Praying with Paul – Sermon Manuscript

-Last week was an “off” week with my ordination, thank you for your support through that! I’m thankful it’s done, and for the encouragement that came from that whole process. One of the most fascinating things to me about it is how infrequently we look to actively encourage each other! I can guarantee that no one around you is feeling TOO encouraged right now! Which gets us to this week’s topic: the prayers of Paul.

-Final week of this brief series. The first week we looked at the prayerbook of Jesus (the Psalms) and were reminded to use the Bible as a guide to our prayers. The second week, Micah took us through the Lord’s prayer as a helpful template to guide our prayers, but not as the only prayer we’re allowed to pray because no other prayer is exactly like it. Then, we looked at the need to pray honestly, to bring our true requests to God because He already knows them! 

-But there’s more to prayer than what we’ve seen so far because we’ve basically stopped at the Gospels, which is only the first 4 books of the NT. Paul mentions prayer regularly throughout his letters. Another inspiration for this sermon series is this book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” (now retitled “Praying with Paul”)

-But before we get to those, I want to remind us of another reality about prayer. Friends, God hears your prayers. If you are His child, He hears every single one of your prayers. And how do I know that? Because of Revelation. I was reminded this week of a couple passages from that book (which we studied in detail over 2024, so if you want to hear that series you can find it online). 2 things: Revelation is meant to give us a glimpse of reality from God’s perspective, and it’s meant to be a blessing and encouragement to the church. It’s one of the most comforting books in the Bible, because it tells us that God’s actually in control! But prayer is mentioned in 2 passages, 5, and 8. 5 tells us the same thing that 8 does: that the elders and creatures have golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And look at what chpt. 8 tells us these prayers do: go up into the very presence of God. Remember what I said about this book being a comfort to us? This is what I mean! Our prayers fill the presence of the throne room of God! Keep that image in mind as we continue:

READ/PRAY (1048)

  1. What Does Paul Pray For?

-I did a search of the word “pray” (so it includes prayer and praying) but doesn’t include things like ask or intercede to try to limit a little bit. Paul uses it in 52 verses throughout his 13 letters, the only ones that don’t have the word pray in them are Galatians and Titus. Here’s the breakdown of where Paul uses pray (see the focus in Ephesians?) I’m going to begin by simply reading every single one of these verses, and as I’m reading them (they’ll be on the screens) see if you notice any common themes or ideas popping up throughout them all, and then we’ll go on to talk about 2 things that stood out to me from these texts, and how we should incorporate those ideas into our prayers. I’ve already highlighted each use of pray so you can easily see them on the screen. Are you ready for this? We’re going to go pretty quickly through them!

-Did you notice any themes pop out through them all? What stands out to me is how different this is from so many of my prayers, and the prayers I hear from other people. How many of our prayers are focused either on our prosperity or our physical health? Don’t get me wrong, those aren’t bad things to pray for, James commands us to pray for the sick and Jesus tells us to ask God who will answer us, but what is the percentage of our prayers that are focused on those things instead of the things we see Paul mentioning that he’s praying about?

-Not only that, but Paul seems to assume that his prayers will be answered. There’s no waffling, no giving up, no complaining about a delay to His prayers. He expects that God is going to respond to his requests.

-This is why I began with a couple quotes from Revelation. Friends, do you realize that your prayers are brought before the throne of God like incense? Like imagine it’s summer or fall, the 2 months where it’s tolerable to live in MN. You decide to have a bonfire. You get the grahams, chocolate (only Hershey’s), and mallows ready, build the perfect tee-pee with kindling, and you’re off to the races. When the fire dies down, and you have to douse it with water at the end of the evening, what do you smell like? Smoke! Even after you shower and change your clothes, right? I feel like my beard smells like smoke for at least 2 days after I’m at a bonfire, which is why I’m digging the new smokeless firepits!

-But combine that bonfire reality with the description of our prayers in Revelation: our prayers linger around the throne room of God like smoke on our bodies after a bonfire. Friends, God isn’t distant or aloof! He hears every prayer, and every prayer lingers on Him because He cares for us.

-One of the passages that has been lingering in my mind this week is Rom. 12:15. Within 5 minutes this week, I got 2 different texts, 1 from someone who got a new job offer that we’ve been praying for for 4 years, and another one from someone who was told he would be cut to part-time effective Monday. How do you deal with those 2 bipolar realities? I think I’ve shared this from the pulpit before, but in 2022 Cara had 2 miscarriages before the twins came along. And as she was going through one of those miscarriages, I was walking into church when someone stopped me to share that they were expecting another child. And a part of me was angry and hurting, and at the same time I was grateful that this couple was expanding their family and rejoiced with them. How do we live in those 2 realities, and often at the same time?

-Friends, welcome to the church! God calls all of us together to be a body, to love each other through every circumstance, and to recognize that not everyone is in the same place as us. Some people are coming in excited and thankful, and others are coming in weary and exhausted. And Paul reminds us to pray for everyone! But back to my original question, what things is he praying for? The 2 things that stood out to me this week were thanksgiving and growth or maturity. We could use a number of verses to see these modeled, but for simplicity sake we’ll look at the end of 1 Thess. and the beginning of 2 Thess. (same spot in the pew Bible!)

  • Thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

-I remember reading this in college, when this verse really popped out at me because my friends and I were always trying to figure out God’s will. How do you know which major to pursue, is this girl the right one for me to date, where should I work in the summer? There was 1 person I knew who wouldn’t do anything until she felt like the Lord had prompted her to, so she would skip class if she thought the Lord hadn’t told her to go. It was weird! This verse tells us that God’s will isn’t some mystery that we’re supposed to try to figure out, like a maze where there’s only 1 right path, and if you get off, you’re done. God’s will for all of us is a different way of living, God wants a certain character to mark out His people, we’re not supposed to live in fear of falling out of God’s will for us, we’re supposed to be chasing after Him, taking steps closer to Him each day, and then live a normal human life.

-But in order to understand what we’re supposed to give thanks for; we have to take a look at the larger context of this letter. This exhortation comes at the end of this letter where Paul has written to remind the church to remain faithful in following Jesus. They were worried that those who died would miss Jesus’s return, so he writes them to remind them that they’d know when Jesus comes back, they literally wouldn’t be able to miss it! In addition, because Jesus is coming back, He expects His people to act and behave a certain way. 

-Paul begins with a reminder to respect or honor the leaders of the church. We looked at those last Fall in much more detail in our walk through 1 Timothy. Thessalonians doesn’t articulate what the leadership is, but it shows that Paul expects leaders in every church. If you weren’t here with us last Fall, what Paul lays out in 1 Timothy is 2 church offices: elders and deacons. Elders focus on teaching the Word and praying for the church, deacons focus on the physical and practical needs of the church. You can go back to those sermons to learn more if you’re interested!

-And then included in this section is a reminder to be at peace. Now, I’m not sure how you’re feeling right now, but right now this feels like nonsense to me! How can Paul command the church to be at peace when the world is full of conflict and tension? Is there any way this can match up to reality? The good news is that answer is YES, but the bad news is it’s only in this community of believers called the church, as soon as we walk out those doors and go back into the world we’re not going to see peace. And church – we can be at peace because of what Jesus Christ has done. 

-Paul also tells us how we’re supposed to engage each other as brothers and sisters: warn, comfort, help, and be patient. Anytime we’re interacting with someone, we’re only seeing a glimpse of what’s going on in their lives, and many times people are bringing hurts and insecurities with them wherever they go. So as we talk to fellow Christians, we should be thinking about where they’re at. Do they need a warning to ensure their life is reflecting what God has called? Are they discouraged and in need of comfort? Are they worn down and weak and need some help? And regardless of where they’re at, we’re commanded to be patient. Church – this is how we help each other take 1 step closer to Jesus each day! Growing more like Him takes a lifetime, which is why we need the reminder to be patient with each other. 

-If we’re able to come alongside each other, we’ll be able to ensure that we’re pursuing with is good for others. As Christians, we’re supposed to forgive others as God has forgiven as. In fact, did you notice in the Lord’s prayer that we ask God to forgive us AS we forgive others? So we’re commanded to ask God to only forgive us as much as we forgive others. I hope you’re quick to forgive!

-Then we get to the primary verses for us from this section! Rejoice, pray, and give thanks 24/7/365. This is God’s desire for us; it’s the way we’re able to live out all the previous commands. And Paul goes on to remind us where the battle is really fought: in the spiritual realm.

-Don’t stifle (quench, suppress) the work of the HS. Are there ways you’re doing that? Could be through dismissing promptings in your life, could be living in unrepentant sin, could be from not living in a church community that God has called you to engage in! A way we ensure we’re not stifling the spirit is by giving high regard to the prophecies (words from God) that are tested and true according to the rest of God’s Word! And friends, because we have the Holy Spirit living in us, and God’s Word to guide us, we should be marked by thankfulness on a daily basis.

-Lastly, if you go to the next page of the pew Bibles, we’ll see what else Paul asks for this church, and this will be quicker:

  • Growth (2 Thess. 1:11-12)

-Your theological term for the day is sanctification, that is becoming more holy. Once again, I think we need some broader context to understand why Paul says what he does in these last 2 verses. And if the theme of 1 Thess. is to not worry because they wouldn’t miss Jesus’s second coming because He IS coming, the theme of 2 Thess. is but not that soon! And ironically enough, this section begins with another thanksgiving, hence why I chose thanksgiving as one of the themes to emphasize in Paul’s prayers! But what is he thankful FOR?

-Faith is flourishing, mutual love is increasing, another way of saying that is Paul is giving thanks for their growth in the gospel. Once again, when’s the last time you gave thanks to God for someone’s growth in the gospel? Not only does Paul give thanks to God, he also boasts about them to other churches! 

-All these verses are 1 long run-on sentence in the Greek, so it’s an extended explanation of why from Paul. This church is persevering through persecution, and Paul reminds that that the suffering is worth it, because in the end God’s justice will be delivered to those who opposed God and His people. That’s the summary of vss. 5-10! Some people will bear the penalty, and others have had that penalty paid for by someone else.

-Because God’s justice is coming, Paul’s prayer for this church is that God will make them worthy, and that they will live out their transformed lives by doing good. It’s important for us to note that these good works don’t earn salvation and don’t even earn special recognition from God. We do good works because of our transformed hearts, not as a way to earn special favor from God. But we are supposed to be praying that our transformed hearts would be evident in the ways we live, by doing good works.

-And the last verse is the reason we pray for growth: so that Jesus would be glorified. Friends, prayer is useless if it’s only focused on us. The point of prayer is to align our hearts and minds with God, for Him to be glorified in our lives through our thoughts, words, and deeds. To look for ways for Him to increase as we continually look for ways for us decrease.

-So as we conclude this series what are the things I hope (pray!) you’ve taken away from it?

-First – learn how to pray by using the Bible! Jesus used it as his source of prayers, Christians throughout history have used it to know how to pray, and we should continue that tradition. The book of Psalms is especially helpful!

-Second – in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells us how to have the correct orientation to our prayers. We start with God, acknowledging that He is God and we’re not, and only when we grasp that reality can we move to asking for our daily bread.

-Third – we need to pray honestly. Don’t hide behind walls or pretend like everything is ok when it’s not. God invites you to continually beg Him!

-Finally, this week we saw that Paul models that we should always be thanking God for all the ways He’s continually at work in us, through us, and around us. AND we should ask for continued growth for ourselves and our church body. SO THAT the name of Jesus would be glorified in us. All to His glory alone!

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by mikethestrand on February 1, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 1, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/01/praying-with-paul-sermon-manuscript/

Praying Honestly – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re going to have some fun this morning! I know what you’re thinking, how could church be any more fun than it already is!? We’re going to play some trivia this morning, I’m going to put some quotes on the screen, and you need to figure out where it came from: Taylor Swift or the Bible. For any swifties in the room (first of all, I don’t need to know which era you’re currently in), but if you’re a switfie don’t shout out who it is right away, let people think about it! You all ready?

-What does Taylor Swift have to do with praying? That’s a great question! I would argue that Taylor Swift is meeting a perceived need that people have. Her most recent tour grossed over 2 billion dollars in revenue, and she has a cult-like following. No one was surprised when the football star proposed to the pop star! And I think Taylor’s music is unique because she actually is involved in writing it – it’s songs that come from her real life experiences (which is why her latest album wasn’t as good, she’s found her “true love” so the angst, tension, and turmoil from all her previous albums is gone, she no longer has needs to just “shake it off”)

-See I think Taylor demonstrates what many people think they want. She’s perceived as being true to herself, to speaking whatever’s on her heart and mind, and she matches that to catchy melodies! She writes from a place of honesty and vulnerability that should be a marker of our prayers to the Lord. The fact that her lyrics sound so much like passages of Scripture shows us that we need to come before God with a level of vulnerability that maybe we’re not used to.

-So far in this series, we’ve looked at the prayerbook of Jesus (which is the Bible), we’ve seen how we can use the Bible as the inspiration for our prayers. Last week we looked at the Lord’s Prayer and saw that prayer isn’t supposed to be a performance, it’s supposed to reorient our hearts to God. This week, we’re going to look at the need for us to pray honestly to God, and what that looks like. 

READ/PRAY – Luke 18:1-14 (pg. 930)

-Before we work through some passages of Scripture, I want to remind you of a quote I shared a couple weeks ago that has served as the primary inspiration for this sermon series, as well as been challenging to my own prayer life as I’ve worked to grow in how I approach God on a daily basis.

-How often do we view Christianity threw this skewed lens of a personal growth project, where Christianity is the cherry on top of the rest of my life. The gospel message is there’s nothing you can do to save yourself, nothing you can do to earn God’s favor and merit, and unfortunately, the temptation for us all is to spend all our time and energy working to “prove” ourselves, to clean ourselves up so that God will be happy with us. And the reality is our best “good works” are viewed by God as filthy rags. Like imagine cleaning your bathroom, and then using the rag you used to clean it as an offering to God, and that’s how he views our attempts to try to be good by ourselves.

-John Gerstner (church historian, professor at Pittsburgh and Knox Seminary and mentor to RC Sproul) said this: 

-Keep this thought in mind as we work through all these passages today. The gospel message is meant to free us from trying to earn God’s favor, the gospel message means we are accepted, but not by anything we can ever do. As work our way through these various texts today, you’ll see why we need to come before God honestly, transparently, with everything we truly are.

  1. God Already Knows (Matt. 6:8)

-The first reality I want to remind us of is something Micah brought up last week. See, the Lord’s Prayer takes place in a specific context, Jesus is intentionally contrasting incorrect ways to pray with the way God wants us to pray. The beginning of this section begins with Jesus telling the people 2 ways NOT to pray, which is where I want us to begin today. The first is a praying for a performance, praying to try to impress other people. You see this often in movies where someone is having a normal conversation, and then as soon as they start to pray they start using old King’s English! Thee, thine

-The second way we’re not supposed to pray is to not “babble like the Gentiles.” We’re not sure everything that entails, but because Jesus goes on to say “many words” we know it has some level of repetition. Now, repetition itself isn’t bad as we’ll see later, the problem is with pointless or useless repetition.

-Most scholars points out that 2 things are being cautioned against here: first is the superstition that the right words said the right way invokes a deity to pay attention to you. Part of the reason the Romans had so many “gods” they worshipped is because they thought that you had to the right words to get a deity to pay attention to you, and if you said it the wrong way they would ignore you. 

-The second thing being cautioned against is one of my favorite stories in the OT, the story of Elijah in the showdown against the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Israel is being led by a terrible king named Ahab, who has led the nation to worship false gods, particularly the god Baal. Baal had 450 prophets that served him, meanwhile Elijah was the only prophet left of the one true God. So he challenges the prophets of Baal to showdown on Mt Carmel. The challenge is each group of prophets must prepare a sacrifice to their god, but the one true God is the one who lights the sacrifice on fire without any help. And he lets the prophets of Baal start, since there’s so many of them. He gives them hours to cry out to their god (to babble), and what’s the response? Nothing! Finally, Elijah starts making fun of them, and he’s ruthless! But on and on they continue, but no one answered because as Jesus tells us in Matthew, this doesn’t work. And maybe that’s been your experience in prayer: it feels like there’s no sound, it feels like no on answers, it feels like no one pays attention. It’s ok, the theme of this sermon is honestly. It’s ok to admit that it doesn’t feel like it’s working. This is why we need other Christians around us to encourage us! And that’s why a series like this is important: we need regular encouragement to continue praying!

-I like what Jonathan Pennington (NT Prof at Southern) says about babbling: 

-A call for simplicity over rhetoric, clarity over piled-up repetition. What this tells us is that the focus is like Nike: just do it! Even if it’s a really brief prayer, just pray it! What God wants is communication with him, it doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out event. And why is that? This is the greatest news in the world for us: He already knows! We don’t need to worry about trying to get His attention, we don’t need to try proving ourselves to Him by finding some magical formula of words, He already knows everything we need, AND remember from 2 weeks ago that not only does He know what we need, but the other 2 persons of the Godhead are also always actively praying for us!

-Someone recently told me a story about a conversation they had with an unbeliever who was trying to argue that there is no evidence for God. The believer drew a circle and said, “imagine this is all the knowledge in the universe. How much of this do you think you know?” The unbelievers drew that black circle, and the believer said “Wow! That’s a lot more than I know! But look at how little you still know compared to the sum total of all knowledge. Don’t you think that it might be a problem to act as if you have all the answers to everything in the cosmos?” See, God does actually know EVERYTHING, including you. He even knows you better than you know yourself!

-That’s why sometimes God’s answers to your prayers are “no!” He knows far better than you do what you actually need. I love the way Tim Keller summarizes this point: If what we’re praying for is the right thing for our growth in the gospel, for our becoming what God wants for us, then he’ll give it to us. But we have to admit that we don’t know as much as He does.

-I have 2 2-year-olds in my house right now. One of the most used words from them is “PLEASE!” especially when there’s any candy in sight! Do you think me being a good parent means I should give them whatever they want? No! If it were up to them, they’d eat goldfish and candy for every meal! And anytime the stove is on, they run and grab a chair, push it right up next to the stove and try to “help” us with the cooking. They have no clue about the source of heat they’re trying to play with! Once again, Keller summarizes this idea well:

-So we need to acknowledge that God knows things we don’t, God is aware of things that we aren’t, which is why what Micah preached last week is so important. Half of prayer is recognizing who God is, and we have to start with Him before we can begin to ask Him to help us. But now let’s turn to Luke 18 to see a couple other concepts we need to learn about prayer:

  • Persist in Prayer (Luke 18:1-8)

-This is in the middle of a section of Jesus’s teachings as He journeys to Jerusalem. Right away, Luke tells us the point of this parable, which means we don’t need to try to guess the point! Here, the point of this story is to: pray always and not give up.

-Previously we looked at the caution to not babble in prayer like the gentiles, that is don’t assume that God will listen to you if you pray for a very long time, but here we see a reminder to persist in prayer, to continue asking for God to answer. 

-This story begins with a judge who doesn’t care about others, including God! In this town there was a widow, someone with no rights or privileges in society, someone who was easy for others to take advantage of. Unfortunately for this woman, the judge doesn’t care. But eventually he gets so tired of her that he gives in to her request and notice that he even knows that what she’s asking for is right: he’ll give her justice. If an ungodly and uncaring judge is that way, how would God, who is infinitely caring, respond to His children? 

-And it ends with Jesus asking the question: when He comes back, will he find anyone with faith? Because it requires faith to persist in prayer, to continue asking God and not giving up.

-So persistence is different than babbling! It’s a continual pleading with God to answer your requests, and it forces you to trust in His plans for you, plans that are for your good and growth in the gospel message. Persistence if you are being honest with the Lord, that what you’re asking is something you desperately need Him to respond to. Persistence is working to bring your feelings in line with God’s will for you, it’s a reminder that you’re not in control and He is, which is where He turns next:

  • Get God Right (Luke 18:9-14)

-What is your attitude when you pray? What does your heart tell you when come before the Creator of the universe? Because this story gives us 2 heart attitudes to approach God with: either self-justifying or understanding that your justification can only come from God.

-We view the Pharisees today as the opposite of how they were seen in the 1st century, they were the “good guys” that everyone looked up to! Jesus knew they were trying to pursue righteousness, He says so in Matt. 5:20. The problem was they thought righteousness came through external obedience, compliance to a list of specific rules, but Jesus tells us the externals were only there to work to transform their hearts. And for us who are living on this side of the cross, our righteousness does surpass the Pharisees, because when God looks at us, He sees Jesus’s work, not ours! That’s why what matters for honesty in prayer is looking in the right direction, which the Pharisee doesn’t do. The Pharisee is only comparing himself to other people, and we tend to only compare ourselves to people we think are worse than us, and then we excuse anyone we think is better than us! See, if we come to God in prayer comparing ourselves to others, our view is always going to be skewed.

-We’ll be looking at this at the end of February, or you can go listen to a whole series through it that I preached in 2021, but the book Amos has a story that tells us how we’re supposed to compare ourselves. In Amos 7, God appears to Amos and pulls out a plumbline. If you’ve never done any building, a plumbline is a straight line that ensures the building is built straight. God says His plumbline or standard for people is completely different than the one the people are using. But if everyone is walking around with a skewed view, we’ll look at God’s standard and say He’s wrong! 

-The Pharisee thinks he’s superior to everyone else because he’s using the wrong plumbline, the wrong standard. He needs to look at his own heart in comparison to God (who’s perfect).

-In prayer, we need to understand that our thoughts and feelings aren’t always true, just like this Pharisee! He feels superior to the tax collector, but his feelings aren’t matching up to reality. 

-Kyle Strobel summarizes this concept well: One of the most frustrating things I see when talking to people is assigning motives to others without knowing the full story. You assume the worst about someone who you view as hurting you but assume the best about your intentions. I see it in marriages, in friendships, with coworkers, so when we come before God in prayer, we’re forced to deal with our own issues instead of continually blaming others for our responses. Chuck Swindoll (long time pastor) said it this way: Prayer is what helps us realize our 90% contribution to what’s going on in our life! 

-One last thing I want to point out about the Pharisee is that true prayer will result in life change. Notice that the Pharisee is using the life change to try to attain righteousness, he’s turned things upside down! Fasting and giving a tithe (tenth) are good things for you to do, but they don’t make you more righteous. You do them in order to draw closer to God, not to try to force God to respond to you, this is another form of “babbling”

-In contrast, the tax collector wouldn’t even look around him, he knew who he was compared the perfection that is God! He admits that apart from God’s mercy and grace there’s no hope for him. He could fast 7 days a week and give 100% of what he makes, and it won’t help him climb any closer to God. This man is at the place where he can begin to pray honestly! 

-And here’s the best news about praying honestly, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that have been coming here for any period of time. The gospel doesn’t leave us to wallow in self-pity when we realize we stand convicted. Once again, Kyle Strobel summarizes this well:

-Friends, everything within us works to self-justify, to clean ourselves up before we come near to God, but the reality of the gospel is that we can’t! That’s why the gospel is such good news: it’s not up to you; it’s in God’s hands. Jesus is telling us: the path for anyone who wants to follow him is through humility, which CS Lewis says isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking about yourself less. It’s stopping worrying about what others think of you and finding your identity only in Jesus, the only one who can actually meet you where you’re at and provide everything you need to fully live as a human in the world He created.

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by mikethestrand on January 18, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 18, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/01/18/praying-honestly-sermon-manuscript/

The Prayerbook of Jesus – Sermon Manuscrip

-Happy 2026! One of the things I’ve tried to do at the beginning of each year is to do what I’ve called “Theological Tune Up” where we talk about some things that have come up that are pressing issues in the world today, or things that have come up over the past year in conversations I’ve had with some of you, but I’ve always wanted to try including some emphasis on spiritual practices or disciplines we can grow in over the coming year. One of the things we need to be doing every year is continuing to get God’s Word into our lives, whether that be through reading it more, memorizing it more, meditating on it more, and there’s other practices that will help us take steps closer to Jesus, and this past year I’ve been focusing more time on prayer.

-And maybe like me, you’ve had that experience at about this time every year, where you’re determined to pray more and read more Bible, so you set out your clothes the night before, go to bed early, get your coffee ready (as everyone should be doing in the morning), get all comfy and ready bright and early, then you start to pray, get through your entire list you thought of and feel like you’ve been praying for about an hour, and check your clock and somehow only 3 minutes have passed.

-We’re going to be looking at 4 ways to pray this January (there’s lots more in the Bible, but we only have so many weeks!). We’ll start with the prayerbook of Jesus the guide Jesus used for His prayers, next week we’ll look at the most famous prayer: the Lord’s prayer, the third week we’ll look at the need to pray honestly, and finally we’ll look at the prayers of Paul.

READ/PRAY  – Psalm 110

  1. The Dilemma

-The Bible talks about prayer A LOT! And I don’t know about you, but for most of my life I felt discouraged about my prayer life. Think of what Paul commands us in 1 Thess. Not only are we to pray constantly (some trans. without ceasing), but this is God’s will for us! Talk about pressure! How does that stand up to the reality of everyday life, and how does that make you feel?

-This started changing for me when I was in seminary. One class I had, the professor began the class with the question: “how’s your prayer life?” And I answered “it could be better.” And we spent literally the rest of the class talking about why we feel guilty about our perceived lack of prayer. And friends, this was with a group of both present and future church leaders! If church leaders struggle to pray, what hope is there for everyone else, right!?

-And I’ll put all my cards on the table: I’m not a morning person, I REALLY don’t like getting up early! If it were up to me (and my kids didn’t have school) I would sleep in every day! And when I was growing up, I was always told that you were supposed to get up every morning to do a “quiet time.” I don’t like mornings and I don’t like quiet! (God’s working on me) so what else could I do? I’d also regularly forget to pray about things friends asked me to pray for (it’s a good thing God isn’t constrained by time like we are!), so I remember sometimes praying after someone had a surgery that went well! Thanks, God, for answering my future prayer in the past!

-And just to be completely honest, my heart and desires often weren’t even in it! Growing up I remember the church had a monthly prayer night that made ZERO sense to me, and what was worse was we couldn’t even do our normal playing because it would be distracting to the adults who were trying to pray!

-I remember when an adult that I looked up to was feeling called to seminary, the church commissioned him, prayed for him to go, and on his last Sunday I saved up all my money to buy him a CD (expensive in those days! Plus I was 12). I knew my mom got him something too, so I asked what it was, and he told me she had committed to pray for him and his studies every week. Astonished, I said “That’s IT!?” And he said “That’s much better than the CD you got me!”

-Now, I know some of you are much better at praying than I am, you have it scheduled, you never miss that time, it’s a sweet time of fellowship every day. Similarly, there’s other people that are able to run dozens of miles without stopping! We’re all wired differently, but we’re all commanded to be people who pray. Regardless of where you’re at with praying every single day, or whether your only prayer time is when during this worship service each week, this series is going to be some potentially new ways for you to pray that you may not have considered before, some ways that I’ve been stretched and challenged to grow in my own life, because the reality is we’re all on a journey. None of us will ever arrive, and we all have ways we could continue to grow.

-I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading on the idea of spiritual disciplines over the last couple of years. If you haven’t heard of him, a guy named John Mark Comer has just absolutely taken off. Former pastor and author who is a New York Times bestseller. College professors I talk to say everyone is reading him, every pastor I talk to has thoughts on him (including myself! But I’ll save those for another time, if you want to talk about him let me know and I’ll buy you some coffee)

-There seems to be a rise currently taking place in the church towards mysticism or experiential theology (seems to come in cycles, any of you former pastors remember Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline?). The trend (especially for younger Christians) is toward some more historical church practices, with a current obsession with eastern orthodoxy. 

-Just last week, I was talking to Micah about this trend with music leaders. I would argue that the music we do in the church today is mostly influenced by the Jesus People of the 60s, and that we’re on the 5th generation of those music leaders, which Micah believes is now emphasizing the experiential or mystical aspects. (again, if you want to talk about this, let’s get coffee!)

-The guy I’ve found that I think is writing more helpfully on this than anyone else right now is a guy named Kyle Strobel – a professor at Talbot seminary in LA. What he argues that we need is a recovery of Word-centered, Spirit-empowered, whole-life spirituality (come to the Walk This Way class for more!). He’s someone who stirs my heart and mind to love Jesus more completely. I’d encourage you to find his books and read them, listen to his podcast, or checkout his substack! 

-There are 3 theological realities that serve as the foundation for prayer that we need to be aware of.

1 Reality: We don’t come before God in fear. This is where my comment about “could be better” is off base, because I don’t truly understand God’s desire for me. Look at what we learn in 1 John 4. Friends, Jesus loves you! And not only does He love you, but he likes you. Not some future you, not the you with all your issues “fixed” (whatever that might mean), He loves and likes you! And out of that love comes a desire to be with you! Similarly in Heb. 4, we learn about Jesus who allows us to come boldly before the King and Creator of the universe! No fear, boldness. 

2 Reality: The Spirit is always praying for us Rom. 8. Do you ever feel like you don’t even know where to start praying? You don’t need to worry, because the Spirit is already praying for you! And not just the Spirit:

3 Reality: Jesus is always praying for us. Look at what Paul says in Rom. 8. Jesus is constantly interceding for us, which is also brought up in Heb. 7.

-Because of these 3 realities, prayer isn’t something we begin or end, it’s us entering into something that is taking place 24/7 regardless of what we do. We enter into what the Spirit and the Son are constantly doing on our behalf. Yet we still have the responsibility to come before God.

-I shared this quote as I came back from sabbatical, but it’s still been ringing around in my head since then (from Kyle Strobel) that comes because of the previous truths.

-In prayer we come as we are. God already knows it, why do we pretend that we can keep things hidden from Him?

-This gets to our “wandering minds” in prayer, too. What if, in prayer, as we draw near to God, the idols of our hearts begin to come to the surface? Like as metal is dropped in a forge, the impurities are literally burned out, as our hearts approach the completely holy one, our impurities start to bubble to the surface. Friends, instead of being a distraction from praying, those things may be the very things God is calling you to pray for! We’ll get there in a couple weeks.

  • A Proposal for this week, here’s my proposal for us.

-But we need somewhere to start. And I would argue that we have an entire book of the Bible that was used as the prayerbook for Jesus, that He taught His disciples to use and pray, and has benefited countless Christians throughout history.

-I am indebted to Donald Whitney for helping me understand this approach to both praying and reading the Bible. AND I’ve got a number of extra copies of this book, so first come first serve for whoever wants it!

-Martin Luther loved the Psalms so much he described it as a “little Bible.”

-The reason we know Jesus used the Psalms is because Jews have been using it as their prayerbook for centuries, and Jesus quoted from a Psalm while He was hanging on the cross, AND he used the Psalms to point to His divinity, AND His disciples quoted from the Psalms to share how Jesus fulfilled the OT, AND we have an entire book of the NT that one scholar has described as a sermon on Psalm 110.

-First, what is probably the most quoted verse in the NT: Psalm 110:1

-Jesus was interrogated by many of the religious leaders of His day on a regular basis. They had all the rules and all the history, and Jesus didn’t fit in their boxes! So Jesus goes on the offensive, and asks them whose son the Messiah is, so they reply (obviously…) David’s. But if that’s true, why does David call Him “Lord” in this Psalm? What comes out when Jesus is confronted is the Psalms.

-And His first disciples followed in His footsteps. During Pentecost in Acts 2, when the Spirit descends on the disciples and they begin telling the world in Jerusalem about what Jesus has done, Peter stands up and guess what he quotes from? This Psalm!

-And not just the early disciples, some scholars believe that the book of Hebrews is a sermon walking through this Psalm. Every time someone in the NT refers to Jesus sitting at the Father’s right hand (it’s all over!) it’s referencing this Psalm.

-The second reason we can see the Psalms being Jesus’s prayerbook is because of what He says on the cross. One of the last phrases he cries out (Hebrew, to Aramaic, to Greek, to English), is asking a question to God. But He’s quoting from a Psalm in the OT, specifically Psalm 22. We most likely don’t have every word that Jesus said from the cross (this was a multi-hour event), it’s feasible Matthew just references the first verse to signify that Jesus was praying this whole Psalm as His last prayer on the cross.

 -And listen to some of these descriptions from this Psalm: 

-Friends, this was written 1000 years before Jesus came! Crucifixion hadn’t even been invented yet, and here David (under the inspiration of the HS), is talking about the kind of death Jesus experienced. I don’t know about you, but that comforts me! Jesus, in His humanity, experiencing the weight, the burden of all of our sins (and not just ours, the sins of the WHOLE world), was able to use God’s Word as a comfort, it gave Him the words to say as He experienced the heaviness and burden of the sins of the world.

-So if Jesus can use the Psalms as His guide for prayer, maybe we should too, right?

-Now I want to get at something right off the bat – using other people’s words to pray. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but when the elders pray, they’ve written out their prayers ahead of time and then they read them to us. When we first started having them pray, there were some elders that didn’t like that I asked them to write them out, and there were some people in the congregation that were hesitant about seeing the elders writing out their prayers. If you’ve ever heard someone get up to pray that hasn’t written anything down, isn’t it distracting to hear them say “just” over and over again? “God we just want to thank you, we’re just so blessed, we just want to confess our sins…” Many times, there’s a pointless repetition to those prayers! 

-Once again, we need to have an understanding of a theological truth to know what’s taking place here. Heb. 13:8 tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” So we can say that GOD never changes (that’s worth praising God over, and something we can barely understand because we ALWAYS change!). If God never changes, then why would we think that He’s more present if my preparation takes place in the moment on Sunday morning instead of being present if my preparation takes place days before? 

-I experienced this when I was a music pastor. I would schedule out the services a month ahead of where we were, so people could both know they were on the team that week and know which songs they had to know. And I was accused of squelching the Holy Spirit because I wasn’t spontaneous enough. So I walked people through the reality that God doesn’t change, the Holy Spirit is JUST as active in my preparation before as He is in the moment. BUT we plan everything in pencil, because God can do whatever He wants. And honestly, what I’ve found is those who push for less structure just don’t want to put the work in ahead of time!

-What we’re doing when we use someone else’s words (God’s and humans) is helping to guide our thoughts and prayers, and it turns our prayers into a conversation with the one true and living God because if we use God’s Word, it begins with what He’s said and revealed, and then moves to our response.

-I worked for a pastor who got really into what he called “listening prayer” where you ask God to speak to you and then sit silently while you wait for Him to give you an impression or a word for the moment you’re in. Now, I completely believe that God can and does work in the present moment, but it comes across as denying that God has spoken to us THROUGH HIS WORD! 

-This isn’t sitting silently and waiting, this is letting God set the agenda for your prayer time, and I think the Psalms is a great place to do it because the Psalms really cover the whole human experience. High highs, low lows, and everything in between.

-Let’s think of how this would work:

–Psalm 23 is one of the best-known Psalms, worth memorizing and meditating if you haven’t memorized it (even if you have it memorized in the KJV!).

-The first line: The Lord is my shepherd. Have you ever thanked God that He is a good shepherd who is leading and guiding us as His sheep? Honestly, this line could be the spark to spend hours thanking God! Maybe you think of the under shepherds God has appointed in our church (the elders and pastors) But pray whatever comes to mind when you hear that line, and then go onto the next one.

-I have what I need. Well, this makes me think of the fact that I’m getting kind of hungry, but I’ve never been truly hungry. I have enough food in my house to let me eat for a LONG time without truly starving (despite what my kids think!) And maybe you then think of some of the kids you sponsor across the world who do struggle with food.

-He lets me lie down. And you remember that you need to schedule that vacation you talked to your spouse about! But you have the opportunity to ask God to be in this time of rest and recovery.

-And on and on you can go! I think the Psalms are the easiest, but you can do this with any passage of Scripture! 

-150 Psalms, most days have at least 30 days, so 2 options. Day x5, start there and work back 5. Or take the day, jump ahead 30, another 30, another 30. 

-What happens when the Bible inspires and guides our prayers?

  • The Outcome

-God gets to speak to us on His terms, we don’t come up with an agenda that God has to answer.

-Many times, there’s a verse or 2 that really stand out that you’re able to use to meditate on throughout the day. So you get a 2 for 1 special here, where you’re praying the Bible, AND you’re memorizing the Bible!

-So your assignment this week is to pick a Psalm each day and use it as a template for your prayer for that day.

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by mikethestrand on January 4, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 4, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/01/04/the-prayerbook-of-jesus-sermon-manuscrip/

Prince of Peace – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re back with my Christmas beefs. If this is your first Sunday, go back and listen to my previous sermons, but what I’ve complained about so far is: real Christmas trees that drop needles everywhere, flimsy ornaments that are given to kids but weren’t created with any kids in mind, Christmas songs that are either nonsensical or weren’t mean to be Christmas songs. This week, my Christmas issue is Christmas movies (and just so we’re all on the same page, Die Hard is absolutely a Christmas movie!). But if you think about all the Christmas movies, they’re all centered on some bad guy who has to learn the “Christmas spirit” (whatever that is). You’ve got Scrooge who needed to learn to be generous and care about others, you’ve got Buddy the elf’s dad who only hired angry elves, you’ve got the bully in The Christmas Story, or the movie that is literally named after the bad guy: how the Grinch stole Christmas. All these movies need some level of tension in them, some lesson that needs to be learned, otherwise they don’t seem to sell! Even the Christmas story itself has a bad guy: Herod, with his plot to kill all the boys under 2 years old.

-Today we’re going to look at Jesus being the Prince of Peace, and I bring up all those other stories because I tend feel like peace and Christmas don’t belong in the same sentence. There tends to be family tension that we feel that brings a level of apprehension and uncertainty, there’s the pressure of getting just the right gift for everyone on your list, the pressure of decorating your house in just the right way. Or maybe it’s trying to keep up with your neighbor’s decorations. I love the commercial that’s played this year that shows one incredible house, then it shows the neighbor whose lights spell out “ditto.”

-Church, did you know that because of Jesus taking on flesh (called the incarnation) peace is possible? Now, we have to talk about what that peace means, and what it looks like! But it’s no coincidence that Jesus is called the prince of peace.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

  1. What is Peace?

-I realize this is a little before my time but think of some of the ways our cultural imaginations have been shaped around peace. There’s the peace sign that my parents grew up using, John Lennon wrote the song Happy Xmas does anyone remember the rest of the name? (War is Over) Where they sing “War is over if you want it.” Did these children of the era of peace summarize it?

-Or maybe I should (again, and I know I’m not the only one who does this) ask google what peace is. According to the google, it’s freedom from disturbance, or a time without war. But is that what Isaiah is getting at when he describes Jesus as the prince of peace?

-I thought I’d also go a step further, and instead of just looking at the AI summary, look at some of the links Google found (anyone remember when Google just compiled results for you instead of summarizing them for you? Anything to make our lives easier!) Link to United Nations. Calm, tranquility, absence of disturbance. Is that the goal of Jesus coming to earth? To prevent wars? On the one hand, yes! One of the biggest ironies of the book of Revelation is we view it as a bloody spectacle, of a big war. But there’s no war there. The battle lines draw up, and then they’re defeated without a fight, but with the Words that come from the mouth of Jesus. That’s what it’s talking about when it says there’s a sword coming out of His mouth (Rev. 19:15). 

-So I thought I’d look at some Bible resources. The Hebrew word Isaiah uses is shalom, which has a more complete sense than the way we use our word peace. One commentary defines it this way:

-Wholeness, completeness, not lacking in anything. Do you know how when you feel like you’re missing out on things, or all your friends are always on vacation and you’re stuck where the cold hurts your face in MN. The biblical idea of peace is the antithesis of that. And look how it goes on: harmony across a wide assortment of relationships: God, the world (creation), others, and even yourself!

-If you attended the “Strands of Unity” class last week, this should sound familiar to you! We talked about how to reach out to our community, and it has to begin with the understanding that there are multiple forms of poverty.

-This is the way the world worked when God created it (Gen. 1-2). Everything worked, there was no conflict or turmoil, every relationship operating as it’s supposed to operate. Plants and animals coexisting (think about that, no worries about poisonous animals, no season allergies)

-The hard part is, this is the world we live in today: EVERYTHING is broken, everything is in conflict and turmoil. And this one talks about the different ways people can be living in poverty. But this isn’t what Jesus wants from us.

-We’ve just been reading from Isaiah 9 this month, but there’s some other passages I want to point your attention to now that get at what it means for Jesus to be the Prince of Peace. 

-The first comes earlier in Isaiah, and look at how God describes what the outcome of His rule will be. He begins the chapter saying the nations of the world will stream in to seek the face of the Lord and ask how to better follow in His ways. Then He says: 

-So Jesus coming means people won’t have any use for weapons of war anymore. Instead of looking to fight each other, they’ll turn their attention to creating food, and even the training of fighting will be done! People will be so at ease they won’t even feel like they have to prepare for any “what if” scenarios. It’s fascinating to me, I asked some guys to read a book that was written around 330 AD (yes, almost 1700 years ago!) with me this year that is titled “On the Incarnation” written by Athanasius, one of the most influential early church fathers, whose work paved the way for the understanding of Jesus being fully God and fully man, and he does a masterful job of weaving Scripture and contemporary (to him!) philosophy. But he quotes from this passage in his book! Where he says: 

-Then he talks about “the barbarians” (those who don’t know Christ). He’s saying that this prophecy can take place even now! But we’ll get there. 

-The next one comes after our passage, it’s another Messianic prophecy that you’ve probably heard read at church before! I’m going to read starting in vs. 1, and then we’ll focus on just a couple verses that paint a picture of shalom, of the kind of peace that God intends for His people.

-Notice that the predator will lie down with the prey, the animals will allow themselves to be led by children. The lion will become a vegetarian.

-Even children won’t need the same kind of training we have to do for our kids. Cara has told me stories of her growing up in Kenya and needing to keep an eye out for the mambas that would make homes in the trees or bushes outside their house. When I asked her about it this week, she said the worst was when a mamba decided to turn her favorite fruit tree into its’ home! Cara wasn’t living in the realities of this verse!

-Lastly, see the way God brings about this peace: it’s connected to the knowledge of the Lord. Just like peace is more than just the absence of conflict, here the knowledge that God’s talking about is more than just mental, it’s living out the truths that you ascribe to.

-These pictures are what God’s peace is meant to bring, not just a lack of conflict, but true unity. Some people translate this idea as wholeness or completeness, and in every area of life!

-We all know that Jesus focuses on the arrival of Jesus, of His coming to earth, taking on flesh. So if that’s the goal, how does Jesus provide peace? 

  • How Does Jesus Provide Peace? 

-To answer that, I want to read from Col. 2 (pg. 1044), we’ll start in the middle before we get to the implications of how to live a peaceful life. Remember what I said previously about everyone living in some kind of poverty? Paul goes a step further here.

-When you were dead. What can a dead person do? Nothing! But here, Paul is saying that when we were dead in our sins, God made us alive with Jesus and forgave us for all our sins. Now, can we sit in that reality for a minute? When we were dead, God made us alive with Jesus. I sometimes worry that we approach our faith as if we were somehow worthy or special enough to get God’s attention, and the reality is none of us could ever come anywhere close to approaching God in our own power and strength. Dead people can’t even hold themselves up, much less be able to reach God by themselves! I love a line from the old hymn “Rock of Ages” “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”

-But notice that there’s something more than just forgiveness that’s offered at the cross. It goes on to say that he erased the certificate of debt. There’s a whole host of discussion and debate about what this debt is, who the debt is to, and how it was paid, if you want to talk about that feel free to reach out to me and we can grab coffee.

-But there is some kind of debt owed because of sin, some payment needs to be made in order to even out the scales. Jesus, through his death and resurrection paid the penalty completely. Suddenly death itself had been defeated, sin no longer has power, Jesus has triumphed over Satan so we don’t need to continue trying to reach out to God, He has reached out to us. I love the way Augustine (4thcentury church father) talked about this. Before the Fall, humanity was able to sin or not sin. After the Fall, humans were only able to sin. Through Jesus, humans are back to being able to sin or not to sin. Finally, someday when Jesus returns, humans who are alive with Christ will only be able to not sin, all because Jesus erased this debt that we owed.

-But it wasn’t just for us, look at what else He did: disarmed the rulers and authorities. I haven’t been able to work LOTR into my sermons in a while, but this is the perfect time to bring in another one of my favorite fantasy series: Chronicles of Narnia. After Aslan (main character, the Jesus figure), is killed and resurrected, he breaks the stone in half. And when asked why here’s how he answers:

-Friends, Satan has been defeated! Paul says that he has been disgraced by what Jesus did. What looked like defeat, what appeared to be the end was just the beginning of a brand new order in the world brought about by God taking death on Himself. Satan didn’t understand the way the world works, since just like the witch in Narania, his knowledge only goes back to creation, not before. God’s good plans for the world involved sending Jesus to the world, and Satan thought it was his opportunity to get destroy God’s plan once and for all! But instead of ruining God’s plan, he fulfilled it and brought his own destruction.

-Because of that, we have the opportunity to be alive, to live “in real life,” but it involves a complete transformation of the way we live, which is what Paul goes on to talk about. You ready to look at that?

  • How Should We Live as Ministers of Peace?

-Paul gives us 3 responses we’re supposed to have as people who are marked by peace: living (or abiding) in Christ, overflowing with gratitude, and dying to yourself. All of them could fit under the “In Christ” idea. And all of this is supposed to be descriptive of the way we engage with each other in the church.

-The first reality comes in vs. 6-7. If you have been saved, there is a new trajectory for your life. If God has raised you from the dead, there’s some things you’re supposed to pursue. Notice the action words Paul uses: walk, rooted, built up, established. So we have a path we’re supposed to follow, a foundation we’re supposed to build on, and it’s established, or prepared for us. 

-But notice the means that God uses this to take place: in Him, twice, three times if you include the means by which we’re in him: in the faith. The miracle of the incarnation is that Jesus took on flesh (like us), to allow us to become like Him. In another one of his most popular books, Mere Christianity, Lewis says it this way:

-We talked about this last week, the fact that God is our Father means we have a family, a new source of identity. This new family of God gives us a new identity, a new purpose, a new direction to our lives, and provides us with others who are commanded to love and care for us, but notice that it starts with being in Christ.

-Finally, notice the outcome of being in Jesus: overflowing with gratitude. I know the joke: you have the spiritual gift of sarcasm. And even if you won’t admit it, I know some of you have the gift of complaining! But that’s not what the Bible calls us to. Here we see that we’re supposed to be overflowing with gratitude! If God has changed you, your natural instinct should be to give thanks. I know we already passed Thanksgiving, but friends every day is a new opportunity for us to give thanks to God for all his wonderful gifts!

-Paul goes on to start talking about the way we die to ourselves: don’t follow after the things of this world, the things that don’t come from Christ. You may have something in mind like I had when I was growing up: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t go with girls who do! That’s not what’s being talked about here (although the advice itself isn’t bad, but we’ll get there later). 

-Paul’s asking us to look at the source of where ideas are coming from. And what’s difficult today is so many ideas that we take for granted are founded in Christianity. Things like equal rights for all people, fair treatment of workers, concern for the poor and the marginalized. None of that comes about apart from Jesus! And church, the world is starting to realize that! If you haven’t, look up the book Dominionby Tom Holland, he traces the impact of Christianity to the entire world.

-And Paul tells us how this comes about: circumcision of the flesh, that is the death of Christ, when He was cut off from the land of the living. And we follow along with that when we are baptized, it’s a way of us identifying with Jesus, reenacting what He did on our behalf. Because we have died and been raised WITH Christ:

-We don’t need to let anyone look down on us for what we eat or drink, for the things we celebrate, for our spiritual practices. Those things were given to God’s people in the Old Testament, but now that Jesus has come we have the Holy Spirit living in us. We take Jesus with us everywhere we go, there’s the potential for us to bring peace to the world!

-Similarly in the next section, even legalism isn’t what we’re called to pursue. It would be easier if it was, if we could just have a clear demarcation between what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not allowed to do. This is some of where our fights and tensions come from! We don’t extend grace to people who may struggle with different issues than we do. 

-Reputation for wisdom, false humility – these have NO value in crucifying our fleshly desires, because it’s not a matter of what we do externally (up to a point, you can sin externally), but the focus God wants for us is in here. If our hearts are right with God, He’ll allow us to be reconciled to each other, AND from there we can be reconciled the world. 

-But it takes effort that starts from being rooted in Christ, it comes from walking along the well-worn path that follows after Him, and it comes from loving and caring for others even more than we love and care for ourselves.

-If you feel a lack of peace in the world today, it may be because you haven’t truly put your faith in the Prince of Peace. Like the Grinch, your heart might need to grow even more than 3x its size, but it starts when you admit that you can’t do it yourself and put your faith and trust in Jesus.

-And if you have put your faith in Him, maybe there are areas where there’s a lack of peace in your life. Are there things you need to die to in order to have that peace in your life? Or maybe you need to work on being more grateful. At the very least, you can give thanks to God for breath in your lungs, for a church family, and for a Savior who loves you and welcomes you in as children.

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by mikethestrand on December 21, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 21, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/12/21/prince-of-peace-sermon-manuscript/

Everlasting Father – Sermon Manuscript

-Christmas beef: we’ve done real trees, we’ve done flimsy ornaments. This week it’s Christmas songs. Did you know not all the songs we sing during the Christmas season were written to be Christmas songs? Joy to the World wasn’t written to be sung at Christmas. It’s a song about the incarnation, the reality that Jesus became a man, and that’s something that we need to celebrate all the time. 

-And some songs that WERE written for Christmas just make no sense! One of my personal favorites (that actually has a message that I think is great) is ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ I’ve been in the room for 4 deliveries, and I can guarantee that the last thing Mary would want in the room with her after delivery was a drummer boy, especially a “little” drummer boy! If you’re wondering why I still like that song, the message of it is beautiful. A little boy sees Jesus, has nothing to give Him, so he uses the one thing he has to worship Jesus, and it says “I played my best for Him.” And just so we’re all on the same page, the For King & Country version is the best version of this song! 

-When I was growing up, my family would sing Christmas carols each year, but specifically on Christmas Eve before we opened any presents, we had our own Christmas program. One year during the singing, my dad decided to create his own rendition of the song: Hark the Harold Saastad’s sing. It was only funny to us, because my grandpa’s name was Harold Saastad. But now I can’t sing that song anymore without hearing my dad’s voice booming about my grandpa. 

-There’s something fascinating to me about this week’s idea about God being our everlasting father, actually there’s a couple things. The first is the reality that this means God has a family. By definition, a father requires children! That IS the requirement to be a father!

-But the second piece comes from a podcast I listened to a couple years ago that asked a question about the Bible that really stood out to me. The podcast host asked the question: can you think of any good examples of a father in the Bible? Since then, I’ve asked this question to more people than I can keep track of, and the only one I’ve heard has been Joseph, the father of Jesus. But that’s more of an argument from silence than explicit things in the Bible. And I wonder if what we’re supposed to take from that is that no dad, no matter how good they were, will be able to provide exactly what every kid needs, which means all of us are going to be looking for the perfect father figure until we understand that only God can be that for us, can meet us exactly where we’re at, know us perfectly, and still love us unconditionally exactly as God created us to be!

-Let’s read Isaiah 9 again, and then we’ll talk about what I just said.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

-We’ve worked our way through 3 of these names so far. Wonderful Counselor is what God provides through us by indwelling us with the Holy Spirit (who’s referred to as a counselor), last week we say that the Mighty God has been working out His plans in human history to accomplish His purposes. I think all 4 of these names are connected to each other, they build on each other, and it helps us to live as humans in the world as God designed us to live (hence IRL). One of the things we need to flourish is a family. Now, please don’t jump to viewing this through the lens of your nuclear family, when I talk about this I’m referring to something else, something that takes place spiritually, outside of our control. We talked about this pretty regularly this Fall as we worked our way through 1 Timothy. God’s plan for the church is to treat each other like a family! To be devoted to each other, to sacrificially care for each other, to come alongside each other and encourage each other to grow closer to Jesus each day. As we think about God being our everlasting Father, I’m going to work to answer 3 questions that are implications of this reality: what is a family, what is God’s family, and how does God’s family behave?

  1. What is a Family?

-Is it those who live in close proximity to you? Is it those that are related to you through blood? So siblings, cousins, aunts & uncles. Is it 2 parents with 1.9 kids living in a house with a dog and a white picket fence? For some of you, maybe all you think of when you hear family is: trauma or tension! I thought it would be helpful to ask all knowing Google, and here’s what I got, 3 different options. I think we jump to the 1 definition anytime we hear the word, which I would argue starts to affect our view of the church, too.

-Another piece that I think is true is that in many cases the church assumes the nuclear family as the norm, and has inadvertently created an idol of the nuclear family, which has been harmful to the health of the church (broadly, not just South Suburban). I have 2 primary problems with this:

-1 is I think we misunderstand the priority of God’s family. The church (which is just another way of saying God’s family, I’ll use those terms interchangeably throughout this message), is meant to be a place where multiple nuclear families commit to helping each other flourish on this side of eternity, we’ll get there under the next question.

-My 2 problem is it either ignores or alienates anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of a nuclear family. We live in a broken and messy world, which means there’s going to be people who have suffered through divorce, or have never been married, or maybe people that have been married and have been unable to have kids. And friends, I can name people in our church family right now who fit each one of those categories. Is there a place here for them? Because what Jesus does is level the playing field for all to come find healing and A FAMILY in His body. I heard a single speaker onetime at a conference talk about singleness in the church, and the church where he was a member was hosting “Supper for Six” groups (assuming that it would be for couples). He went up to the table to sign up and asked if there was room for a “Supper for 5” or a “Supper for 7” and he got blank stares in response! 

-I actually experienced this when I first started in ministry! I was single (which meant all the grandma’s tried setting me up with their granddaughters, that’s a story for a different day!), but when I arrived at the church the way the Lead Pastor described their church was a “Family-focused” church. What did that communicate to the singles (like me!)? 

-Meeting where someone proposed doing a “family night” on Fridays for the whole church instead of the typical Wednesday nights, even saying “I thought this was supposed to be a family focused church, but it doesn’t feel like it’s focusing on my family!” I work here, and I don’t want to come to that! There’s a tendency for us to attempt to force the church to fit our family instead of working to apply our family to our church. I think we’ve flipped the ordering of what God intended us to be! I’m all for a “family focused” church, if it’s the church family!

  • What is God’s Family? (Galatians 4)

-So let’s talk about that! What is God’s family? How should we define it? I want to start with a couple things Jesus said, because I believe he laid the foundation for what comes up in Galatians, and for us I think we read it as pretty ordinary, but this was revolutionary in the 1st century! In the 1st century, family relationships were literally everything! We miss it because we view the world as a meritocracy: you have to “earn” whatever comes your way (which has a different set of problems!)

-One brief example. In the middle of the moment where Jesus asks Peter who people say He is and then turns to Peter and says “What about you?” Jesus calls him by his dad’s name (growing up this was transliterated to “Simon bar Jonah” and I was always confused about why Jesus called him a bar!). The translation we use fixes that confusion, what Jesus is doing is identifying Simon/Peter by his dad’s name. But it went beyond just a name, if your dad was a fisherman, that meant you were a fisherman. If your dad was a blacksmith, that meant you were a blacksmith. The individual was completely lost in the community. Make sense?

-The first example of Jesus shifting the focus of this communal from the nuclear family comes during His preaching ministry. This story is in a few of the Gospels, I’ll use Mark’s because I just used Matthew! And Mark adds a detail where he says why his family came to him: Mark 3:21 “When his family heard this, they set out to restrain him, because they said, “He’s out of his mind.”” Shortly after that story, Mark picks it up with Jesus being so surrounded by people that his family can’t reach Him.

-Word traveled through the crowd up to Jesus that his mother, brothers, and sisters were outside trying to meet with Him. That’s all well and good! You’d think Jesus would respond, particularly because of how family oriented this culture was supposed to be! And there’s even another story where we see how much Jesus cared about his family! So before we finish this part of Mark:

-One of Jesus’s last acts before He dies is making sure that His mother will be provided for after He’s gone. Around Jesus while He’s hanging on the cross is a group of Mary’s: his mother, wife, and Magdalene. Most scholars believe the disciple He loved refers to John (whom this book is named after), He tells Mary that she should view John as her new son, and John should view Mary as his mother, and the text tells us that’s exactly what happened. So we see that Jesus did care about His nuclear family, He didn’t just leave His mother to figure things out on her own! So keep that in mind as we go back to Mark.

-Remember that Jesus’s mother and siblings were trying to talk to Him, and look how he replies. He intentionally shifts the focus of family from biological family to: whoever does the will of God. That means Jesus is changing our allegiances from our biological family to the family of God, which means that just like in our biological families, in our church families we don’t get to pick who’s in! God does! We’re just called to love them like family!

-With that foundation from Jesus, now let’s look at Galatians 4.

-The right time, this gets to what we looked at last week, God is the author of history, which means He determines the times and places of our lives. The passing of time is in His hands, if He isn’t in complete control then he would stop being God. That includes the time that Jesus was sent to earth. Have you ever thought about all the promises that Jesus perfectly fulfilled? From the right lineage, from the right towns. Even the way God used a census from a pagan Roman, who wanted to make sure he was taxing the people enough, that little decision led to Jesus being born in Bethlehem. You can’t make up a story like this! At just the right time, God sent Jesus. 

-Born of a woman. Friends, this is VERY important! This means that Jesus was completely human, he HAD to be. In a letter written in the 4th century, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Archbishop of Constantinople) defended the incarnation of Jesus in a letter where he said: This is another way of saying what Heb. 2:17 says, that Jesus became like us in every way, except sin. If there was any part of human that Jesus was not, that part wouldn’t be included in salvation. But because Jesus was fully, completely human He is able to completely redeem us!

-Because He came as a human, that also means he was under the law, the rules that God gave for His people to represent Him to the world. But where those laws were a prison for everyone else, for Jesus it led to complete freedom because He was able to perfectly obey every single one of those rules! (active obedience)

-And the outcome of that is redemption and adoption. Most translations, even the ones that work really hard to be incredibly gender inclusive still keep the word sons here, because it’s connected to a 1st century tradition that an inheritance is only passed to sons. What Paul is saying is that through Jesus’s work, all of us are now worthy of receiving a heavenly inheritance, we’re all the favored children of God!

-So in response, we cry out to God as “Abba, Father” an affection way of talking about your dear dad who you know loves and cares for you. And do you see how we’re enabled to cry out to God? Through the Spirit who lives in us. Friends, this is the message of the gospel, the message of Christmas

-And that gospel is what unites us together, what makes us a family! The moment that we’re saved, we go from being strangers to family. And think about what that means. Even if we have the worst family in the world, even if we’ve been completely abandoned, we have a new family that is as everlasting as our Father. We have a family that we’re going to be spend eternity with! This all gets us to the last question:

  • How Does God’s Family Behave? (Matthew 6)

-The appropriate behavior begins with how we approach God, that has to be the starting point for everything we do. I saw a tweet from Tim Keller over 10 years ago now where he said this:

-Can you picture God that way? Maybe I should say DO you picture God that way? God has invited us to not only call Him Father, but to approach Him with everything we have, with anything we need, at all times! He never sleeps, He’s never grumpy, He’s never too busy, He’s always and perfectly present to every single one of His children.

-Not only is God available, but J.I. Packer says this may be at the heart of Christianity. If we understand God as our Father it changes everything else about our lives. It means we are accepted as His children, and there’s no takebacks! It means what He calls us to do and be come from being His children, from being called to represent Him, to image Him to the rest of the creation.

-But what stood out to me as I was preparing this week is how much Jesus talks about our Father in the Sermon on the Mount. Look at how pervasive this is:

-First is we’re supposed to shine before others so they see our Father (just like kids are images of their biological fathers)

-We are supposed to live differently than the world, we’re supposed to love everyone, even our enemies! Jesus says that’s how we demonstrate that we’re children of God. And then He goes even further and says we’re supposed to act just like our heavenly Father: perfect. No pressure, but that’s the standard that we’re supposed to be aiming for. How are you doing at that? 

-Then He tells us that we need to ensure that our motives are right, that we’re not acting to impress people, because our Father will only reward those who are faithfully following after Him, which also affects the way we’re supposed to pray. Don’t pray to try to impress others, pray without worrying about others, knowing that God knows everything we need even before we ask Him. Which is also how we’re supposed to practice our spiritual disciplines: don’t do them to try to impress others, do them to draw nearer to God! 

-Same thing with worry: God provides for the birds of the air, and He cares even more for us as His children! Which means we’re supposed to worry ourselves with pursuing the kingdom of God, that is living in such a way that people can see we’re citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth.

-And friends, the way God often intends to provide for us is through the church.

–Rom. 12:10 CSB: “Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another.” GRK: Show familial affection to each other (be devoted), prefer the honor of another. What are your preferences? What are the things you need to die to in order to be devoted to your brother or sister in the church? What might God be calling you to give up for the sake of someone else? 

-This isn’t easy, just like being involved in a biological family isn’t easy! There’s things you need to give up or let go of so that someone else can be honored and cared for in ways that maybe only you could provide. 

-One of the easiest examples is with music, and I can say that now because I’m not a worship pastor anymore! People used to think I was being self-serving when I’d say this! Friends: music isn’t for you to get some emotional “high” each week, we’re actually commanded to sing to each other! The early church took this idea literally, and each person was expected to sing some kind of encouraging song each week. What if, instead of only looking for the songs I like, we came to church looking for ways to encourage our brothers and sisters, so even a song I don’t like is an opportunity for me to encourage the person sitting next to me?

-One of the areas that I don’t think receives enough attention in churches is generational differences. I think this is because people tend to gravitate towards those who are similar to them: their own age. It’s more work to spend time with someone who views the world differently than you, but it’s also worth it. Because that’s what God has called us to pursue: a family comprised of people from all ages AND nations. It takes work to be this family, just like it takes work to be a healthy family. 

-Story from When the Church was a Family

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by mikethestrand on December 14, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 14, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/12/14/everlasting-father-sermon-manuscript/

Mighty God – Sermon Manuscript

-Christmas beef: why are ornaments so flimsy? They know kids are going to be grabbing them, throwing them around, why do they use the most fragile pieces? We’ve already had some ornaments break because we have 2 2-year-olds who think the tree is their new toy! Our other kids are already starting to realize that these ornaments tell a story. My grandma got all her grandkids a new ornament every year, so all my ornaments have a history to them. My parents have started doing the same thing with my kids, each ornament they pull out their reminded of an event that happened that year. 

-All of us have a history, memories that can be triggered by different things, right? The one that always gets me is the corner of MOA that has Cinnabon. I loved MOA when I was in HS (much less fondness as an adult), but that corner that smells like cinnamon gets me every time I walk by! 

-God created us as storied creatures. We use stories to make sense of the world, and to make sense of our lives. We define ourselves by the stories we tell. And God is the same way.

-A few years ago, I came across a minimalist drawing of the various relationships we’ll have over our lives. I’m not saying they’re all the most appropriate (I think this was published in the New York Times), but it’s an interesting way to think about our various relationships throughout our lives, isn’t it? And each one of these tells a story. We’re going to read Isaiah 9 again, and this week we’re focusing on the second name: Mighty God. But as I read it, I want you to think about the story it’s telling.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

  1. What is Your Story?

-We tend to focus on ourselves and our own lives and either neglect or ignore the lives that come before us. We do this as a country, and as individuals. There’s a tension here, because historically people were only connected to their family which means the individual was lost in the communal. But our culture has swung to the complete opposite of that, to the point that we have no room for anything communal! No one will commit to anything, no one will look out for anyone else, and no one else can tell anyone else what to do. The fact that we have something called FOMO should tell us everything we need to know about our culture! 

-But the reality is we’re all products of our culture and our upbringing. We all came from somewhere (and someone) which affects all of us. And part of the problem with our world today is that people don’t take the time to know themselves, which means they also can’t truly get to know anyone else because they haven’t taken the time to know how God created them. AND if we don’t know the way God created us, we’re always going to be scared that someone will expose us as a fraud. It’s no wonder people church hop, and job hop, and house hop, it means no one can ever truly get to know the real you.

-But friends, the only way to find healing, the only way to have hope in the world, the only way to be truly loved is by opening yourself up to others. To know your story and be willing to share it with others so they can care for you. And what’s scary about digging into yourself is you’re messed up and broken. All of us have temptations and impulses that we wish weren’t a part of our lives! One of the best examples of someone who tried digging into his life is in a guy named Augustine, who lived in the 4th century. Augustine may be the most influential theologian to live after the Apostle Paul. Augustine was an African who lived a life seeking nothing but pleasure until God saved Him, and one of his seminal works is titled “Confessions” which is Augustine processing his life and God’s work in His life. It’s an interesting look at the intersection of theology and testimony.

-Read a 13-point summary of the book this week that was really helpful, and it just reminded me that people who weren’t distracted by technology had time to think and process the things of the Lord in ways that we never will! You can find a LINK to the summary in my sermon manuscript online. Listen to how Augustine describes his life story.

-The staff here read a book over the past year that talked about how we can think and process our stories, how we can look at our family of origin and see some of the ways that continues shaping us today. The author has this fun line that has stuck with me: Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa’s still in your bones! We can’t escape our histories, what we can do is bring it to the feet of Jesus and ask Him to help us process our history in healthy ways! More to come on this in the future!

  • What is God’s Story?

-It begins with knowing God’s story! There is a surprising amount of ignorance around the Bible today! Most people don’t even know the basic storyline, what it focuses on, the way it talks about history. Could you? I love the way Stephen, the first martyr in the church, is able to walk through the whole OT and talk about how it points to Jesus. He starts with Abraham, goes to Joseph and the patriarchs, then to Moses leading Israel into the promised land, then to the tabernacle and temple and ends with a focus on Jesus, the Righteous One, which leads to his death.

-If we look at Isaiah 9, we see a story! Referring to the past, that this day will be different. Looking to the future where a light will come. The promise of a coming kingdom where justice and righteousness will rule.  

-If you were asked to summarize the entire Bible, how would you do it? There’s multiple proposals for this, and multiple ways that could describe it. One easy way is: creation, fall, redemption, transformation, and consummation. Another way I’ve seen is tracing the serpentine theme through Scripture – garden, Pharoah has a serpent on his headdress, Goliath is described like a snake with his armor, Jesus calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers, in Revelation the enemy is described as a giant snake (dragon). The one I think summarizes the storyline the best, however, is the idea of God’s kingdom. Coincidentally, the one thing that I would argue is missing from our denomination’s SOF is any reference to the kingdom. There’s reasons for it that I don’t have time to get into here, so if you’re interested in talking about that, let me know! 

-How should we define God’s kingdom? Graeme Goldsworthy Gospel and Kingdom 53-4. The place/sphere that this takes place starts globally (tasked to spread the garden out), then narrows in focus, before going all the way out again to encapsulate the entire world. But God’s plan has always been global (dare we say cosmic) in scope. And I think it’s helpful for us to remember the whole storyline of Scripture, because if we just take Jesus out of context we miss everything that He came to fulfill, which means we miss His entire mission and reason He came to earth. God’s Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts

  • The Pattern of the Kingdom

-The goal of the creation is rest. If you didn’t know, the chapter and verse markers aren’t inspired and weren’t part of the original writings. The creation account actually goes into Gen. 2, after God has created everything, it says He rested. We shouldn’t think of this as God being tired and needing a nap (like us), it means He doesn’t need to do any more creating. It’s done, it’s correct, everything is ordered as it should be. This tells us that this is the picture of how God intended to interact with His creation. He would be able to meet in perfect harmony with everything He had created, no Christmas complaining ever! So we see the pattern of the kingdom is like this:

  • The Perished Kingdom

-But we know that’s not the way it ends, that’s just the first 2 chapters, because Gen. 3 tells the story of what’s often referred to as the Fall. And look how it begins. Remember the way God’s rule was demonstrated in the garden? Through His Word. What does the serpent question? His Word! And look at how the relationship the people have with God is affected. Where they used to be together, knowing God and each other without any hindrance, now there’s a barrier. There’s something to hide, so God calls out asking where they are. In the perished kingdom, this is what God’s kingdom looks like:

  • The Promised Kingdom

-The story continues with increasing corruption in the world resulting in a flood (intentionally worded as the opposite of creation, a de-creation of the world). Yet out of this corruption, God is still faithful, still wants a relationship with His creation, so He reaches out to Abram (later called Abraham), calls him to leave everything he knows and go to a new land where God would be with him, and he would be a blessing to the entire world. What’s amazing about this is that even though sin had led to complete corruption in the world, the world receives nothing but grace from God. Even though they had betrayed the king, God continues loving and blessing His creation. Here the Kingdom of God looks like this:

  • The Partial Kingdom

-And once again, these people listen to the serpent and follow after their own ways. The rest of the first 5 books are the formation of this new nation of Abraham’s descendants. Exodus tells how God saved His people from slavery, led them into the wilderness (where he continued providing for them anytime they needed food or water), and the need to obey God’s law, which is revealed through the rest of the books! Remember Micah’s overview of Leviticus, and the distinction between clean and unclean, holy any unholy? There are specific ways that God’s people are allowed to approach Him, otherwise they’ll be killed by his perfect holiness. Here we see the partial kingdom looking like this: 

-A specific people group called out from all the nations of the world who are supposed to be an example to the world of what fidelity to the one true God looks like. But there’s still a separation because of sin, so God’s place is specifically located in the temple, and the only way to approach Him at the temple is through the elaborate sacrificial system. And notice how God’s rule is demonstrated: through the law and the king, who is supposed to serve as the example to the people of what God looks like. And the theme throughout this time period is: the nation is only as faithful as its’ king. As the king goes, so goes the nation. And they had some BAD kings leading to the land being split in 2: northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and eventually even those 2 kingdoms no longer existed because the people were taken off into exile, which is getting somewhat into the next era of God’s kingdom in human history: 

  • The Prophesied Kingdom

-God disciplines His people by sending them into exile. We often think of the prophesy coming through the prophets are future telling, but they do a whole lot more talking about events in their time where they plead with the people to repent, to trust God, and obey His plans for them. All the prophets focus on 2 themes: judgment and hope. Judgment for disobedience, and hope that God will be faithful to His promises to restore His people. The prophets also tell of a day in the future where God’s blessings will be given to all creation, where God’s original intent for perfect relationship with His creation with be realized, where everyone will desire to follow after God completely, obeying all His laws perfectly because they’ll be written on our hearts instead of stone tablets. God says my job will be redundant, I won’t need to tell you about God, because all of us will know Him perfectly! What a wonderful day that will be! Here’s what God’s kingdom looks like as a prophesied kingdom: 

-And then we turn the page into the NT, which covers 400 silent years, years that included the beginning of one of the most impactful civilizations in human history: the Roman empire. And a census during the Roman empire is what led to the Christ-child being born in Bethlehem, the land of His father David. But think of His arrival:

  • The Present Kingdom

-Jesus preaches that the kingdom is here! It has arrived IN HIM! All the promises of the past are answered and fulfilled in Him. All the previous things God used were pictures that pointed us to the fulfillment of them in Jesus. Therefore, the present kingdom looks like this: 

-Do you see how Jesus fulfills every single one of God’s promises? He completely changes everything! Jesus is the true and better Adam, He’s the true a better Israel, He’s the true and better tabernacle, He’s the true and better temple, He brings in the true and better covenant, and He alone offers us the rest we so desperately need. Where the world continually tells us we need to prove ourselves, Jesus tells us to find our rest IN HIM! Friends, this is the reality of the Christmas story, this is the reality of the gospel message, that because God became a man, we have hope to draw near to God once again. We can have a lasting relationship WITH HIM! This Kingdom has already begun, Jesus is already on His throne, the question is do you realize and recognize that?

  • The Proclaimed Kingdom

-After Jesus rises from the dead, a new era of human history began, what the NT calls “the last days.” The purpose of these last days is to share the reality of this kingdom with others. The Spirit is poured out on the disciples of Jesus, who immediately began sharing the story of what Jesus has accomplished with the nations who were in Jerusalem. Look at the way the disciples were thinking about this, though. They were still too narrow in their focus, only worried about themselves. And look what Jesus calls them: witnesses. They’re supposed to bear witness to this new kingdom, to proclaim it to others, and it’s supposed to take place across the world. This part of the kingdom looks like this: 

-Notice that the current kingdom is in the church, which is comprised of individuals who make up a body! God now dwells with us once again, and it’s all centered and focused on Jesus. But even this isn’t the final stage of God’s kingdom:

  • The Perfected Kingdom

-God is in the process of making everything new, of redeeming it to Himself, and it comes through the proclamation of His people, from every tribe and tongue and nation. There’s a day coming when sin won’t have any more power, where everything sad will come untrue, where God will completely heal everything. The idea of shalom, lasting eternal peace is what God calls it, where everything is properly ordered, in its’ rightful place. A day where we don’t need preaching anymore, because we’ll all know exactly what God wants from us, and where our work will no longer be thorns and thistles. This final part of the kingdom looks like this: 

-And if you want a picture of the whole storyline of Scripture, it looks like this: You can see it’s not a straight line! 

-But that’s not where we should end this story, because this leads to another question:

  • What Happens When Your Story Meets God’s Story?

-I think we often view Christianity as a self-actualization project instead of complete self-transformation. I love the way Bonhoeffer says it: when Christ calls someone, he calls them to die. The moment we’re saved we’re brought into union with Jesus Christ. Paul says it this way in Col. 3. If we think back to those relationship lines I shared at the beginning of the sermon, our lives would like this:

-We’re operating by ourselves, until we come to the reality that we’re a sinner in need of grace. Then God brings us into His story, and our lives become hidden in Christ. That doesn’t mean it’s all easy, and you can see there’s times where the lines aren’t as close as they could or should be, but our lives are meant to be completely changed. Our story, which used to be completely dependent on us to figure out, has a new purpose and direction to it because Jesus is now supposed to be the driving force behind everything we do. I think there’s a great picture of this in John 9. A man born blind is healed by Jesus, then interrogated by Pharisees, and he answers, “Whether or not he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I can see!” Friends, Jesus wants to take all the burdens and concerns of your story and bring healing to them. This is God’s plan for humanity – to know and follow Him serving under His rule and reign wherever we go. What’s crazy (to me) is the Mighty God’s plan now relies on broken people like you and me to be His witnesses, to share the story of what God has done in history and in our story with others. To tell them about the kingdom of God that will last forever, and to invite them to participate in God’s plan, which takes place here every week.

-It’s not super flashy, it’s not super impressive, Jesus describes it like a little yeast in a bread dough. Just a little bit is enough to make the whole thing rise, and just a few Christians meeting together is enough to accomplish His plans for us!

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by mikethestrand on December 7, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 7, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/12/07/mighty-god-sermon-manuscript/

Wonderful Counselor – Sermon Manuscript

-I don’t know where you’re at the Christmas starting time scale, I’ve learned there’s 2 types of people in the world. There are those who would put the Christmas tree up in October, and those who do it the right way and give each holiday it’s proper respect, and wait until after Thanksgiving to start getting set up for Christmas! 

-The difficulty is those 2 people tend to get married to each other, so each Christmas, which is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year is full of this underlying tension about who’s going to win this year. 2 years ago, I decided to cut my losses, wave the white flag, and create a compromise with the other side. Not only was the Christmas tree supposed to go up on Nov. 1, but we also were supposed to go get a REAL tree! If you’ve never done one, it involves wading through the forests at the back lot of Menards, pulling out about 15 different trees, just to go back to the first one you pulled out and buy that one. 

-Then once you’ve finished hiking through Menards, you have to figure out how to get this large shrubbery home, which for us meant trying to tie it to the roof of our van, and hoping it didn’t fall off on the drive home! Then when you get home, you have to figure out how to get it through one of your doors (dropping needles the entire way in), set it up so it’s level and doesn’t tip over, fill the base with water so the tree doesn’t die before Christmas. And it’s only after all that is done that you can start talking about putting lights on it! One person is stuck in the corner of the room, being attacked by the pine needles as you pass the lights back to the person in the front. Oh, and don’t forget the tree sap that is also going to be impossible to wash off your hands for a couple days!

-So my compromise with Cara was: if we can get a pre-lit fake tree, we can put it up the day after Halloween. I know it’s illegal, we try to keep it hidden from public view so we don’t get arrested! 

-Christmas can bring up all sorts of different feelings for people, depending on what’s happened the past year, what’s happened around Christmas previously, or even what your family situation is like. Yet we can’t escape it! It affects all the commercials, you see it on billboards when you drive, every store puts up some sort of holiday decorations (often just as early as Cara wants them put up!)

-And it’s not just at home, I often struggle to figure out what to preach for Christmas! I’m guessing most, if not all of you have heard the story before (I’ve read the story more times than I can count at this point!). There’s only so many different ways you can approach this story! I actually got lunch with another pastor this week and he asked me, “do you ever get tired of preaching for Christmas?” 100%

-But this year feels different to me! I don’t know if my Christmas heart has grown 3x larger, or if it’s because the twins are now at the age where everything Christmas is brand new, so we’re experiencing it through their eyes, but I’ve been legitimately excited for Christmas this year. I even broke the law a second time, and started listening to Christmas music this week, BEFORE Thursday! Don’t let that news get around.

-And I think some of the reason I’m excited for it is because I’ve been meditating on this Messianic prophecy from Isaiah for the past month. This has been a crazy year in our country! Political assassinations on both sides of the aisle, the polarization that we’ve seen for the last 15 years continues getting wider, yet in the midst of that I keep seeing glimmers of hope, like light breaking through the darkest clouds, because the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ continues making advances. Gen Z is showing more interest in church than any other generation, Bible studies are growing at universities, Bible sales are on the rise. Friends, despite being told that Christianity was a dying thing, the hope of Jesus continues persevering, don’t ever count Christianity out!

-I’m not sure if you saw this, but after Charlie Kirk was killed, the governor of Utah in his press release said the best thing you can do is log off social media and go touch grass. Do real physical activities as a real embodied physical human. The internet has rewired our brains, which is affecting how we engage with each other!

-And into this world, where we can have so many conflicting emotions, so many competing proposals on what’s wrong with the world, enters a baby. A baby who had been promised for thousands of years! And not just any baby, a baby from a very specific lineage, chosen from God’s people to be a representative and substitute because God’s people kept failing. But what’s amazing is this baby came in real life. This isn’t some myth, some made up story like Thor or Zeus. The Bible records events that took place in time, in a specific location, and it’s only by living in the light of this promised child that we can live in real life. Let’s read the text, and then I’ll explain what I mean.

READ/PRAY (pg. 607)

  1. What Do We Need?

-What we’re going to be spending our time studying this Advent is the reality that God has provided everything we need to live a fully embodied human existence, which is exactly what Jesus did when he came to earth! And this gets to what we as humans need. This was a topic that came up regularly in 1 Timothy – contentment. Paul said that godliness with contentment is of great gain to us, so we need to learn to grow in being content with everything God provides us. Friends, all of this is according to God’s good plans! Let’s walk through this text. Each week we’ll be focusing on slightly different aspects of it, along with studying the implications of what each name means, so if I don’t talk about something in Isaiah 9 today, just wait, because we’ll probably look at it in a future week.

-This takes place in the middle of God (through Isaiah) telling the people what God’s future plans for them are. God promises that his grace will come from Isaiah (seeing the throne room in Isa. 6), to the southern kingdom of Judah, then to the northern kingdom of Israel, then proclaimed to the rest of the world. And notice that it begins saying “it won’t be like the previous days.” God is going to be doing something BRAND NEW when all these events come about.

-It begins with a great light. This should make us think back to the very beginning, where Gen. 1 says that darkness covered everything, so God’s first act of creation is speaking light into existence. This tells us that in this future day, there will be a new act of creation that God brings light into existence once again. It also says this will lead to joy for the people because salvation will be coming. Their oppressors will be defeated but then look how it’s going to happen: through a child.

-Now I’m not sure if you know this about kids, but they tend to not be as strong as adults (which I’ve heard is a good thing, because otherwise the adults probably wouldn’t survive some of the tantrums that little kids throw). This is God’s ways of demonstrating (as he has done throughout history) that His way is often the unexpected way. There’s a pattern in Scripture of God choosing the younger child, or choosing the weakest person, or choosing someone too old. It’s the same thing with this future salvation. And notice the language: born FOR us, son GIVEN to us. It’s not something humans can do in their own power or strength, it has to be done FOR us because we keep failing over and over.

-We’ll talk about the government in a little bit, but look at all these incredible descriptions of this child: 4 names, which is what we’re spending our time studying this month: wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace.

-And I think these 4 things offer exactly what we need to flourish in the world God has created. Think about it: we need someone who’s going to give us wise and good council and advice on how to live. We need someone outside of ourselves to provide us with a sense of purpose and identity (honestly, a large part of the mental health crisis in our world is because no human being is capable of creating an entire identity for themselves, we need someone or something bigger than us to give us the guardrails). We need a family to belong to where we know we’ll be loved and cared for no matter what happens in our lives. And we need peace where we live so that we can actually pursue all these other things. Friends, Jesus is who lets us live in real life!

-Last thing from this verse for today, most other translation say something like of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any government that I want to continually be increasing! In my mind, that just means things would continue getting worse! With all governments except 1: the government where Jesus is King! And friends, that government has already started. Jesus is already sitting on His throne interceding for us, ministering for us, praying for us. Jesus is the one who allows us to have a place to be truly human, and His rule is primarily seen in the institution that we today call “the church.” But we’ll look at that more closely in a few weeks! But let’s look at the first name: wonderful counselor:

  • A Counselor Who…

-The first part of this counselor is the adjective wonderful. This refers to being able to perform supernatural signs, or something miraculous. Like when God came to Moses and said that He would perform miracles over the Egyptians He used the same word. So that combined with counselor tells us that this future child will be able to do signs /wonders AND give wisdom through His words. 

-So when Jesus comes, what do we see Him doing? Doesn’t He perform incredible signs and teach about wisdom? Not only does He do it Himself, but when He comes, He talks about another Counselor that He’s going to send.

-It centers on Jesus saying it’s better for Him to go away, which always struck me as odd until I continued reading. If He doesn’t leave, He doesn’t send His Holy Spirit. Friends, Jesus in his humanity was limited by space and time, Jesus in His divinity is not. It’s better that He leaves because after He left, He sent His Holy Spirit who isn’t limited in the same way.

-Jesus talks about this reality in John 14 (pg. 957). But what’s interesting is what Jesus says the purpose of this counselor is, and I think it gives us something to consider when we think about the advice we need in our lives today. 

-Jesus begins with an if/then statement. If you love Him, then you’ll keep His commandments. But I had just talked about us NOT being able to do that, and Jesus knows that. That’s why He says He’ll send someone else to help us be able to keep His commandments. And notice how He describes this other person: another Counselor. Someone who will be able to give us the advice we need. And unlike Jesus, who is only with us, this Counselor will also be IN us. This is the incredible part of the way God works: where before this time in salvation history, the Holy Spirit didn’t live in those who were following after God. They were reliant on other sinful humans to help them. Now, because of God’s plan from the beginning of time, we are literally God’s temple, the place where God lives! 

-Jumping ahead a few verses, Jesus goes on to tell us more about this Counselor. While Jesus was on earth He was able to speak the truth of God’s plan directly to His followers, but soon He wouldn’t be around anymore. And notice the 2-fold approach to this Counselor’s role: teach you all things and remind of everything Jesus said.

-I had a friend text me last week asking what I think is reasonable to expect someone to know to be saved because he’s been thinking that we’ve added so many addition steps to it, and I think this gets to that reality. The Holy Spirit is how Christians grow, which is why we need to be working to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. A question for us is do we actually trust the Holy Spirit to do this work? It’s unreasonable for us to expect an immature Christian to act like someone who’s been keeping in step with the Spirit for decades! Not only that, but we tend to forget some of our past sins and temptations! I love what Paul says in 1 Cor. 6 “and such were some of you.” None of us are off the hook. And part of the reason the Holy Spirit helps us grow is so that we can in turn look around and help others who are struggling with the same things we used to struggle with.

-The second piece to this is that growth is centered on what Jesus said. What has Jesus said? Lots of things, but we have them preserved for us in this book. What a wonderful gift! We have the Word made flesh in Jesus, and the written Word of Holy Scripture to provide counsel for us.

-And notice the outcome of this: peace. Friends, there’s a reason He’s called the Prince of Peace, He is the only way peace is possible on this side of eternity. He is the only way we can endure through the difficulties of dealing with sin.

-Church, part of what Jesus’s arrival means for us is we have been provided what we need to be counseled: through the Holy Spirit, grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and centered around the people of God (each other). Micah is actually very gifted in counseling and currently pursuing a certificate in it so that we can better come alongside people who need counsel. There’s a tension here because not every mental issue can be resolved through God’s Word, but I do worry that the professionalization of counseling has left us as Christians looking for answer in the wrong places sometimes. The joke when I was in college was everyone in the psychology program was there to try to figure themselves out.

-And many times what we need is just someone who loves us and accepts us as God created us, which is what the church is supposed to be! A place where you can be honest, share you hopes, dreams, and struggles, and receive prayer and counsel from other people who are steeped in the Word of God and who can speak the truth of God’s Word to you, reminding you of everything Jesus said.

-This is the antithesis of someone who just gives bad advice, or speaks nonsense to you: kind of like the whole 6 7 phenomenon that my kids keep talking about.

  • A Life That Is…

-All of this leads to something that we studied in 1 Timothy. Friends, Jesus hasn’t left us to figure out life on our own. We’re not created as blank slates who have to try to figure out how to operate in this world, God provides counsel for us which allows us to live a life that is truly life.

-And notice how this comes about: by living out good deeds. Friends, one of the best things we can do as Christians AND for our mental health is to look beyond ourselves, to look for ways to do good to others, to outdo one another in showing honor, to consider others interests above ourselves. That’s what the Lord has provided for us to flourish as people, and the best part is we don’t need to worry about ourselves because other people have been commanded to care about us better than they care about themselves! Be committed to a church!

-Jesus is the one who came as the Wonderful Counselor, and then left another Counselor to meet us where we’re at and help us mature and remember the truths of God, who brings us together as His people, unites us together as a body and allows us to love and care for each other, providing the council we need!

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by mikethestrand on November 30, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 30, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/11/30/wonderful-counselor-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 6:11-21 – Sermon Manuscript

-For those of you who don’t live super close to your parents, have you ever noticed the way they send you off after a family get together is almost laughable? Maybe this is just a Midwest thing, but I have fond memories of time spent with my grandparents, and then on the way out the door grandma would always say “drive safely!”

-Of all the things that my dad needed to be reminded of, that one was always the one I could assume he’d do! And ever since I went to college, that farewell has been bestowed on me every time I drive away, and surprising to no one, my reply was generally “oh shoot, I was going to drive fast and take chances!”

-In today’s text, Paul is going to do something similar to Timothy! He’s going to remind him of some things that, at this point, should have been very obvious to Timothy, but Paul still thinks it’s important enough to remind him of

READ/PRAY (pg. 1053)

  1. Pursue (11-16)

-Paul has referred to Timothy a number of ways throughout this letter. True son, a good servant, here he calls him “man of God” which is the only time in the NT that title is used, and it’s an exalted title throughout the OT, referring to people like Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and David. After all these reminders to be humble and serve others, this ending is a reminder that God exalts those who are humble! We don’t need to fear the opinions of other people, because we belong to God!

-That’s the reality that allows us to acknowledge our sin, share it with others, and admit that we need God’s help. This reality is what allows us to open up with others, to be vulnerable, and to allow others to come alongside us and support us. This is the reality that reminds us that when others are vulnerable with us, we can treat them with honor and respect because they’re also chosen by God!

-But do you see how Paul tells Timothy to be a man of God? It means he’s supposed to flee something, pursue something else. That is, run away from things that aren’t from God and run to things that are from God.

-What is he fleeing? Paul’s referring to the previous verses that we looked at last week. Timothy is supposed to flee the ungodly teachings and craving of ungodly riches. The pursuit of those things are what lead to a ruined life. This fleeing is similar to Joseph in Gen. who was trying to be seduced by his master’s wife, and instead of giving in he ran away as fast as he could, leaving behind some article of clothing, which the wife used to complain that Joseph had attempted to have his way with her. Yet even in the midst of these accusations, Joseph remained a righteous man, refusing to give in to any of the temptations, which may be what Paul is trying to communicate to Timothy. To be a man of God means running away from things that don’t lead to godliness.

-In contrast to fleeing, which isn’t sufficient to lead to life change, Timothy needs to pursue something else. See, there’s a tendency for us to only focus on the NOs that God gives. It’s a little bit like a kid who’s told to not touch something, as soon as the no is given, what becomes their focus? Whatever they’ve been told not to do! But with God, every no is followed by an even better YES! Think of the very beginning in the garden, where God gives Adam and Eve a no to 1 tree so that there could be a YES to every other tree. God’s law is to allow us to flourish in his creation, we need to realize that. 

-Here it’s a no to ungodliness and ungodly riches to say yes 6 other things: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Righteousness is a way of living out of our union with Christ that comes about through faith, with the outcome being godliness. Love often is the first virtue Paul lists, including what he calls “the more excellent way” in 1 Cor. 12-13. Growing in godliness also requires endurance, holding fast to everything God commands and not giving up, and responding as God wants towards other requires gentleness (which Paul mentioned previously in the list of requirements for an elder).

-The next thing Paul brings up seems the opposite of gentleness, doesn’t it? He goes on to talk about fighting! But there’s a correct way and an incorrect way to fight, and many Christians I know end up fighting the wrong way! Think of what Paul says in Eph 6, our fight, our struggle isn’t against other humans, but we tend to act like it is. We attack other humans, we belittle and demean humans who are created as God’s image, and we forget that our fight isn’t against them, it’s taking place in the spiritual realm. I had an apologetics professor in seminary who regularly reminded us that we must NEVER attack people, attack bad ideas or proposals that they have, but never attack them as people. We also need to remember that Jesus has defeated all our spiritual enemies, so when it feels like we’re being attacked, remember our enemy has already been conquered, so he’s fighting with his last breath.

-As I was reflecting on this idea this week, it seems to me that this language has largely left our Christian vocabulary, and I’ve been wondering if it’s because we come into the church so tired of the constant fighting that takes place in our world today. Every day we read about fights in the government, fights in between employees in their jobs, fights between companies. It really is a survival of the fittest world out there, isn’t it? So all our energy is expended on keeping up with those external fights which means we neglect the 1 fight that matters: in the spiritual realm. We’re supposed to fight in the right direction!

-Take hold of eternal life. What does Paul mean by that? Doesn’t God take hold of us? How is Timothy supposed to take hold of eternal life if he’s already a Christian?

-It’s possible to be a Christian but live in fear of messing up, and that’s not Christianity. I’ve shared this before, I really enjoy cooking, and honestly it’s mostly because I like eating good food! Imagine I’ve got a delicious brisket that I’ve just smoked. I’m staring at it, smelling it, seeing the heatwaves rise off the top of it, how dumb would it be to continue sitting there staring at it? Or maybe briskets not your style, and you prefer a double, double animal style from In-N-Out. That picture makes my mouth water! Or if you didn’t know, it’s now McRib season! But no food is any good unless I take hold of it, grab that mess with my hands and bring it to my mouth.

-What Paul is saying is Timothy has been saved, he has privileged access to the Creator of everything, but so often he doesn’t live or act like it. And I think we’re probably guilty of the same thing, we’re too accustomed to living in this sinful world that we forget we’ve been brought into something that’s SO much bigger and better than anything this world can offer us! He’s basically telling Timothy: you’ve been saved, so act like it! 

-But notice the way that this faith was made visible: he made a good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

-The first reminder is the way we are saved is through a confession. Paul says in Rom. 10:9 “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Faith comes about through a confession that Jesus is who He said He was!

-But notice what he goes on to say: your faith isn’t just for you! We’re called into a community of faith who can remind us what we believe and help us hold fast to it. This is why the initial marker of a Christian is baptism, a public declaration that your life has been transformed. Baptism is an act of obedience done in public (the church) where people will be able to remind you of that reality.

-I talk about this when I do wedding ceremonies, the couple is committing to each other before God, but they’ve also invited others to bear witness to the confession to love each other for the rest of their lives, so I ask those in attendance if they will do what they can to care for this new family. Similarly for us in the church, we need witnesses to help us: become a member! This is the means by which we can be assured of our salvation: through the recognition and affirmation of the local church.

-And all of this isn’t just for us as individuals, it all connects back to what Jesus did: Jesus didn’t shrink away from the truth of who He is. All 4 Gospels tell the story of this interaction Jesus had with Pilate, who viewed himself as the judge and jury. 

–Matt. 27:11: “Now Jesus stood before the governor. “Are you the king of the Jews?” the governor asked him. Jesus answered, “You say so.”

-Jesus gave a faithful confession that serves as the picture and example we’re supposed to follow. Just as He gave a good confession, we have our good confession that also centers on Jesus! And our job is hold onto it, to not turn away from it until a day:

-Until the appearing, God will bring about this in his own time

-No one knows when, so don’t fixate on trying to figure out when it’s going to happen! Anything that draws our attention off Jesus is the wrong emphasis, including improper emphasis on the events surrounding the return of Jesus.

-I’m not sure if you keep up with some of these things, but there was a so called “prophet” who went viral on TikTok because he claimed Jesus came to him in a vision and told him that He would return on Sept. 23-24. Went viral: #RaptureTok. Then when Jesus didn’t come back he changed it to Oct. 6-7. And then it became a mystical date that he had to try to figure out. Friends, don’t let people try to convince you that they’ve figured out some secret knowledge because whenever Jesus does comes back, it doesn’t change what we’re called to do today! Be faithful in the here and now, don’t worry about what people are telling you, and look forward to that day!

-Paul ends this section emphasizing the complete transcendence of God, He is completely separate from His creation, He exists outside of time and space and lives in “unapproachable light” I love that idea! A light so bright it’s unapproachable.

-There was a picture that went viral this past week that I think communicates this idea. A guy went skydiving, and another friend timed it so he would get a picture of him as he passed in front of the sun. Normally, if we were to look at the sun we wouldn’t see that, would we? The sun is our unapproachable light! And the sun is a pale image compared to the brightness of our God!

-We can’t come near Him! As a former music pastor, I would regularly have people tell me that I ushered them into the throne room. I can’t! I am a broken sinner, saved by grace. We have 1 worship leader who has gone on ahead of us into the throne room: Jesus! Jesus is the way we can approach the unapproachable.

-What’s incredible is even though we can’t see this God, God lowered Himself to our level. That’s the miracle of Christmas, that’s the reality of the incarnation! Jesus is the unseeable God becoming seeable.

-Which leads to Paul worshipping: amen: yes, it’s true, so we praise God! I’ve shared this before, but amen isn’t just a way of hanging up the phone when you’re done talking to God! It’s a way of saying: let this be true! 

  • Hope (17-19)

-Where are you aiming your hope? The fact that you’re still alive today tells me you have some level of hope that things are going to be ok! But this warning Paul gives is just as true for us today as it was for the church at Ephesus. 

-The temptation for those who are wealthy is to begin to feel as if they’ve “arrived” and don’t need anyone else to come alongside them to help them, which can start to impact the way you view God! See the temptation is to become arrogant, assuming you’ve gotten there in your own power, strength, and gifting, which is honestly what many people view as the American story! We hold up those who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and figured things out. We forget that no one exists by themselves, did anyone in here have any say over the day they were born? We all have limited control over our lives.

-But notice what Paul says about riches: uncertainty. I got lunch onetime with an older pastor who shared with me that he remembers coming to church in 2008 the week after the market collapsed, and he said he remembered a number of people hardly being able to move because their entire future plans were gone. If our future hope is tied to wealth, we’re going to be disappointed. This gets to the age-old question: how much money is enough? A little more.

-Notice that God gives us things to enjoy. Friends, believe it or not, it’s ok to have nice things, it’s ok to go on nice trips IF it’s within your means, and if you’re living a generous life that also shares with others.

-I feel like Christians often feel the need to apologize anytime they have or do something enjoyable, as if Christians are just supposed to be miserable all the time. God gives us all sorts of good gifts to enjoy! Like a double, double animal style from In-N-Out! Or a hobby that you enjoy that helps you know and understand more of who God is. The question is are you using your riches to make yourself feel good, or are you using your riches to allow you to be rich in good works?

-Paul says if you’re able to be generous, able to bless others that’s a way of banking your treasure in the next age, that treasure leads to a guaranteed outcome! God guarantees that good will come from it! And if you do that:

-Take hold again, what is truly life. I love the way the NIV translates this:

-What is a life that is truly life? Think of what Jesus says in John 10. Friends, Jesus offers the only way to find abundant life, a life of flourishing, a healthy and fulfilling life! Do you trust Him? It only comes about by living a cruciform life:

-John Stott quote. Have you ever considered this to be a description of what it means to follow after Jesus? It’s not creating a following, it’s not traveling overseas, it’s a basic life that is used in service of God and others. That’s what God wants for us. In my daily Bible reading this week was Gal. 5:6. At the end of the day, isn’t this a summary of what we’re called to do? Have faith in God as expressed through love (as God defines it). 

  • Guard (20-21)

-How do we guard what has been entrusted to us?

-Focus on the right things, the truth of God, following Jesus

-It means avoiding things that are a distraction from the truth of the gospel, here he says irreverent and empty speech, anything that distracts from our focus on Jesus! Don’t give into those distractions! Stay focused on Jesus.

-This also tells us that some people who claim to be following Jesus will end up leading people away from the faith. Until Jesus returns there will be people who will try to lead us away from the truths of the gospel. We must guard the truth! Stand firm on the Word of God in the power of the Spirit, fighting the good, right, and true fight!

-Grace be with you all.

-How do you end a letter to a church in a way that encourages them to remain faithful and steadfast? Remind them how they can have a true, flourishing life: only by the grace of God

-Which is given to “y’all” or as we say in the North “you guys”, plural, the church!

-So what’s an appropriate way to end our study through 1 Timothy? By remembering what God has called us to be as a church:

-We are supposed to treat each other as family: as brother and sisters, or mothers and fathers. 

-We’re supposed to provide order to our body as God raises up faithful leaders who can keep us focused on the Word and help us love and care for one another

-We need to keep our focus on the right place instead of being distracted by false teaching or ungodly living

-Let’s be a holy church together, a holy people who are pursuing Jesus Christ with all we have, a church who is daily dying to self to become more like Jesus and become more of what Jesus wants us to be, regardless of what other people or churches are doing or even what we’ve done in the past! God is going to continue working in us today, so let’s encourage each other to keep chasing hard after Jesus today!

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by mikethestrand on November 23, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 23, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/11/23/1-timothy-611-21-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 5:17-6:10 – Sermon Manuscript

-How do people know you’re a Christian? Is it just because you walk into some building 1 a week? Another way of asking this is does this weekly gathering change anything else about your life, or is this all there is? 

-What we’ve been seeing throughout this book is the reality that there has to be something different about your life, God calls us to live a transformed life that is continually growing more like Jesus. In this text, Paul gives us some markers of what a transformed life is supposed to look like.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1053)

  1. Good Leaders (5:17-25)

-This verse connects back to 1Tim. 3 where we learned about leaders in the church. All churches are supposed to set aside a group of qualified men to lead the church under the rule of Jesus Christ. I say that intentionally because I think we tend to miss that the church is a theonomy with a monarch named Jesus! Unlike our representative democracy, the church serves under the oversight of Jesus, not a human. 

-But of those elders who are chosen by God and affirmed by the congregation, some of those who serve as elders are worthy of a double honor. What does it require to receive a double honor, and what does it mean to receive a double honor? 

-Notice what Paul says: the focus is on those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Some people argue that this means there are 2 different kinds of elders: ruling elders and teaching elders. I don’t think that’s what Paul is saying, I think he’s saying that of the elders, there are some who work hard at preaching and teaching, who should thus receive a double honor. But what is that double honor?

-Double honor: some say it means they should receive a double salary, most believe (and I agree) that it’s referring to respect and finances. See 2 Thess. 3. Here Paul talks about his practice – he could have expected payment from them, after all he had labored among them! But he decided to be bi-vocational to set an example to the rest of the church.

-Some churches continue this practice today, that’s a fine thing if someone is able and willing to do that, the difficulty is as a church grows it can be hard to have the time required to invest in the congregation God has brought together. That’s why it’s common for churches to have at least 1 pastor who labors in preaching and teaching for the church. Micah and I are, in essence, freed up to invest our time in preparing for the various events and activities in our church body. If we had to work somewhere else to provide for our families, we wouldn’t be as freed to spend time with and for you! We’re literally able to meet with you any time of day!

-And Paul bases this thought on a couple previous passages of Scripture (which is a good practice! If you can’t base your argument on the Bible, it may not be a great argument). But they’re very interesting, the first is from Deut. 25:4 and refers to way an ox would be used to separate out the wheat while it was laying in the field. In order to make the most profit, some people would put a muzzle on it to prevent it from stooping its’ head down to eat some of it. Paul’s using this analogy to say that someone who works in preaching and teaching should be expected to be paid from his preaching and teaching, otherwise it would be like muzzling him.

-What’s fascinating is the second quote! It’s not unique to quote the OT as he did, that happens all the time, what’s unique is Paul is quoting Jesus (which also isn’t that unique) but he specifically quotes the Gospel of Luke and explicitly calls it Scripture! Friends, this is a BIG deal! This means Paul had access to Luke’s Gospel, which he considered on par with the rest of the Old Testament. This contradicts basically every other liberal proposal to the writing of God’s Word. If you ever read The da Vinci Code (fascinating thriller that was terrible at history), they argued that the Bible came about because of a power play that was settled at the Council of Nicea. WRONG! The Bible was settled by God, humans just affirmed what God had already done as people were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 

-The place Paul quotes from is when Jesus appoints and sends his 72 disciples out in pairs, they’re supposed to look for people who will be willing to take them in, because the worker is worthy of receiving wages from his work. Paul picks that idea up and continues it for elder/pastors. This is a helpful picture of how we’re supposed to interpret and apply Scripture today. Jesus wasn’t specifically focusing on pastors and elders with His words, but Paul was able to take those principles and apply it to the church. Similarly for us, we carefully study what the Bible says and what it means in its own context before jumping to how we should apply it to our lives today.

-Continuing on what elders should look like, they must be men of good character who have proven it over a long period of time, and because of that the church is supposed to not allow someone’s accusation against an elder to stand unless they are following Jesus’s commands in Matt. 18. 

-Most of the time, we don’t hear about church discipline because it stops at the second step. Notice as well the power Jesus gives to the church, which goes completely contradictory to our individualistic culture: the church is given the keys to the kingdom! Do you realize how significant this is? The church determines who is a part of the church and who is not, this is one of the reasons I emphasize membership so much, Jesus has told us that we (as the church) are supposed to help people understand who is “in” and who is “out”. This reality really hit me over the past year: part of the reason I have assurance in my faith is because of you all! I’ll be honest, if it was just up to me to white knuckle it and push through on my own, I wouldn’t make it, I’m not strong enough and my faith is too weak. But put me together with a group of people (a church) who are working towards the same goal, and we have a much better chance of making it.

-Notice that there’s 2 sides to this reality: binding and loosing, accepting and rejecting, this gets us to the situations where people are sinning:

-(20) The flip side of not accepting an accusation is finding someone who is sinning, and that needs to be dealt with.

-The whole #ChurchToo movement falls under this, where people were trying to cover up and hide what was going on. Friends, I hate to share this, but the church unfortunately isn’t immune from abuse, and that breaks my heart, and much more importantly breaks the heart of God. The church must never try to cover over or hide sin. The church is supposed to be the 1 human institution where we expose sin to the light and deal with it in the ways God commands.

-Last week I shared my issues with the Billy Graham rule, but this is where we also need to live a life of complete purity where an accusation couldn’t even be made! What levels of accountability to do you have in your life to prevent any level of accusation? Are you living properly with all the people you come into contact with? 

-Letter from the 2nd century description of the church. Notice particularly: “they have a common table, but not a common bed.” Meaning they lived with all purity toward each other.

-(21) This next part is brought about with as much power and influence as Paul can muster! God, and Christ, and the “elect angels” (vs. demons): serve faithfully, love faithfully, shepherd faithfully for EVERYONE. Favoritism isn’t the way of the Lord. That being said, there will be people you’re closer to! Jesus had the crowds, the 72, the 12, and the 3, increasing levels of closeness with each of them. Just acknowledge that we are ALL the body of Christ, we ALL need to be committed to each other.

-If you look down at the footnote for 22 it says the literal translation is “do not be too quick to lay hands on” or as the ESV says “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands.” Which, as you know, means we have to mention LOTR!

-Laying hands on is the way the Bible talks about setting someone apart, that’s why we’ll do it as people move away, or if they go on a mission trip.

-One of the things that an elder is involved in is entering into broken and sinful situations, and there’s a pattern where those sins can suddenly become temptations for you. Don’t give in! Pray against them! It’s the same thing in preaching, whenever something about marriage comes up, I can guarantee Cara and I are going to have a conflict that week!

-Some debate about the pure, is it in relation to the sins, or the next part? Apparently Timothy tried to live such a holy life that he abstained from any wine. Yet wine has medicinal purposes, and Paul was encouraging Timothy to take his medicine (remember, Paul has previous prohibitions against drunkenness but not drinking).

-Just a couple verses ago, Paul had talked about the need to publicly rebuke sin (rebuke as far as the knowledge and impact of it go), but for others it doesn’t surface until you dig a little deeper. This is part of the reason Paul says to not be quick in appointing elders, you need to get to know them (even if they were elders at a previous church!)

-But the same thing can be said about good works, which means we should continue doing good works regardless of how many people see them. This connects to Paul’s command that Timothy keep himself pure. The question is will he continue being faithful in the good works, even if no one is aware of his faithfulness? And for us today: will we continue in good works even if no one else sees them?

  • Faithful Slaves (6:1-2)

-One of the major accusations toward the Bible today is on the issue of slavery. Some people will take verses like these as supportive of slavery (and unfortunately it was used as justification for slavery in the past). But this is where we need to look a little broader than just our country/culture, and need to understand some historical context a little better. This is intentionally going to be brief, I’ve talked about this before, and if you have more questions about slavery in the Bible, please reach out to me! I have a number of resources I can send your way.

-First: Jesus didn’t set about to start a revolution; he worked to bring salvation. A revolution was an outworking of the gospel message, but it wasn’t the focus. The primary problem in the world isn’t human slavery (although that is problem!), the primary problem is that people are slaves to sin, which leads to spiritual death!

-Second, slavery is just as alive today as it was in the 1st century (if not more so!) According to one survey, there are almost 50 million people who live in slavery today, and today’s slavery is far more severe than what people faced in the 1st century. Part of our issue is we judge this culture based on our culture’s morality (which has been profoundly influenced by Christianity), without taking the time to understand what was taking place back then. Some slaves were educated, some willingly sold themselves into slavery as a way to provide for their family. Yes, some were mistreated and abused, but as we’ve seen in our culture it doesn’t take slavery to see mistreatment and abuse. 

-So how are Christian slaves to act? Faithfully (have you heard that anywhere else as we’ve gone through this book?)

-Friends, even ungodly authority is supposed to be respected. Even ungodly authority! We know that someday they will stand before God and give an account for their actions on earth, and so will we. The difference is if we’re claiming to follow God, we’re supposed to represent Him to others! 

-Additionally, Paul says that if the master is a believer, that doesn’t get you off the hook. You still need to respect and honor them, and even more than you would an unbelieving master because your work furthers God’s aims to build and establish His church, His kingdom, on earth.

-Another component to this that I think is worth mentioning is the fact the slaves are both mentioned in this letter and given a sacred job to do! Most 1st century letters would have been exclusively focused on those with power and influence; slaves wouldn’t have even been “worthy” of receiving a mention.

-What this is pointing out is even the lowly can join in God’s mission to seek and save the lost! You don’t need influence, you don’t need money, you don’t need power, in fact in God’s kingdom, those things tend to get in the way! Which is what Paul talks about next:

  • Follow The Teaching (6:3-10)

-Paul begins this section reminding Timothy that he is supposed to train the church to implement everything Paul’s been saying! This isn’t an optional add on

-We just talked today in our Strands of Unity class about how we ensure what we’re teaching and thinking aligns with “the sound teaching,” if you missed it, it’s not too late to join us next week!

-Warning against someone teaching false doctrine, which is anything that is opposed to the teaching of Jesus, or godliness. Friends, one of the markers of true Christianity (as opposed to heresy) is what it leads to! If godliness is the outcome, it’s correct!

-In contradiction to this, the false teacher is conceited, knows nothing, and instead only wants to fight and argue with others. There are some things that are worth fighting over, but false teachers want to fight about pointless things. And in contrast to true teaching, what’s the outworking of this teaching? 

-Envy, quarreling, slander, evil suspicions, and constant disagreement. These people use Christianese to benefit themselves instead of looking to serve others. Paul picks up this same idea in 2 Tim. 3, people who want to keep up appearances but refuse to admit that the Holy Spirit is the only way you can have life change. They hold everyone else to a certain standard of living without asking anyone to change their hearts. 

-And friends, this is the biggest difference between a true Christian and a fake Christian. A true Christian is someone who knows and trusts that your growth only happens because of God working in you. You can’t force it or manipulate it or fake it! It takes you daily dying to yourself and completely trusting yourself to the Lord to follow after Jesus. There are practices you can do: read the Bible, pray, but you don’t have to be a Christian to do those things. We can plant and water, but apart from the Holy Spirit there will be no growth.

-Back to godliness in 6, one of the characteristics of a Christian is contentment! Paul talks about that idea in Philippians, where he says I can do all things through a verse taken out of context! Just kidding, it’s through Christ, and it’s because he’s learned the secret to being content, it’s trusting God to provide everything you need, because God has provided for you up to this point. And He’ll continue to provide for you, which means we should be content with what God provides. And the bar Paul places is fairly low, isn’t it? Food and clothing, maybe add shelter in there and what else do you really need?

-Notice who falls into temptations: those who want to be rich, not those who are rich. If your desire is to be rich, you’ll give anything else to pursue that one thing, nothing else matters. Which is the plot of more books and movies than I can keep track of! And even someone who is poor can have an improper desire to be rich!

-Money isn’t the problem, it’s what we do with money. And money does have a unique pull on the human heart, doesn’t it? We all end up playing the comparison game instead of the contented game (which is what Paul is calling out). He’s saying if we love money, it leads to all sorts of destruction in our lives.

-Church, whatever your state in life, this text is calling us to be faithful and content. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, God wants us to be content with whatever He gives us. Additionally, everything God gives us is meant to be a blessing to those around us, especially to those who are fellow believers. Money is a tool that can be used to help or hurt your walk with Jesus, it’s a tool that can be used to help or hurt those around you. How do you use the money God has given to you? 

-When John D. Rockafeller died (richest man in the world at the time) someone asked his aide how much he left behind, he answered “He left it all behind.”

-There are some things we can take with us: friends, love, God’s Word, but money isn’t one of them.

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by mikethestrand on November 9, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 9, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/11/09/1-timothy-517-610-sermon-manuscript/

1 Timothy 5:1-16 – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you noticed how easy it can be to slip in and out of churches today? You have ushers to guide you into your seat in a dark auditorium. The music is so loud you can’t hear anyone singing next to you (which probably is appealing for some of you, right?), but it’s ok, because it’s still so dark that you can’t see if anyone’s sitting there anyway!

-Every age has their own segmented spaces so adults don’t need to be inconvenienced by little ones who have trouble sitting still, teenagers have video games so they don’t get bored listening to a middle-aged man talk for too long.

-But what if that’s not what church is supposed to be or look like? What if church is supposed to be a place where we’re pushed outside our comfort zones, where there are people who don’t look, think, or act like us who are involved in our lives on a daily basis? Paul is going to use some incredibly intimate language in today’s text to point out a different way for the church to treat each other.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1052)

  1. Family Members (1-2)

-How do we treat or view each other? For most of us, there will always be people older and younger than you in the church! We’re going to spend most of our time on these first 2 verses today because I think we need to talk about them more, and I would argue that the latter section is actually fairly straight-forward in terms of interpretation, I’m not completely sure how to apply it, but we’ll get there in a bit!

-1st century relationships were almost the opposite of what we have today, we live in a youth driven culture, 1st century was elderly driven, where the older you were the more respect you were supposed to be given. 

-I’ve experienced this moving back to MN! I run into my friend’s parents and I still call them Mr. or Mrs., even after they’ve told me to call them by their first name (I didn’t even think adults had first names!) I remember my parents asking me the names of my friend’s parents and I would tell them “Mr. and Mrs.”

-But even that has changed over my life! My kids call adults Ms. Or Mr. first name! 

-Older men: don’t rebuke, instead exhort or encourage him. 

-I’ve felt a shift in my ministry over the last few years, where I’m suddenly not the young guy at these conferences anymore! And I look at these other pastors who I just assume as high schoolers who are attending these conferences with their dads! But this is a tension point, because how do we live this verse out if older men are sinning? Which, let’s be clear, is true of everyone! We’ll continue our fight against sin until the Lord returns or takes us home. So what does this text mean when talking about leadership in the church?

-Don’t be flippant or dismissive towards older men, instead treat them respectfully and honorable, like you would treat your father. Does that mean you never confront sin in their lives? Absolutely not! Unfortunately, growth in holiness can’t be assumed (just a quick reminder, the name for growth in holiness is sanctification).

-Remember from last week the way Paul described our Christian walk: he says we’re to train ourselves in godliness, to labor and strive, practice these things, be committed to them, pay close attention to them, persevere in them. Does that sound easy to you? Friends, God calls us to give our everything in following after Him, to literally lay down our lives for Him! It takes grace-drive, God-enabled effort.

-And it doesn’t matter how old you are, your work isn’t done. Carson quote.

-And friends, you can tell the difference in older age between someone who has (through grace-driven effort) become more holy, and someone who has become more grumpy. Let me caution all of you who are older to not give up pursuing holiness in your life!

-I’ve shared this picture before, but I think it’s worth looking at again, because it’s been a couple years since I shared it. This gets at our whole concept of “One Step Closer” where I’ve had people ask me what those steps are moving towards, and we’ll go from the bottom to the top.

-Domain of darkness: those who aren’t following Christ, and as you can see that domain will continue until Christ returns. But there was a point in history where that realm was defeated, where a new people was formed called “the church” where people from every tribe, tongue, and nation can become new people, brought into the kingdom of the Son.

-Those people have an “L” above them to signify that they’re “Learners” who are learning the way of Jesus, following after Him, and never stopping learning more about Him. Just like in marriage where you never stop learning new things about your spouse, your faith is meant to continually be growing. And there’s various levels of growth that take place, but I would argue that you never remain stagnant, as Carson said. The drift, pull is always backwards. 

-The goal is gathering around the throne and worshipping Jesus perfectly, that’s why we work to daily take 1 step closer to that end. And then as we do that day after day we’ll become more and more like Jesus. And just so it’s clear: no one graduates in this! We all have places and areas in which we need to grow! But in relationships, we’re supposed to speak the truth in love, always looking to help people take steps closer to Jesus in our interactions, including with those older. Now, because we’ve done all this work, the next ones can be quicker!

-Young men: treat them like brothers. I never had brothers growing up, but I have 3 sons, and I’m not sure many of you would appreciate being treated how they treat each other! But there should be a familial connection to those younger.

-Similar to the older men, treat older women like mothers! Respectfully, honoring.

-We need to spend a little more time on the younger women part, because Paul adds something here: treat them like sisters, but with all purity. I want to talk a bit about this one, because I think there’s been some misunderstanding in relation to this.

-Unfortunately, there have been too many accounts of abuse from pastors to younger women in the church, and each one of those breaks God’s heart and defames the name of Jesus in the church. That’s not a new thing, in fact it led Billy Graham (20th century evangelist) to commit to never being alone with any woman besides his wife, which then was became known as the “Billy Graham rule” and it popped back in up popularity a few years ago because VP Mike Pence also practiced it.

-At first glance, it sounds great! And for someone like Graham, who traveled all over (or Pence) there’s some wisdom to it. The problem is 2-fold. 1 is when everyone viewed this as the golden standard for every Christian leader to follow, because churches generally have more women than men, which means if you follow this rule you would refuse to meet with a majority of the church. 2 is it treats every woman as a temptress. And I hate to break it to most guys, but you’re not that tempting! I thought it was the Christian standard to follow the Billy Graham rule when I was in college, but then I had someone point this text out to me and ask me: would you ignore your sister? Well, no…

-Now, this does require wisdom! It doesn’t say treat them as your wife! There’s a difference between your spouse and your sister, right? We have to understand that we’re more than sexual beings, and the overly sexualization of our culture goes completely contrary to the way of Jesus. Friends, we must work to live in all purity in all our relationships in the church. We must show the world a better way. We even see this with same-sexual friendships! People read about Jonathan and David and assume they were erotic lovers. Or they read letters exchanged between men 200 years ago and assume the same. The problem is we don’t know how to be friends today! It’s ok to love a friend, but it’s a different love than the love I have towards my wife! Are we ok admitting that we need friends? I would argue the best place to find those friends is in the church! It’s people who should be the most understanding of you, acknowledging our common need of God’s grace, and accepting us as the sinners we are.

-Did you know that the surgeon general labeled loneliness one of the biggest epidemics in our country today? Here’s what he said:

-And at the same time, did you know that Harvard released a study. QUOTE. Any guess what the medicine is? Attending church! This is literally life-giving, and I would argue it’s because it provides our true identity, tells us who we are and how we should live and brings us into a new family who is committed to loving and caring for us through thick and thin.

  • Care for Widows (3-15)

-I have no clue what to do with this next section! I’ve been wrestling through it all week, because the context is so different from Paul to us. I said earlier that the 1st century was more focused on the elders (older), but what I didn’t mention is it was also focused on men, so women were only viewed in relation to men: either fathers or husbands. That means that if a woman became a widow, she was essentially destitute. She wasn’t supposed to work, wasn’t supposed to inherit money, was supposed to continue relying on the rest of her family to take care of her. Which means if she didn’t have any family, she had nothing to live for and no one to support her. And into that world comes this new thing called “The church,” which actively looked to help the least of these. In fact, Rodney Stark, a sociologist, argues in his book The Rise of Christianity that the primary reason the church grew so quickly was because it cared for the people no one else did: women, infants and children, and the sick.

-Where I struggle is what do we do with this text in a world of social welfare systems, 401Ks, retirement accounts, and assisted living? There are some principles I think we can take away from this, but we have to admit our world today is very different than the world Paul was writing to!

  1. In Your Family (3-8)

-Paul begins with a command to care for widows. This would have been completely revolutionary! There’s some people that try to argue that Paul is attempting to keep women subservient to the men and trying to perpetuate the gender gap that already existed in the culture. I don’t see that just with using this first verse! He’s saying to come alongside and care for them!

-Now there are some caveats given: first being genuinely in need, which means something different to Paul than it would to us! This is why I struggled with what to do with this text, because the rest of this section is all the reasons a woman doesn’t qualify! 

-The first reason a woman wouldn’t qualify for this is if she has living family. This connects to the 10 commandments, where God’s people were commanded to honor their parents. This was true in the 1stcentury too, but apparently people would look for loopholes where they didn’t need to fulfill their responsibility to their parents. This is what Jesus says in Matt. 15. This is getting to something known as:

-Subsidiarity argues “that social problems should be addressed at the lowest and most local level possible.” (EDT, 675). So if a widow has family, the family should look to care for her.

-Then Paul goes back to the true widow: she’s in need, is all alone, but entrusts herself to God and focuses on praying to Him (petitions is another form of prayer). Hold on to this role that they’re focusing on, because I want to talk about it again in vs. 9. 

-In contrast to a widow who focuses on prayer is someone who is self-indulgent. Some translations emphasize a sexual nature of this, but the primary focus of the word is on material excess, flaunting her wealth. This leads to her looking like she’s spiritually alive (like all these godly widows) but spiritually she’s dead!

-We’ve seen “above reproach” in relation to church leaders previously, so hold on to that thought until vs. 9 too!

-Really briefly, Paul explicitly gives us the idea of subsidiarity here: if someone doesn’t care for their nuclear family, they are worse than an unbeliever. I would argue that what Paul is including here is the new family that we all have – the church family that comes about under God the Father. Think of what Jesus said in Luke 8.

-Paul is saying that the faith that saves us must be a faith that changes how we live. We’re called to work to provide for the needs of our church family, otherwise we’re even worse than those who aren’t following after Jesus!

-An implication of this in our lives is that Christians should work to be the best employees they can possibly be! And they should look to extend that blessing to others! Work hard, live a faithful life, be a faithful witness to God’s plan to reconcile the world to Himself. 

  • In Your Church Family (9-15)

-This is the verse we’ve been building up to! And the reason I said to wait is because some people argue that this was an official role in the church: the widows who devoted their time and energy to praying for the church, thus were compensated by the church. This is the minority position (meaning less people believe this to be the case). Most people believe that this was merely a list of women who were widows who qualified for church assistance, committing to remain widows and care for others (12), but not referring to an additional office to elders and deacons.

-But Paul’s expectations sound similar to church offices, don’t they? Age limit, faithful in her marriage, and faithful in good works. 60 would be past the age of being able to work and provide for herself. The good works listed are interesting:

-Brought up children: not only has she been a faithful wife (assuming she was married) if she had children, she was faithful in raising them. It doesn’t say she must have children, but the normal ordering is marriage to children (infertility)

-Shown hospitality: she was willing to share with others out of her abundance.

-Washed: just as Jesus did on the night He died, this designates that the widow is someone who was willing to be a faithful servant to the church

-helped the afflicted: helps the marginalized, even more marginalized than she was!

-devoted to good work: intentionally looking for ways and opportunities to be a blessing to everyone she comes into contact with.

-In contrast with this, Paul goes back to those who should not be put on this list: younger women who have become widows because they’ll want to re-marry. And the desire for marriage is a good thing! But if they had promised to focus their attention and energies on the church, and then renounce that promise to pursue marriage they’ll be forced to go back on their word to focus their energies on praying for the church.

-And those who are younger have too much energy! He says they’re idle, wasting the days away. AND they’re gossips and busybodies, women who are spreading stories around to places they shouldn’t be, stirring up division in the church.

-And friends, this isn’t just an issue for women! This is just as true of the rest of us! Anytime you’re tempted to complain about someone else when they’re not in the room you’re turning to gossip. The Bible commands us to not do that, but it says if we have a problem with someone, we’re required to go to them.

-And the reason for this, Paul says, is for our witness to the world. We look to be faithful in our homes because our homes are outposts of God’s kingdom. Our families are supposed to represent a new way of living where we live as if Jesus is actually the King (because He is!). Friends, your Christian witness starts with the way you treat your family, both your nuclear family and your church family!

-And the church is called to actually care for widows who have legitimate need. What does that look like? That’s where I’m not completely sure! I asked a pastor/friend about this yesterday, and he said they have a list that the Deacons hold on to so that if a widow asks for help the church bends over backwards to come alongside and help. That sounds like a reasonable application point from this text to me! But we haven’t done that before, which is something for us to pray for together! We haven’t even had Deacons in the past, so add widow care to the list of things we need to do! But I’ll end with some things for us to think and pray about as a church family.

-First: do you honor your mother and father? Honoring doesn’t mean just going along with whatever they want, especially if there’s painful things you need to work through. At the minimum, even if the relationship is strained or hurtful, you can pray!

-Second: do you honor your church family? Are you willing to prioritize your siblings and parents in the church, or do you try to just sneak in and out as fast as you can?

-Third: how do you show that honor? What does it look like for you to show honor, and would others in the church see that?

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by mikethestrand on November 2, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 2, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/11/02/1-timothy-51-16-sermon-manuscript/

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