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Sunday Sermon

  The Nature of God Isaiah 59:17 He covered himself with goodness like armor. He put the helmet of salvation on his head. He put on his clothes for punishing and wrapped himself in the coat of his strong love. One of the struggles we have as believers in the living God is understanding what our faith is all about. It is so easy to make our faith about religious practices because we can do those and then move on but our faith is so much more then a religion. At the same time if we get our faith right religious practices can help us in our worship and service of God. So I don’t want to reject religious acts, I just want them in the right place. Faith in God is also not centered on obedience. Don’t get me wrong God teaches us about the concepts and ideas of how the universe works and when we reject those things our faith will not be what it should be but obedience is a result of our faith not the thing that makes our faith. Our hope in Jesus flows from the nature of God and s...
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Sunday Sermon

  The State of Man Isaiah 59:10 We are like the blind feeling our way along a wall. We feel our way as if we had no eyes. In the brightness of day we trip as if it were night. We are like dead men among the strong. My five-year-old granddaughter has become horse crazy. For her birthday Debbie and I bought her horse toys and she loved it. Because of my hobby I have lots of horse models and this little one has discovered them. One day she and I went through every box of figures I own to look for any horses and we found dozens. She was so pleased to know I had all of these figures and now she comes down to play with my horse figures and she wants to build more and even paint some. I love that I get to spend time with her doing something we both enjoy but she does not know that I am also using this time with her to teach her. Of course we do math and we work on reading but I also speak to her about faith and what it means. It is important that she lean how to become a woman ...
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Sunday Sermon

  God is Sad Isaiah 59:8 They don’t know how to live in peace, and there is no fairness in their lives. They are dishonest. Anyone who lives as they live will never have peace. The current book of the Bible that has caught my attention is the book of Jonah because it speaks to how God works in people’s lives to bring healing. It really frustrates me that people only think of this book because of the big fish and they do not grasp what a powerful and wonderful book it is. God tells Jonah to go and tell the city of Nineveh that God has decided to destroy the city because of how evil it is. We need to know that this judgement by God is right. Nineveh is the capital city of the Assyrian Empire and that empire has built its wealth and power by stealing other people riches and leaving people to starve and die. For some reason, we are not told Jonah holds a level of anger for Nineveh that is not healthy. Because of this anger God calls Jonah to go and to tell the judgement of God....
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Seige Towers

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Suinday Sermon

  Evil Isaiah 59:1-2 1 Surely the Lord’s power is enough to save you. He can hear you when you ask him for help. 2 It is your evil that has separated you from your God. Your sins cause him to turn away from you, so he does not hear you. The greatest event in all of history is the entry of Jesus Christ into the world. There is nothing that compares to this single moment in time. Jesus is both God and human at that same time and so we have God who lives a fully human life knowing the joy of human life and the suffering. I have talked about how the birth of Jesus has a sad side effect for me that we do not think about very often but nags at me on a regular basis because I know that Jesus has come to deal with my sin. It breaks me that God has to die because of my sin but that also makes me aware of my sin and my need for God to save me. Jesus dying on the cross is the most tragic event in history but is also the greatest statement about who God is and how God works. As power...
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Sunday Sermon

  The Sabbath Isaiah 58:13 You must obey God’s law about the Sabbath and not do what pleases yourselves on that holy day. You should call the Sabbath a joyful day and honor it as the Lord’s holy day. You should honor it by not doing whatever you please nor saying whatever you please on that day. A few months ago I was awoken by my family to find that our water heater had broken. Water was pouring out of the bottom of it at a rate that told me we had real trouble. It was clear that the only solution was to replace the water heater. Of course this did not make me happy because it was now going to cost us hundreds of dollars to replace it but I had no other choice. No matter how much I did not want to admit that the water heater was broken or that it needed replacing reality made me deal with the issue. I could not avoid the problem because we had no hot water and that made me have to fix the broken water heater. When I think about that day, it makes me think about the human ...
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Sunday Sermon

  Lead by the Lord Isaiah 58:11 The Lord will always lead you. He will satisfy your needs in dry lands and give strength to your bones. You will be like a garden that has much water, like a spring that never runs dry. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge story has always fascinated me. To reduce the initial construction price from an estimated $11 million down to a cheaper budget, engineers replaced the original deep, rigid open-truss stiffening design with shallow, solid steel plate girders. On November 7, 1940, moderate 42-mph winds caught the rigid, unyielding deck design, creating a violent twisting aerodynamic resonance and the structural forces then quickly snapped the cables and tore the entire bridge apart. That bridge did not break apart because it was built wrong but it broke apart because a choice was made that ignored what was true and instead chose to follow what was easier. I think about that often when I think about God. We have a God who tells us what is true and what ...
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