Category: Epistles

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

07-Feb-21 II Peter 1:16-21 “Religion, and the transformed attitudes and behaviors that accompany it, has been irrelevant in our culture for decades.” I wonder if that sounds familiar to anybody? Is somebody thinking to themselves right now, “I read that someplace not too long ago, now where did I see it?” Well, if it rings […]

03-Jan-21 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 God is faithful. God is always faithful. People, on the other hand, are not always faithful. Sometimes people are never faithful. People are, well, human. People sometimes have ideas and opinions that overrule what God has to say. And they will hold to those opinions and ideas as if God did […]

27-Dec-20 Galatians 4:1-11 It is no secret that the Apostle Paul, and the followers of Jesus in the churches of the province of Galatia did not get along. Oh, I suppose that they got along, but it was rather poorly, that they did so. At the beginning of chapter three, the apostle calls his his […]

08-Nov-20 1Thessalonians 1:1-10 The folks in the church at Thessalonica were deeply loved by the Apostle Paul. Now that part’s not so unusual. Paul loved all of the churches with which he was associated. But in addition to love, he also had deep affection for them. Paul is very excited about the work that this […]

27-Sep-20 Philippians 3:1-14 Every once in a while, I wonder if one day God looked down from heaven at the man who would eventually become the Apostle Paul and said, that guy has got to become one of ours. We can use him. I wonder that, because sometimes I do the same thing. Well, I […]

16-Aug-20 1 Peter 5:6-11 If I begin to think too seriously about what it must have been like to live in the first century as a follower of Jesus, I begin to shudder. Life was awful, just plain awful. Everyone knew someone who had been martyred. Everyone knew someone who had been arrested by the […]