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Sunday Sermon

Humble People Isaiah 57:15 And this is the reason: God lives forever and is holy. He is high and lifted up. He says, “I live in a high and holy place, but I also live with people who are sad and humble. I give new life to those who are humble and to those whose hearts are broken. In two thousand and twenty-four the state of Louisiana passed a law requiring all schools to post the Ten Commandments in each school class room. For some reason this caused a fire storm of criticism and condemnation. It confuses me why anyone would object to a poster of something that is objectively true. If schools are there to teach children, the fundamental truths about the world like math, reading and science it makes since that teaching the basic moral underpinnings of the universe should be there too. No one is forcing anyone to accept the truth that is found in those words but just like rejecting the truth that math gives us all that can happen are negative results. Learning to be moral people...
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Sunday Sermon

  A Quiet God Isaiah 57:11 “Whom were you so afraid of that you lied to me? You have not remembered me or even thought about me. I have been quiet for a long time. Is that why you are not afraid of me? Our faith is in the God who redeems us but what does that really mean and how do we get to that place of faith. We need to think about this on a regular basis because understanding our faith will shape how we live as people of faith. First we need to make the point that our faith is not in what God does but the very nature of who God is. In short we trust in the God who does the things not in what God does. Grasping this idea is central to what we are all about because it will directly impact how we see God and then how to react to what God says. The starting place of our faith is that God saves us from the death and destruction of our own sin but we do not trust in the redemption we trust in the God who delivers us from the death that sin brings. Our next step into real an...
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Sunday Sermon

  Resisting God Isaiah 57:4 Of whom are you making fun? Whom are you insulting? At whom do you stick out your tongue? You turn against God, and you are liars. For me one of the things that makes scripture work is the idea that God does not use perfect people but He uses people who are willing to listen and live as God calls us to. Abraham comes off as a regular human with real issues and struggles. When we look at David we find a flawed man who seeks to live by faith as best he can. Then there are the son’s of Zebedee or better known as the son’s of thunder. In one instance they wanted Jesus to call down fire from heaven and another one they had a little talk with some people who were not part of their group. And yet John would be the one who was loved by Jesus the most and James would have clear influence over the early church. Let us not forget people like Naomi who loses her husband and sons and is so completely lost she tells people to call her Mara which means bitter...
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Sunday Sermon

  Rest in God Isaiah 57:1-2 1 Those who are right with God may die, but no one pays attention. Good people are taken away but no one understands. Those who do right are being taken away from evil 2 and are given peace. Those who live as God wants find rest in death. Has anyone else thought about how thick the Bible is? Think about all the words that God has written down and how much material we have to direct us into the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. We have a God who wants to talk to us and wants us to know how the world works. God hides nothing and speaks about the human condition with clarity and certainty. The more time I spend in God’s word the more my faith grows just because of the sheer volume of stuff God talks about. From the very beginning God discloses how broken we are but instead of letting us be destroyed by our sin God then spends millennia explaining how He can fix us if we will let Him. One of the things that used to be a problem for me...
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Sunday Sermon

Leadership Isaiah 56:10 The leaders who are to guard the people are blind; they don’t know what they are doing. All of them are like quiet dogs that don’t know how to bark. They lie down and dream and love to sleep. A part of my thinking and study over the last few years has been looking into the nature of God. What things do we know about God and how do they all fit together? Developing this understanding has helped build a faith that stands when all other things fail. Everyone knows the big things about God. First is that God is The Truth and then we know what flows from that is God’s righteousness and love. It is the next level of things that have caught my attention. How does God’s righteousness and love work in everyday situations? A quality that often gets bypassed when considering things about God but seems central to who God is and what our faith is all about is that God is a generous God. As we look at how God operates and what God does we see that God just gives th...
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Sunday Sermon

  A House of Prayer Isaiah 56:7 I will bring these people to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. The offerings and sacrifices they place on my altar will please me, because my Temple will be called a house for prayer for people from all nations.” The church’s positive influence on the world cannot be understated. Making that statement might be considered controversial in today’s political climate but as a historian the data is clear. No other evidence need be advanced but the fact that it was Christian nations that ended the legal slave trade in the modern world. England not only outlawed the slave trade but then sent navel forces out to prevent the slave trade from even happening. William Wilberforce was the man who drove the political fight to end legal slavery and he did it because of his Christian faith. The power of the church to affect society over the centuries and millennia is not in dispute. A clear movement of God has shaped large groups of pe...
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Sunday Sermon

  Good Rules Isaiah 56:2 The person who obeys the law about the Sabbath will be blessed, and the person who does no evil will be blessed.” Does anyone else remember the American Bicentennial? It was my blessing to be a young person at that time and I remember the celebrations and the talk of the freedom that people experienced because America was a nation based on the idea of people being empowered not government. It is a little disappointing that we are now in the two hundred and fiftieth years of America and it just does not seem to have the same sense of celebration that I remember in my youth. Freedom is a fundamental desire of the human heart and we should commemorate any nations that have worked hard to make freedom a central part of who they are. Humans long for freedom because we have a God who wants us free to be the people we were made to be and that is why one of the subjects that often occurs in scripture is the idea of humans being free. We are told that Jesus co...
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