07-Feb-16 Exodus 34: 29-34 Sometimes when God is dealing with human beings, it takes a couple or more times to get it right. We sort of know this from our own lives. Oftentimes when God is trying to get our attention, we ignore at least the first attempt, and some of us have gotten so […]
Good Sermon, Poor Follow Up
31-Jan-16 Luke 4:16-30 The sermon was fine. It was just what happened afterward that caused things to go down hill so quickly. Jesus has returned to his home town of Nazareth, and its the Sabbath, and so he has gone to the local synagogue to attend the service. Luke tells us that this was his […]
Putting The Pieces Together
24-Jan-16 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 Once in a great while, I start to fantasize about how grand it might be to go back to the first century church. There are some really awesome things about the early church that would be wonderful to return to, but there are also some really terrible things about the early […]
Lemme Buy This
10-Jan-16 Acts 8:9-24 Our passage this morning is really a wonderful story about the growth of the Gospel in the very early, brand new church. At the time of our passage, the Christian Church is only a few months old. And in those few short months, with the help of the power of the Holy […]
A Promise of Hope
03-Jan-16 Jeremiah 31:1-14 Darkness is everywhere. Its not pretty. For many of us life is exceedingly difficult. We are afraid much of the time. We wonder how we will get along today and we are frightened about what tomorrow holds. Perhaps it is the time of the year. We are in the darkest period of […]
2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people. Click here to see the […]
The Story in the Story
27-Dec-15 Luke 2:1-20 Most of us here this morning probably don’t remember being born. I certainly don’t, although I’m pretty sure I was there. But there are stories about our births that we have been told. We probably know where we were born, and we likely know some of the circumstances and events that attended […]
The Star of Hope
Christmas Eve 2015 We had been watching the star for about two months before we really got serious about it. I’m not sure why it took us so long to make something of this, but you know how schedules are and all; I guess it took us that long to actually realize that it really […]
What Should We Do?
13-Dec-15 Luke 3:7-17 It’s been a long time with a lot of things to forget, but to the best of my knowledge I have never opened a worship service by saying, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” I suspect that that kind of greeting would probably not […]
The Lord Whom We Seek
06-Dec-15 Malachi 3:1-4 It sounds like wonderfully good news. The Lord, whom we seek, will suddenly come to his temple. What a joyful dream! How wonderful it would be if the Lord came suddenly to his temple. How excited we would be! This is what we have long been hoping for. This is the day […]