Sermon Archive

Text : Jeremiah 1:4-10 Have you ever noticed that with a great deal of Biblical characters, particularly with the Old Testament, none of them ever seem to want to take on what God calls them to? They always seem to provide a litany of excuses as to why they’re not suitable for the task, and that really God should be looking for someone else… someone better suited than they. When Moses encounters God in the burning bush, he’s pretty blunt… tells God off and says, “please, send someone else!” Yet we know how that turned out. Moses is basically dragged kicking and screaming back to Egypt where he confronts pharaoh, and it leads to the freedom of his people. Imagine what would have happened had God actually listened to all the excuses that Moses provided, I would suspect that the Hebrews might still be living in slavery… and the world that we have today would be much different. Yet Moses isn’t the only one. Jeremiah is just as good at putting up excuses as to why he can’t be a prophet as M...

Text: Luke 12:49-56 Professor Stanley Hauerwas, a well known Christian Scholar, often opened his classes at the beginning of the year a story like this. When he was at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, he often began a course on marriage by reading a letter to the students. A complaint to authorities, it went something like this, “Our son had done well. He had gone to good schools, had gone through the military, had gotten out, had looked like he had a very promising career ahead. Unfortunately, he has joined some eastern religious sect. Now he does not want to have anything to do with us, because we are people of ‘the world.’ He is never going to marry because now he claims his true family is this funny group of people he associates with. We are heartsick. We don’t know what to do about this, please help us!” Then he would ask the class, “Who wrote this letter?” So who do you think wrote this letter? The students replied that the letter was written by concerned parents, whose adu...

Text: Isaiah 1:1; 10-20 Corruption, it seems, has been in the news a lot as of late. We think of Conrad Black’s recent conviction, and last year’s convictions over the Enron scandal in the US. Recently it’s been made public that some Chinese factories use substandard if not dangerous ingredients for consumer goods. Apparently, those who were supposed to be responsible for oversight of these factories have taken bribes to look the other way. We have heard stories of bribery and corruption that are hampering efforts to rebuild governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as we know from scandals in our own government and businesses, it is neither limited to somewhere “over there” and it’s certainly nothing new. Bribery and corruption has been a chronic problem that has plagued society for thousands of years. It is perhaps the one thing that eats away at a nations own ability to care for its people, because individuals use or abuse power for their own personal gain. Yet when it comes to this ...