2020 Sermons

Does God EVER Intervene?

I do not expect everyone to agree with the thesis I am proposing in this sermon. I readily admit it is unorthodox. But I want to propose it anyway in case it helps any of you who have prayed many prayers that seem to have gone unanswered. My thesis, strange as it may sound, is this: God never intervenes directly in the lives of human beings.

On Living with Approximation

No one ever becomes the finished product God wants us to be; no one! We are all getting there, or least we should be trying to get there, but we’re not there yet, and we shall never fully get there. The problem is that we’re human; we aren’t divine. God is perfect, and complete, and “finished,” but we are not. And that’s something we must never forget --- about everyone else, but especially about ourselves.

Sunday Service - May 17 - Text

Both strength and weakness can be deceiving. Some things look very weak, like ants, but they are incredibly strong. And some things look strong, like mastadons or mammoths or saber-toothed tigers, but a group of clever hunters, armed only with sharpened flint spears, managed to send these and many other powerful species into extinction. Thing are not always as they seem.

Should Christian Culture Trump Secular Culture?

Back when I took Introductory Sociology in college, we were taught that culture is the totality of the customs, laws, mores, religious influences, art forms of all sorts, and popular understanding which comprise the social life of a very large group of people or a sub-set of people. Thus, for example, there is an American culture, very broadly defined. But there is also a Southern culture, a Northeastern culture, a Midwestern culture, and a Western culture. Within those cultures there are various Indian (or Native American) cultures, an Appalachian culture, a Lutheran culture, a vegetarian culture, and so on. Having lived on Hilton Head Island for an accumulation of thirty years, and in Bluffton for six years, I can safely declare to you that there is a Hilton Head culture and a Bluffton culture, and nary the twain shall meet. Years ago bumper stickers proclaimed, “Bluffton Is a State of Mind.” It still is, but just more so now.

Via Dolorosa: The Temptation of Self

any charismatic gift, every charismatic gift, is ultimately a gift from God. And no one was more gifted in charismatic abilities than Jesus. But Jesus, also more than anyone else, knew that self can be a huge distraction if one intends to devote his life or her life to the service of God. The temptation of self is a temptation for anyone, but especially for someone of great talent and ability.

Via Dolorosa: The Temptation of Power

The Apostle Paul described what Jesus did in some magnificent theological prose. He said that though Jesus was “in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be snatched away (from God,) but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). Jesus knew very well what divine power was, but he wasn’t going to try to expropriate it from God. By so doing he had no other option than to lower himself, and to start walking the road at the end of which he knew inevitably there was a cross awaiting him.

The Origin of Repentance

We repent because we realize that God loves us. We don’t decide to follow God’s law and therefore God accepts us; we finally realize that God accepts us and therefore we decide to follow His law. That is the message the cross is intended to illustrate. It isn’t the cross that saves us or Jesus’ death that saves us; it is God who saves us, but that is supremely illustrated by means of the cross.