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Jonah – Sermon Manuscript

-If anyone knows any of the minor prophets, it’s probably this one! VeggieTales movie, topic of a host of debates about whether or not this could really happen.

READ/PRAY

  1. Jonah’s Journey

-Fact or fiction: one of the biggest questions about this book is whether or not this really happened. I had a friend in seminary who was convinced this was a myth, written just to teach a story and wasn’t historically true. I’ve read all sorts of commentaries arguing both sides of this, and even saw a video of a kayaker in Patagonia who got swallowed by a humpback whale and then immediately spit out! So apparently it is possible to be swallowed by a fish and spit back out. But the primary reason I believe it’s a true account of a real historical event is because Jesus seemed to think it was, and anytime there’s a debate going on, I want to side with the guy who’s the author of history!

–Matt. 12:39-41 Jesus is asked to perform a sign for the Pharisees, and here’s how He responds: the prophet Jonah is referred to as a real person, and it says not only did it happen in the past, but the people of Ninevah will in the future condemn those asking the question for their lack of repentance!

-Another component to this is we tend to view the world with an anti-supernatural bias, or question whether things we consider miraculous can actually happen. Is anything too hard for God? Think of just a few other things God does in the OT: He makes a donkey talk, He makes food both fall out of the sky and appear on the ground, and walls fall down in response to people shouting. Do you think it’s outside of God’s ability to have a fish swallow a man in the sea? I don’t!

-We also see Jonah appear in 2 Kings 14:25. So with all that evidence, I think we should take this as a real, historical account.

  1. Down to Tarshish (1-2)

-Jonah is an anomaly in these prophets. The other prophets willingly obeyed God, there wasn’t any questioning or doubting of God’s call on their lives, Jonah is literally the opposite of everything else we’ve seen.

-Jonah also has very different content than the rest of the prophets (which is part of the reason we tend to gravitate towards it!) Jonah tells a story, and it’s a story that feels bigger than life, doesn’t it? (theme of “great” throughout) A prophet (who is supposed to represent God to the people) who attempts to flee to the ends of the earth to escape God who gets swallowed by a big fish, then reluctantly preaches the bare minimum of God’s word to his assigned city and leads to a revival. The whole thing it crazy! And pay attention to the way the book intentionally contrasts Jonah with the rest of the characters.

-One of the ways Hebrew builds suspense (and so do we) is through repeated words. Another one of the comparisons in Jonah is down vs. up. The Lord calls to Jonah and calls him to go UP to Tarshish, and he responds by going DOWN to Joppa. And this isn’t just a casual “on the way I accidentally” this is an intentional running away from. He goes down even lower into the boat and stays down while the storm is raging. The captain tells him to come UP to pray, pick me UP throw me DOWN into the sea. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself! God’s command is 1 thing, but Jonah’s response is another. He’s commanded to go to the northeast, and he goes southwest, and then finds a ship going to what would have been considered the ends of the earth! Jonah’s not only disobeying God, he’s running as far away from God as he possibly can.

-One thing I noted in my sermon scraps for Amos is that the tendency at this time was to view gods as tribal deities, not dissimilar to the way we have NFL teams today. Yahweh was the God of Israel, Baal was the god of the Canaanites, and when they went to war it was seen as a battle of the gods, and whoever won the battle was the superior god. And that also impacted the sea! There was a specific god of the sea people would appeal to for safe travel.

-So when the text goes on to tell us that there was a great wind and a great storm, they all started appealing to any god they could think of for mercy, but it didn’t help. So they continued going on to throw out all the cargo. Compare the sailors to Jonah here. They’re doing everything they can to save the ship, and what’s Jonah’s response? He doesn’t care at all! He’s treating this like a cruise and decided his best course of action was to take a nap.

-So the captain wakes him up. He’s the only one who’s not trying to contribute to the crisis! Even though Jonah’s the main character of this story, he’s taken a completely passive role in this account. The prophet, who’s supposed to be speaking on behalf of the one true God is silent. They decide to do some work to find out which god is upset with them by casting lots. Jonah, as a good prophet, should have seen his chances of escaping getting even smaller. Prov. 16:33 tells us that God is even in control of this seemingly random event.

-This gambling (which God was in charge of, but friends, don’t gamble today! We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as our guide!), but this gambling leads to Jonah being found as the guilty party. They didn’t know much about him, and if you remember back to our first week, I shared that the role of the prophet is to speak on behalf of God, but Jonah remains completely silent until he’s forced to open up. They’d been calling out to all these random gods, but Jonah is supposed to be worshipping the 1 true God, who even rules over the heavens, the place where they thought all their gods were. Not only is He the God of the heavens, he’s also the one who made the sea and the land, so there’s no where you can escape from Him! But Jonah’s trying to do exactly that and run to the furthest reaches of the earth to try to escape!

-When the men hear it, they’re seized by a “great” fear and realize they’re toast! Remember what I said earlier about the various gods? They assumed that Jonah was just running away from a little land god, not THE God who you can’t escape! Since Jonah is the only one who knows this God, the sailors ask him how to deal with the problem. And Jonah says: it requires a human sacrifice. Do you see how Jonah’s trying to die? He would rather be thrown into the sea in the middle of a hurricane than go to Ninevah to tell them to repent. And not only is Jonah trying to die, he doesn’t even care if the sailors are taken with him! Do you see how even though the sailors know what’s going on, they still try to help him? They worked as hard as they could to save Jonah, who’s still passive.

-And now who cries out to Yahweh? The sailors! Jonah still doesn’t care! Where previously Yahweh was unknown to them, as soon as they learn which God it is, they’re all in. They throw Jonah in and the sea is calm. So what’s their response? They worship the one true God! Do you see how even in Jonah’s sin God is still working? Jonah, the guy who’s trying to escape God’s call on his life just mentions the name of this God, and their entire worship changes. Keep in mind what these sailors do: they offer a sacrifice and make vows (assuming to Yahweh)

-But Jonah can’t catch a break; God STILL won’t even let him die!

-This next chapter needs to be read with a strong level of irony. First, do you hear how much this sounds like the Psalms? Jonah knows the Bible! He knows the truth about God, but it hasn’t transformed his heart. Second, do you see how self-centered it is? Who’s the focus of this “prayer” God or Jonah?

-Look at what he says in vs. 2, he waited until he was in Sheol, the place of the dead to call out to God. Why didn’t he call out to God while he was in the boat with all those pagan sailors? And it gets worse! Look at 3 he says God threw him into the sea! He’s blaming God for his current situation. Just when it feels like it can’t get worse, he keeps going!

-Let’s look at the end of the prayer. He talks about those who cherish or love worthless idols and says they’re terrible and wrong. Who were the ones who cherished worthless idols in this story? Wasn’t it the sailors? But where did we leave them? Offering sacrifices to Yahweh and making vows to Him. Jonah’s saying the sailors are the problem, meanwhile He’s in the right standing before the God! He continues deluding himself! One scholar said, “these are the right words coming out of the wrong mouth!” We don’t see any accounts in this story of Jonah offering a sacrifice of any vows. The final irony is salvation does belong to Yahweh, which is good for Jonah because if it were up to him, no one except him would be saved.

-But God is faithful and shows His complete control once again by commanding this fish to vomit Jonah up. We see this as gross today, but I think it has deeper significance than just the disgust: throughout the OT, this word is used to describe God’s punishment on the Israelites for disobedience, the land vomits them out. This may be a way of saying this is a continuation of God’s punishment on Jonah.

  • Up to Nineveh (3-4)

-Déjà vu here, as God tells Jonah once again to go to Nineveh, but this time he’s learned his lesson and finally obeys.

-Just to catch us up again and understand this, Jonah has spent who knows how long trying to run away from God’s call on his life. He’s been swallowed by a great fish, been vomited out, then recommissioned with the same task, and the journey to Nineveh would have taken him about 30 days of walking to get to. So this story for us is condensed, but how happy do you think Jonah was on this journey? Do you think he spent the time skipping and jumping along to get to Nineveh as quickly as he could? Remember: God wouldn’t even let him die previously! I picture him grumbling the entire way!

-So Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh, and begins proclaiming the incoming destruction of the city. Other prophets had similar tasks warning that the day of the Lord was coming, a day of darkness and destruction. 2 things to note here: first the description of the size of the city: it’s huge! It would take 3 days to walk it! And how far does Jonah walk? 1 day, which means he doesn’t even get to the middle of it! And what is his message? 5 words in Hebrew, 7 in English. He doesn’t mention which god he’s preaching on behalf of; he doesn’t say why they’re going to be destroyed, all he says is destruction is coming. All he does is predict a certain destruction.

-And what’s the response of the city? Immediate repentance! Friends, this has to be the most unbelievable part of this story! This city of people devoted to destroying the nation of Yahweh responds the right way when they’re faced with the realities of their sin. They don’t make excuses, they don’t ignore it, they work to get right with God. And the repentance is universal! It says the greatest to the least: no one is left out! And the king led the way! Here’s the decree he made the everyone:

-Everyone (even the animals, keep that in mind) is to fast and put on sackcloth (a way of grieving), AND begin crying out “earnestly” to God. Do you notice that they’re not even sure which God they’re crying out to? Think back to the sailors, as soon as they heard his name they started crying out to Him, here they’re only told that a god is upset but it’s STILL enough for them repent. Notice the ending here: they’re concerned that it’s too late and they don’t know how God will respond. They don’t know which God, they don’t know how to please Him, but they’re willing to try doing whatever they can!

-And we know God, we’ve seen that He’s slow to anger and quick to forgiveness (we’ve seen that repeatedly through these prophets). So God responds as He always does: he relents. The certain destruction doesn’t happen. And if this were the ending of the book there may be a glimmer of hope still for Jonah. But we’re not done.

-Jonah is now great with displeasure, and contrast this with the question of the king. Who knows what this God will do? And what does Jonah say? I KNEW IT! This was the whole reason he tried running way! God always forgives, God will always relent from sending disaster for those who respond correctly. But that’s not what Jonah wanted. Jonah wanted grace and mercy for himself, but not for his enemies. Keep that in mind, we’ll come back to it in a minute. Jonah here is so upset that he finally just explicitly asks God to kill him. He tried running away, tried sleeping through a hurricane, tried drowning and none of those worked, so he goes straight to the source!

-And God asks him a question in response: but Jonah (as we’ve seen previously) just goes with the silent treatment. He goes to build a little shelter and watch the show. I picture him setting himself up like this:

-And God is once again kind and gracious. Jonah goes from being greatly displeased to greatly pleased because of the shade. Unfortunately the shade turns out to be a lesson for him, and God sends a worm (compare that to the whale!) to kill the plant. AND THEN God throws in some nature to make Jonah even more upset. So how does Jonah respond this time? Once again, he asks God to kill him. And God asks a similar question to His previous one: is it right for you to be angry about this plant?

-YES! I’m angry enough to die! That’s the last word from Jonah in this book. Jonah’s anger keeps bubbling up to the point where he’s so angry he wants to die because of a plant. Doesn’t that seem a little misplaced to you?

-But God gets the last word. Jonah CARED about nothing in the book except a plant. He didn’t plant it or water it; he was just the benefactor of it. If Jonah cares about this little plant, isn’t it even more important for God to care about Nineveh, a place with more than 120,000 people who are all created as the image of God? God’s people are commanded to care for humans above all the rest of the created order, but Jonah’s missed that reality and was only worried about himself.

-Not only is this city full of people, but it’s people who don’t KNOW the right thing to do. Jonah is the only one in this story who knows the right God, the right ways to live, and is the only one who responds with disobedience and sin. Every other character obeys; did you notice that? The sailors believe, the whale obeys God’s command, the Ninevites repent, the plant obeys, the worm obeys, the scorching east wind obeys, meanwhile, Jonah gets angry. The worst prophet in this series!

-And God’s final request is: if you can’t care about the people, would you at least care about the animals? And that question leaves the book unresolved, doesn’t it? We don’t know what happened to Jonah, and the ending of the book is meant to force us to ask that same question: who do you view as outside of the bounds of God’s mercy and grace?

  • Grace for Who?

-The question at the heart of this book is: how do you view your sin? Do you know that you need God to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding I faithful love TO YOU, or is that just needed for other people who are worse than you? Isn’t the temptation for all of us to grade ourselves on a sliding scale? We compare our strengths to someone else’s weaknesses and determine they MUST be worse than us.

-You can see this with the whole NIMBY phenomenon, have you heard of it? It stands for not in my backyard. I’ve read it referring to someone that’s pushing for low-income housing, as long as it’s not in my backyard. They want to appear virtuous, but don’t want it to affect them. I think we also saw this during COVID: good for thee not for me, we excuse ourselves but enforce strong rules for everyone else.

-There’s a fantastic quote from a Croatian theologian named Miroslav Volf (who’s a professor at Yale Seminary) who wrote a book on reconciliation where he talked about forgiveness in this way:

-What’s he’s saying is we all place people in 2 different camps: those who are opposed to us (or we view as opposed to us) are less than human, meanwhile we elevate ourselves to the place where we’re more than human. That’s normal! We all do it! But Jesus gives us a different way: He goes on to say that when we look to Jesus our perspective changes. We go from wanting condemnation for our enemy to wanting resolution and reconciliation with them, and we go from pride to realizing that we, too, are in need of God’s grace.

-After all, this is what Paul says in 1 Tim. 1:15-17.

-He’s not saying he’s done the math and he got the worst grade, he’s saying that when you use the right standard, we’re all the worst! When we’re all comparing ourselves to perfection none of us can stand. At the end of the day, we’re all like Jonah, the temptation of the human heart is to give grace to yourself and condemn everyone else. But there’s a second piece to this that I think we also need to look at:

  • When Religiosity is the Problem

-Did you notice how when Jonah finally “prayed” he essentially just quoted the Psalms? He knew the right things to say, but it hadn’t gone the 18” from his head to his heart. Often Jonah is used to preach about ethnocentrism (or racism, if you want to talk about why I prefer the former term let me know), or it’s preached about the need to go into the nations and do cross-cultural missions. But I think that’s missing the purpose of this book. I think the warning is to those of us who are like Jonah, who haven’t let the truths of the gospel trickle down into our hearts and begin to transform us from the inside out. Jesus had some strong words to people like Jonah, who judged other people based on external compliance but didn’t take the time to look at the deeper reality.

-2 examples back-to-back in Matt. 23:

-First is the picture of people who clean the outside of a cup but leave the inside. One of my cousins when we were growing up was a major germophobe. He didn’t want to shake hands, refused to ever share snacks or drinks. But when he was done eating, he would literally lick his plate clean and stick it back in the cupboard. Do you see the inconsistency!? I know he sometimes listens to these sermons, so sorry if you catch this one! The point is: it’s gross, right!?

-The second one is making the exact same point: Jesus is accusing them of whitewashing tombs. Think of a house that looks beautiful on the outside, fresh paint, brand new roof, immaculate lawn, but you walk in and it’s a hoarder’s house. Jesus isn’t asking us to clean up our mess to present to Him, He invites us to come to Him so He can clean up our mess.

-Friends, this is why we need Jesus and not Jonah.

-Jesus, who also slept in a boat during a storm, but then cared more about saving his friends than himself.

-Jesus, who asked NOT to be killed, but willingly went to His death anyway, not because He was angry, but because we were angry.

-Jesus, who knows everything, and asked for God to forgive those who “didn’t know what they were doing,” even as he bore the penalty for every sin on the cross.

-Jesus, who then spent 3 days and nights in the belly of the earth, and then was “vomited” out because the punishment was done. Forever. Aren’t you glad that in a world full of Jonahs, we get Jesus?

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by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/08/jonah-sermon-manuscript/

Obadiah – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you ever noticed the way people seem to react like a pendulum? You look at the White House, and doesn’t it seem to flip to the other party every 4 (or 8) years? People don’t like what’s taking place so they assume the opposite must be better. Maybe you’ve seen it in people dating: you see someone going through a breakup, and the next time you see them dating someone it’s the exact opposite of their ex! Or in churches, I’ve seen a tendency to react to the weaknesses of a previous pastor by only hiring a next pastor who has those strengths (without realizing there are DIFFERENT weaknesses that will come with that).

-A similar thing seems to be taking place throughout these prophets. One prophet talks about one area of focus, and then the next prophet comes along and brings up a different perspective on it. Last week, in Amos, we say the prophet calling out God’s people for their lack of justice. This week, the prophet will be calling out a different nation for their lack of justice.

READ/PRAY (pg. 819)

  1. The Message of Obadiah:

-We need to understand some family history in order to know what Obadiah is talking about. Does anyone know the history of the nation of Edom, where they came from? All the way back in Genesis there are twin boys born who have conflict with each other from the womb to the tomb: Jacob and Esau. We’ve previously studied the beginnings from Gen. 1-11 and Father Abraham in Gen. 12-25, but that’s where we stopped. So Abraham eventually becomes the Father of the Israelite people, but his promised child is Isaac. Isaac becomes the father of Esau and Jacob, the twins who were in conflict with each other, even before they were born! There was so much conflict that Rebekah asked the Lord what was going on and He told her:

-When they’re born, it says Esau came out “red-looking” which sounds like the word for “Edom.” And that theme continues: Jacob is described as a quiet man who stays home, while Esau is the outdoorsman, the successful hunter, Esau is loved by his father while Jacob is loved by his mother. Their lives are continual conflict. One day, while Esau is out hunting, Jacob is at home cooking. Esau comes home “exhausted” and demands that Jacob give him some of the “red stuff” (adom) to eat. Jacob is shrewd and agrees IF Esau will give Jacob his birthright in return. In this culture, the oldest received the inheritance, and no one else did.

-Then, as Isaac is getting old, he realizes he needs to bless Esau, his inheritor, but Rebekah overhears and tricks Isaac by having him bless Jacob instead of Esau. When Esau finds out he’s furious and demands a blessing from Isaac. And look at the blessing Isaac gives:

-Church, don’t miss that the Bible is completely honest about the whole experience of humans! Genesis is basically a case study in family dysfunction! Dishonestly, backstabbing, deception, and abuse are normal!

-There is a bit of a happy ending to this story, at least the last biblical account of their interactions. Jacob runs away from Isaac and Rebekah and goes to live with his uncle Laban, ends up marrying his cousins (plural, and sisters, which is apparently not illegal at this time!), and grows incredibly wealthy. Eventually he leaves his uncle with his whole family and runs into his brother Esau again. But look at how this meeting begins:

-Just as God promised, there would be 2 nations that would come from Rebekah’s womb: Israel and Edom. Edom existed southeast of Israel, not an easy area for agriculture, as you can see in THIS picture, these are the mountains of Seir in Edom (which we just read about). These mountains served as a natural barrier and protection from other invading armies, which led to a misguided pride for the Edomites. They viewed themselves as essentially impenetrable at the time, which will be called out by God in this book!

-But the conflict that started in the womb continues down through their descendants! When Israel is led out from Egypt, they ask the Edomites to let them through and here’s how they reply. And on it goes! King Saul fights them, King David fights them, and then they revolt against King Solomon. But then comes the final straw. The Babylonians attack Judah in 586 BC, and instead of coming to help their brother, the Edomites attack Judean forts near their territory. And this event seems to be what Obadiah is talking about when he brings this prophesy to them. So let’s get to the book:

  1. Judgment on Edom (1-14)

-Same as Joel, we know nothing about Obadiah apart from his name! As I shared at the beginning, the general beginning is the name of the prophet followed by the kings who were on the throne during their ministry which gives us dates for many of the prophets, but Obadiah is one that gives us none of that information!

-Let’s look at what God condemns them for right away: pride. Think of what Prov. 16:18 says (as I heard it from when I was growing up, the KJV)

-Pride is trying to build yourself up, looking down on others so that you can feel superior to any and everyone else. And pride is sinful. At its core it is an anti-god approach to life. CS Lewis wrote an entire chapter of Mere Christianity dedicated to the sin of pride, listen to what he says:

-Here he’s saying that pride leads us so far as to even look down on God. Pride was at the root of the devil’s fall because he was looking down on God! And that same pride that affected the devil affects us today, which is where he continues:

-Since God is so far above and beyond us, it requires us comparing ourselves to the right standard. Think of what we read in Amos 5 last week where Amos sees God standing with a plumbline. A prideful person is the one who accuses God of using the wrong standards! Pride is what leads to Jacob being a trickster and stealing his brother’s birthright, pride is what leads to Esau being careless about his birthright, and friends, humanity hasn’t changed in the last 4,000 years, because pride is still one of the prevailing sins in the world today. Our entire economic system is built on pride: assuming that people will always be wanting more and more and building bigger and bigger. I don’t have any alternative proposals because that has been the root of economics for a LONG time, but I think it’s true.

-But it also runs contrary to the way of Jesus. Look at how Lewis describes a humble person: do you see the contradiction here? He’s not saying you have to think less about yourself, he’s saying true humility is on a completely different plane: it’s someone who is finally able to get beyond themselves and start thinking about and caring about others. Tim Keller (who loved Lewis) summarized this idea this way:

-God’s way is completely different than what the world wants us to pursue. Edom is representing the way of the world which means they stand condemned by God. And this serves as a warning for us too! We can be so prideful that we refuse to admit we need help. If you haven’t heard the name, there’s a former Nebraska senator named Ben Sasse (who’s also a Christian) who in December announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He has enough accolades and worldly success that he announced it through a press release, but I’ve been so edified reading or hearing various interviews he’s conducting as he’s facing his end because he’s shared that it’s causing him to look back on the ways pride affected him and family, and unless we admit that we’re needy people, we won’t ever get to that point. Edom is condemned for the sin of pride, we are still prone to that same sin today unless, through grace-driven effort, we work to shift the focus from ourselves to others.

-Think back to what I shared at the beginning of Edom’s refusal to help when Judah was being attacked. Instead of helping, Obadiah says they stood aloof, they wanted some of the riches, they acted just like the rest of the nations. Which means Edom is included in the punishment that’s coming on the nations:

  • Judgment on the Nations (15-18)

-One of the brilliant ways Obadiah works to get this point across is he uses the word “day” repeatedly building up to this: 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 before landing on THE day. I spent some time when I preached on Joel talking about the day of the Lord, we’ll look at it in more detail in a few weeks, but the short summary is during this time, God’s people were waiting for the day of the Lord because they viewed it as the day God will destroy all their enemies, but Obadiah gives us a different perspective.

-After increasingly building up these various days, we get to the Day of the Lord as being near, and this time instead of being against God’s people it’s against “all the nations.” But Obadiah doesn’t stop there with a warning, he tells them exactly what they can expect here: “as you have done, it will be done to you,” this is the opposite of the golden rule! If they had followed the golden rule they’d be in a different place at THE day. He goes on to talk about drinking, and in many cases throughout the Bible this is referring to drinking a cup of judgment.

-And look at the end of these nations in the next verses:

-Where will deliverance come from? Mount Zion, Jerusalem, from Judah. Everyone who oppressed God’s people will find themselves oppressed, just as Edom pursued the survivors of Judah, they will be pursued, attacked, and will have no one left. And just as we saw last week at the end of Amos, this is guaranteed to happen because the Lord has spoken.

-But unlike last week, that’s not where Obadiah ends!

  • Restoration of God’s People (19-21)

-While Edom mocked Judah when they were destroyed, the irony is Edom is eventually destroyed by the same nation. So as they did to Judah was literally done to them. Once again, Obadiah repeats a word through this section to drive home a point: possess. Just as all these nations were once possessed by others, the day is coming when God’s people will “possess” all these other lands.

-The last verse alludes to the book of Judgeswhere the Lord raises many “saviors” or “deliverers” to help with the various enemies who were fighting against God’s people. But none of them could ever establish a full and lasting dynasty for the people, they all fell short. Even David’s dynasty only lasted through his grandson! But someday David’s descendent will come to Jerusalem to rule over everything. Does anyone have any ideas who that might be?

  • The Inclusion of the Nations

-Friends, this is where God’s guidance of all the events in human history shines the brightest and should give us the most amount of hope! See, here God predicts the complete destruction of the nation of Edom, of Esau. But what does that look like in reality? In 553 BC, Edom was conquered by the Babylonians (remember the 2 mountains: close future and far future). The close future was they had the same punishment as Judah, the FAR future tells a different story, and to understand exactly what’s taking place there, we need to go back to the beginning.

-Adam and Eve are provided everything they need to live a flourishing life. They are in perfect harmony with God, themselves, and the rest of the creation. God gave them 1 boundary: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. See, when they were created, they only knew good! But pride (as we saw earlier) led to them wanting to take the place of God. Satan tempts them with that reality by telling them God didn’t have their best in mind and if they eat from that forbidden fruit they would become like God. What they failed to realize was they already were!

-Look at what God says: when does God say they would die? In the DAY they eat from it! But do they die? No! Friends, we can’t even begin to comprehend God’s grace toward His creation. Now, some people will say that they spiritually died, and that’s probably a part of it, but God doesn’t stipulate that it would be limited in any way, He says they will die. Period. Instead, what happens? God gives them grace, He clothes them (just like He had done in creating them). Friends, our God is the God of life, not death! He hates death, death is an enemy to be defeated! And we also see that reality with Edom.

-For the far future of Edom, after they were conquered by the Babylonians, there weren’t many descendants left, and the Arabs from the east eventually began encroaching on their territory, so they moved into the land of Judah which became known as Idumea. Now, there’s 1 horrible Idumean that comes up in the Gospels, his name is Herod, and we read about him in Matt. 2. He’s the one who tried to kill Jesus when He was a child. The family conflict between Jacob and Esau carried down all the way to Jesus! Herod slaughters any boy under 2 years old around Bethlehem. One final act of Edom belittling Judah. But Herod dies, and Jesus lives. The way of Esau only offers death, while the way of Jacob leads to life.

-The only time Idumea appears in the Bible is in Mark 3. This is towards the beginning of Jesus’ ministry where he’s starting to preach and share the gospel message with the nations. But look where some of these early followers came from:

-Friends, God’s invitation is to repent and come to Him! Apart from His mercy and grace the only future hope is in judgment. But we see that NO ONE is too far away for Him to save! Everyone is invited to align themselves with God’s family and have a different trajectory for their life. WE, all of us, were once like Edom. We were once enemies who were doing everything we could (willingly or unwillingly) to fight against God’s plans for the world. Paul talks about this reality in Col. 1. Some translations use “enemies” for where this says hostile. God doesn’t save people because He likes the way they look or they somehow clean up their act enough to get His attention. God says at the time when we were his enemies, Jesus still reconciled us to Himself. And now, how does God see us? As holy, faultless, and blameless. Even Esau, Edomites, and Idumeans are welcome to be a part of this new family of God, which means there’s hope for everyone in this room! But it demands a choice, and not just a one-time choice, a daily working to continue following after Jesus every day, which is what Paul goes on to say here: grounded, steadfast, not shifted. Friends cling to Christ!

-And when we are saved, what is the correct way to respond to God?

  • The Response of God’s People

-When God acts, we worship. This has been true since the very beginning of creation! When God brings Eve to Adam he sings a song of praise. When God leads His people out of slavery in Egypt, and then defeats the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, look how they respond:

-“He has become my salvation.” Friends, that’s the song every one of us should be lining up to sing! All these people that we read about in the OT could only dream of what we get to experience every day of our lives! Our habits, our practices, our routines should all be shaped by the reality that the Lord is our salvation. That’s the focus and goal of every Sunday morning. One of the themes that has come up through the prophets already is that we need to get God right, and in order to get God right, we need to get our worship of God right because our worship shapes and informs the way we see God.

-If you pay attention to it, you can see we have a rhythm that guides each Sunday. It’s rooted in historical Christian tradition, which is guided by Scripture, and looks to be acceptable to God. One of the words that drives me NUTS that often gets connected to worship is “authentic.” It was one of the core values of the previous church I was at, and I died a little inside every time I had to say it, because we don’t just come to God as we are, we come to God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, otherwise God will not accept our worship! Look at how the author of Hebrews puts it: By referring to “consuming fire” he’s talking about an event in the OT where Aaron’s sons offered to God “strange fire” and were killed, so we need to be careful in our worship of the one true and living God.

-The second key comes from Col. 3. We begin seeing the reality that we are 1 body, which tells us this is something we’re supposed to do together, with 1 voice, united together (and by the way, be thankful, even if you don’t like the music. Especially if you don’t like the music!)

-What does Paul say the focus of our worship should be? To let the Word of Christ dwell richly among you. One great question to ask of any church you visit is: how long does it take to have the Bible opened? I had a guy who did NOT like the music we sang at church, and he made sure I knew it! He would stand in the aisles with his arms crossed staring at me anytime we sang a “new” song, and would sing as loud as he could anytime we sand an old song. Instead of only focusing on what we like, we should focus on what the song teaches us about the Bible. AND music is supposed to be a way we can teach and encourage each other (which means we should be able to hear each other singing)

-Do you see the variety Paul talks about too? Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. There isn’t only 1 style of music that can be used to worship God. “And whatever” anything else we do should bring honor and glory to God.

-Friends, our entire worship service is important. We have announcements at the beginning so we can know practical ways to love and care for each other, we have Scripture read to orient our hearts to God, we respond to who God is through singing. We gather to confess our sins because when we confess our sins God is faithful to forgive our sins and cleanse us. We remind each other truths from the Bible in recitations, catechisms, creeds. We corporately pray together for various needs in our body. We have exhortation and teaching from the Word of God, and we respond to that exhortation with more singing. See, part of the reason we sing after the message is because we need to respond together to the truths we’re learning from the Word. I hope those songs give time for the truths that we’ve heard go from our heads to our hearts, and then we end with a benediction from God’s Word before being sent to live out the new reality we’ve learned together with our hands.

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by mikethestrand on March 1, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 1, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/01/obadiah-sermon-manuscript/

Amos – Sermon Manuscript

-All these angry men are calling out various ways God’s people aren’t living up to His standards. So last week we saw in Joel a warning about “The day of the Lord,” that idea comes up again this week in Amos, but with a slightly different focus. Amos is all about justice, worship, and God. This was a challenging sermon for me to condense down because there’s SO much in this book! So I’ll be for sure be doing a “Sermon Scraps” (video tomorrow where I talk about what ended up on the cutting room floor) to talk more about it. But as we walk through this book today, pay attention to what this teaches us about true worship of God that He loves, how God defines justice, and how it all goes back to the character of the one true God.

READ/PRAY (Amos 4, pg. 813)

  1. What is Social Justice?

-One of the things we have to talk about when in order to properly understand Amos is social justice. Now, for some of you, your ears may be pricked and you might be nervous about where this is going because those 2 words aren’t supposed to go together, and anytime they do it’s smuggling in a whole host of secular ideologies that are against the Bible. That may be true in some cases, but I’d like us to potentially have some of our thinking related to that term stretched so that we can better understand what Amos’s message is, as well as some of the implications for us today.

-First – by itself, I would hope no one is opposed to the concept of social justice. Justice, after all, is inherently social in its outworkings. There can’t be justice unless there’s at least 2 parties involved in the process (which means it’s social)! Unfortunately, our world has taken this concept, smashed those 2 words together without thinking through how we can get true justice, and forced it to mean something that we wouldn’t. We’re going to wait a few weeks to really dig into what the Bible says about justice (that’s the theme of another minor prophet!), but one of the keys that we need to be aware of is that we don’t get to define justice, justice is determined by the Creator of the universe.

-Second – social justice isn’t something new that just developed in our culture and nation. As you’ll see through our walk through Amos, God cares greatly about social justice, about ensuring that societies (groups of people living together) are marked out by justice as He defines it: care for people who can’t care for themselves.

-A couple thoughts on this from other people to share with you, and why we’re talking about it today. First, from Peter Gentry, whose book I recommended at the beginning of this series:

-We have a number of things like this in our language. Think of the phrase “by and large” or “try and do” they’re referring to the same thing, and if you break the 2 words apart you lose the original intent of what is being said. Similar with the prophets when they use “justice” and “righteousness.”

-I think the key verse from this book is Amos 5:24, and what 2 words are right next to each other. Justice and righteousness! Amos is saying they need to be marked as being a socially just society!

-Jesus talked about this reality, too. Think of what He said when He was asked what the greatest commandment was, His reply in Matt. 22 was:

-Here we see 2 realities that are connected to each other. First, we must love God. But then the love of God has to be made visible in our love for our neighbors (vertical AND horizontal). And do you see that Jesus says this second command is like the first? That is, if you truly love God, you will truly love your neighbor, which means you will care about the society being marked by justice.

-In our denomination, we’ve had this conversation over the last number of years! There are people that have accused the EFCA of being “woke” or “social justice warriors,” so the EFCA responded by writing a statement titled “Where we stand in the EFCA.” And our church offered a class where we walked through each one of the 8 statements on there (you can google it to read all of them if you want, I’m just going to use the first one for today). But friends, these issues matter! We MUST talk about them in the church, AND talk about them carefully, because otherwise we won’t know how to truly love our neighbors. So here’s the statement from the EFCA:

-Did you notice that social justice in this context is in capital letters to signify a specific thing? This is a whole methodology that contradicts Scripture in foundation yet still tries to get at the same goal of what Jesus offers us. For this thinking, everything is condensed down power dynamics between the oppressed or the oppressor, and the goal is to elevate the oppressed while you penalize the oppressor. But think that through to it’s ultimate conclusion: if you just continue penalizing one group and elevating the other, don’t they at some point switch places? Suddenly the formerly oppressed is now the oppressor. What do you do then? Do we just keep bouncing back and forth over time? This isn’t a sustainable way to live!

-The Bible gives us a different picture. It says all of us are responsible people who can be both oppressors and the oppressed, and sometimes at the same time! The Bible gives us a model of redemption where the person who has all the power and influence willingly lowers themselves to identify with the oppressed and then free them and elevate them back to a place of dignity and honor. The Bible argues that the oppressed or oppressor dynamics don’t get to the deeper reality of sin that’s affects all of us! 

-To summarize this point: our God is a God of justice, and He wants His people to be people of justice (who reflect Him to the rest of the world). That means that one of the places that we’re called to pursue justice is social (with no capital letters!). That’s what we say when we pray the Lord’s prayer, where we ask that His kingdom would come on earth the same as it is in heaven (and heaven is the place where perfect justice reigns and sets the direction for everything that takes place). 

-We need to keep this in mind with everything we’ve talked about so far: if you remember Hosea, the focus of that book was justice between us and God (vertical), in Amos the focus shifts to justice between each other (horizontal)

  • The Message of Amos:

-Who was Amos? Amos’s name means “to carry a burden or a load” which once again gets to the purpose of the book where the role of follower of God is to help carry the burdens of others. But his self-description here labels him as a “sheep breeder” (some of your translations may say “shepherd”) the word he uses is not the typical one used of shepherds, in another place it’s used to describe a King, so it’s a shepherd of a LARGE flock. He also describes himself later on as taking care of sycamore figs, and sycamore trees grew near the coast, so it’s likely that Amos was a wealthy man who was able to speak to many of the excesses in the culture because he knew it well. Another reason scholars think Amos was wealthy is because this book is written with a high level of skill. He uses irony throughout to make his point, he also writes very carefully which signifies a high level of education. Finally note that it says the WORDS of Amos, of what he SAW, which is a good way of summarizing the book: words against Israel accompanied by visions for Israel.

-Just to situate ourselves, Amos identifies himself as prophesying during the reigns of Kings Uzziah & Jeroboam, 2 years before the earthquake. No one knows when this earthquake took place, but the first readers would have known exactly what he was talking about. This makes Amos a contemporary of Jonah, Hosea (who we studied earlier), Isaiah, and Micah. Here’s a picture I’ve shared before of where the prophets were stationed, Amos is called to go north to Bethel to prophesy.

  1. Judgment on the Nations (1-2)

-The judgment begins with a note that this is coming from the Lord who is coming from Jerusalem, not Bethel or Dan, the competing religious sites in Israel. 

-There’s some debate about how to summarize the ways God’s indicting the nations, but do you notice that they all begin the same way? 3, then 4. 7 throughout the Bible refers to perfection, so it could be saying they’re perfectly evil. The book of Proverbs also uses this phrase regularly, so it could also be a common phrase that the people would have used and understand that has been lost to time! In Proverbs it always is followed by the correct number, this time it’s not, which just makes it even more confusing! 

-1 thing we DO know is the ordering is significant to communicate a specific point. If you look at this map, you can see how the judgments are handed out. Damasus – Gaza, Tyre – Edom. Who’s in the middle of that X? And then we start circling in from there: Ammonites – Moab – then we get to God’s people at 7. And remember what I just said about 7 referring to completion in the Bible? This is where the people would have expected the Lord to stop! And we know from Amos 7, that Amos also was prophesying in Bethel, which means his journey looked like this: 

-For all these, the people of Israel would have been celebrating! AND surely that would be the end of it, because 3+4 is 7, so obviously Amos was building up to Israel being the one true remaining group. But that’s not where he stops, is it? And not only does it not stop, but Israel gets the longest condemnation!

-And I think this serves as a picture of how we can summarize the reason for God’s judgment: because of a lack of social justice towards other people. Do you see the description here? People who are righteous (morally upright citizens) are being sold to build out wealth, those who are poor are being sold to buy a pair of sandals, and it gets worse! They step on the poor as they pass by, grinding their faces into the ground, and get in the way of the needy for their own self benefit. And this is probably one of the more mild descriptions of the ways people are being treated. 

-I’ve shared these pictures before, but the nation that’s the biggest threat to the people at this time is the Assyrians. I got to visit the British Museum in London a couple years ago and saw some unbelievable treasures, including these doors. You can’t read it, but the plaque on the right side of these doors says, “Enter the palace of the Assyrian king, ruler of the world’s first empire. The sculptures in these rooms are from the royal capitals of Nineveh, Khorsbad and Nimrud.” Wood doesn’t last the few millennia it would take for me to see them, so these are replicas of the originals, but they do have the bronze bars that held them together (those last a little longer). Here’s just 2 of them: on the left you can see a field of people being crucified on stakes, and on the right you can see the slaughtering of children. What do you think seeing that every day on your city gates would do to the psyche of a civilization? And this is the world in which God is calling these civilizations out!

-Compared to this way of living, Israel’s sins seem minor, don’t they? They’re “only” alienating the poor, not murdering them brutally, right? But that’s not how God sees it. Of all the nations, Israel should know better! And that’s where Amos spends the bulk of the rest of this letter:

  • Words to Israel (3-6)

-The difference between Israel (and Judah) and all these other nations is they know better. God’s covenant stipulations and expectations weren’t given to anyone else, just Israel, and how is Israel living? No better than the rest of the nations! And God says He will hold them responsible for it. God says that at Bethel (means “house of the Lord”) He will punish them, the alternative sites of worship have become places of sin, and it’s because they’ve living in luxury while they ignore or take advantage of the poor. See, they’re so wealthy they have both winter and summer houses, their houses are full of beautiful (and expensive) things.

-And this begins the contrast God will make in these chapters between their acts of worship to Him and their lack of lives of worship marked by care for the suffering and marginalized. We’ll talk about this more later, but as we walk through this pay attention to what God expects from His people in regard to the worship of Him. Do you think God cares how we worship Him? 

-The excesses continue in Amos 4, where Amos compares women to cows of Bashan signifying that they are healthy with excess. Meanwhile, these women who live in excess oppress the poor and needy. But it goes on, they not only oppress the poor, they also make demands of their husbands. So God again invites them to come to their places of worship to continue in their sin (insert joke about Bethel here)

-And look at what God says they’re doing at these places of “worship.” All these things listed are things God expects them to do! But not at the expense of the poor and needy. It’s not enough to turn God’s commands into a checklist so that you can ensure you’re “good enough,” God actually expects you to live an entirely different life.

-God’s condemnation continues in chapter 5, but with a twist of irony. I just want to briefly point out the continuity between what we saw in Joel last week and what we see in Amos this week. Remember that topic of “the day of the Lord”? Here it is again! The people are expecting that day to be amazing, but that’s the opposite, and Amos lays some irony on thick to explain: imaging running away from a lion and run straight into a bear! Yikes! Or he finally escapes into his home, leans against a railing and is bitten by a snake! This is supposed to be funny. 

-And this comparison continues through the end of the chapter, and builds to what I think is the primary point of this book. Once again, God is calling out their acts of worship as useless, but it doesn’t just say He’s not happy, it says He HATES them! Their offerings are pointless because He won’t accept them, and He plugs His ears when they’re using music to try to worship Him. 

-Instead the people are supposed to pursue justice and righteousness for everyone in their nation, and only if they pursue those things (which remember can be summarized as social justice). They must care for the poor among them. And that same drumbeat continues through chapter 6.

  • Visions for Israel (7-9:10)

-God then reveals some things to Amos by giving him visions. First locusts sent from God to destroy their crops, but Amos begs God to relent and He does. Then there’s a vision of fire destroying the land, and Amos again begs God to stop and He does. Then there’s a vision of a plumbline, where God hands the plumbline of His standards up to the people and no one can measure up, no one is aligned to God’s perfect expectations (even though He told them how they should live!)

-After these visions come a brief interlude where Amaziah, the priest of Bethel comes out to confront Amos, but Amos continues prophesying and speaking down to Amaziah.

-The visions continue in chapter 8, with a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” (qayits) sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “end.” (qets) God’s way of saying the end is coming. Finally, the last vision is the Lord standing beside the altar where He promises the destruction of all the people.

  • Restoration (9:11-15)

-But that’s not where this book ends. After chapters of judgment and destruction, the book ends looking far into the future where God promises to completely turn the tides of the destruction, but it only comes about by the repentance of His people.

-He says He will rebuild, restore, repair the house of David. But remember back in the beginning when it seemed like the bad news was going to stop before it got to Israel, now the reverse is true, the blessing won’t stop with Israel, it will go out to ALL the nations! Everyone can become a part of this blessed community where true justice reigns! And look what that day will look like:

-You won’t be able to wait from planting to harvesting, the wine will flow in abundance. God’s telling them they think they’ve seen prosperity now, but they’ve seen nothing. And all this is God’s doing, no one will be able to take them away from their land. And this book ends, appropriately, with God having the final word. He has spoken, this will happen.

  • Amos for Us Today

-What’s the point of worship? Why do we meet here every week? I’ve asked this question before, but it really comes to the front in this book: when we gather as God’s people, as the church, is it for believers or for unbelievers? That’s one of the biggest questions churches ask! But it’s the wrong question, because we gather for God. So then the question becomes: was God honored in our worship today? Unfortunately for many people today the only metric is: did the music emotionally move me? That’s the wrong question to be asking, God says that’s what he hates! Instead, what Amos teaches us is that worship is meant to change us, to make us more like Jesus. That means sometimes you might feel a little uncomfortable here because you’re being stretched to change! That’s not a bad thing! So instead of rating our worship services either on how much you liked it or how much it emotionally moved you, let’s think about whether or not God was honored and glorified through what we did.

-The inclusion of EVERYone. God has commanded His church to go out to the ends of the earth, but what we might miss it that wasn’t a new message! God’s plan from the beginning has been that He would be the God of the entire world, but it requires people who are going out to share that message with others. AND 

-One of the ways we demonstrate that reality, that we’re truly worshipping God is that we care for the poor and marginalized. This is not optional for Christians! The only option is which of the poor and marginalized is God calling you to. I heard someone in a parenting talk say that God told is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and every morning when I wake up I have a house full of both of those things, so for those of you with kids, this command is for you every day! AND for all of us, none of us are excluded from the command to love our neighbor, and work to bring God’s true peace and justice to bear in our world today. What is God calling you to do to accomplish that goal? I’ve talked about this before, but one of the best ways for you to care for others is by sponsoring a child. Our denomination supports kids through Global Fingerprints, and they’re doing some really cool things across the world! Maybe it’s coming to help with Project Count on Me on Saturday, maybe it’s creating a “blessing bag” that you keep in your car to hand out to people who are begging on the streets. And maybe it’s as simple as inviting someone over to your house. There’s all sorts of ways we can do this, I’m just beginning to scratch the surface here, but I’d encourage you to take some time to pray and ask how God wants you to carry out His mission of reaching out to EVERYone. 

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by mikethestrand on February 22, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 22, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/22/amos-sermon-manuscript/

Joel – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the interesting things about these prophets is that all their names have specific meanings that tend to correlate to their role. Hosea’s name means “salvation” or “deliverance” which shows the way God’s people were saved or delivered from their sins. Joel’s name means Yahweh is God. But did you know the Jesus wasn’t the name of God’s Son? Jesus’s name in Hebrew was actually Joshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” So when the angel appears to Mary, he tells her that she should name her son Joshua because He will save His people from their sins. So why do we call Him Jesus?

-When the OT was being translated from Hebrew into Greek, there were some words that were transliterated (moved from Hebrew into Greek without translating, each letter for the corresponding letter in Greek). We saw this last week when our Bible’s transliterated the names of Hosea’s children. So Jeshua in the Hebrew became Iesous in the Greek. Then English came on the scene, and the first English translation put the name as Ihesus, which in the KJV became Iesus. So Jesus comes from a transliteration of a transliteration, and because of the impact of the KJV, we refer to Him as Jesus in all our English Bibles today.

-We’re going to look at the significance of Jesus’s name today, and it may surprise you that it comes up in Joel!

READ/PRAY (pg. 807)

  1. The Day of the Lord

-One of the repeated phrases throughout this book is, “The Day of the Lord,” a future moment where God would come in judgment to pay back the enemies of His people. It’s used in a number of other prophets in the OT, but it also makes some appearances in the NT. Some people call it just “that day” or will refer to it as “the great day of the Lord”

-Talked about in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, and most explicitly in Zephaniah. Now, this gets to one of the biggest questions surrounding Joel. Think back to last week when I talked about the dates of these books. Many of them begin with the name of the prophet, followed by the kings who reigned during their ministries, see here’s the first verse from Hosea. Compare that to the beginning of Joel. So there’s debate about where we should historically locate Joel, since there’s similar themes to some other books, is Joel using terminology from them or are they borrowing language from Joel? If you remember this chart from last week that placed the dates of the various prophets, you can see a question mark next to Joel. The big event in Joel is a famine due to a swarm of locusts, which could place it in any of these centuries.

-We’ll talk about this more thoroughly when we get to Zechariah, but I think we need to build a foundation of this “day” that the prophets are talking about here to help us understand the message of Joel! 

-At the time, the Israelites were anxious for the day of the Lord because it was viewed in a completely positive light, where the other nations who had defeated God’s people would be judged. But the message of the prophets is that the judgment would be negative, not positive! Look how Isaiahdescribes this day:

-And this isn’t just an OT focus, look how Revelation both describes the day and what that day is referred to as. So instead of being a positive thing, the prophets warn us that that the Day of the Lord is going to be terrifying! And where that Revelation passage ends is the question Joel will help us answer: Who can stand?

  • The Message of Joel

-The focus of this book is trying to prepare people for the day of the Lord by using the picture of the current disaster from locusts as a picture of what will someday be coming from an invading army.

-Now, because it’s the Bible and probably the most studied and dissected book in the world, there’s debate about what’s being talked about! The debate is what exactly is Joel talking about, and is it different between chapters 1 & 2, or is he just talking about the same event? Either Joel uses locusts to describe an invading army, or there’s no army he’s just talked about how destructive the locusts are, OR 1 chapter is locusts and 2 is an army of people. Again, it doesn’t help that we can’t specifically date this book, which slightly complicates figuring out what exactly Joel’s talking about. BUT I would take the position that Joel 1 is referring to a real ecological disaster that serves as a picture of what an invading army would do in Joel 2, followed how God will redeem and restore His people in Joel 3. Remember, Joel’s name means “Yahweh is God,” and it fits with his primary message of God’s upcoming judgment of the wicked and restoration of the righteous.

  1. Judgment in the Day of the Lord (1:1-2:17)

-The first reminder is that this event is supposed to be significant for the people, significant enough that it becomes a part of the family story. What’s amazing, to me, about this is that throughout the Bible, God commands His people to repeat stories down through the generations. 

-2 brief examples. My mind has been in Joshua a lot the past few weeks, and one of the amazing stories in that book is that the nation is able to cross the Jordan river on dry ground because God stops the river from flowing (similar to what He did when they left Egypt). Once the whole nation had crossed, God tells Joshua to take 12 stones from the middle of the river and bring them to their camp, and then set up another 12 stone memorial in the middle of the river as a reminder of what God had done for them. And notice how God describes it: 

The nation is supposed to talk about God’s provision for them.

-Second is in Deut. 6, as God tells His people how they’re supposed to live (just so you keep this in mind from last week, don’t miss that the one true God doesn’t leave us in the dark, He tells us how we should live!) And look what God says they’re supposed to do with these words: repeat them to your children. This is God’s way of saying: know your history, know your story, so that you can know how you got where you are today. AND as we see in Joel, don’t just repeat the good stories! Share the difficulties and struggles God has taken you through, don’t just give your kids or your friends the Instagram reel of your life, talk about the times and seasons where you weren’t sure if God was going to show up. 

-I’m not sure if you know this yet, but life is HARD! And one of the things I think we need to teach kids is that it’s possible to navigate and persevere through difficult things. Sometimes the difficulty is because of our own stupidity, and sometimes things just happen to us, but let your kids know that you survived!

-In the case of Joel, what has happened that the people had survived is a plague of locusts. Just a few years ago, locusts were actually in the news because in Kenya they were facing the destruction of their crops from locusts, the BBC called it “The biblical locusts plagues of 2020.” And look just how complete this plague is for Joel 1:4:

-Nothing is left, they’re facing starvation in ways that we can’t begin to comprehend today! And when their entire economy depends on agriculture this is like facing the great depression of 1930s (close enough that we have to specify which century now!) Joel goes on through this chapter to say the grapevines have been ruined, fruit trees are destroyed, even the animals are grieving and groaning. 

-And this was something that God had promised! Remember to last week where I said the primary role of the prophets was to remind the people what God had said and to call them back to uphold their end of the covenant? God always keeps His Word, both for His blessings and His curses. And in Deut. 28, God says:

-And what’s the proper response of the people? They’re supposed to wake up! (5), grieve (8), be ashamed (11), dress in sackcloth and lament (13), announce a sacred fast and a solemn assembly (14) Why? Look at vs. 15. This is the first time that phrase is mentioned. And unfortunately, even though this day is terrible, it’s not THAT day! It’s near, this plague is a picture of the judgment and devastation that will come from God on THAT day, so brace yourself! Look at the way the Lord is spelled out in your Bible, do you see the smaller font, but uppercase letters? In the OT that’s the way our modern Bibles note where the divine name “Yahweh” is being used, you can see it previously in vs. 14, 9, & 1. If the letters aren’t capitalized it’s using a different Hebrew word.

-And that warning continues in chpt. 2, he doubles down on the reality that the day of the Lord is coming, and look at how he describes it in vs. 2, and part of the reason I think this is referring to something in the future is because of his description of something that “never existed in ages past and never will again.” He’s using the plague as a picture of what THAT day is going to look like.

-And to see how complete this destruction is, look at vs. 11. Nothing can stand in the way of this army, nothing can stand against them, leading to God asking the rhetorical question: who can endure it? The answer is no one!

-And friends, apart from God’s miraculous intervention that’s where we’re stuck. Paul in Eph. 2 describes us as dead in our sins. If God hadn’t brought us from death to life no one would be able to stand in His presence. And we know that about God! The fact that we preach a “gospel” which means “good news” means there must be hope in the midst of this destruction, right? Let’s see the way God answers that question, who can endure?

-God’s people can, if they follow through on God’s commands to seek repentance. And do you notice that Joel calls out a false repentance? Friends, how easy is it to act remorseful but not actually be repenting? To grieve that you got caught, not that you were sinning. God invites us to repent and provides a way of dealing with that sin, not just looking the other way and ignoring or penalizing and holding it against you but casting it as far as the East is from the West. And how often do we see a fake response in our world? People apologizing “if you were offended,” or apologizing for hurting you, but not admitting that what they did was wrong. And that’s only if someone actually apologizes! Think of what we’re seeing with the release of all these Epstein files! I’ll be honest, it’s pretty hard for me to take most of the apologies seriously when these people have had years or decades to apologize, but they waited. Is there actual regret for what they participated in, or is it merely posturing – putting on a show so you look good to others. That’s the kind of “repenting” that God is calling out here. He wants true repentance from the heart, not a show of repentance without any inner transformation.

-And notice how it describes God: gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love. Church – this is why it’s so important for us to have good theology, a good grasp on who God is. Since we know that God is gracious and compassionate we can respond with repentance! If God was malicious or angry we should be afraid to admit we’re sinners, but that’s not our God. Our God is slow to anger and overflowingwith steadfast, faithful love (Hebrew words chesed which is very hard to translate). Sally Lloyd Jones calls it: “Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.” Think about that comparison: slow to anger. God’s first reaction isn’t in anger, it takes Him a LONG time to get angry. But God’s first reaction to true repentance is forgiveness. He’s slow to anger but QUICK to forgiveness. And if you think about that, isn’t that exactly what you’d hope for from Him? You don’t want him to be quick to anger and slow to forgiveness because we’re ALWAYS going to sin! If He weren’t slow to anger we’d be toast!

-Then with that reminder of who God is, the priests can call people to a true repentance (vs. 15-17) where once their sins are dealt with, God can be with them again.

  • The Mercy of the Lord (2:18-3:21)

-Now that the people know what God is like and they move to respond in repentance, how does God respond? Just as He promised! He will restore everything they’ve lost. God spares His people because they have responded in repentance. 

-God says He will repay His people for the lean years. God’s blessings will pour out on His people, but even more importantly than the blessings: 

-God will be present with His people. They won’t be looking to idols as their source of comfort anymore. BUT that doesn’t happen on this side of Jesus’s return! Which is what God goes on to predict, and this gets us to those near and far future fulfillments that we talked about last week but hold onto that for just a minute.

-The next key to Joel is that when that day of the Lord comes it will be marked by a revival among the people. Look at what He says in 28-29:

-Previously, God’s Spirit only indwelt people for a short period of time, not permanently, and it was primarily those who were tasked with leading the nation (kings, priests, prophets). But now God says He’ll pour out His Spirit on ALL humanity, and when He says ALL he means it! Sons and daughters (suddenly there’s no gender divisions in salvation), old men and young men (suddenly there’s no age or generational divisions), and male and female slaves (suddenly there’s no class or economic distinctions). God’s Spirit can live in any and every one! I think this is what Paul’s talking about in Gal 3:28 when he says: 

-And back to Joel, that’s what God says too: EVERYONE. 

-The final chapter gives the other perspective of the day of the Lord. There’s a different response from God to those who don’t turn in repentance to God. If you look at the footnote of your Bible, you’ll see that Jehoshaphat means the Lord will judge. God is reminding His people that even if it looks like the nations around them are flourishing in their defeat of them, the end result will be completely different for them. God will respond to their lack of repentance with judgment. But even in the midst of that judgment, look at how God describes Himself for His people: 

-A refuge and stronghold, a place where they can be protected and preserved from the incoming judgment and destruction of the nations. And look how God promises to pour out His blessings on His people:

-In order to understand how we should respond to this book, I think we need to see how the NT writers interpret Joel’s words, so there’s 3 key passages that I think help us understand what God is teaching to His people through all time:

  • The Use of Joel in the New Testament (Acts 2; Romans 10:13; Revelation 9)

-2 key changes that Peter makes:

-Peter says it is IN the last days, where Joel says “After this.” Peter is saying this is the sign you’ve been waiting for! The last days have started NOW, but those last days aren’t fully realized, just like the 2 mountains.

-He also adds in 18 that “they will prophesy.” Peter is saying what is taking place is prophesying, we think it’s just the future, but Peter is showing us that it is speaking in the power of God in unique ways, sometimes speaking to what’s happening right now. 

-More importantly, after quoting from Joel, Peter does a bit of logic building in the Greek to point out exactly how this salvation comes through a name. In the Greek, the word for Lord is kurios (no special marker in our English Bibles), so he begins with a reference to Yahweh from the OT, then he goes on to talk about God raising this Jesus in 32. Then he goes on to equate Jesus with the Lord (this is a key verse Jesus uses to describe Himself in Matt. 22) and lands by saying in vs. 36: God has made this Jesus the kurios, the Lord God. 

-The people are convicted, and they ask what they should do, and what does Peter say? Repent and be baptized (those are connected to each other), in what name? The name of Jesus. The promise that those who call on the correct name will be saved was hidden to Joel, but with the arrival of Jesus has been revealed! We know that name! We know who we should call to if we want to be saved!

-This is exactly the same argument Paul uses in Rom. 10.

-Lastly, just so we can begin to understand the way the day of the Lord works, listen to one of the things John sees in Rev. 9. 

-And there’s more descriptions of these locusts in later verses. In Joel, the locusts are described as lions (1:6), complete destruction in the front and back (2:3) perhaps like a scorpion, like horses specifically war hoses (2:4), their sound is described like chariots (2:5). Do you think there might be some parallels between what God revealed to both Joel and John? I tried emphasizing this point when I preached through Rev. in 2024, but how much of Revelation do we misinterpret because we don’t catch these OT references and allusions? And what if the verses in Revelation are supposed to remind us of what we just talked about as an application from Joel? Unless you call on the name of the Lord, you will be destroyed.

-So friends, as we conclude this sermon, the question before you is: what’s going to happen to you on the Day of the Lord? Today we’ve seen the reminder that unless we repent and believe in the name of Jesus we will not be saved.

-Peter says that there is no other name we should look to for salvation, there’s no hope for salvation from anyone or anything else.

-And because God is slow to anger, Paul tells us in Rom. 2:4 that that trait is God’s kindness and is meant to lead us to repentance. If you repent and believe, then the Day of the Lord is something to get excited for! It’s the day where our faith will be made sight, where the spiritual realm will be visible to us, where we’ll see our Savior and King returning to bring us home!

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by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/15/joel-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
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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/

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
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 9, 2025

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

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