Whole Reason

Here’s my first ser­mon as an ordained pas­tor, and here’s what was in it:

1. Get there
2. Quiet your soul
3. Pour out your soul
4. Read and wait for Illumination
5. Jour­nal
6. Express thanks

Lis­ten to Draw near to God

You can lis­ten to the ser­mon below:

How to Mis­un­der­stand Scripture

Ser­mon out­line after the jump.

Read more…

Here is my ser­mon from 12/06/09 enti­tled At the Bot­tom.  Based on Mark 12:41–44, it cov­ers these main points.

1. Turn towards God, not away
2. Do not worry
3. God is doing some­thing new
4. Put God first
5. Give what you have

At the bottom

In this ser­mon, I exam­ined Pilate’s exas­per­ated excla­ma­tion, “What is truth?”  I dis­cussed three seri­ous objec­tions to the exis­tence of God from this pas­sage, including:

1. Reli­gious hypocrisy
2. Injus­tice and suffering
3. Per­sonal lim­i­ta­tions and failure

I apol­o­gize for the back­ground noise, and the places where I had to dub in miss­ing words — the orig­i­nal audio file had some dropouts.

Down­load What is truth? (mp3)

What is truth?

Based on my pre­vi­ous post, I preached an entire Sun­day ser­mon on the use and abuse of alco­hol, from a Bib­li­cal perspective. 

Down­load Alco­hol and the Bible

Alco­hol and the Bible

This ser­mon, based on the exam­ple of God the Father in the Bap­tism of Jesus (), includes the fol­low­ing points:

1. Accep­tance: I know you
2. Affec­tion: I love you
3. Approval: believe in you

For you hard­lin­ers, don’t worry, I cover DISCIPLINE in the sec­ond part.

Down­load Chris­t­ian Par­ent­ing — Part 1 of 2

Chris­t­ian Par­ent­ing — Part 1 of 2

Many of my friends, includ­ing my pas­tor, think that this is the best ser­mon I’ve preached so far.  I think the deliv­ery could have been bet­ter, but I loved the con­tent.  This ser­mon was inspired by a neigh­bor who, when dis­cov­er­ing that I was a pas­tor, got quickly defen­sive, say­ing “I’m a spir­i­tual per­son.”  That reac­tion got me think­ing, and this expo­si­tion of John 15.  It includes these main points:

1. Intro: False Vines
2. Start­ing the Journey
3. Expe­ri­enc­ing God
4. Know­ing God
5. The Obe­di­ence of Love
6. Lov­ing Others
7. Being Pre­pared to Suf­fer for what is right

Down­load What is a spir­i­tual person

What is a spir­i­tual person?

This ser­mon, deliv­ered over the July 4th week­end, cov­ers a por­tion of John 10, explain­ing the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in Jesus’ alle­gory of him­self as ‘the Good Shep­herd.’  It explores what a good pas­tor looks like, as well as describ­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a hireling, wolf, and the sheep.

Lis­ten: John 10: The Good Shepherd

Down­load: John 10: The Good Shep­herd

Jesus had a major smack­down with the Phar­isees, in which they exchange insults.  It esca­lates to a point where Jesus finally just replies “I AM that I AM” — mean­ing that He is claim­ing to be the God who spoke to Moses (Exo­dus 3:14). 

In the mid­dle of that exchange, Jesus addresses those who have come to believe in Him dur­ing this dis­cus­sion.  He says “If you con­tinue in My word, you are my dis­ci­ples indeed.  And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 

This ser­mon explores what it means to “con­tinue in My word.”

Lis­ten:  John 8: If you continue

Down­load: John 8: If you continue

The Wall Street Jour­nal takes a look at Pres­i­dent Obama’s pro­posed mort­gage res­cue plan and finds that it could cre­ate far more prob­lems than it solves:

Pres­i­dent
Obama yes­ter­day announced his plan to pre­vent home fore­clo­sures, say­ing
he wanted to be “very clear about what this plan will not do: It will
not res­cue the unscrupu­lous or irre­spon­si­ble by throw­ing good tax­payer
money after bad loans … And it will not reward folks who bought
homes they knew from the begin­ning they would never be able to afford.”

We
really do wish he were right. In fact, the details released yes­ter­day
sug­gest the President’s plan will do all of the above. The plan will
help some strug­gling home­own­ers. But by invest­ing in fail­ure, the
Admin­is­tra­tion will also pro­long the hous­ing down­turn and make
financ­ing a home pur­chase more dif­fi­cult for future bor­row­ers.
Mean­while, the plan isn’t likely to slow the con­tin­u­ing decline in
hous­ing prices.

The President’s plan is pred­i­cated on the
false belief that every­one deserves to own a home. The fact is that not
every­one can afford to own a home. The efforts of Fan­nie Mae and
Fred­die Mac to make it eas­ier for peo­ple to buy homes they could not
afford are at the heart of the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis. Unfor­tu­nately,
the President’s plan does noth­ing to address this fun­da­men­tal issue and
instead just pro­longs the cri­sis and leav­ing tax­pay­ers on the hook.

As CNBC’s Rick San­telli cor­rectly points out in this clip,
this is an exam­ple of gov­ern­ment reward­ing bad behav­ior. Unfor­tu­nately
it’s the 92% of hon­est, hard­work­ing Amer­i­cans he refers to that will
pay the price.