Luke 7:36-50
Luke 15:1-3, 8

Do you remember the Beatles?

Most of us thought John Lennon had it all; fame, money, girls! We thought he lived a charmed life; a kid from the hicks, Liverpool, nothing good ever came out of Liverpool, makes it big. He lives a glamorous life; instantly recognized all over the world.

And yet despite his fortune […]

Luke 15:1-32

The following “Dear God” letters indicate kids have the funniest ideas of who God is and what He is like:

Dear God,
Thanks for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.
Joyce

Dear God,
My mommy told me what You do. Who does it while you’re on vacation? […]

Matthew 6:19-24
I Corinthians 15:50-16:4

“Now concerning the collection?”

“Now concerning the collection?” What kind of mumbo jumbo is this; moving from discussing the most astounding news the world has ever heard, the historical resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of His children to this mundane matter of collecting money?

“Now concerning the collection.” There must be some mistake here. Surely the Apostle […]

Matthew 25:14-30
I Corinthians 15:51-58

Talk about someone needing a little encouragement! A pastor whose sermons were very long and boring, announced one Sunday that he had been called to another church and that it was Jesus’ will that he leave that week. Whereupon the song leader got everybody up to sing, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”

Last week, we began a brief […]

I Thessalonians 5:1-11

Speaking of encouragement who is more in need of it in this story; the wife or the husband or the marriage counselor they made an appointment with because they felt their marriage needed a shot in the arm? The wife was hurt and upset and as she began to recount her loveless life, tears filled her eyes and her lips started […]

Romans 12:1-2

An intoxicated guy staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, slowly sits down, but doesn’t say, “Father forgive me for I have sinned” or anything. The Priest, on the other side, conspicuously coughs a few times to get his attention, but the inebriated sot continues to sit in silence. The Priest says, “I’m listening, my son,” but still no response. […]

Psalm 51:1-17
Matthew 5:4

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Bible scholars agree that although the word translated ‘mourn’ could be a word used for the ‘mourning of the dead,’ that to understand this beatitude as such limits what Jesus had in mind.

For example, John Stott writes:

Matthew 9:35-38
II Corinthians 5:14b-21

After I became a Christian, I began to faithfully attend church.

And although I continued to work on the railroad with the same group of guys that I had known for 10 years, I found that I now had more in common with my new friends in the church than I did with friends at work. I began to pull […]

Revelation 21:1-5

This week, Dr. John Schultz is filling in for Randy with a message entitled “All Things New”

Psalm 103:1-12
Luke 22:14-20

Last fall I preached a sermon series on what to do when, for whatever reason, we are Disappointed with God. Today I would like to turn that around and consider why and what to do when we think God is disappointed in us.

Have you ever disappointed someone? When that happens, how do we react?

Galatians 5:16-25

As kids, we almost all inevitably faced the temptation at one point or another to slip our favorite candy bar into our pocket at a store without paying for it. So easy, and harmless, right?

That’s what a 38-year-old New Jersey man seemed to be thinking when he robbed the exact same 7-Eleven store at knifepoint four different times in four days—just […]