Many people in northeast Ohio have visited the Amish Country at least once, if not numerous times. One stop they are sure to make is at Lehman’s Hardware Store in Kidron, Ohio. What I have learned from my visits there is that at one time only other Amish people purchased items at the store because they were committed to using non-electrical equipment in their farming. More recently, however, a new set of clients has arrived, not counting the usual tourists. Some religious believers have the convictions ...
It has been several decades since Pastor John Lloyd Ogilvie wrote his book about the parables of Jesus titled, The Autobiography of God. As Ogilvie pointed out, this “autobiography” – this self-writing – is exactly what the parables of Jesus are.[1] They are the description of the kingdom of God by God’s own self.” Jesus did not write them down as an author would; he told them to small groups, to angry crowds, to the masses, to individuals, and most often, to his disciples. He painted word-pictures about ...
Today is the end of the church year. The school year ends in June, and the calendar year ends on December 31, but the church year ends always on a Sunday in late November, and the new church year begins with the season of Advent. Next week, I’ll begin a sermon series called START HERE; appropriate for a new year, with a blank canvas standing before us. But as we today focus on the Reign of Christ, it also seemed like a good time to give you a prologue of where it all started. That’s what the START HERE ...
The Book of Ruth is a family story. It is an old story, possibly over three thousand years old. It is a story about a family in trouble. Let me briefly summarize the story. Elimelech flees with his wife and two sons from the famine in Israel and heads for Moab because they heard that things were better there. In desperation they move to Moab, an out-of-the-way sort of place. You would have to be desperate, really hungry to move your family to Moab. Soon after their arrival Naomi's husband dies and she is ...
Exodus 33:12-23; Matthew 22:15-22 Without wanting to be either flippant or blasphemous, I don't think it out of line to say that there is something a little odd about the story where Moses gets to see the back side of God. This is Moses, the one who went up the mountain and brought down the tablets of the law; the one at whose uplifted rod the waters of the Red Sea parted and then came back together; Moses, the person who filled more roles than any other in the Torah -- prophet, priest, military leader, ...
One long, shadowy afternoon, when the light was more smoke than light, a young American of Russian descent wandered along a canal in Leningrad, searching for the Palace of Prince Yarosof, where the monk Rasputin had been killed. Leningrad in winter is not a cheery place. The sun rises late in the morning and sets about 4 p.m. Daylight, always weak and wintry, never rises above a sinister haze. In that light Alex sought his narrow door. He didn't realize quite what he was seeking. Only when he found it did ...
An old man died in a Manhattan brownstone some years ago. No one in the neighborhood knew much about him. Some neighbors thought he was odd and eccentric. Most ignored him altogther. Just a silly recluse, they said. When he died the newspapers sent a reporter to his brownstone home. Inside they found newspapers and magazines stacked to the ceilings. Narrow corridors wound in a maze throughout the house. When the papers and magazines were removed, furniture of all kinds, including 17 grand pianos were found ...
Matthew 5:1-12Matthew 18:23-35 The quality of mercy is not strain'd,It droppeth as a gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath: it is twice blest;It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomesThe throned monarch better than his crown.(The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene 1) In our practice of "mercy" there is a kind of "I'll scratch your back -- you scratch my back" philosophy. Be decent to others and they will be decent to you. It is like the story on which ...
It is often difficult for Christians to get past the idea that those who have given themselves to the Lord should be treated a little better than the average woman or man who does not possess a living faith. In other words, there ought to be some kind of return for what you have done for God, for what you have given in time, energy and money. That doesn't sound outrageous, does it? In this "you get what you deserve" world, you really ought to be rewarded. Harmless as that sounds, it is the first step ...
So, where are the shepherds? And what about the "multitude of the heavenly host" shining their glory on everyone and breaking into song about God, and salvation, and peace? Sure, there is an angel. One angel, who sounds more like a meditating attorney in a three-piece suit, speaking in one long sentence which tells Joseph he ought to see this thing through and try to work things out with Mary. And that even happens in a dream. But that seems to fit Matthew's purpose. Matthew isn't interested in the ...
"So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them a warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life." Is ...
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil which we did to him." So they sent a message to Joseph saying, "Your father gave this command before he died, ‘Say to Joseph, Forgive, I pray you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.’ And now, we pray you, forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father." Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also ...
It was the best of times. A time of prosperity and confidence, a time of relative peace, a time when most everything looked pretty good, a time when most everyone felt pretty good. It was a time maybe not unlike our own time. In such a time, among such a people, naysayers are hardly welcome. Who wants to hear about the bad that could be coming in the future when what’s going on in the present looks so good? Who wants to hear protests when the prevailing winds of prosperity are blowing so strongly? Who ...
“Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah” (1:10; cf. Genesis 19). Sodom. Gomorrah. Remember? Places of wickedness, of violence, of perversity. Do you know any place like that? Places where sexuality is twisted and relationships are corrupted and social order is breaking down? Places where people seek to gratify personal desires at the expense of others, where individual pursuits take precedence over common well-being, where anything goes as ...
Have Faith: Everything changes. Some things never change. I grew up in the nostalgic days, the "Happy Days" of the 1950's. Our fathers, without a doubt the "Greatest Generation," returned from a world torn by war to build a new world out of their hopes and dreams. They began by giving birth to the largest generation in history, the Baby Boomers. Born in 1947, I was one of the first. It was a time of great vitality and optimism, a time of peace after the trauma of two world wars. And it was a time when a ...
One of the tangible benefits of reading the Bible is that we discover that God calls people to service in areas they may not have thought possible. People often discover that with God's help they are able to reach deep within themselves and find strength they did not know existed. Back in the '60s, Bill Withers sang, "Lean on me when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on." For most of us, it is not until we find ourselves unable to carry on that we discover that with God we can ...
No reading of Luke is complete without coming to realize that Luke is concerned that the world understands that Jesus is the hope of the world and that any teaching that leads away from that fact is a false teaching. No matter what, no matter when, Jesus will be there to give us life. In our own time, there have been those who have predicted that the end was near because of some tragedy that has shaken our world. Each time some doomsday people took from that awful event that God was getting ready to shut ...
Our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah is one in which the Hebrew people, not knowing what else to do in terms of addressing their predicament, decide to blame it all on God. They believed their problems to be the result of their sins and the sins of their fathers. Of course, one person's sin does indeed affect other people, but all people are still held personally accountable for the sin in their own lives (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:2). This theme would later be taken up in the New Testament as ...
Malcom Uggeridge closed his biography of Mother Theresa of Calcutta with this word: “It will be for posterity to decide whether she is a saint. I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ’s Gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth” (Something Beautiful for God, p. 146). I assume Muggeridge is using the word saint in a specialized way. For me there is no question left for posterity. ...
It glows with light and power today as we turn to verses 1 through 4 of the second chapter of this Philippian letter. “If then our common life in Christ yields any thing to stir the heart, any loving consolation, any sharing of the Spirit, any warmth of affection or compassion, fill up my cup of happiness by thinking and feeling alike with the same love for one another, the same turn of mind, and a common care must be no room for rivalry and personal vanity among you, but you must humbly reckon others ...
There are some writers and some speakers who pack every sentence to the brim. If you miss a sentence you miss something significant. Others of us would like to think that true, but it really isn’t. You can miss a sentence here and there, unfortunately, maybe a number of sentences - and still not be poor for what you didn’t get. Samuel Miller is one of those people who packs every sentence to the brim, and you need to get every word. Listen to him. “A man’s birth is not ended with the first gasp of his ...
Chapter three and half of Chapter four of Exodus is the story of the burning bush. This episode is central to the Exodus story, but we can get too preoccupied with the burning bush. Some would even want to debate the kind of bush it was. But that misses the point. As someone has well said: “When God decides to make His appearance to man, any old bush will do.” We are staying with the story of the burning bush again today as we continue our preaching journey through Exodus. In my last sermon I talked about ...
What would you feel like if you had an appointment with God at 9 A.M. tomorrow? Would you be able to eat for the rest of the day? How much sleep do you think you’d get tonight? You’ve got an appointment with God at 9 A.M. in the morning. He has given you instructions as to where to meet him and what to bring with you. That was the case with Moses. “Come up in the morning to Mount Sinai,” God said, “and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.” Moses was to bring with tables of stones like ...
Today we’re beginning a series of sermons on coping - coping as a Christian. To cope is to “contend or struggle successfully.” Now I had some hesitancy about the use of the word cope in the title of this series. A lot of people are talking about coping. Being who I am, a Christian minister seeking to proclaim the word of God, I was not interested just in a series of self-help, psychological messages. So I thought for awhile that I would talk about conquering as Christians. Paul said we Christians are to be ...
Many years ago, Dr. James Fisher, a practicing psychiatrist, wrote a very entertaining little book entitled A FEW BUTTONS MISSING . It was a light treatment of some of his experiences in psychiatric practice. However, near the end of the book, Dr. Fisher became very serious. This is what he said. “What was needed, I felt sure, was some new and enlightened recipe for living a sane and satisfying life — a recipe compounded from all the accumulated scientific knowledge acquired through study and research. I ...