 Ephesians 6:10-20 When the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the Ephesians, he was writing from prison in the city of Rome. He was in prison, not because he was a hardened criminal, but rather because he was a follower of Jesus. Paul had this pesky habit of preaching the gospel in spite of […]
Frightened into Peace
20-Jun-21 Mark 4:35-41 There are times when I feel totally unqualified to be up here behind this pulpit. And this morning is one of those times. I am not much of a boater. I’ve never been on a boat in the midst of a big storm, when I was afraid that I might not live […]
A Ministry of Disruption
13-Jun-21 John 2:13-22 It used to be that the only useful information that could be gleaned from this passage was that Baptist churches should never have any fundraising activities going on in their houses of worship. No suppers, no sales, no nothing. It seemed fairly clear from this passage that Jesus was pretty much vehemently […]
Love is All You Need
30-May-21 1 John 4:7-21 “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” That quote, from verse sixteen, describes the essential nature of God; it describes the essential nature of the relationship that we have with God, and it describes the essential nature of the relationship that […]
