All posts for the month August, 2026

The Order of the Ordinances – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re taking 4 weeks to look at some questions I’ve gotten over the past year. Last week we looked at the EFCA, which is our denomination. And we needed last week to set us up for this week, because this week we’re looking at the 2 ordinances or sacraments of the church (hold on to those terms, I’ll explain them in a bit).

-One of the realities that we need to be reminded of in our world is that there is a spiritual realm that we can’t taste, touch, or see. Sometimes we get glimpses of it where the barrier between the physical and spiritual becomes thin, but that’s not our normal human experience, and our world has been so shaped by the scientific revolution that we sometimes forget or neglect that there is a bigger spiritual reality behind the physical world that we can see. We also neglect that there’s an interplay between those 2 realms, where what we do in the physical realm has implications spiritually and vice versa. That means that the choices and actions we do today have implications for eternity.

-I share all that because we’re talking about things that from a physical perspective don’t seem to do much, but spiritually they’re an act of war where we’re pledging ourselves to Jesus as the King and (to use the phrase from the old baptismal recitation), “renouncing the devil and his works and effects.” That means these are things that shouldn’t be taken lightly or flippantly, but it also means that these things are gifts from God for us that do something to us in both the spiritual and physical realm.

-Text in any questions

READ/PRAY (pgs. 1001, 1018)

-we have a LOT to cover today, so I’m not going to be digging too far into any of these issues so we can at least get an overview of the significance of these practices.

-Here’s what the EFCA believes about these ordinances:

-The EFCA is making a distinction between “true church” and “local church” the way that’s often expressed is the visible vs. invisible church. Every individual believer when they are saved are brought into the church family of God (spiritual/invisible), but that also means they should identify themselves with a local church family (physical/visible)

-The marker of the family of God is that they are the ones who practice these 2 ordinances, which express the gospel. Each time either of these are celebrated they are visible reminders of the spiritual reality of what Jesus has done, it helps our eyes see what our ears and hearts know: the gospel. The Belgic Confession, written in 1561, tells us the 3 markers of a true church. These markers must bepracticed to be considered a church. Now, when we talk about a church, there’s different categories of churches, I got this chart from the book Sojourners & Strangers. And if we see the 3 markers of the church, if an organization that claims to be a church doesn’t practice 1 of these 3 markers, are they a church anymore? Similarly, is the trajectory of a church making them more or less holy?

-THE means of salvation, they are A means of salvation (grace) in that they confirm and nourish believers. Historically, the church has labeled these “means of grace,” things that God uses as gifts to make us more holy and more like Him. Here’s the way the EFCA has said it:

-It’s also important to note that these are markers of the church, which means they’re not something you practice by yourself. I can’t go baptize myself, I’m baptized by and into the church. Similarly, I can’t take communion by myself, I participate in communion as part of the church (meant to mark our union). This also means this is something we shouldn’t do on our own, this came up during COVID when we weren’t meeting in person, some churches encouraged people to grab their own elements and “do” communion in their homes, I was opposed to that because we are embodied people and not meeting together is abnormal, and I wanted us to feel it! There are other implications to this too, like I won’t serve communion at a wedding if it’s just for the couple, it’s not something individuals do together, it’s supposed to be for us all to celebrate, but that’s all I have time to say about that now!

-Where we’ll get to at the end: Jesus gave us these 2 ordinances (or sacraments) to practice as the markers of His people until He returns. 

-Sacrament vs. ordinance. I will use them interchangeably; both can be used legitimately. Sacrament means something sacred or set apart (which they are). Early Protestants preferred the term “ordinance” to refer to something “ordained” by Jesus and to distinguish them from the RCC position on them. I think either one is appropriate for us to use today.

-This is a different sermon (in a bit of a different series), but to help you understand what we’re doing today, we’re going to begin: exegesis (reading the text), move to historical theology (what has the church historically believed), that will get us to systematic theology (summarize and systematize what the whole Bible says) and we’ll land at pastoral (or practical) theology, working to answer how do we live this out today?

-1 other note (I promise this is the last one!) but I want to help us understand how to “triage” this issue. 1st you HAVE to believe to be a Christian, 2nd is why we have different churches and denomination (need to take a position, but can make different biblical arguments), 3rd should be able to have a fun conversation about but not condemn or divide over. The reason this is tricky is because the EFCA is unique in that we’ve put the timing and mode of baptism as a 3rd issue, in most churches it’s a 2nd order issue, but everyone agrees this issue has 1st order implications. The way these are practiced are 2nd order issues, but that they are practiced are 1st order issues, which means these must be practiced in order to be an obedient church. 

  1. What is Baptism?

-The first and most important reason for this is to be like Jesus. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist (which also shows us the significance of this act). It’s talked about in all 4 Gospels, we’re just going to look at Matt. today to save some time. 

-The end of this Gospel also talks about baptism, it’s often referred to as the great commission. Jesus says that the way we make disciples is by baptizing them and teaching them. Once again, notice is that this is given to the church as a whole, not for individual Christians to do by themselves (this will come up later, I just want to mention it now so you can see it) the commands are plural.

-Then in the book of Acts repeatedly we see 2 things connected to each other: repent AND be baptized. The first time is in Acts 2, after the first disciples have been filled with the Spirit and Peter preaches the most impact sermon ever. God is at work, the people are convicted of their sin, and look at what Peter says:

-This tells us that the marker of someone who has repented of their sins is baptism, and can you imagine being at this baptism service? The church went from a house church to a megachurch in a day!

-1 other passage that we read earlier (so I won’t read it again) Rom. 6. Paul seems to assume that everyone had been baptized. He also tells us that baptism serves as a picture of our union with Jesus. We go down into the water just like Jesus went down into death, then we are raised up from the water, just like Jesus was raised up from the dead. It serves as a physical reminder of the spiritual reality of what has taken place. Our old self has been crucified with Jesus.

-The NT also tells us that there 3 OT stories that point to the reality of baptism: crossing the Red Sea, circumcision, and the flood

-The first is found in 1 Cor. 10, where Paul says that the church must be careful that they remain faithful in their confession because even the Israelites participated in the pictures of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but they weren’t all saved. Similarly, we can participate in these practices today but not be saved.

-Circumcision is seen in Col. 2, this connects back to Deut. 30:6 when God said He would circumcise the hearts of His people, here Paul is connecting the NT practice of baptism to the OT practice of circumcision (hold on to that, it’ll come up later!)

-Finally, the flood of Gen. 7. Here Paul says baptism corresponds to the way Noah and his family were saved through the flood, centered on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, notice that it’s not baptism itself that is salvific, it’s what baptism points to: the resurrection of Jesus.

-Throughout the book of Acts, the normal order was repentance then be baptized, and it was almost immediate. Things changed in the 4th & 5th centuries when Christianity became much more prevalent (and legal). People started to join the church just for social standing, which meant they weren’t truly Christians. So the church added a period of training before you could be baptized (for a season it was an entire year). The other shift was that the church quickly moved to infant baptism as the general practice (as most rigorously defended by Augustine).

-The church also had conversations (debates) around what “counts” as a baptism? And the general agreement was 2 things: Trinitarian, and water. So a picture of the church in the 1st century can be found in the Didache (teachings), here’s what they said:

-Do you see all the caveats? Living water (moving), cold, pouring onto the head, fasting at least 1 or 2 days. In Geneva, Switzerland, they’ve uncovered a church from the 4th century with a baptistry. What’s fascinating about this is if you look closely you can see that this was “living” water because it was connected to the river.

-To put all the pieces together into a systematic overview, I like the way John Frame defines baptism:

-Today there are 2 positions about who should be baptized: paedo, credo. Credo think of Creed, someone who can confess to believe in Jesus. 

-Everyone practices adult believer’s baptism; the question is what do we do with children? For those who are credo, we do dedications (which my Presbyterian friends tells me is a child baptism I just forgot the water)

-As I said earlier, remember the baptism connection to circumcision that Paul made in Col. 2? If baptism corresponds to baptism, then should it look the same in the NT as the OT? Protestant paedobaptists would argue yes. Both of these serve as the initiatory right: if you a part of this covenant community, you will practice this rite as the beginning of your journey into the church, therefore children should be baptized.

-My position: credobaptist, with a preference for immersion because of Acts, Rom. 6, and the Didache but I have strong with sympathies to and appreciation of paedobaptism who strive to see the children as part of the family of God. My leaning right now (subject to change) is that we should be more willing to baptize younger children than we often are! If God is at work in children, we shouldn’t prevent them from following in obedience to Him, so parents if you see the Holy Spirit at work in your children and they express interest in being baptized, reach out to someone on staff! We’d love to help your kids move towards publicly identifying themselves with Jesus!

-The primary thing is if you are following after Jesus, you must by baptized. I like the way Wayne Grudem summarizes this in his Systematic Theology:

-EFCA says similar: by saying that it is essential, it means that it is required. So friends, if any of you haven’t yet been obedient to Jesus’s command, what’s stopping you? We’d love to baptize you! Reach out to us! 

  • What is Communion?

-Remember, Jesus gave us 2 ordinances (or sacraments), baptism which is the marker of entrance into His people, and communion (or the Lord’s Supper, or the eucharist) as the ongoing reminder that we are a part of His body. That was practice is 1st order, the way we practice is a 3rd order issue. 

-Far fewer passages on this topic, but it’s just as important as baptism as these are the 2 things that mark out the people of God as unique. And just like baptism, we trace this practice back to Jesus, and because we used this Gospel earlier, I’ll stick with Matt.

-The other key text is 1 Cor. 11, Paul’s instructions, very similar to what we say in Matt, but here we see that Paul connects this back to Jesus’s practice.

-It’s likely that the early church practiced this weekly, as inferred from 1 Cor. 11:18

-For the historical practice of the church, I’ll once again quote from the Didache, which lays out clear parameters around who should participate: you must be baptized. This tells us that the practice of the early church was not only that baptism was expected for everyone following Jesus, but it was required before anyone could partake in the Lord’s Supper.

-Over time, the restrictions got more and more narrow, which meant that before the Reformation (1517) the RCC only allowed some people to take the bread (if they were allowed to take at all), no cup, because that was too holy for the “common folk.” (Sidenote: the pre-Reformation church largely became a spectator sport where the preaching was in a language you couldn’t understand, the singing was done by professionals without the congregation, and full communion was reserved for the priests. It seems like many mega-churches today are moving back to that model)

-In more recent history, Spurgeon’s practice was to use tickets that had to be turned in before you were given the elements. They used this system to both track attendance and fence the table. Fencing is the word used to lay out who is allowed to participate in this meal. Spurgeon went so far as having his congregation vote on this practice for visitors (Aug. 13, 1856). He required people to be both baptized AND members of a local church.

-So now a systematic definition once again from John Frame:

-Baptism is meant to be a 1-time thing (can you be born twice?), communion is meant to be observed “perpetually.” There’s some debate about how often that means, we’ll talk about that later!

-4 views of communion today:

-Transubstantiation: RCC, the elements are TRANSformed back into the body & blood.

-Consubstantiation: (Lutheran) CON is Greek for WITH, Christ is uniquely present in, with, and around the elements but they are not TRANSformed.

-Spiritual presence: Christ is spiritually present in in the practice of communion in some unique and special way

-Pure memorial: (“Do this in remembrance of me.) This is often the default position of many Protestants, but I love what Millard Erickson says about the potential negative of this position.

-Who can participate in this sacrament? There’s more to 1 Cor. 11 then we looked at! This says it’s not open to just anyone, and that each person is supposed to examine themselves, which many people have taken as needing to confess all your sins before communion. But that’s not what Paul is saying, there’s a specific examination we’re supposed to do, but it’s not internal. We’re supposed to be repenting of sin all the time, but in communion we’re supposed to examine how we are in relation to the rest of the church (body). This means that you should not participate in this meal if you have unresolved issues with someone else in the church. This tells us that one of the purposes of this celebration is to unite us together (spiritually).

-Vs. 30 is why I’m spiritual presence, because there’s something more than just a memorial meal that’s taking place in communion. 

-This is also where we get the idea of “fencing” the table, this isn’t open to anyone to come take a piece of bread and shot of grape juice, I believe there’s something else going on spiritually here that we shouldn’t be flippant about.

-This has led to the church having 3 approaches as to who can participate. One note is every church believes there is some limit to who is allowed to participate, but they draw the boundaries in difference places.

-Closed communion: in 2 ways, either a baptized member of that denomination, or some go so far as to say a baptized member of that specific church. 

-Close would be say a baptized member of a church (Spurgeon)

-Open is this meal is for anyone who has been saved, without any other limitations.

-My personal position differs from our church on this, we practice open communion, but my position is “close” communion, but because this isn’t a gospel essential, we can dialogue and debate the merits of these positions without dividing over them (more on that coming in 2 weeks)

-The final question is how often should we celebrate? And once again, my preference is different than our church! When I first arrived, it was celebrated monthly, we have since moved to 2/month, but I would love to celebrate it weekly as the culmination of our worship service, where each week, we’re reminded of Jesus’s sacrifice and each week we can taste and see that the Lord is good.

-When we switched to 2/month, I got an anonymous letter from someone who didn’t like this transition. Just so everyone hears this, if anyone ever sends an anonymous letter, it goes straight into the garbage. The Bible tells us if we have an issue with someone we go straight to them, we don’t hide beyond anonymity. I will share all the push backs I’ve gotten to celebrating communion weekly, and why I think they’re wrong, are you ready? I can condense them down to 2:

-First, people have said it makes communion less special. What doesn’t make sense to me is why that doesn’t apply to: singing, or praying, or preaching. Or if we want to go a step further, if communion is meant to nourish us spiritually, I need food to be nourished physically, but eating 3x a day doesn’t make it any less special for me! Sometimes it’s a very special meal, but most of the time it’s just to get calories into my body.

-Second, I’ve been told it takes too much time. Which honestly just sounds lazy. I’m not sure if you realize this, but anything worth doing takes time. And since it’s something Jesus commanded, I think it’s worth “wasting” time on it! I had a conversation with someone once who’s a member of the biggest EFCA church in the country. That church celebrates communion 1/month only at their Saturday service, and they don’t let anyone know that’s the only time they celebrate it. Something’s off if it’s not an essential component of the practices of your church!

-So those are the 2 sacraments given to us from the Lord that are means of grace from God to us to confirm and nourish us as believers.

  • Does the Order Matter?

-I think the order to these does matter, because they’re both connected to being a Christian, but they’re connected to different parts of being a Christian. Baptism is connected to the beginning or entry point. Throughout the NT, the command is repent AND be baptized. 

-But here’s where there’s room for some disagreement. I can’t point to a specific chapter and verse for this ordering. It’s a logical argument that they should be sequential, but that’s where I’ll stop. The way I’ll say it is I think the preferred order should be: you’re saved, then shortly after that you’re baptized, and then only when you’ve been baptized (as the entry rite) should you participate in the Lord’s Supper (the ongoing rite) because why would you willingly only participate in 1 of these 2 practices? Both are commands (not optional) therefore both need to be done. You may be asking: what about if someone gets saved today during this service, would you ban them from the table until they’ve been baptized? No! But I would hope they would want to be baptized ASAP. I’ve said before that I would love to fill this baptistry up every week because people were being saved. The logical ordering from what the Bible teaches seems to be: salvation leads to baptism which then leads to the Lord’s Supper.

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by mikethestrand on August 23, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 23, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/23/the-order-of-the-ordinances-sermon-manuscript/

What it Means to Be Free – Sermon Manuscript

-We’re going to spend the next 4 weeks looking at some questions I’ve gotten over this calendar year, this week as you saw in that video, we’re looking at the denomination we’re a part of the EFCA. I’m also going to be trying something new with this series, so if you have questions during the sermon or as your processing throughout the week, text 651-252-4486 and I’ll answer those either in Sermon Scraps or in next week’s sermon. 

-So you know where we’ll be going: next week we’ll be looking at the order of the ordinances, then we’ll talk about the office of Deacon which was just added to our bylaws, and finally we’ll talk about how to disagree. But today, what it means to be free because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the EFCA and what we’re about. And I think a lot of the questions parallel our current societies questions. 

-One of the primary issues in our world today is around your identity. Who are you, who do you want to be or become? I grew up in the era where you were told you could be whatever you wanted to be! So I decided (like most people my age) that I was going to play in the NBA. You may not be able to tell this from where you’re sitting, but I’m white. I’m also a solid 6 foot nothing. Which means my prospects for playing in the NBA were slim to none. But people wouldn’t tell kids that back then! Instead, I had to come to that realization myself through a lot of trial & error.

-There should have been signs though. Some of you have met my parents, they’re both the same height: 5’9” (probably shorter now as they’ve gotten older). Honestly, I’m just glad my first number got to 6 instead of staying in the 5’ range, thankfully my mom’s side has some height!

-Time has a way of tempering our expectations as we start to come to grips with the reality of ourselves and the world. Youth has a naivety about it that as you get older looks simultaneously cute and stupid! The message that you can be or do whatever you want is just not true! We’re all wired differently, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, we’re all products of a wide assortment of things, including the genetic makeup of your heritage, and the reality is we can’t escape those things – we are products of our histories. This somewhat runs contrary to so much of what we’re taught today. Our culture trains us to throw off all the shackles of tradition and chase our own desires. That’s basically the primary point of every Disney movie: “betcha on land they understand, bet they don’t reprimand their daughters sick of swimming.” Or “see the line where sky meets the sea, it calls me, no one know how far it goes.” Or even more explicit: “No rights, no wrongs, no rules for me, I’m FREE!” And there we are, back at freedom. And depending on what you mean by that, it may be true! But there’s a passage in the Bible that talks about being free that I want us to read together to get a sense of what the EFCA is about.

-There are 3 points to today’s sermon, and we’re going to spend most of our time on point 2 because I think it needs the most work! First is what is “free”? Second, what is an evangelical (wait before jumping to conclusions on that word), and finally the reality of the EFCA is an unofficial motto: we’re better together.

READ/PRAY (pg. 1034)

  1. What is “Free”?

-We’re going to start with the biblical and theological point, and then we’re going to get to what the Free in EFCA stands for historically. We just read this text, but there are 3 things I want you to see in from this text that will help us understand this point. As Americans, this is one of the core things to the founding of our country! You can buy “freedom” t-shirts at Wal-Mart every summer! But is that the same thing as Christian freedom that Paul is talking about here?

-We need to understand 2 aspects to freedom: freedom from something vs. freedom to something. Our culture pushes freedom from everything! That’s Disney again, throw off all the shackles so we can be free and true to ourselves. But that’s a different form of slavery. Slavery to our individual wants and desires that change from moment to moment.

-There’s a great picture of this in the show Bluey (if you don’t have young kids right now, you’re missing out on some QUALITY TV, much better than the Barney I had growing up). It’s about a family of Australian blue-heeler dogs who go about their normal lives. In 1 episode, the family is going on a walk, and one of the kids is complaining about being “too tired” to walk, but then they start playing a game and the kid is running in circles as the walk continues. But as soon as the game is done, she’s suddenly “too tired” again. The best thing about this show is how much it parallels real life! We adults are the same way: our motivations and desires change from moment to moment, we are often slaves to our desires.

-But Jesus offers us freedom to live a flourishing life. However, that means there are boundaries to our freedom. If we’re following after Him, we’re not “free” to pursue sin, those things are antithetical to each other. Our tendency as Americans is to focus on vs. 1 and miss vs. 13-15, let me show you what I mean:

-We read vs. 1 and because of the climate that we live in, we jump to we are free from the yoke of slavery. But that misses the bigger context of Paul’s argument here. The freedom isn’t to go do whatever we want, the freedom is to go serve one another! But what’s the temptation? It’s to bite and devour, to fight and push for your own freedoms at the expense of others. Paul is telling us our freedom is a freedom to go serve others, giving higher priority to others because that’s what Christ did for us.

-The second piece I want you to take away from this is that the cross is offensive. Now I want to be careful, because that doesn’t mean you should be a jerk in your witnessing to others. The cross does and should offend people, but we shouldn’t be offensive to people, there is a difference! The last verse here is one of the funniest verses in the Bible – Paul is talking about circumcision, and the word he uses here means to completely cut off, so he’s saying why stop with circumcision? You should go all the way!

-The final piece from this is vs. 6. This is the reminder that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but that faith that saves us isn’t alone, it comes with strings attached. You can see the focus of our lives as Christians begins with faith, but then it has flesh on it: expressing itself outwardly through love.

-This is what we’re freed to do: to love others just like Jesus loved us. We aren’t saved by our good works, but we are saved (and freed) to do good works to others. Eph. 2 says it like this:

-So the idea of freedom is an idea that’s rooted in Scripture. We’re freed to live as God intended, not giving in to sin. There’s a song from Cityalight that says it this way: “Yes, He rose that we would be free indeed! Free from every plan of darkness, free to live and free to love” Apart from that freedom that has been won in Christ, we can’t truly live or love.

-But historically, the free in EFCA has meant that we are “free” from state-imposed rule. We are congregational in our polity. Let me explain all those words:

-In many European countries there is an official state church that oversees and manages the churches. That means taxes also go to support the pastor and church facilities. The EFCA intentionally didn’t want any higher oversight, so for us the highest governing body is the congregation. Our members are involved in most major decisions of our church (and that’s true of all EFCA churches), that’s what being congregational is.

-Polity is the same word for politics. How does a church govern itself? In the EFCA, the congregation is the highest governing body, where each church determines our leaders (elders/pastors), our annual budget, is involved in membership, taking on any debt, facility purchases, those kinds of major decisions. Here’s the way the EFCA states it:

-Autonomous doesn’t mean independent. We don’t get to make all our decisions on our own. By associating with the EFCA we are agreeing that we will support what the EFCA is doing (hence interdependent). We’re not DEpendent on the denomination, nor are we completely INdependent where we do whatever we want, as we’ll see at the end, we’re better together than apart, which is where INTERdependent is a helpful descriptor for us. 

  • What is an Evangelical?

-Now for the first word! And part of the reason we’re going to spend the bulk of our time on this word is because of the misunderstanding of this word in our culture today. For many people the word “Evangelical” has become a political marker and not a religious marker. Each election cycle we’re told what percentage of “evangelicals” voted for a candidate, but first I don’t think that’s accurate, and second what I’ve read about those polls is people self-identify out of a list of options, which means we have Buddhist evangelicals, Mormon evangelicals, and even Muslim evangelicals! When we use that word, we’re not talking about anything in American politics, we’re going back to a Greek word pronounced euongelion (which I put on the screen, because you can see how we can transliterate that into evangel, the base of evangelical) and all that word means is “good news.” 

-The early Reformers even described themselves as “evangelicals” so Luther described his movement as the (in German) evangelische kirche in English, evangelical church. So that term has more history to it than modern day American politics.

-And where this intersects with the EFCA is that the history of the day parallels the evangelical movement, so in order for us to understand our denomination, we need to understand what we mean when we say we’re “Evangelical,” and part of the difficulty is there’s no one to tell the world what it means! There’s general agreed upon ideas, but it includes Christians from a wide assortment of beliefs! 

-One of the most cited definitions of an Evangelical comes from a historian named David Bebbington who says Evangelicals are known by these 4 things (therefore this is often referred to as “Bebbington’s quadrilateral”)

-Another one is from the NAE (which the EFCA has been involved in since its founding), and they define it this way: 

-Finally, Thomas Kidd, a historian on evangelical religious history wrote a book titled ‘Who is an Evangelical?’ who defines it this way:

-I hope you can see some of the similarities! Evangelicals are Bible people, who emphasize the need for spiritual birth and then work to live and apply that belief to their lives, which is a good summary of the EFCA! Since it’s origination, the EFCA has been focused on the Bible, has sought to be faithful in evangelizing others about Jesus, and has looked for ways to care for the poor and marginalized. For example, in 1996, the EFCA passed a resolution titled, “A Stranger at Our Gates: A Christian Perspective  on Immigration.” This statement was explicitly stated to apply to all immigrants, whether legally documented, or not. I’m not saying that to make a political statement, we need some nuance on this conversation, if you want to talk more about that, email me and let’s grab coffee, but also keep in mind, this statement was written in 1996, 30 years ago! Friends, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

-With all that background to evangelicals, I want to share a brief history of the EFCA with you, which largely parallels the broader evangelical movement, and begins as a movement of immigrants from Sweden and Norway in the latter half of the 1800s. One of the descriptions I’ve heard from people trying to define the EFCA is we’re “like Baptists, but we’re not Baptists” and that’s not actually true. Our founding had a different focus and emphasis than the Baptists did, which you can see on this chart: the 3 primary streams of denominations that came out of the Reformation, and the EFCA is based out of the Lutheran stream, Baptists come out of the Anglican stream. 

-As for the history of the EFCA, we’re going to look at it tracing the mottos of the EFCA, which are:

-We’ll start with the first, and most important one: where stands it written.

-This gets to the primary focus of the Bible for us. The EFCA came out a pietistic movement in Scandinavia that was brought over to the US by immigrants from those countries (primarily Swedish and Norwegian). By piety, I don’t mean something negative, they took it from the Latin word pietaswhich means devotion. They were Lutherans who wanted to take their faith seriously and saw themselves in the lineage of the original Lutheran, Martin Luther. This pietistic impulse led to something known as the “Readers movement” where Christians would gather in homes to read the Bible and apply it to their lives (kind of like we do Life Groups today!) 

-The Bible has always been the focus of the EFCA, and that even impacted the founders of our movement. 2 names that comes up repeatedly when talking about the EFCA are Ellen Modin and Frederik Franson. Frederik was a Swedish traveling evangelist who wanted people to know about Jesus. He spent time in Chicago learning from and emulating DL Moody, and was referred to as “Moody’s Swedish disciple.” 

-Around the same time, Ellen Modin became the EFCA’s first supported missionary who was sent to the Mormons in Utah.

-As they started wanting to send more missionaries and continue expanding their reach and influence, they started realizing they couldn’t just operate by themselves, so they had their first conference in Boone, IA in 1884, which continued emphasizing the Bible, and from that conference this motto originated!

-The Swedes and the Norwegians both continued along parallel paths throughout the beginning of the 20th century, but a controversy was brewing that set the trajectory for the EFCA in the future. Today it’s referred to as the fundamentalist/modernist controversy. The question was centered on the work of God and the Bible being reliable. The “modernists” were influenced by the enlightenment and argued that miracles can’t happen, the “fundamentalists” argued for the “fundamentals” of the faith (wasn’t negative). The EFCA, being Bible people, landed on the side of the fundamentals, which eventually went 2 directions, the first was to become modern-day fundamentalist (arguing over every theological issue), and what are today called “Evangelicals.” 

-This leads us to the 2 motto: All believers, but believers only.

-This statement came out of the evangelical vs. fundamentalist divide and is an implication of theological triage: (EXPLAIN)

-The EFCA intentionally looks to focus on the essential tenants of the historic Christian faith without compromise, but to hold those convictions as graciously and charitably as possible. It’s possible speak the truth but be a jerk about it, this is the EFCA’s way of saying we’re not going to be a fighting fundamentalist. This is the way it’s historically been said in the EFCA: 

-Along with this movement, the 2 Free Churches (Norwegian & Swedish) starting having conversations about merging together, and another father of the EFCA, A.T. Olson, chaired a merger committee, which was finalized in 1950, dropping the European names and becoming the Free Church of America. One of the people involved in this process stated: “We’ll never stop being Norwegian, or Swedes, but tomorrow we will all be American.” Here’s Olson presenting a book celebrating the 75th anniversary (back to 1884) to President Eisenhower in 1959

-What started as a Scandinavian movement eventually realized we needed to reach beyond ourselves to truly represent the communities we lived in. This was FAR more than debating whether we should continue speaking Norwegian in our worship services (which was an early debate!) and it brought attention to the EFCA needing to reflect all peoples across the world, because all peoples in the world need the gospel. This has 2 implications, the first the missions of the EFCA, which includes 550 missionaries in 40 countries across the world, but closer to home it means looking beyond our Scandinavian heritage and reaching out to people from other tribes and tongues and nations who comprise what is today America! One of the big celebrations of the book is that our current acting president is an African American (being voted to officially become the president in June). Carlton Harris did his first internship out of seminary at First EFC in Wichita, KS in 1981, but several families left the church because he was African-American. Friends, that’s a part of our history, too. It’s not always the right things, and we need to be ok with acknowledging our past and working to grow more like Jesus over time.

-The last motto gets at the focus on discipleship (becoming more like Jesus), and I think this is where the history of the EFCA gets fun (in my mind) because our church has some strong connections to the EFCA! As I was reading the book, I came across this picture from 1984, 6 years after our church was planted, featuring our very own Ed Bender, who was receiving training on intentional discipleship. 

-A couple chapters later, I came across my dad, who still works in that role today, this also mentions Bill Hamel who was a member here at South Sub! And THEN, as it was discussing the rewrite of our SOF leading up to the 2008 vote, look who also got a shoutout! We hosted a conference here in 2006, the year after this room was built! And if you didn’t know, the headquarters for the EFCA are right off 494 & Cedar (so make sure you wave whenever you drive by)!

  • We’re Better Together

-As I mentioned at the beginning, there’s also a 4th motto that came up in the book, but I hadn’t heard other places, and that is the third point of the sermon: we’re better together. What started as a wide assortment of individuals coalesced into churches, which banded together to create a denomination that remains tethered to God’s Word, compassionate about reaching the lost, looking to love others in what we say and in how we live, and is committed to making disciples among all peoples. Last year, acting president Carlton Harris shared 4 words that he believes summarizes the EFCA from the past and into the future, and if you go the EFCA website you’ll see them on the front page: biblical and missional, united and free.

-The Bible is our highest source of authority, but we don’t exist to learn more Bible, the Bible compels us to look beyond ourselves and live missionally throughout the rest of our lives (loaded word that I don’t have time to explain now, text me if you want me to explain more about that)

-Similarly, we’re united together around our SOF, but we are free to love and serve the community that God has placed us in, but we don’t use that freedom to pursue selfishness, instead use it serve each other in love.

-Since I arrived 6 years ago, I’ve been working to more closely align us with the EFCA. In 2021 we hosted the same conference we had hosted in 2006, that same year we also hosted a national worship leader gathering. The EFCA has its’ problems and issues that need to be dealt with, but that’s true of any and every church and denomination until Jesus returns! I’m grateful for the EFCA, and am excited about what God continues to do in our little corner of the Evangelical world, and I hope this excites you to be a part of this denomination as well!

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by mikethestrand on August 16, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 16, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/16/what-it-means-to-be-free-sermon-manuscript/

Sermon Manuscript – Psalm 50

-There’s a movie that came out in 1992 that has become one of the top movies in history. It’s a story about a military investigation into the death of a Marine, and it featured a wide assortment of stars like Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Kevin Bacon. A quote from the movie has gone down in infamy and has been rated the 29th most impactful movie quote of all time (according to the American Film Institute). I’m sure many of you have heard the quote, if not seen the movie. The pivotal scene of the movie, and the iconic quote, is when Jack Nicholson’s character is on the stand being grilled by Tom Cruise. And it builds up getting more and more intense until Jack Nicholson exclaims: “you want the answers?!” Tom Cruise responds with: “I want the truth!” And then the line: “You can’t handle the truth!” And he continues his verbal tirade from there! 

-There is something exciting about courtroom scenes, getting a glimpse behind the curtain to the legal system. There’s book series devoted to it, movies devoted to it, TV shows that show real life courtrooms. We’re hardwired to want justice, it’s one of the ways God has created us. But what would happen if God were the one who was serving as the judge? Who would serve as the jury? How would humanity defend themselves, and what would God be indicting people for? Today’s Psalm shows us that exact situation. God delivers the opening statements, He lays out His case, and then He enacts a judgment. 

READ/PRAY (pg. 498)

-I found this quote from Derek Kidner’s commentary helpful in understanding exactly what’s going on in this Psalm, as well as a reminder that this text was also written to us! Even though this is addressed to God’s covenant people in the OT, the message applies to us today. We need these words just as much as the first hearers did, and there’s even some similar reminders for us in the NT, as we’ll see when we work our way through this chapter.

  1. Opening Comments (1-6)

-The first thing we need to look at is: Who is Asaph? This is the first Psalm we’ve come across that begins with his name, but he comes up later (mostly in the 70s). We learn more about him in other places in the OT. One example from 1 Chron. 16, tells us that Asaph was the chief musician who played the cymbals (just a reminder that drums are one of the most holy of all instruments!) 

-Whomever was final compiler of this book thought that this Psalm fit contextually here, which makes sense with what we’ve been learning all summer. 

-A brief summary of our study this summer, because all these Psalms build on each other, and I’d forgotten what all we’d seen in these Psalms (vacation brain is real)! We began in Pss. 41-43 with individual complaints and requests for protections from God. Ps. 44 expands the focus out to include the the entire community. Pss. 45 and 46 address the arrival of the King and establishing His reign. Pss. 47-48 celebrate the King and His glory filling the city, and last week we saw the foolishness of looking to worldly riches to fulfill you. This week we see the story of God coming in judgment. 

-The first verse begins with a running list of the names of God: Mighty One, God, the Lord, you should read this as God establishing His credentials. Just as a lawyer lists his various accomplishments and achievements, with God His credentials are connected to His various names because who else would be able to validate these credentials? We’ll see more of this in a few verses. 

-It goes on to say that He goes on to summon the earth, the whole earth. He’s inviting His creation to come and participate in this judgment.

-And where is God calling them to convene? It says from Zion – the place where God lives, the center of the world in Israelite thought. This also connects this Psalm thematically to Ps. 48, where God was establishing His rule and reign as centered in Zion, think of it like Washington DC, the primary city where God rules from.

-The further descriptions of God here allude to the first 5 books of the OT. Radiance could be referring back to Deut. 33 where God “shines forth” as He blesses the tribes of Israel, and then vs. 3 points back to Ex. 19, God’s appearance when He delivered the stipulations of His covenant to His people, the people are warned to stay away from the mountain when God met with Moses so that His glory wouldn’t destroy them

-(4) The same word that we saw previously comes up again here, God is calling the rest of His creation to come act as the jury in His case against His people. Last time it was just he earth; this time He expands His invitation to everything. And do you see why He’s gathering them? To serve as the jury in His indictment against His people.

-One of the fascinating things about this reality is that means the jury is always watching! Think back to Ps. 19 which tells us the the creation teaches and models God’s glory for us, they’re pointing us to God, witnessing to His glory and grandeur, so not only are they serving as a jury, they also serve as God’s witnesses. Let’s think about that for a minute. Can you escape the heat of the sun? You can maybe go to your basement, which stays the same temperature all the time, but even in my basement I have windows! And when it’s as hot as it has been the past month it’s a reminder of how much the sun affects things. Did anyone else appreciate the cloud cover on Tuesday? Just as we can’t escape the sun, we can’t escape God’s watchful eye over us

-But there’s another reason God calls out His creation here: they were the witnesses when the covenant was enacted between God and His people (see the beginning and end of Deut). By calling His witnesses, He’s reminding the people of their previous promises to remain faithful to Him. It’s a bit like pulling out the contract that both parties signed to remind everyone what they had previously agreed to. 

-God tells us who all is assembled in this courtroom. He’s acting as judge and defense attorney. The jury is the heaven and earth (the rest of His creation), and on trial are his “faithful ones” connected to the Hebrew word chesed God’s covenant keeping faithfulness, which signifies that this judgment is against His people.

-Last week’s Psalm was unique because it was meant for everyone, this one gets us back to the “normal” focus of the people of God. And once again we’re reminded that God is a righteous judge, His witnesses will speak to His faithfulness.

-We see a corollary to this in 1 Pet. 4:17. Friends, we will not escape God’s judgment, we’re actually more culpable than unbelievers because we’re supposed to know better! If we fail to live obediently even though we have His Word, what hope does the rest of the world have? This is why we need to ensure we’re faithfully obeying what we learn from God’s Word instead of either going through empty motions or ignoring the commands of how God has commanded us to live. 

–Selah

-“Lord, I praise you that, like a good father, you love your children far more than others, yet you hold them to far stricter standard. It is only when I grasp both of these truths that I change for the better, escaping both self-hate and self-indulgence. Infuse them deep into my heart by your Spirit. Amen.”

  • Judgment Against the Half-Hearted (7-15)

-After setting the stage, God moves to lay out His case, and the first issue he has is with the half-hearted (what Kidner called “unthinkingly religious”). And this group is a helpful warning for us to be aware of because the external appearance here is the same as those who are living in faithful obedience to God. 

-All the things God lists here are things that the people are supposed to offer: sacrifices, burnt offerings, offering up bulls and goats.

-But did you notice the pronouns here? God is building up to vs. 10 in the beginning of this section. Did you catch all the repeated use of “your.” 

-This group of people is faithful in obeying what God has commanded, but that’s where it stops. Those things aren’t wrong! But doing them as a way to “earn” God’s favor is wrong. He says every animal (wild) cattle (domesticated), but then he goes on to mention the birds and creatures of the field. If He’s the Creator of everything, is there anything that isn’t His? No! Why would the people need to “give” Him anything if it’s already His? They wouldn’t! All the offerings they could give are nothing compared the the reality that He already owns it all! 

-Vs. 12-13 we need to understand some historical context. There are some historical documents that list out that if a god isn’t given his sacrifices he dies from hunger (not sure what kind of a god that is that’s completely dependent on other people), but not this God. God doesn’t need anything. We’ve already established this, even if He did need something, it’s already His!

-This is teaching us something about God. Your fancy theological word for the day is “aseity” which means His complete self-existence. (from Latin a se which means “from himself.”) God is completely self-existent. He didn’t come from anyone, He doesn’t need anyone or anything else for Him to exist. Everything else comes from Him.

-There’s also another theological idea that’s coming up in this text, that is that God is also spiritual. He doesn’t need to eat like we do, He doesn’t eat bulls or drink their blood. That means the commands for the people to offer sacrifices to God aren’t just to expand His portfolio, there’s a different purpose to this: it’s meant to do something to us, which is what God talks about in the next verse:

-(14) Instead of just going through the motions, God invites His people to offer a thanksgiving sacrifice, to demonstrate gratitude for the gift of life that He has given.

-We see a parallel to this in Heb. 13:15. The author there tells us this is something that’s supposed to be going on continually, confessing and praising His name, giving Him thanks for the salvation that has been given to us because of His Son.

-When that becomes our way of life, then God invites us to not just go through the motions, but to pursue Him. He will meet us in our struggles and rescue and redeem us.

  • Judgment Against the Hypocrites (16-21)

-This next group has a different problem, Kidner called them the “hardened and hypocritical” This group is similarly going through the motions, but not all of them. These people say the right things, but then intentionally throw away God’s words, and even worse, God refers to this people as “wicked.”

-I’ve had this happen to me before! I had someone come up to me after a sermon onetime and tell me that they didn’t like one sentence of the sermon. When I asked which sentence it was, it was a Bible verse I quoted. This person said, “I don’t agree with that.” So I just said, “you’ll have to take that one up with God!”

-Jesus talks about this idea, too in Matt. 15, quoting from the prophet Isa. They speak the right things, they’ll recite the commands of God, but then live as if those words don’t exist.

-And the question we need to ask ourselves is: what do we do when we’re confronted by God’s Word? The goal of our study of the Bible isn’t to master it, the goal of our study of the Bible is to be mastered by it. Each week when I’m preparing these sermons I’m thinking of the Bible as a mirror: my goal is to hold this up to you and trust the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how closely your image reflects what we’re reading in the text. See, preaching isn’t just about me getting up here to pontificate each week about things I find interesting, God has designed the church to have leaders who weekly remind us of the truths of what God has done, and we’re supposed to respond with obedience. Preaching is meant to be a means of grace in the life of the Christian, a gift that helps us take 1 step closer to Jesus each week. 

-That’s the opposite of the description of the wicked: they see what it would take to grow closer to Jesus, and they run away from it. Instead of moving towards holiness they’re running in the opposite direction, which is the temptation of all our hearts. We think our way is better, we don’t always trust that God’s way is best or that He has our best interests at heart. That’s why the Bible is so incredible, it knows the way we’re all wired, which means it’s timeless. It knows the orientation of our heart, it isn’t bound to a specific cultural climate, it helps us correct our misplaced priorities 

-In this case, the Psalmist goes on to list some specific things they’re doing, ways they’re disregarding God’s Words:

-3 of the 10 commandments are listed here: thief, adulterer, speaking evil. Based on the description of these people, I’m guessing they could even list them out all 10 commandments if asked. But this text also tells us that they’re not always the ones committing the sins. 

-These people are guilty by association. It says they befriend the thief, they spend time with adulterers, and then they join in on speaking evil against others. This means it’s time to hold up the mirror of this text: church: who are you spending time with? We become like the people we spend time with. Now, this doesn’t mean that we never spend time with unbelievers (or the wicked), we’re still commanded to evangelize and tell others about what Jesus has done in our lives, but don’t put yourselves in places where you’ll be tempted to follow in their sinful ways. You need to know yourself well enough to know what faithful evangelism looks like for you without giving in to their sinful ways. You also need to have other Christians who know you well enough to be able to speak into your life and help you as you process and navigate life on this side of eternity.

-And it could even be that the Psalmist is trying to say that even though they didn’t participate in these things they were affirming them by not stopping them or telling their friends that this was wrong. This doesn’t mean you need to be a legalist or a party pooper, but it does mean evaluating what’s taking place around you and refusing to cross the line into sin.

-The last verse in this section tells us that they assumed that because they hadn’t yet been stopped or confronted that there was no problem with what they did. But it gets even worse. The 2nd line here could contain a reference to God’s name “I Am”, so it would be something like “you thought I AM was just like you.” This is connected to God’s aseity that we talked about earlier, God’s covenant name. Think of this like when your parents call you by your full name. The people were taking God’s silence as His permission to sin, but this verse is saying there’s a different reason for this:

-2 things: there is both a reason for His delay in returning and today is incredibly important. We see a warning like this in Heb. 3, where the author repeatedly says watch yourself today. On the day you hear God’s voice, don’t respond with a hardened heart! Obey now! Because tomorrow it could be too late.  

-Paul talks about this exact same idea in Rom. 2: God’s patience and long-suffering is intentional: so that we could have time to repent. And if you don’t repent then it’s going to be even worse for you when God returns, where we will face the consequences for everything we do on earth. Friends, your decisions today have implications for your life in eternity. God invites us into a way of flourishing as humans, but it comes through obedience to God’s way of living. One of the things that worries me is we tend to view Christianity as a 1-time decision and that’s it, instead of seeing that God expects a complete reorientation to our lives. God tells us that we need to pursue holiness with our whole lives, not just the bare minimum.

-So friends, are you pursuing God and living a holy life with all that you have, or are you wanting to continue holding on to your old ways of living?

  • Concluding Remarks (22-23) 

-The ending of this Psalm is a reminder about true wisdom. There are 2 ways to live: either obediently following God or refusing to obey and running away from Him. And we once again see that we’re not just supposed to go through the motions of sacrifices without a changed heart and life, we need to always give thanks to God for the salvation He has won on our behalf.

-Following Christ means that we live a thankful life. We give thanks to God for His good gifts, but there are also string attached: we need to order our conduct, we need to ensure that we obey God’s commands in our lives because those commands are how we live in wisdom, aligning ourselves with the reality of how God has designed this world to operate.

-The mirror of this text has a lot for us to reflect on! We see the reminder to not live a half-hearted life where we go through the motions but don’t allow that to affect our whole being, and the reminder to no be a hypocrite who can say all the right things but not be pursuing holiness and righteousness in our life. And with those reminders to pay careful attention to how we live, we have the promise that we will experience God’s salvation that comes through Jesus Christ.

-And the reality for us is that spiritual none of us can “handle the truth.” Rom. 3 tells us that we’ve all sinned, that we’ve all fallen short of what God has done, which means in God’s courtroom every single one of us has a “guilty” verdict. “But God,” we saw that reality last week! But God did what we couldn’t do, He paid the penalty that we couldn’t and gives us the freedom to live as new creations who have been called to live a holy life. We are the half-hearted, we are the hypocrites, but God’s mercy and grace are enough to deal with our sins.

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by mikethestrand on August 9, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 9, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/09/sermon-manuscript-psalm-50/

Psalm 49 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the things you probably know about me if you’ve been coming here for any bit of time is that I LOVE history! I love reading history, I love studying history, I love visiting historical things. And 2 years ago, I got to go on the trip of a lifetime around Europe with some other pastors, which means you all will regularly be subjected to pictures and stories of my time from that trip! Partly because it was connected to church history. I got to visit London, Geneva, Rome, Edinburgh, Oxford and visit some places that had a profound influence on the direction of Western Christianity. But it wasn’t just Christianity that has been influenced by these areas, so I want to share some pictures that I took of significant things I saw. I’ll share a bit about each one, but I want you to see if you can figure out what they all have in common. Are you ready?

-This is a bust of the Roman emperor Claudius, who appears 3 times in the book of Acts, which we’re going to be working our way through this Fall, so it’s been on my mind. This bust lives in the British Museum in London.

-Up next is Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking (who asked to be buried by Newton). Isaac’s comment is in Latin, Stephen’s is the English version, and this is at Westminster Abbey in London.

-In the same building, is the tomb of King Edward the 1 who it says was born in 1239 died in 1307

-Just to prove I was there, too, that’s the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Charles Spurgeon preached, was dedicated as a building in 1861 (Spurgeon died in 1892)

-Next is a random building I walked by in Edinburgh, Scotland, which according to this sign is where Charles Darwin lived while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1825-1827.

-Also in Edinburgh is St. Giles Cathedral, where the Reformer John Knox (the statue, not the other guy, that’s my friend Brent) ministered during the Reformation. He had multiple run ins with “Bloody Mary” (Queen Mary I), as well as Mary, Queen of Scots during his life as pushed for Reformation beliefs, and that yellow square in the middle of that parking space marks where he was buried.

-Here is a memorial of where John Calvin used to live in Geneva. Not that building because that building was torn down, but it’s posted there in memory of where he lived while he was a pastor. 

-This is the Reformation wall (another evidence I was actually there) with statues of: John Calvin, John Knox (who you heard about earlier), William Farel (who coerced Calvin to serve in Geneva) and Theodore Beza (followed Calvin as the pastor in Geneva)

-Also, going even further back than the Reformation, here’s a sign in Geneva that says this road is the path Julius Caesar walked when he visited Geneva in 58 AD (which means the Apostles would have still been alive)

-Lastly, this is the stone marking the spot where Nero is buried in Rome. That’s it! Did you figure out what all these pictures have in common? They’re all markers of people who are dead. Today’s Psalm tells us that death is the great equalizer of everyone. The mortality rate has held steady throughout history at 100% (with the exception of Jesus), and in Ps. 49:11, we read, “Their graves are their permanent homes, their dwellings from generation to generation, though they have named estates after themselves.” Let’s read the rest of the Psalm together:

READ/PRAY (pg. 497-8)

  1. True Wisdom (1-4)

-The first 4 verses are an introduction that are saying what this Psalm is about, and there’s a couple things that make this Psalm unique. First comes in the first 2 verses. It says this Psalm is for ALL peoples, low and high, rich and poor. Generally, the Psalms are director to the people of God, this one is for every person who has ever lived, which is why it’s referred to as a wisdom Psalm, hence why it sounds more like the books of Proverbs or Ecc. than Psalms.

-And the entire purpose of those books is seeking to answer the question: what is wisdom? How do we get it? I would define wisdom as living in line with reality. That means aligning ourselves with God’s intent and design for us as humans. That also means sin is pushing against God’s design for us, which is what we see throughout the wisdom literature. Wisdom literature does all sorts of comparisons between the way of wisdom versus the way of foolishness. And the other thing about this Psalm is vs. 3-4 use basically every word the OT uses to talk about God’s wisdom: wisdom, understanding, proverb, and riddle. What’s slightly different about this is the last word: lyre. This is meant to be sung together. So, this wisdom Psalm is a song that contains wisdom for all people from all socio-economic backgrounds to learn a truth together. 

  • A Worldly Ransom (5-14)

-Remember what I said earlier about the comparison between wisdom and foolishness in the wisdom literature? That’s where the Psalmist jumps to next, he asks a question: why should I fear in times of trouble? And the implicit answer is: he shouldn’t! But what times of trouble is he talking about in this Psalm?

-The second half of vs. 5 tells us: the iniquity (that’s another word for sin) of his foes is all around him. Once again, that can be any number of things, right? Sin isn’t restricted to just 1 thing, so which sin? Look at vs. 6, that’s where we see the focus of the rest of this Psalm! It’s addressing the way of the foolish who look to their salvation and satisfaction in worldly wealth.

-He uses 2 interesting financial words in vs. 7 that we have use often when we talk about salvation: redemption and ransom. These are terms the wealthy would know because redemption is the price paid to free something (free an animal from another person, in this time you could free a slave with a financial payment), and a ransom is paid when something or someone in their household is captured by someone else (which the wealthy would have been more susceptible to). We see this even today, people are kidnapped and held hostage until a ransom is paid, but it isn’t generally the poor it happens to. And each of those things would have a price limit, but what would the price be when the ransom needs to be paid to God? Anyone have a way of measuring that price? It’s incalculable, at least in our minds.

-Jesus talks about this idea in Matt. 16: The last question Jesus asks is the same one we’re seeing in this Psalm: what ransom would someone pay to live longer? And isn’t that a temptation around us all the time? There’s a guy named Bryan Johnson (spelled differently), who’s described as a “biohacker” who supposedly spends $2 million each year to attempt to live forever. He’s claimed to have the “biological age” of a 17-year-old, despite actually being 48. It turns out, he has an autoimmune disease that is fatal. Friends, all the money in the world can’t save you from death, and for those of us in Christ, death isn’t something to fear. Yes, it’s an enemy, but death has been defeated! 

-And the Psalmist goes on to say exactly that point in vs. 10, who dies? Everyone. Just as we saw at the beginning of this Psalm, he uses a few words to describe everyone: wise, foolish, and stupid, and all of us are somewhere in that spectrum, right? 

-At some point, if Jesus doesn’t return, all of us will join the rest of humanity in the grave. Graveyards bear this out, don’t they? The checking account of everyone at a graveyard is exactly the same, they left every penny behind. This is one of the saddest things about the Egyptian Pharaohs that we’ve uncovered, they’re buried with all their treasure for the afterlife, but they didn’t take them to the afterlife, they’re sitting in museums all over the world.

-The last part of vs. 11 talks about this idea. Just like my visits to all those places in Europe with plaques and statues named after people, they’re just as dead as the person who died destitute and was buried in an unmarked grave. Even though they’ve worked their hardest to preserve their reputation in the world the only thing that is permanent is their living in the grave.

-Vs. 12 becomes a bit of a theme that serves as the markers of this Psalm, because it’s repeated almost verbatim in the last verse. One of the realities about humans is we have the same trajectory as every animal: death. We’re more than animals (one philosopher said we’re the only animals that think about being animals) in that we’re created as God’s image, but we end up in the same place: dead.

-And for those who live as if their riches make them better than others, that is the end of everything for them, as well as their followers. 

-Selah – Pray through whether or not you’re viewing life through this worldly view of material wealth determining your standing. Keller “Lord, I often catch myself imagining how much greater life would be if I had more. I also quietly ‘boast’ in my heart when I see myself able to afford certain goods and inhabit certain places. Save my heart from such shallowness and foolishness.” (Songs of Jesus)

-The Psalmist makes an interesting comparison in vs. 14 comparing death to a shepherd. What kind of a shepherd do you think death would be? Contrast that with the picture we see of God as a shepherd in Ps. 23

-Do you think death would lead you to green pastures and still waters or renew your life? Death is a horrible shepherd where the outcome is just destruction! That’s where wisdom is aligning yourself to God’s ways.

-The last sentence of vs. 14 says that while they used their money to advantage themselves on earth, the opposite will happen to them in eternity. 

-Jesus tells a parable with a similar focus in Luke 16 about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. From the beginning of the story it looks like 1 of these men is blessed and the other is cursed. But then we get a glimpse behind the curtain, after they’re both on the other side of life their situations are reversed. The rich man asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus to put a drop of water on his tongue, and here’s how Abraham responds: 

-And what’s amazing about this story is that the rich man is never even named, as if Jesus is using his as a stand in for everyone Psalm 49 is talking about. The man goes on to ask Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them about death, and Abraham says they have Moses and the prophets, who they didn’t listen to, and the parable ends saying: 

-Guess what? Someone did rise from the dead and did tell us exactly how to ensure that we don’t go to the place of torment, which is where this Psalm goes next:

  • An Eternal Ransom (15-20; Heb. 9)

-I think the biggest and most significant 2 words in the Bible are the beginning of this verse: but God. In one of his many explanations of the gospel message, Paul in Eph. 2 says it this way: 

-Friends, this is the best news in the world! We’re all tempted to look with jealousy at those who make more than us, and not just that but we’re also tempted to look down on those who make less than us, aren’t we? How do you feel when you drive up next to someone begging for money at a stoplight? Do you pull over to the far lane to get away from them? Do you pretend they’re not there? Do you pray for them? Do you smile at them? There’s times where each of those responses may be appropriate, depending on the safety of the area you’re in! This isn’t meant to cast judgment on you, especially if you’ve been taken advantage of in the past, but I think it’s worth remembering that financial success doesn’t necessarily always come from God. And the human temptation is to look to worldly success instead of looking to God who is rich in mercy and will lavishly pour out that mercy on His children!

-The Psalmist says the exact same thing, even though he didn’t know the name “Jesus” millennia before He was born. Here he says the gospel message this way: But God will redeem me from the power of Sheol (death, the grave) because He will take me.

–Selah – take some time to pray and thank God for the 2 words at the beginning of this verse, “but God” who did rise from the dead and tell us exactly how to live a wise life

-Reiterating the question he asked at the beginning all the way back in vs. 5, we’re reminded to not be afraid when someone gets rich, or when his investments go up in value, because it has no bearing on their eternal soul. When he dies, he’ll have the same investments as everyone else who’s dead, you can’t take it to the other side with you.

-Vs. 18 is kind of weird, what seems to be taking place is the second half is what the rich person says to himself. He’s blessing himself, taking and spending his money on whatever he wants, then says to himself “you do well for yourself,” and finally the Psalmist interjects once again with wisdom in vs. 19

-This is the final reminder that even the wealthy end up in the same place as the poor: dead. By saying they will never see the light, the OT often picks up the idea of salvation coming with the morning, but for the rich who died without wisdom that morning salvation will never come.

-Vs. 20 is almost a repeat of vs. 12 but with 1 distinct difference, here, I’ll put them next to each other up on the screen so you can see it:

-In vs. 12 we see the reminder that humans are destined to be like the animals in that we’ll all die, what vs. 20 is doing is saying there is a difference among humans. Some humans die “without understanding” which means there’s the option of dying “with understanding,” and not ending up the same as the animals who are here one day and gone the next. 

-There’s a verse in the book of Hebrews that answers the unanswered questions of this whole Psalm. Vs. 7-8 said the wealth and abundant riches can’t redeem a person or pay back his ransom to God since the price of redeeming him is too costly. Which is why those two words that we looked at matter so much: but God. 

-Did you catch what the Psalmist is saying throughout this? The entire wealth of the world put together isn’t enough to pay God off for the consequences of 1 person’s sin. All the wealth in the world will someday pass away, but any 1 single sin has eternal consequences against the eternal God who created everything. But God paid what we couldn’t, He gave us Himself, which includes all the riches of His glory in the heavenly realm. Riches that we get to see little glimpses of here. I was struck this week that what we call “grace”, God’s undeserved and unearned favor poured out on us is nothing less than getting God Himself! Friends, when you’re saved, you are indwelled by the living God, you are united together to Him. Isn’t that incredible? Heb. 9:15

-This verse tells us that Jesus’s death paid that ransom. We were in bondage to sin, the only possible outcome for everyone was death, which is why Jesus had to die. But even death wasn’t strong enough to defeat God, so death spit Jesus back out. Friends, death no longer has power over anyone who is walking in the way of wisdom, another way of saying that is walking in the way of Jesus. If you follow Him, if you obey Him, everything changes, both here and then. 

-This is where the good news of the gospel is actually good news. Friends, Jesus told us that we have access to every spiritual blessing. Our spiritual bank account is LOADED. But we don’t have complete access to it right now. We get a stipend now, but the full inheritance is waiting for us. And it doesn’t come about by accumulating more stuff now, it comes by being faithful now. God brings people from all sorts of backgrounds here: wealthy and poor, young and old, and He invites us to use our gifts to be a blessing to each other. Are you demonstrating your faithfulness by using whatever resources God has given you to be a blessing to others? That’s what’s going to carry over into eternity, not building shrines to yourself, not naming buildings after yourself: using your resources as a way to be a blessing to others instead of building up more recognition for yourself is what shows that you’re living wisely, living in line with reality, and living as someone who is following in the way of Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on August 2, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 2, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/08/02/psalm-49-sermon-manuscript/