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Generous with Time and Talents – Sermon Manuscript

-Middle of a series looking at the God of generosity.

-This section is all about financial generosity, but I think Paul lays the groundwork for us to go beyond just being generous with our finances, and the way I’ve always heard it talked about is with 3 T’s: time, talents, and treasures (good alliteration, and 3 points so you know it has to be true!) 

-This week, we’re going to be focusing on time and talents, with treasures being the focus of next week, but I want to start looking at what Paul says in 2 Cor. 9, before seeing other places where these ideas are also brought up.

-And this isn’t a brand new idea for us, it’s just approaching a topic we’ve talked about many times from a different lens, another way of thinking about generosity is through the lens of worship. Are you worshipping God with all you have and all your are, or are you holding things back?

READ/PRAY (1027)

  1. Excel in Every Good Work

6-This section begins with the assumption that sowing is going to be done, the only question is where are you sowing, in the world or in heaven?

7-What should mark the giver?

-As you decide – this is up to you, don’t try to keep up with someone else!

-Not reluctant – if God has changed your heart, it should affect your wallet

-Not compulsive – don’t lock the doors until you give a certain amount, don’t give just because someone begs!

-Cheerfully. Did you know that God actually wired us to become cheerful through giving? Some people report a “giving high” when they’re generous. Not only does God love a cheerful giver, but God INTENDS givers to become cheerful! Sociology is just the study of how God created us!

-“A stingy Christian is a contradiction in terms. We ourselves have been gifted into new life in Christ. We have been gifted into becoming givers.” Ortlund

8-At the core, where does this generosity come from? Generosity is grace, generosity comes from the gifts God already gives, and it leads to excelling in every good work.

9 – quotes from Psalm 112 as a model of someone who gives generously leading to being a righteous person. Generosity always bears fruit, even into eternity.

10 – God provides AND multiplies, it all comes from Him

-We’re expected to sow what God provides, but it leads to a harvest in our righteousness, which means one of the ways to determine if you’re walking with the Lord (in right standing before Him) is evidenced by your generosity.

-And the best part is we’re not the point! Generosity begins with God, is stewarded through us, and then goes back in thanksgiving to God! 

12 – our generosity is supposed to be a means of caring for each other, those who are a part of the church

-And I think this is important for us to realize that God’s means of providing for one another in this church body is right here, which I believe means that one of the ways this is evidenced is through our annual voting of our budget. Each year is a step of faith that God is going to provide for the needs of the saints through us, which means we should all take that vote very seriously, and cover it in prayer because at the end of the day this isn’t a business, this is a ministry. And the reason it’s an act of faith is because we can’t manipulate the market to increase our revenue stream – it takes all of us taking these ideas to heart and living out a generous life that leads to thanks to God.

13-Which leads to this last section, where Paul begins saying that your generosity towards other believers is a proof that the gospel has changed you. 

-And we continue to see this interplay between God receiving the glory, and the way generosity unites us closer to each other.

-Obedient confession with your mouth leads to an outpouring of generosity, those 2 things can’t be separated! With them and EVERYONE!

14-which connects to prayer, prayer is to God, but it also unties us together: it’s hard to remain mad at someone when you’re praying for them. Generosity leads to deep affection, deep union, a close relationship with each other.

-Which means we must be grateful people. One of the things about Paul’s letters that amazes me is how much thanks he writes about for and to other people. We, as Christians, should be the most grateful people on the planet, first because of what God has done for us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, but also because out of Jesus comes this new community called ‘the church’ which is comprised of people from all backgrounds who are brought together in a specific time and place to provide everything needed for us take steps closer to Jesus.

-Now, one of the things I want to note about this section is the temptation for us to have the appearance of generosity, but do it from the wrong motivation.

-Ortlund quote. There’s a story in the book of Acts about the way the early church was ridiculously generous, so everyone wanted to become more generous. So a couple decided to sell a field and give some of the money to the church, but because they were more worried about appearances they told everyone that they gave EVERYTHING they made from selling their field. Instead of actually being generous, they were wanting to look generous to others, they were more worried about what other people thought than what God thought.

-I want to end this section with another passage from Paul that we’ll come back around to again in the Fall in 1 Tim. 6 because it connects to this section.

-Friends, we are rich in the present age. Paul says not to be arrogant (prideful, trusting in your own wealth), and to not hope in wealth (which can disappear in an instant), but on our rich God who alone provides everything for us.

-Instead of being rich in earthly wealth, look to be rich in good works! That’s practically how you store up treasures in heaven! And then Paul says how to be rich in good works: be generous and willing to share. Don’t horde and don’t hold on to your possessions too tightly – that’s how you demonstrate that the gospel message has changed you!

-But I think the most incredible piece of this section is the way Paul ends it, and it’s a phrase that was pointed out to me last October that I’ve been contemplating since then. What is life that is truly life (NIV)? 

-And as I’ve been thinking about it, I think what Paul is getting at is if you want to live a full life, or as Jesus says life in abundance, it requires reorienting your life to the way God intended us to live, being like Jesus. 

-Eternity for us starts now. Things you do now have a direct influence on the rest of your life. That’s why Paul is saying there’s a connection between how we handle our resources here, and what God gives us to handle in eternity. Friends, we’re going to live forever, the question is do we live like that now or not?

-And a primary way we live like that is by being generous with our time and our talents.

  • With Time (1 Thess. 2:8) 

-Who or what determines time for you? This is another concept that has been fascinating for me to consider since last summer’s trip in Europe. We had a professor from TEDS come who is a Genevan church history expert, wrote this book and spent the beginning chapter talking about St. Pierre, the biggest cathedral in the city, and still the highest point of the city. Listen to how he describes the passing of time:

-Manetsch quote

-Do churches have any bearing on time today? I often joke that I keep “Apple Standard Time” in my house. But with so much of our lives moving online that even affects the way we live! (the staff was laughing this week at how much we rely on the internet to do our jobs) And when does the internet shut off? Never! How do you think that affects the way our world engages time?

-Think of the promise of all the technological advancement we’ve had – easier lives, less time devoted to work, but has that actually happened? Why do people say that we spend about the same amount of time on household tasks today as our grandparents, or great-grandparents did 100 years ago? 

-Yet another piece, think of the verbs we use in relation to time, aren’t they all monetary? Spend, invest, waste, steward. But is that the way God thinks of time? Think of what Peter says about time (2 Pet. 3). God’s timing is rarely the same as our timing. And how long does it take for us to grow in holiness? I’ll be honest, it seems to be taking a LOT longer in my life than I thought it would when I was a kid!

-A book I recently read said God’s speed is 3 mph, which caught me off guard. But then the author went on to say: how fast did Jesus move? Walking speed! And then the author pointed out that Jesus spent a majority (something like ¾) of his 3-year ministry walking. If God’s speed is 3 mph, should that affect the way we view time? How much do we miss because we’re in too much of a rush to notice what God is putting in our path?

-I think one of the ways we all could grow in generosity with our time is by prioritizing people over productivity. Friends, you never need to apologize if you want to spend time with me or anyone on staff. I’ve lost count of the times I sit down to meet with someone and they say “I’m sorry for taking your time, I know you’re busy.” I’m not! My role here is to invest my time here on all of you! There are some boundaries that I need to keep, priorities that I have, but it’s a joy for me to be with you!

-For many of us, we live by the maxim time is money, don’t we? One of the things that has driven me nuts over my life is the people who are always looking for someone better to talk to, where you feel like you’re just in their way. When you’re trying to talk to them they won’t make eye contact, they keep looking just over your shoulder. Please don’t be like that! Friends, everyone we encounter is going to live for eternity, so get started loving them now!

-I onetime had someone ask me: how do you I know you care about me? After a bunch of wrong answers I landed on the one he was looking for: time. Time is one of the primary ways we show that we care about each other, which is just another way of saying if you love someone, you will spend time with them. 

-Which gets us to the primary verse for this section. What does Paul say he’s willing to share with the church? The gospel, and our very selves. We’ll give you ourselves. That’s how we’re generous with our time: by sharing our very selves. Do you share yourself with others, or do you try to remain stingy with yourself and your time?

  • With Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)

-5 talents, 2 talents, 1 talent. The first 2 double their talents, the third hides it, which would have been a completely acceptable arrangement at the time! Thieves and robbers were plentiful, burying it would have ensured it didn’t grow legs! 

-But look at how the master rewards the first 2, and then look at the third. The third is called evil, lazy, good-for-nothing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think those words are very positive! My prayer when I see my master is what the first 2 heard: well done good and faithful servant. But how do we steward our talents? In this parable, Jesus is talking about money, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for us to move this into the ways God has created us with specific talents that we’re supposed to build on and grow in. 

–1 Cor. 12 talks about many different ways that the body of Christ is gifted, none of us are gifted (talented) exactly the same way. And that’s not meant to cause jealousy or comparison between each other, God designs the body so that we always have exactly what we need, and nothing more! BUT it requires all of us using our gifts for the good of each other, look at the end of vs. 7: “for the common good.” 

-Church: your talents are not for you. But that also means you need to be actively using your talents, growing in them so that you can be a blessing to those around you. So that you can be generous with your talents! Every person who has been saved has some way or ways that God has equipped them for the good of the church, your brothers and sisters around you.

-Now, you might be thinking that’s awfully self-serving of me to say! I need your help to make this church function, and that may be true if it wasn’t for Eph. 4, which I have often referred to as my job description. 

-Notice why it says gave all these roles: to equip the saints for the work of ministry (service). Friends, the reason we have a church staff is to help equip you to function to the best of your abilities for the sake of our church. And the end result of us all using our gifts is growth and maturity, taking steps closer to Jesus each and every day.

-If you’ve been attending here for a while, you’ve seen this chart before, but this is what I try to share at least annually in our member’s meetings to give you a perspective on all the areas of ministry we have. And do you see all the question marks? Those are places we have needs! Now, that doesn’t mean no one is involved in these areas, many people are, but we don’t have someone to be the point person and help direct and guide these areas…yet. Are you someone that is looking for more ways to get involved? 

Communication, finances, hospitality, equip, care, mercy/outreach, men’s all are places that I would love to have an intention focus. Kid’s ministry always needs people, youth group always has opportunities, facilities always has little projects going.

-How are you growing in generosity with your time and your talents?

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by mikethestrand on August 24, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 24, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/24/generous-with-time-and-talents-sermon-manuscript/

Our Generous God – Sermon Manuscript

-The elders read through various books together to help us grow in our understanding of God, the church, leadership, etc. Over the summer, Micah took them through the book that God used to call me into ministry called ‘Worship Matters.” The bulk of the book is taken up with what the author calls “Healthy Tensions” things that we need to keep in mind to have a healthy music ministry in a church. But as I’ve thought about that concept over my life, I think it applies to our Christian faith much more broadly, and these tensions prevent us from sliding into heresy. And I’ve thought of this through the lens of something they have at playgrounds. Any kids know what this is? A see-saw! Has anyone ever seen a seesaw sitting in its natural state perfectly balanced like this? No! It always leans 1 way or the other. And if you trace the history of Christianity, you can see the theological see-saw going back and forth. A few examples:

-Is Jesus God or a man? Yes! And if you start emphasizing one over the other you end up in heresy!

-Is God 3 or is God 1? Yes! 

-Are Christians for the world, or against the world? Yes! We’re for the world coming to know Jesus as the Savior of the world, but we’re against the world and it’s sinful desires!

-We could keep going, but the point is there are things about God that don’t make sense to our finite human minds. And generosity is one of those areas of living that doesn’t make any sense in our world. Why in the world should we give things that we work hard to acquire to someone else? In a purely materialistic world, being generous is honestly a dumb way to live!

-In April, I took a class at TEDS titled ‘Fundraising Principles and Practices.’ Not a class I was excited, not a class I really wanted to take, but it’s a class that really knocked my socks off! Because it connected some dots for me on how I (we) tend to approach money, but all the things we think are “ours.”

-I say “ours” intentionally, because what do you have that hasn’t been entrusted to you for a season? And what do you have here that you’ll take with you after you die? So I’ve spent the last 4 months sitting in this idea and praying about what it means for us to be a generous people.

-Book recommendation

READ/PRAY (pg. 1027)

  1. Rich Through Poverty

-Background to 2 Corinthians: the upside-down way of living. One of my favorite descriptions of the early church is found in Acts 17. Paul is continuing to preach the gospel, arrives at Thessalonica (wrote a couple letters to them that we have later in our Bibles!), and the Jews become jealous and come before the officials and describe what’s taking place: turning the world upside down.

-A commentator put this summary of the book, just like the see-saw that I talked about earlier. This doesn’t make sense in our world! Paul is intentionally making these contrasts in this book that point to a cross-like way of living

-Paul making these contrasts that point to the cruciform (cross like) way of living, particularly in response to a group who claimed to be “super apostles” who proudly announced their accomplishments and pointed out all of Paul’s weaknesses. So Paul uses this opportunity to point out how these “super apostles” are only pursuing worldly recognition, which isn’t the way of Jesus.

-Think of Jesus in Matt. 10:39. In order to find your life, you must lose it. How does that make any sense? Until you understand the gospel message it doesn’t!

-This inversion leads to us being a people marked by generosity instead of hoarding, giving instead of taking, trusting instead of doubting.

-And I’ll put all my cards on the table here: this has been a stretching concept for me to engage, which probably means it’s exactly what God has needed to teach me! I don’t like talking about money, it honestly stresses me out! I’ve had to grow (a lot) in my engagement with money, in the ways I talk about money, and even in my own stewardship of money.

-I also don’t preach as someone who feels like they’ve arrived with this! I’m a pilgrim just like you, and just like many of you I preach far better than I practice! This is something I’m still working on and trying to grow in so that I can be better marked by generosity than hording. But I also know I’m not alone in this!

-And let me illustrate this by asking you a question: how would you feel if I asked to see your bank account, your budget, and your pat check? I’m not asking, and I won’t ask (unless you’re wanting to talk about it!) but why is it that we tend to feel comfortable talking about anything except money? I’ve had people share things with me that they’ve never told anyone else in the world, but those same people wouldn’t tell me what their annual salary is. And friends, I think that may be a way of revealing an area that we NEED to talk about. And I’ll make this personal, I think this is something I need to talk about, because I find myself cringing about this topic which I think is a way of God revealing an idol in my heart.

-I recently listened to a podcast from someone who said he has 2 guys go through his budget every year, and he calls them before he makes any purchase over $1,000. I’ve heard of other Christian guys who rented a house together out of college and literally pooled all their money together. Any purchase over $50 had to be approved of. 

-I don’t know about you, but I hear that and start to get uncomfortable! Why should anyone else have a say in MY money. And friends, there’s the problem. What is truly mine? Nothing! This is starting to get to the point where I think Jesus wants us to be, and (Matt. 6) why he says where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is. Jesus says you’ll build up treasures somewhere, where are those treasures that you’re building on?

-The theme verse for this that crystalized this topic for me is found in 2 Cor. 8:9. In this section, Paul is urging the church to give generously, and he summarizes the gospel message in a financial way. Jesus became poor to allow us to become rich. This richness isn’t limited either, and Peter picks up this idea in 2 Peter 1.

-I loved the way my professor talked about this in the class I took. What’s left out of “everything”? Well the opposite: NOTHING! So friends, what do we lack?

-The temptation for all of us is to operate out of a scarcity mindset, where there’s a limited amount of resources, so in order for us to ensure our survival it’s taken at someone else’s expense. But what if that’s a worldly way of living? What if we serve and worship the God who has made everything out of nothing? What if we really have been given everything we need, but it requires a shift in thinking and approaching the world from us? 

-We’ll get to this more in the Fall as we walk through 1 Tim., but look at how Paul describes the way Christians operate. What do we enter the world with? Our birthday suit! And you can’t even take that with you! But how many of you would honestly say you’re content with food and clothing? 

-I’m guessing many of the kids in here aren’t even content with the food they’re served each day! I know in my house we often get complaints that it’s food they don’t like, or we’re not getting it to them fast enough and they’re “STARVING.” 

-And noticed Paul doesn’t warn those who are rich, he warns those who WANT to be rich.

-Once again, as I say this, I feel the need to caveat, and it’s something I brought up in class: isn’t this prosperity theology? And once again, I think this brings us back to a tension point: because the opposite is also not true: poverty theology, and the Bible points us between those 2 extremes. See riches CAN be a root of evil, but it isn’t evil by itself. God blesses some people with material blessing so they can be a blessing to others. Think of Abraham or Joseph, men given material blessing so that they can in turn bless others. Or during Jesus’s ministry, when Luke tells us “many” were supporting Jesus and His disciples. Friends, riches isn’t a good barometer of either spiritual blessing or spiritual maturity. There can be mature people in poverty, and immature people who worldly rich, but the call for everyone who is in Christ is to grow in generosity. To grow in trusting God’s provision in your life.

  • Taking Versus Trusting

-Scripture begins with a story of a generous God who creates everything out of nothing and provides everything necessary for his creation to flourish.

-Generosity comes with stipulations: don’t eat from 1 tree. Could also say: don’t live beyond your means. But instead of trusting in God’s plan, Eve takes from the tree. The relationship between God and creation is broken, moves in the next chapter to human relationships being broken where Cain murders his brother. Doesn’t say why Abel’s offering was acceptable, but it describes Abel’s as “some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions.” (Gen. 4:4) Abel gives the best, where Cain gives “some.” I think this is where we see that God expects people to be generous.

-And I also think this helps us understand a weird story in Genesis 6 about the sons of God “taking” the daughters of men. Instead of trusting God’s rules and laws for the structuring of the world, creation continues taking things that God has forbidden. In contrast to this is Noah who is described as righteous and blameless.

-Noah began trusting God’s rules, but then what happens to Noah? Noah takes from fruit of the vine in excess and becomes drunk. What was initially trust in God’s provision became abuse and excess.

-This rebellion against God’s ways of living climaxes in Gen. 11 with the tower of Babel. People had refused to obey God’s commission of filling the earth, so they build a tower in order to build a name for themselves, or TAKE a name for themselves instead of entrusting themselves to the one true name that matters: Yahweh. Their tower is their picture of human continually trying to take what is rightfully God’s, instead of trusting His good design, so God forces them to be obedient by confusing their language and spreading them across the earth. This unfinished tower serves as a picture for us of any human efforts to reach God, it will always fall short.

-Side note: story of a church building a pyramid in the lobby of all their “accomplishments”

-God’s story shifts from everyone in the world to 1 man: Abraham (studied his story in the Spring) Abraham’s life is meant to be blessed by God so that Abraham can turn and be a blessing to the whole earth. We saw this in the way Abraham blessed others, and those who were close to Abraham received blessing, and those that stayed far off didn’t.

-Genesis ends with God’s people in Egypt, where they are taken into slavery. Yet God still cares for them and raises up Moses to deliver them to a land full of abundance, God’s generosity continuing. 

-But even as God miraculously leads them out of Egypt, and his generosity continues in miraculously providing food for the entire nation, they don’t trust God. Each day God would send manna and quail for them, but as in the garden they were given stipulations: only take enough for that day. (Ex. 16:4) They were commanded to trust God’s daily provision in their lives, and how did they respond? They took more than they were supposed to, leading to their food spoiling. They took instead of trusting.

-After 40 years of God’s abundant provision of food, they finally enter the promised land that was supposed to have everything they needed, flowing with milk and honey, but they’re still not happy. They want to take a king to lead them just like the other nations, and what’s fascinating is God warns the people that a kind would take their kids and force them to serve the king! (1 Sam. 8:11, 13)

-Where God is generous, His people even the leaders aren’t so generous, and the rest of the history of Israel is people continuing to take for themselves instead of trusting God and being generous with their blessings.

-And then we get to the NT where God’s people are now subjected to life under a government that views taking as a normal way of life. If you’ve never read about the Roman empire, it was a BRUTAL place to live! And into that world comes Jesus who says it’s better to give than to get, better to turn the other cheek than lash back. And then went and lived that out, He trusted Himself to His Father instead of taking the honor and recognition that should have been His. 

-He modeled a truly generous life where He freely gives His status to anyone who would ask by taking our poverty on Himself. He became weak so that we could become strong. He stewarded His riches in a way that allowed others to be blessed through those riches. He didn’t horde it for Himself or hold anything back, He freely gave to anyone who would ask!

-THAT is the history building to what we see in 2 Cor. Jesus through his riches took on poverty to enable we who are poor to become rich, and then go from there to share our riches with others. Friends, this should completely change the way we view our riches! 

  • Which Way Are You Living?

-Would you say your life is marked by taking or by trusting? Just a few chapters earlier in this book, Paul says that what should compel us, drive us forward it “the love of Christ,” 

-One of the markers of the love of Christ is growing in generosity. Is that modeled in your life? 

-One of the assignments I had to do for this class was to write down my history related to generosity. Who modeled generosity for me and how have I modeled generosity in my life? This was an INCREDIBLY helpful experience for me! And one of the things that stood out to me was how much being a part of the church affected my views (yet another reason it’s important for kids to be in here on a regular basis!) I remember passing the plate, seeing people drop their hard-earned money into it every week. That starts to affect your views of money! 

-Take some time this week to thing and pray through your history of generosity! Is your life marked more by trusting or taking? What would it mean for you to grow in this gift of generosity over the next month, 3 months, 6 months, year?

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by mikethestrand on August 17, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Sermon, Theology, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 17, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/17/our-generous-god-sermon-manuscript/

Tales from the Trail – Sermon Manuscript

-THANK YOU!

-First of all to the staff & elders for picking up many things in my absence, particularly Micah for doing the bulk of the preaching while I was gone. Anyone become converted to his side of having your favorite book be Lev.?

-So appreciate this time, time with my family, time to reassess and reevaluate. And even when we were gone, we missed you all. So thankful for this church family that loves and cares about me and my family, it wasn’t easy to be gone! 

-It’s going to take me a while to catch up, so if I look dazed and confused for a few weeks, I probably am! I realize it’s going to take me a while to catch up with all of you, too, so I’m going to get our side of it out of the way now so when we sit down to talk you can just fill us in on what you did this summer.

-This is going to be VERY different from a normal sermon here! I just have some things to share with you about to catch you all up on our summer, as well as some things I’ve been thinking and praying through over the summer. Normally, we’re walking through a passage of the Bible, this week will be random wanderings and disconnected Bible verses, so bear with me today, we’ll get back into our normal rhythms next week.

-I have a couple sticky notes on my church computer monitor with verses that have been meaningful to me at various points during my time here that serve as a good starting point for sharing some of what I learned, and one that I’ve had on there since the beginning of this year is Psalm 16:6.

-Friends, don’t ever forget that God is good and desires good for us as His children. This doesn’t mean that everyday will be the best day ever, or that it always feels like things are “pleasant” but it means that God is in control and the outcome for anyone who is a child of God is “a beautiful inheritance.” This has been something I’ve been trying to remind myself of over this year, because I have so many things to be grateful for, one of which is you all.

-I haven’t shared much of this publicly before, but Cara and I came here in 2020 at a pretty low spot. The church we were coming from was pretty dysfunctional, and I’d had 3 failed interviews the year leading up to coming out here (nothing like you guys getting sloppy thirds) – interviewed at a large church in Chicago to be a worship pastor in 2019, and was told I wasn’t a good enough singer, thus ending my dreams to be on American Idol. But God used this to confirm that it was time for me to move out of music ministry and into preaching ministry.

-Then I had 1 phone interview with a church in La Crosse, and was told they loved my preaching and leadership, but wished I was 3 years older. Strike 2!

-Then in March of 2020, Cara, Calvin, Ellie and I flew to DC to interview about doing a church plant (which everyone called to be a pastor within 10 years of my age has wanted to do). When we landed, one of the pastors picked me up and said “not sure what this is going to look like now, the whole city just shut down” and I, foolishly said, “over a little virus? Are you guys crazy!?” So we went through the interview weekend, watched these 2 churches process shutting down in-person meetings, and then flew back to CO. A week later, they called me and said “I tried pushing as hard as I could, but my elders don’t feel like we can ask you to move across the country when we don’t know what this city is going to look like tomorrow, much less in 3 months.” So we went back to square 1. A month later, I got an email from South Suburban who asked me if I was interested in having a conversation about a position, and this has been just the right fit for us.

-We got to go back and visit with people from that church, and were reminded of how God has continually provided for us again and again and again. So when I say we’re thankful for this church, that’s not hyperbole or an exaggeration. I have a friend who pastors the EFCA church in Hastings (since 2018), who tried planting a church in San Francisco – 3x, each time failed. He said what his family needed was a hug from a church, and that’s how Cara and I came here, and you guys have welcomed us and our growing family, God has been at work in and through us together, and we’re just getting started! When I candidate, I shared that if you hired me, I was committing to AT LEAST 10 years, then the elders extended the contract to 15 years (to finish Psalms) which is actually going to take us 18 years (because of sabbaticals), so we’ve got 13 more years before we can talk about a sign and trade with another church! 

-I told a friend about the Psalms in the summer, and he said it was brilliant on my part to make sure you couldn’t fire me before we finish! 

  1. Our Travels

-Now onto what we did and where we went this summer!

-A highlight for me personally was getting to visit a number of other churches where I had no responsibility! If you were here last summer, you got to hear all about my big grand European escapade where I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc with 8 other EFCA pastors from MN (and some others), well it’s time to hear about it again, because those are the guys I visited!

-John Stromberg at Elmwood in St. Anthony Village (shoutout to Tom & Kris)

-Clay Edens at Hope in Oakwood 

-Bryan Lair at Trinity City in St. Paul

-RCC at the resort (don’t worry, we didn’t take the eucharist, and the priest made sure the emphasize that his homily would be “short” don’t expect the same from me!)

-South Sub online (a poor substitute for in person!)

-(no picture) a Baptist church in Bismark, ND with my sister who played piano

-Siloam Springs Bible, EFCA in Siloam Springs, AR (Cara’s family) 

-Aaron at Resurrection in Burnsville 

-Mike Richards at CrossPoint in Bloomington

-Friends, there’s some great churches in our area that are faithfully preaching the gospel, that are loving their communities, and following hard after the Lord! I’m so thankful for the ways God has been working in all these churches to bring the pastors together as friends, and as encouragement in gospel ministry. If you haven’t realized this yet: life is hard, and no one should be going through life alone! I just listened to a podcast this past week on the need for pastors to have good friends, and I sent it to many of these guys.

-As far as our TRAVEL: we stuck around here while the kids finished up school, and I got in the way around the house a LOT (I’ll get to that with my next point)

-After school wrapped up, Cara and I spent a week in Mexico to celebrate our 10-year anniversary while my parents watched our kids. Everyone survived, but I’m not sure that my parents will sign up for that again. When we got home they told me “your house is busy!”

-This was what Cara looked like most of the week, and this is what I looked like

-I made the mistake of reading the 2 Jurassic Park novels while I was there (if you haven’t read them, they’re really fun science fiction books that the movies didn’t necessarily recreate very well) The reason it was a mistake was because this resort was in the jungle, and the dinosaurs kept trying to take my food! These things are TERRIFYING!

-As a special treat, my youngest sister and her husband joined us after a few days, and we enjoyed catching up with them and introducing them to the resort!

-Flew back for a week (I got sick), then we spent 2 weeks on the road!

-Bismarck (stayed with the same sister who was in MX), Medora, Bismarck, Mt. Rushmore, Colorado, Arkansas, Nebraska, home. If you can’t see the tiny font, that’s 48 hours of driving and 3,222 miles.

-As fresh as we got, in Medora we did the pitchfork fondue (which Charlie loved), Mt. Rushmore was a hit for the bigger kids, my highlight from CO was getting In-N-Out. Ellie decided it was the best cheeseburger she’s had, but Lucy prefers Wendys. It was so good, I got it twice!

-Were hoping to make it back to Cheyenne to see our old church there, but Thomas had other plans. Unfortunately, he had a respiratory infection where he wasn’t breathing well, and nurse Cara was very worried. We came home a few days early and took him to the ER, his blood oxygen was 90%, and they diagnosed him with cold induced asthma. But wait, we weren’t done! That was Saturday night, on Monday, Cara took Calvin in, and it turned out he had gotten walking pneumonia! Didn’t know you could get that in summer. AND THEN we had to talk Thomas BACK in on Wednesday, and it turned out he ALSO had walking pneumonia! Then that Thursday it was Charlie’s turn for tubes, and to round out the summer, Lucy’s getting her tonsils removed in a couple weeks!

-We had a great summer together despite all the sickness! And got to show the kids all sorts of fun things! 

  • Human Being vs. Human Doing

-It was hard to mentally shift from doing to being. The first week and a half I read at least a book a day to try to keep out of Cara’s way (she had her schedule with me at work, from taking the younger kids to the library, to grocery shopping, to naptime), meanwhile I was just trying to keep busy and keep feeling productive, which I realized wasn’t the best use of my time. I texted a friend and asked him how much of sabbatical is supposed to be realizing you’ve put too much of your identity in what you do and what you produce, and his reply was “that was my entire first sabbatical.” Which is NOT what I wanted to hear!

-I don’t know about you, but I often judge myself on what I’m able to accomplish or produce. Like one of the biggest struggles I have in ministry is that I can’t see my accomplishments. No one gives me an award for praying, I can’t measure my growth in holiness, and I would argue that one of the markers of God’s people throughout history is complaining and grumbling that God’s timetable doesn’t align with ours. I don’t know about you, but I felt like I would be FAR more sanctified by now than I am! What’s been amazing to me, is as I’ve talked to many older saints, the older they get they just realize how much more of a sinner they are than they were when they were younger. It’s like the sin goes far deeper than any of us would care to admit. Additionally, what happens when you put sinners in close proximity to each other? Your sin is going to come out, and potentially hurt someone nearby.

-An old joke: ministry would be great, if it wasn’t for all the people. But the reality is if it wasn’t for all the people, there wouldn’t be a need for ministry! And I really like this you all!

-I think part of the issue is that many times we end up judging other people based on our own doing-ness (don’t think that’s a word), but we compare the ways we’re strong to the ways others are weak, particularly when we think of the ways we’re gifted. We tend to view gifts through a scale: we give certain gifts higher priorities, but that’s not the way God views it. It takes all of us working together because we also have to deal with sin, and sin is the reason work is hard. A few things I processed about work:

-Work is good (Gen. 2:15)

-I think we have a tendency to view work as a result of the curse, not something God designed. Friends, when we get to heaven, all of us will be working! I am convinced that when I get to heaven, I’ll get to be a chef! I love cooking and using food as a way to spend time with people. Another pastor friend of mine thinks he’s going to be a driver! He loves chauffeuring people around and hearing their stories. Many of you will get to continue doing what God has called you to here, but without the problems, which is the second thing we see about work:

-Work is hard (Gen. 3:17-19)

-Where Adam used to be able to get fruit easily, now all his work will produce thorns and thistles. And that is life between Eden and eternity. We work hard and it doesn’t always seem to work out well, which leads to the last point:

-Work isn’t God.

-Honestly, the rest of the Bible is humans attempts to work their way up to God, either through a literal building to the realm of the gods with the tower of Babel, to creating entire civilizations where the emperor can feel like he’s in complete control of everything. But it never works! Think of the Roman empire, we have nothing that compares to it today. I spent $25 to walk on the path the emperor would take to look down on his subjects and claim to be god. Little old me walked that path!

-I shared a verse from Psalm 16 earlier, but that Psalm ends by saying:

-What is the path of life? It’s not looking to work as your source of worth and identity, it’s God’s presence that fulfills all the deepest longings and existential questions you’ll have. Blaise Pascal said we have a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts that can only be filled by God, which gets us to the need to: 

  • Guard Your Heart

-The second thing I really spent time praying over and processing was what it looks like to become more like Jesus, I shared before I left that I was praying over what a “Rule of Life” looks like for a church body. One of the books I read over the summer was titled ‘Mere Christian Hermeneutics’ by Kevin VanHoozer, who teaches at TEDS, our denomination’s school in Chicago.

-He has made it his life’s mission to determine what it means to be “biblical,” which is a phrase that often bothers me because people tend to use it as a sledgehammer to stop any discussion. If you just say someone is “unbiblical” you can dismiss them outright. I’ve been called unbiblical before because I don’t agree with someone’s interpretation of Scripture! Does that make me unbiblical? And if not, how do we determine what it means to be “biblical”?

-One of the things I’ve really wrestled with over the last 18 months has been the sufficiency of the Bible (fancy word that means it’s enough for Christians to grow in godliness). I’ve been a pastor long enough to see that just reading or even preaching the Bible isn’t enough to lead to true transformation, which has at times made me slightly disenchanted with my job! (remember what I said about work being hard!) This book reaffirmed for me that the way we are made more like Jesus is by knowing, studying, and meditating regularly on God’s Word. This is God’s chosen way of both speaking to us and changing us to become more and more like Jesus. 

-To that end, one of the things I’ve added for us is a weekly verse for us to memorize together, it’s on the bottom of the sermon notes.

-The title of this point comes from Prov. 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart,” which it may be better to think about guard yourself, Hebrew the word “heart” is trying to refer to your deepest desire, where we tend to view the beating muscle in our chest!

-But how do we do that? The foundation or starting point is God’s Word. But then it goes on from there to impact and influence 2 things: meditation/reflection on God’s Word, and prayer which is responding to God who speaks to us through his Word. A couple passages make this point really well:

–Psalm 1

-“Happy” I like that translation! I’ve actually had people at church tell me I shouldn’t use that word, Christians aren’t promised to be happy, and I completely and absolutely reject that idea. But it’s not happiness to do or be whatever we want. It’s happiness that can only come from living a life fully surrendered to God.

–Psalm 119

-Second, see the happiness again? How does it come? Following God’s instruction, and decrees, and seeking Him with their whole heart. That’s how you guard your heart! Following after God.

-Keller “If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side.”

-Friends: soak yourself in God’s Word! But then after you’ve done that, move on to respond to God in prayer!

-I practiced this quite a bit this summer (I unsubscribed from all my podcasts) and would often drive and pray (usually driving time is when I knock out all my podcasts). There’s a guy I’ve been reading as much as I can of over the last year named Kyle Strobel (if you’ve been in church for a long time, you’ve probably heard of his dad Lee Strobel who wrote a book called ‘The Case for Christ’) Kyle Strobel is the director of Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot who has done a lot of writing in what Protestant spiritual formation is as distinct from other streams of Christianity (Roman Catholic, eastern orthodox)

-2 BIG takeaways for me from my reading and praying this summer:

1- You don’t begin and end in prayer, you enter into something that is already taking place.

-Friends, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are praying for us 24/7, and praying in the ways we wish we knew how to pray! What that means is prayer doesn’t depend on us. You should be praying, you should be talking to God, but He doesn’t passively sit back and wait for you to begin praying – Jesus and the Spirit are praying for us all the time! 

-Do you believe that God answers prayer? Now sometimes the answer is “no,” but God does hear us and He does answer us. What should comfort us in the midst of that is that God knows WAY more than we do. Keller quote

-Think of this just in human terms: my kids ask for dessert EVERY night, and we often tell them no, which makes NO sense to them. I shared with them recently that when I was their age, I told my parents I was going to eat hot dogs for every meal when I grew up. Guess what I don’t eat for every meal now! God sees and knows things perfectly, do we trust Him?

2 – prayer is a place to be honest. 

-This is just as important as the first point, because what do you do when the answer is “no”? Do you continue praying? Do you give up? God invites us to keep asking, and then come to Him with our complaints and issues!

-I don’t know about you, but I think praying can be one of the hardest things to do, usually because every time I go to pray, my mind starts to wander, and I feel like a failure. But what if that wandering is God’s way revealing to us what we should be praying for? Like when you pray and start thinking about work, is it God’s way of showing that your work is too important to you, or there’s an issue at work that you should be bringing to Him?

-Kyle Strobel quote

-I heard a pastor onetime say “Pray what you’ve got” and I love that! Don’t put on a show, don’t try to impress God with your prayers, but I also think we should add to that: pray what you’ve got, when you’ve got it, wherever you’re at! 

-You can pray when you’re driving, at the grocery store, talking to a friend, mowing the lawn, but one of my hopes and prayers for us as a church is to become more fluent in prayer, to let prayer become more normal in our daily lives.

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by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/10/tales-from-the-trail-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 25:1-18 – Sermon Manuscript

-I called my grandma yesterday to catch up with her for a bit because her last remaining sister just died last week. Dolly Flaten (birth name of Solvig, you can’t get more Norwegian than that!). This means my grandma is the last living Koppang of her siblings, the generations have shifted.

-What’s amazing to me is how grateful my grandma was for the years they had together. My grandma has been a widow since 1987, and as she joked with one of my cousins one year, all her friends are dead! 

-And I hate to be a downer, but today’s text is about death, which should cause us to reflect and ponder our own mortality. How do you want the end of your life to be described? After months learning from the life of Abraham, today we’ll look at the conclusion of his life 

READ/PRAY

  1. The Rest of Abraham’s Descendants (1-11)

-Keturah – timing may not be as we would think. Biblical writers are more concerned with themes and topics than chronology, so this could have been a woman who was one of Abraham’s concubines that traveled with him, then after Sarah died she becomes his wife. Speculating, not sure exactly the timing on all this.

-We know this isn’t chronological, because in the next section (vs. 19-26), we learn that Isaac is 60 when he has his kids, Abraham had Isaac at 100, meaning Abraham was still alive when Jacob & Esau were born, but we have no account of them interacting at all. I think this is intentional, we’ve been focused on Abraham, the next section shifts the focus to Isaac and gives us the highlights of his life, but not until Abraham is off the scene.

-Think of all the years where Abraham didn’t have a son, the decades of infertility, then in the later years of his life, all these children come. 6 listed here. I think what we’re seeing is exactly what God had promised Abraham: you will be blessed. From you will come people and nations that are too numerous to count. At this point, you can count them (we’ve seen 8), but they all move on to lead entire groups of people. 

-Midian would be the most well-known son from this list, they’ll come up throughout the OT and serve as an enemy to Israel after their return from Egypt.

-Just as I did last week, I found a list of who was related to whom in this story.

-But the rest of these sons are just a footnote, because the story is going to continue following Isaac, the chosen son. Look at the difference in how Abraham provides for them. 

-What does he give to Isaac? Everything. What does he give to the rest of his sons? Gifts. All of his priority and focus was directed toward Isaac, and I do think there’s a lesson here for us to note.

-I always struggled with what to do with some of these patriarchs – why did they have multiple wives, and why is that not disqualifying for them to be chosen by God?

-One key to this is to begin with the understanding that God always accommodates Himself to us. I love the way John Calvin describes the Bible: as God’s baby talk. So everything in here is God lowering Himself to our standards to speak to us in ways we can understand, but He doesn’t reveal everything to us – we talked about that a bit last week, God has hidden ideas that He doesn’t share with us. 

-So when we read about accounts of someone like Abraham having concubines, we need to keep in mind that it’s a completely different time and culture than we have AND most importantly, nowhere does God encourage this. God’s standards never change from the dawn of creation to the end of time: God’s design is one man and one woman in covenant partnership until the end, BUT sin corrupts that, and one of the ways that was corrupted in this time period was through the idea of concubines. And this is one of the things I love about the Bible: it doesn’t sugarcoat any of this stuff. It’s recounting exactly what happened in Abraham’s life: the good, bad, and anything in between. Sometimes he’s held up as a positive example for us, and other times the example is what we should avoid. A large part of what we’ve seen from Abraham taking matters into his own hand has been negative, hasn’t it? Think of the fighting between his wife Sarah and his concubine Hagar, or the fighting between Isaac and Ishmael. It reveals all the negative things that happen when people live and operate outside of God’s design, and it doesn’t pretend everything’s ok. 

-Why send them eastward? Do you remember where we’ve seen people going East throughout this book? The first place is in Gen. 3, which direction are Adam and Eve sent due to their sin? East. Then the sin that begins vertically toward the Lord moves to become sin horizontally toward other humans, and which direction does Cain move? East and notice the way Moses describes it: out from the Lord’s presence. Finally, sin becomes prevalent once again and in Gen. 11 with the tower of Babel, we see the people continuing to move East. So East is connected to leaving the presence of the Lord. 

-Essentially what Abraham is doing is disowning the entire rest of his family. Again, don’t miss that the Bible recounts true events! This would be demoralizing to everyone except Isaac. And I think we see this again in his death: which sons are involved in his burial? Isaac and Ishmael, none of the others. 

-And all of this eastward movement changes with the arrival of Jesus. There are 2 passages that point out this reality. 

-First is a prophecy in Isa. 60 that has a list of nations that will bring praises to the Lord. A light will shine, drawing the nations to Himself, and look at the nations listed: Midian, Ephah, and Sheba. And do you see what this says they will be bringing? Gold and frankincense. Can you think of a story where someone comes FROM the East to deliver gold and frankincense?

-Yeah! The Christmas story! When the wise men come to fulfill and complete all of God’s plans that began with Abraham. Don’t we serve an incredible God?

-But friends, it gets even better! After Jesus heals a centurion’s servant with just a word, notice who Jesus says will share in the banquet at the kingdom of heaven: 

-And who will they be sharing the table with? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is where we see that all God’s promises to Abraham include us, but I’m getting slightly ahead of myself, we’ll get there at the end of this sermon! 

-Now, let’s go back and look at the description of Abraham’s death: good old age, contented.

-Do you ever think about your death? The Bible actually tells us to contemplate our end on a regular basis. Ecc. 7:2 “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, since that is the end of all mankind, and the living should take it to heart.” When I first got into ministry, my senior pastor told me he’d rather preach at a funeral than a wedding, and I thought he was crazy! But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized just how right he was: at weddings no one listens to you. The husband and wife are too excited about the day, the rest of the people there are paying attention to the couple, I can have the most impactful message of my life and it won’t matter. But at a funeral it’s a completely different story: people are ready to listen and are looking for what God says to bring comfort to this situation. 

–Psalm 90:12 says something similar: “Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” None of us know how long our lives will be, what are we doing to make the most of every day? Have you ever considered what it would take to have this description of Abraham be true of you?  

Friends, what do you want people to say after you die? The mortality rate has never changed in human history, even when we read of people living for hundreds of years in Genesis, the ending is still the same – they breathe their last and die. What do you hope people say about you when that day comes?

-He was buried in the same place as his first wife, Sarah, the one little piece of land that actually belongs to him from the giant territory the Lord has promised him.

-And then the blessing moves from Abraham to Isaac, who lives where we saw him last week, but God is continuing to bless the line of Abraham. 

-But Isaac isn’t the only son, and Moses goes on to tell us about Ishmael’s family:

  • The Family of Ishmael (12-18)

-The other son, the non-chosen son. Now, before we walk through this, I want to remind you of something I emphasized a number of weeks ago now as we were comparing Isaac to Ishmael:

-What’s the difference between them? 1 thing: one is the promised son and the other is not. Both are sons of Abraham, both are circumcised, both are blessed from the Lord, both will become a great nation, BUT only 1 of them is THE child promised from God. That’s it! God had a plan, and nothing Abraham did could change that plan. It all begins and ends with God – not Abraham. Abraham’s not the point of this story, Isaac’s not the point of this story, and Ishamel’s DEFINITELY not the point of this story, this whole thing is about God’s plans to point all of history to Himself.

-How many sons does he have? Think back to what God promised to Abraham when he was asking the Lord to provide through Ishmael instead of Isaac in Gen. 17, and what does God promise to do? To make him a great nation with 12 tribal leaders. And how many sons does this tell us Ishmael had? Yep, 12. Isn’t our God amazing? 

-Where was he buried? Not near Abraham, he’s becoming a different nation near Egypt.

-Now, there’s some debate about the land that his descendants move to, but here’s 1 map someone proposed as the tribal leaders move around the Arabian desert. And even as he goes to death, he doesn’t want to be a part of Abraham’s family, he stays with all his mother’s relatives.

-So that’s the lineage of Father Abraham! At least as far as Genesis tells us. The rest of the OT follows the family Abraham began, and things take a surprising turn when we get into the NT. I alluded to this earlier with the promise that the dispersion that we’ve seen in Genesis “to the East” suddenly returns to the praise the one true God after Jesus comes.

  • I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s just praise the Lord (Galatians 3)

-It would be better to say “I am one of them, and so can you” if you’re not yet a believer, become a part of this family today!
-All of God’s promises come to fruition and a new light with the arrival of Jesus, and pretty much the entire book of Galatians is Paul dealing with debates about how we interpret God’s covenant to Abraham. Could also think of this as “how to become sons of Abraham”

-I’ve been chatting with a friend about this book and topic for the last few months. How do we live as Christians today with an understanding of the Old Testament? What do we do with something like the story of Abraham, because it’s not just “be like Abraham” he made some really dumb decisions, and that’s the way I was always taught these stories growing up – purely moral examples. But there’s ONLY 1 main character in this book, and His name is Jesus, not Abraham. Everyone else is secondary in this story.

-And not just the life of Abraham, but what about all the laws in the OT? Like I was always told growing up that tattoos are sinful, and then I read that in context, and realized that was right next to a command I broke regularly: cutting off the hair on the side of my head. I love what my friend said in one of his sermons: Jesus obeyed the law completely in order the be the fulfilment of that law so that we could live a new life in Him. Jesus summarized the whole law as 2 things: love God and love others, that’s His summary of all 613 Old Testament laws. And just I shared earlier with the comparison between Isaac and Ishmael, it’s the same thing for us: it begins and ends with the work of God.

-I texted my friend this week because he’s currently preaching through the book of Galatians, and I asked him how I could summarize chpt. 3 in 10 minutes, his reply was: read vs. 2. The rest of the chapter is at outworking of vs. 2 – how do we receive the Spirit? Is it by strictly obeying all 613 laws, or is it through belief?

-And not just receiving the Spirit, how do we continue on in the Christian faith, it is through our own works or is it through the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit?

-Friends, this is where the idea of Isaac vs. Ishmael is so important! How does God work in people, is it through us working really hard, or through His Spirit making us alive? One professor I had in seminary summarized this really well when he said do we need a ladder or a hand? If it’s a ladder, then it’s up to us to climb to the top and reach God, but if it’s a hand that has come down from above then there’s nothing we can do to reach it, it’s God’s righteous credited to us through nothing we can ever do, but through what Jesus has already done.

-And Paul doubles down on this in vs. 3: do we only begin by the Spirit?

-Friends, this has become one of my burdens for us as a church: to realize the freedom that we have when we walk “in step” with the HS. So often we view our faith as needing to do something that God views as already done. For those of you who are believers in Jesus, what can you do to be more saved than you are right now? NOTHING. Isn’t that amazing? 

-I shared last week that one of the things I’m going to be praying about this summer is spiritual formation, or a rule of life. We don’t live under the OT law, which was given to a specific people who lived in a specific time and place (in the middle of the Arabian desert), what should we do in 2025 in Apple Valley, MN to grow closer to God?

-There was an old song that was taught to children where the words were “read your Bible and pray everyday, and you’ll grow, grow, grow” And while that’s true, how does that actually change us? On top of that, how do we go about these practices and habits in our lives so that it doesn’t become what Paul describes as “finishing by the flesh”? And what does this have to do with Father Abraham?

-First, notice in vs. 7 – who are Abraham’s sons? “Those who have faith.” That’s it! Not just that, but Paul goes on to say that if we have faith, we get the same blessings as Abraham! Isn’t that crazy? God literally takes us out from the nations of the earth (from the east) and adopts us into a new family in the same lineage as Isaac. We can call God our Father! 

-And that’s where the spirituals practices come in, because we’re now a part of a new family with a different set of rules and expectations than we used to have. Every family has certain rules and rhythms that determine how they operate. It’s different for each family! But for the family of God, it’s going to be focused on getting God’s Word deeply into our hearts and minds to make us daily more like Jesus. 

-It’s really easy for us to slip into the old way of pursuing these practices to “earn” God’s favor instead of viewing them as our way of living in our new family. It doesn’t make us any more or less the children of God, but it demonstrates the family we’re a part of and helps us identify more with that family.

-Many of you have commented that you can’t tell my twins apart – they look so similar, even though they’re not identical they’re still brothers, coming from the same parents, so they look alike! It’s the same thing with the family of God. We’re supposed to look “alike” to the world, people are supposed to see us pursuing the same things together, slowly becoming more like Jesus in our daily lives. 

-It’s not legalism, and it’s not losing your individuality, it’s finding out who you were truly created to be.

-Friends, over this summer, spend some time praying about how you can continue walking by the flesh to become even more identified with the family of Father Abraham.

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by mikethestrand on May 11, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on May 11, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/05/11/genesis-251-18-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 24 – Sermon Manuscript

-Do you know how all your friends met and got married? One podcast I listen to asks people “what’s your ‘meet cute’”? 

-Cara and I met when she was looking for a small group and walked away with a husband! Cara moved to Cheyenne to work in the ER and it took her a while to find a church. When she finally did, she reached out to one of the other pastors and asked to join a small group. That pastor came into my study and asked if we had any room in ours, so I said yes but we’re all in our 20s so how old is she? He said I can’t tell, but I figure she’s either in her 60s, or your future wife. And here we are! 

-Today’s text is a the “meet cute” of Isaac and his wife Rebekah.

READ/PRAY

  1. Promise (1-14)

-We’re getting to the end of the account of Abraham, we’ve followed his life through the ups and downs, but just the highlights that God wanted Moses to record to help us understand the bigger story of what He’s been doing through Abraham.

-Notice that he’s been blessed by the lord “in everything” – last week he finally has a plot of land, he’s got his chosen descendant, and he’s already started being a blessing to the world.

-But Abraham wants to ensure that his son is provided for (that will come up again next week), so he calls his main servant (who may have been mentioned by name in Gen. 15:2 Eliezer of Damascus), and tasks him with finding a wife for his son, but let’s look at the stipulations Abraham makes for this wife:

-First – her past with her family.

-The first place Abraham goes is to swear that he won’t let Isaac marry a Canaanite, a native of the land that will someday be theirs. What’s the significance of this?

-First, it’s the opposite of what Ishmael has done. Remember? His mom found an Egyptian woman for him to marry, going a long way off from Abraham to find a wife! 

-Secondly, the Canaanites are those who have been cursed from God (Gen. 9:24 “Canaan is cursed, he will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers”), and those who will be driven out of the land for Abraham’s descendants. 

-This is preserving the lineage that God has promised, and will actually set up a pattern for the rest of Genesis – Genesis is the story of how God became known as the God of: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Isaac’s brother Ishmael married an Egyptian, Jacob’s brother Esau will marry Hethite women while Jacob marries 2 women who are a part of the family (Laban will show up again after today’s text)

-Finally, this is continuing the theme from last week that Abraham is a resident alien. Remember, he’s looking forward to a future hope, a future home not built by human hands.

-The next thing Abraham focuses on is her present. What kind of character does this woman need to have?

-We’ve started with a sweeping statement: not a Canaanite. But what if he finds someone and she doesn’t want to move halfway across the known world? Is it worth taking Isaac to ensure the bloodline continues?

-I think we’ve seen Abraham finally become convinced that God is actually planning out all these events. The Lord had promised to give this land to Abraham and his family, not his homeland. We’re back to this tension of not having a true home. Abraham is FINALLY trusting that God will follow through on everything He’s promised, 

-Which means the woman’s future is in play. If the woman isn’t willing to come back to the promised land, the servant is off the hook for any penalties from this oath.

-The servant agrees, taking 10 camels, all kinds of goods (required to travel and to pay the bride price) and travels across the Middle East to get to Abraham’s homeland. One scholar stated this trip would have taken over a month to travel, ending up in a place called “Aram of the Two Rivers”, near Haran (giving some credence to the northern Ur argument)

-Skips ahead to his arrival, which was apparently during the evening, he stops the caravan just outside town to rest. Once he’s gotten settled, he then prays to the God of his master. 

-Friends, don’t miss that the God of all of creation has always connected Himself to a people or person. He’s the God OF ______, connecting Himself to history and bringing all things to their fulfilment in just the right time.

-And he asks a specific request of God: if he happens to find a girl and he asks her for water, the right one will be the one who goes even further to even water the camels. Is this a test of her character? Is it a test of God? The text doesn’t say.

-Have you ever been in one of these situations where you’ve been asking God for clear direction, and you ask Him to do 1 of 2 things for you? You might have heard this as “laying out a fleece for God,” which is referring to Gideon who has a call on his life from God, but he’s just trying to make sure that God is actually on his side. Or maybe you’ve heard stories of people who are in a difficult situation, and they promise God they’ll devote their lives to Him if He gets them through. This is a fairly common human experience! And it even follows some of the ways God worked in the past:

-One of the components of the priestly garments was Urim and Thummim, almost like a magic 8 ball where the priest would ask a question, stick his hand in this pouch, and whatever was pulled out was the will of God.

-Even the 12 disciples in Acts 1 cast lots to determine who else would be added to their number to bring them back from 11 to 12, the number of completion.

-So if we see these examples in Scripture, should we be doing these same things? Like, should we try to copy what the priests did, and go buy a Magic 8 ball that I’ll keep in my study to consult when any questions come up? And if not, then why? I always seemed to get the “ask again later” option.

-We need to have an understanding of the way God’s will works, and what He wants and expects from us in our daily lives. God has 2 wills (from our perspective, in Himself it’s just 1): His revealed will and His hidden will (theologians call this His preceptive and decretive wills) 

-You get this idea from Deut. 29:29. And notice the purpose of God’s revealed will: so that we may follow God’s law. God doesn’t keep things hidden from us to try to trick us.

-We also know from Jesus’ time being tempted in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry that one thing we’re not supposed to do is test God. So how in the world do we figure out God’s will apart from putting out a fleece, or testing Him?

-There’s 1 key difference between us and Abraham, Gideon, and even the 12 disciples when they cast lots. Do you know what it is? It’s come up the last 2 weeks: we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. We don’t need a magic 8 ball anymore, we have God living in us! 

-Think of what James, the brother of Jesus, says in the beginning of his letter.

-3 things: God’s Word, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, in the context of the church.

-God’s Word is the foundation and source of truth. Apart from knowing how God has chosen to reveal Himself you’ll have no hope of knowing what He wants from you. He even says in 1 Thess. 4:3 that his revealed will is for us to be holy. Then we should ask what is holiness? What does that look like? It looks like God! God is holy, so being in His will is taking on His character traits and becoming daily more like Him.

-Because we need to know and understand God’s Word (the Bible), in order to correctly understand it we need the Holy Spirit within us to bring it to life. Unbelievers can read Scripture, understand it, put together the syntax and grammar of it, and completely miss the point of it. It’s not like any other ancient work of literature, and it requires the same Holy Spirit who inspired it to faithfully interpret (or illuminate it).

-Which gets us to this last part: this interpreting needs to be done in the context of the church (both past and present!). The Bible isn’t meant to be read alone. Did you know that? One of the things that has led to a number of heresies has been reading the Bible alone, without any other council or help. See the Bible is supposed to be read and interpreted with the local church, AND the church of the past (provides guardrails and gets us out of the blinders of our cultural context). 

-Friends, if you’re struggling to determine God’s will, don’t buy a magic 8 ball, don’t cast lots, spend time in God’s Word, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, and invest in the church. Thankfully, it’s not rocket science, and it’s not hidden! That doesn’t mean all your decisions will be easy, but it does mean that you can trust God’s hand as you go through life!

  • Providence (15-25)

-In this situation, God does answer the servant’s prayer exactly how he requested. And notice how quickly it happens: before he had finished speaking, the answer walks up: Rebekah.

-Now if the wording here confuses you, you’re not alone! I had to write it down so I could keep track of where these family relationships were! So I drew up the way this family lineage was working. Rebekah is Isaac’s “first cousin once-removed.” Relationships worked a little different at this time period! But the key is that she’s in Abraham’s family, so she’s exactly what he had requested.

-Then we learn some more about her:

-Very beautiful (like her future mother-in-law), and a virgin.

-And then there’s some speed in the rest of this section:

-The servant runs

-She quickly gets the water for him, then quickly fills up the trough for the camels, and repeats this process again and again until all 10 camels have had their fill. The servant waited to see if she would follow through and be the person he had prayed for, and once they’re all done, then he gives her a drink, costly gifts. 

-And then invites himself into her house, perhaps to see if she is hospitable like she needs to be to follow after Yahweh. 

-And what’s the proper response when God answers our prayers? 

  • Praise (26-61)

-Not only did she fill up the water for the camels (again and again) she also offered him a place to stay. This woman is perfect for Isaac! So he gives thanks to God.

-Which we need to pause and contemplate for just a minute. Because God answers prayers ALL the time! My kids and I pray for a good day at school every day, and God always answers that prayer. We regularly pray that God would bless our food, and he always answers that. Which means we should always respond with praise and thanksgiving to God.

-And once again, speed becomes of the essence, Rebekah RUNS home to tell everyone what’s going on, and surely shows them the gifts he had brought (and the 10 camels, representing the great wealth of his benefactor).

-And then we’re introduced to her brother, Laban. And what does the text say he notices about his sister? The ring and the bracelets. See, Laban is an opportunist. We learn later on that he is a polytheist and is always looking to get ahead, and I think we see that begin to take shape in this text, but I’ll wait to point out where. And notice that just as Rebekah ran home, Laban ran to go meet this servant, not wanting to miss out on this opportunity!

-Laban seems to have gotten things at the house ready, the camels are taken care of, and then the food is brought out, but the servant refuses to eat until he accomplishes his mission. And then we get a repeat of the exact story we just read, almost verbatim.

-He begins with a description of Abraham, who is rich in every way. These riches have been handed down to his son, and he’s here to find a wife for that son, and Rebekah is the one who responded exactly how he’d prayed. So: what’s their answer?

-It’s interesting that it lists Laban first, because generally they start with the older and then go to the younger. And their response seems odd to us: well, this is obviously from the Lord, so go for it. We don’t see the psychology behind this, and this is a completely different culture from ours, so this is a fascinating look at how marriages were conducted 3,000 years ago!

-Abraham’s servant responds just as he did last time! God had provided the woman, this time her family’s on board. God has provided exactly what he’d requested, giving Isaac a wife. And in response, he gives more gifts to Rebekah, and Laban and her mother, and after finally getting his answer, then he sits down to eat with everyone.

-The next morning, he’s ready to go. His prayer had been answered, the wife has been found, now they just need to get back.

-But Laban and her mother aren’t quite ready to go along with it. Could it be that they’re wanting a few more of those gifts the servant had given to them? See this is where I think we’re starting to see Laban’s character coming through. Rebekah’s just a means to an end for him!

-This delaying becomes a bit of a pattern in Laban’s life later on, but that will come up in a future sermon series someday! Or you can just keep reading in Genesis and learn more about Laban! 

-And the servant is ready to go! His job is done, there’s only 1 step left: get home. And remember, this is probably a long journey!

-And finally Rebekah gets to make her thoughts known: they decide to ask her, and she’s ready to go.

-So they do, and with her is her nursemaid, and on her way out they bless her. And does this blessing sound like any other blessings we’ve heard in this book? Think back to Gen. 22, after Abraham had offered up Isaac as a sacrifice, in response God reiterates his promise to Abraham and says: 

-What’s taking place here is Rebekah is demonstrated as being like Abraham. She has been a blessing to others, she is following the ways of the Lord, and now she’s received the same blessing as Abraham. Abraham’s family line will continue through a woman who is emulating him.

  • Provision (62-67)

-This location has come up once before, this is where the Lord provided for Hagar and Ishmael when Hagar fled from Sarah’s abuse.

-One day, he’s out for a walk and he sees Rebekah and Abraham’s servant approaching. We never heard Isaac and Rebekah interacting in this story, but she asks the servant who’s coming to greet them.

-When she finds out, she puts her veil on, which is the customary way of signifying that a woman is unmarried. And then this love story comes to a happy conclusion: they’re married happily ever after! At least mostly, it does say that Isaac loved her, that this marriage brought comfort to him after his mother’s death, but they’re going to end up having twins that adds some level of animosity into their marriage, but that’s a story for a different day!

-What do WE do with this story? Well, if you’re unmarried it may be time to go find the local well. JK. 2 things, both related to God’s will. If you want to dig into what I said about God’s will further, read this book: 

-Do you trust God’s providential hand in your life? Friends, even when things are difficult, God is still working to accomplish his plans and purposes: make you more holy.

-Do you ask God to lead and guide you in your life? It can be very easy for us to only call out to God when things are difficult, but as we saw in this text, even when things are going well we should be praising God and asking for His continual guidance.

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by mikethestrand on May 4, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on May 4, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/05/04/genesis-24-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 23 – Sermon Manuscript

-If we get coffee, I will most likely order a 16 oz Americano with an extra shot and a little heavy cream. It’s been a big debacle trying to figure out the best way to order this drink at various coffee shops, but what I learned while I was in Europe last summer is my drink has a name over there! It’s called “The White Americano,” which when I learned change my life and made ordering WAY easier.

-But then my friend, who was traveling with me started muttering under his breath each time I’d order: yeah you are, and I suddenly was reminded that I was an outsider! I really enjoyed my time overseas (and even started looking for McDonalds just to feel like I was home), but I knew it wasn’t home. They drove on the wrong side of the road, in many places they spoke a different language, used different money, and even ordering coffee was a reminder that I was a foreigner. 

-Today’s text is Abraham’s reminder that he is a foreigner.

READ/PRAY

-Brief overview of where we’ve been the last few months following Abrahams’s life:

-God called him as a pagan to leave his homeland and go to a new land that the Lord would show him so that he would be a blessing to the ends of the earth. This blessing will come about through 3 things: land, seed, and blessing. However, Sarah, his wife, was barren.

-We’ve seen Abraham’s various responses to trusting in God – sometimes he does really well, and other times he utterly fails. But God remains true to his promises to Abraham, despite him acting faithless. We saw this in Gen. 15 when God enacts the covenant with Abraham. Cut some animals in half, then Abraham falls asleep and God walks right through the middle of it, saying that if the covenant is broken, the penalty for that will fall on Him instead of Abraham:

–2 Tim. 2:13

-Keep this idea in mind as we continue over the next 3 weeks to finish up the life of Abraham: it’s a good thing that God’s promises are dependent on him and not us, because if it were up to us, we would completely ruin it.

-We then saw a seed finally born to Sarah & Abraham when he was 100, after waiting 26 years for God’s promise to be fulfilled, so God did prove to be faithful. Then we saw the way God blessed Abimelech through Abraham, so we’ve seen 2 of the 3 promises from God be fulfilled, but there’s 1 missing: land. Today will be the downpayment of that promise.

-We’re going to go through this text fairly quickly today to get to the final point, because the NT has a lot to say about this idea of Abraham being an alien and sojourner that we need to be reminded of in our lives today.

  1. Sarah’s Sojourn Ends (1-6)

-Interestingly, Sarah is the only woman who is given an age in this book. She had Isaac when she was 89, meaning he would now by 38.

-Died in Kiriath-arba (Hebron) parenthetical note to signify which place Moses is referring to here, places can change names! Think of the lake formerly known as Lake Calhoun (now known as “be-DAY me-KAH skah”) or the Gulf of America, or Mexico?

-This is in Canaan, where Abraham had been promised he would be given an entire nation

-Normal mourning period, then the body would be taken out for burial, has to ask the local people for the provision of a place to bury his wife

-But notice the way Abraham describes himself: alien residing among you. This isn’t his home, even though God has promised that this land would someday be his, it’s not his yet. 

-Abraham is humbly approaching and asking this people to be kind and gracious to him, he’s also following the customs of this land.

-Where Abraham labeled himself a resident alien, look how they label him in vs. 6. “prince of God among us.”

-They’ve seen something different and unique about Abraham that sets him apart from the rest of them. Where Abraham comes almost groveling to them, approaching like a beggar, they have a much higher opinion of him! Abraham’s blessing from God is visible even to the watching pagans in Canaan.

-Which is a really good picture of what God wants for all of us, too. Do you think your neighbors would label you as a “prince (or princess) of God”? We’ll look at that more explicitly in a little bit, but keep that in the back of your mind.

-The Hethites go on: you can bury your wife anywhere you want! Because of his exalted status and their high opinion of him, no one would stand in the way of what Abraham wants.

  • Secure Foundations (7-16)

-Abraham proceeds to humbly respond to them and bows in front of them, he knows exactly where he wishes to bury Sarah: a cave that becomes the burial cave of all the patriarchs. 

-Sarah first, then Abraham joins her in a couple chapters, then Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and finally Jacob requests that he be buried in the same cave, the same place where he also buried his wife Leah.

-Ephron, the current owner of the cave offers not just the cave, but the field attached to it as well, and to ensure its legally right, it’s done in the sight of everyone. AND Abraham won’t just take it for free, he wants to make sure there’s no question of who owns this land in the future.

-This is a fairly steep price for a field! But Abraham doesn’t want any discounts or credits, and we’ve established that he’s a wealthy man, so this wouldn’t be outside the bounds of what he can afford.

-Additionally, let’s think back to an account where he was given a bride price for his wife. Back in Gen. 20, Abraham pulled his classic trick of telling people Sarah was his sister (a half-truth). The Lord reveals to Abimelech that Sarah is married, and if he were to follow through on what he wanted to do he would face severe consequences, so in order to ensure nothing bad comes upon them, he gives Abraham 1,000 pieces of silver. I don’t know that’s it too much of a stretch to think that’s what Abraham uses to pay for this field cave.

  • Starting the Promise (17-20)

-This seems to have become somewhat of a homebase for Abraham, we’ve seen him in Mamre numerous times! 

-Payment is finalized, whatever it looked like to write up a deed of contract to buy a plot of land is stamped. And remember something I mentioned from S&G destruction: the gate of the city is the place where the business of the city takes place.

-After all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted, Abraham buries his wife in the exact place that he was hoping to buy at the beginning of his interactions, and because he is now the rightful owner, it’s supposed to be his in perpetuity. 

-Let’s think back to what I said at the beginning of this sermon, what God had promised to provide to Abraham: land, seed, and blessing. We’ve seen the seed (Isaac) and the blessing, but what about land? Here it is! A whole field and cave! Not too much, is it? Most scholars I was reading said that this serves as a foretaste or the downpayment on the greater land promise that God had given him.

-And this is where we now see some of the ways our lives today are similar to what Abraham experienced in his life, with 1 key difference.

–Eph. 1:14 tells us that we have something similar to what Abraham had here, a down payment of the promised land that would eventually belong to his descendants, but our downpayment is God Himself dwelling in us, bringing us spiritually from death to life, making us as new people. Look at what Paul says:

-The moment you believe you are: transformed, made new, radically changed, given the privilege and opportunity to actually pursue Jesus day by day. 

-The Holy Spirit is literally the way we know we’re saved. I was always so terrified growing up that my salvation didn’t “take” so I must have “asked Jesus into my heart” 20 times! (which is nowhere in the Bible! Peter says to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, and that’s it)

-That’s not how Jesus invites us to live. Just like Abraham was promised an entire country of land, but as he approaches the end of his life all he has is a field, we are promised a life of abundance and flourishing, but it won’t be completed until Jesus returns or takes us home. All we’ll ever have on this side of eternity is the down payment.

-If you’ve ever bought a home you know this process is like! You save up for years for that downpayment, you finally find a house you like so you put the offer in and write the biggest check you’ve ever written in your life – but it’s not yet yours, is it? At least not fully, you’re still sleeping in your old house, spending WAY too many hours comparing the hundred shades of grey you could paint your walls, trying to find as many boxes as you can, but you start to worry less about your current place of living too. It starts to feel less and less like home because all your attention is on where you’ll eventually be living.

-And friends: that’s how Abraham viewed his time on earth, and that’s how Jesus calls us to view our time on earth.

-And that’s what we’re going to spend the rest of our time talking about! I mentioned this in last week’s sermon, but I don’t know if you caught it: Jesus said it’s better that he goes away, but for a really long time I struggled with that fact, and some of what we read about Abraham today points to this fact: Jesus is saying if he doesn’t go away, we don’t have our down payment. The reality is that this world isn’t our home, but our temptation is to act like it is. We put WAY too much work and effort into acting like this is our home, acting like nothing else maters but getting the most out of this life that we can. But here we see the reason Abraham is such a big deal is he didn’t try to make this world his home, he describes himself as an alien, which the NT writers pick up as a theme as well for us to contemplate today! We’ll look at a few different texts before getting to some things I’d like to encourage you to contemplate over the summer, some things I’ve been contemplating over the past year, and things I want us as a church to start thinking about how we can engage the world God has created in potentially some new ways. 

-First, lets look at how the author to the Hebrews helps us to interpret this very event:

-Abraham was called to live by faith and not by sight. It took 25 years for him to get his son, there’s been some blessing, but nothing like a blessing to the whole world, and he just now got land (he’s 10 years older than Sarah, so he’d be 137 here). His whole life he is a foreigner, sojourning among other people. And why could he do that? Because he knew this world was not his home, he was living for a different city, a city that is build and sustained by God, an eternal city that will bring lasting peace and prosperity to the rest of the world.

-Faith is what led Sarah to become the mother of a multitude, who only saw 1 child born to her while she was alive, but today there are over 2.4 billion people who are spiritually descended from her. Do you think she would have imagined the implications her life would have on the rest of history, and the world?

-Then the author ends this thought by saying that even in death all these saints died, but NONE of them got the things promised to them.

-They were looking forward to a new day, a better day where they would finally have a home, but instead they were foreigners, and only temporary residents of earth. This world isn’t our home either, the home that’s coming will make the greatest places on this earth look like trash dumps.

-And the reality of this is we’re just called to live like our Savior, look how Jesus described his life:

-Obviously, he had places to sleep, he’s picking up this same idea that we’ve seen with Abraham: this world was not His home, He was looking toward a better home. And what’s ironic is the entire world only existed because of and through Him, but He still didn’t have a place to call home while He sojourned on earth. 

-Which gets us to the last passage which tells us this is also true of us today. Look how Peter describes the church: strangers and exiles, other places refer to us as “ambassadors.” These are here to describe how we’re supposed to engage this world: as outsiders who are pointing to a different reality. If we’re strangers here, that should be noticeable. If we’re ambassadors, our job is to faithfully represent our homeland (which is heaven). And I’ve been thinking about this particularly in relation to the idea of generosity over the last couple months, and generosity in 3 ways: time, talents, and treasures. 

-In the church, when we talk about generosity, we often jump to finances, but generosity is far more than that. Here’s something Paul says about generosity, notice: where does it come from? God himself! God gives us literally everything, and He rightfully expects us to respond with generosity toward others with the gifts He’s given us.

-Which is what Peter gets to in the rest of the section I just mentioned: abstain from sinful desires (sin is putting yourself at the center, only worrying about yourself without caring about anyone else). Sin is literally the opposite of generosity.

-I’m just going to go through time talents and treasures briefly, because I’m planning to talk about them in MUCH greater detail this Fall, but let’s start with time:

-In a book about Geneva during the Reformation (mid 1500s), the author shared how the church bells marked time for the entire city:

-What marks time for us today? Apple, Google, Amazon? What SHOULD mark time for us today? How can we steward the time God has given us, and not just steward it, but look to be generous with our time? To do that I think it’s going to take some changing of patterns in our lives so we don’t just adopt worldly patterns in our lives. 

-Have you ever heard of Blue Laws? Certain activities used to be banned on Sundays because it was marked as a sacred day, unique from the other 6. But when most of shopping goes online, does it even matter?

-What about talents? Have you ever considered that God has uniquely wired and gifted you in a way to be generous to others with your skills? 

-I’m so glad that not everyone is wired exactly like me! Just yesterday, Micah and I were moving a fridge and getting it set up at his house, and we broke the water line going into the fridge. Thankfully, we both have HoJo’s number, so we amateur movers sheepishly called him, and he fixed it much quicker than we could have! And I know many of you have stories just like this.

-And treasures: I would argue this is more than just money, we also have possessions (house, car, other “stuff”).

-Did you know that those who give away 10% of what they make are happier, healthier, have less problems with depression, and live more satisfied lives? A professor I had described social science as scientists discovering the ways God made us.

-Not only that, but did you know that when you give generously to others, it releases dopamine, which makes you cheerful? So not only does God love a cheerful giver, God literally makes you cheerful when you give. Isn’t it amazing how God has created us to operate?

-This is what Abraham was pointing to: living a generous life that demonstrates that this world isn’t our home, that we were made for a different country, a better country, where the God who made everything out of nothing provides everything we need in abundance. 

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by mikethestrand on April 27, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 27, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/04/27/genesis-23-sermon-manuscript/

John 20:1-31 – Sermon Manuscript

-The resurrection is the single most important event for every single one of us to believe in. In fact, when I’m tempted to doubt, the empty grave is what I come back to every single time to remind me what’s really true.

-I can still remember the first time I dug into studying 1 Cor. 15,

-especially vs. 14 “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” 19 “we are of all people most to be pitied”

-Some people have gone so far to say that if Jesus’ body was found it wouldn’t change anything about their “faith,” who’s to be pitied now?

-Which option is most likely, makes sense of all the evidence and therefore to be believed? Which book do we rely on as the most accurate representation of what happened in the 1st Century? 

-NT Wright

-Friends, the resurrection of Jesus is historically verifiable, it makes the most sense of the evidence given, and to just dismiss that claim is, as Wright say, to enter into a fantasy land! You have to find some way to account for the belief of the early apostles, the sudden growth of the early church, the change in approach by the disciples, and the way both Jews and Greeks responded to this news!

-We’ll see in John 20 – 4 different responses to the reality of the empty tomb, and as we’re looking at them, be thinking about which response you’re most prone to.

READ/PRAY (pg. 963)

  1. Peter and John (1-10)

-It’s fascinating that Mary Magdalene is the first person at the tomb.

-This is another piece that testifies to the reliability of the resurrection

-Women’s testimonies were viewed suspiciously in the 1st Century (no offense to the females in the room, but it’s a VERY different context than today!) this also served as one of the reasons Christianity was so attractive to the watching world – they honored people regardless of gender, ethnicity, creed, political leaning, sickness, they treated every person with dignity

-Other Gospel accounts share that Mary came with others to the tomb to add spices to Jesus’ body (way of honoring/respecting Him)

-But something unexpected happened as Marry arrived

-As she gets closer (it says it was still dark outside) she sees the stone is gone. 

-Maybe she is hallucinating, Luke 8 tells us she had demon possession in her past, is that still affecting her today?

-So she runs to get some other disciples to see if they see the same thing

-Quick note – “The other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved” is most likely referring to John, the son of Zebedee, who wrote this book. We have writings from the 2nd Century that list John as the author of this Gospel, 2 generations down (John – Polycarp – Irenaeus)

-John was so concerned with putting the focus on Jesus, he wouldn’t even list his name in the book he wrote about Jesus! We talked about this at our Maundy Thursday service, we’re supposed to have the same mind as Christ Jesus, always looking to others interest about our own, it’s why I have a tattoo to remind me that Jesus must increase, but I must decrease.

-Getting back to the story – she goes and tells Peter and John. Apparently grave robbing was a pretty serious offense in the 1st Century, so again, first instinct would be that’s what happened here.

-So they take off! Have a footrace to get to the tomb, John wins, scholars believe this is because he’s younger. Gets to the tomb and is so shocked he becomes paralyzed!

-If you’re a golf fan, I picture this a bit like Rory McIlroy last week when he sank his final putt, because remember who the author is here? John! John’s writing in Scripture that he won the footrace. Mic drop on Peter for eternity!

-But don’t worry, Peter’s hot on his tail! Impulsive Peter runs straight into the tomb. 

-Something weird about the burial clothes. You’d think if a grave robber came, they’d have just taken everything as quickly as possible, but Jesus’ clothes are still in there, almost as if not even clothing can constrain him anymore

-But notice a couple things about these clothes: linen clothes, and the piece on his head folded up.

-There’s some slight irony here, because Jesus was crucified naked, but John also tells us that when they took Jesus’ clothes off to crucify him, they didn’t tear his tunic. That word is used to describe the priestly clothes in Exodus and Leviticus, and it first appears in Gen. 3:21 as the clothing God uses to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness. The fact that this tunic wasn’t torn is significant because priests weren’t allowed to serve God if their clothes were torn. Jesus, the perfect high priest fulfilled all of God’s laws, but he did it uncovered so that we today could be covered.

-Then John says the burial linens are carefully laid out. First this should make us think of last week where Lazarus needed help with his linens. That’s not the case for Jesus! This tells us the “swoon theory” (passed out but didn’t die) has no merit, Jesus was strong enough to take his linens off. But secondly, this points us back to the Day of Atonement. Aaron is commanded to take off his linens once the atoning sacrifice is done, he’s supposed to leave them behind as he goes back out. This is Jesus’s way of saying the atonement is done! The linens are left behind, just like the sacrifice for sin and death is now left behind.

-After Peter dives in, John follows (and another dig against Peter “who had reached the tomb first) and (as one commentator translated it) “Began to believe” but they hadn’t yet put all the pieces together.

-Maybe this is a good description of you today! You’ve started to believe in Jesus, but haven’t yet put all the pieces together on what it means to follow him. That’s fine! There’s a reason Jesus says your faith only needs to be as big as a mustard seed. 

-John then shifts from his focus from himself and Peter and moves on to the first person to witness the risen Lord

  • Jesus and Mary (11-18)

-She could have easily followed Peter & John back, then stuck around weeping, grieving.

-Not only had Jesus died, now his body had been stolen and there was nothing she could do about it

-Remember, they don’t have the same privilege looking back that we do! This is totally unexpected, neither Jews nor Greeks thought this was ever going to happen! But at some point Mary leans over again to look into the tomb, but it’s not empty anymore.

12 -The position of the angels is telling – Do you know of anywhere else in the Bible do we see an example of 2 angels sitting at both ends of something? Ex. 25 when God is giving his people instructions on how to build the ark of the covenant.

-Ark of the covenant is to be placed in the Most Holy place

-On top of the ark is to be built the mercy seat, and on both sides of the mercy seat were 2 angels engraved in gold.

-Significant because the mercy seat was where God would descend to meet with His people, where the priest would come 1/year into God’s presence

-These 2 angels are pointing to the reality that there’s now a new mercy seat that’s not dependent on the old sacrificial system. 

-But Mary doesn’t know that yet, so when the angels ask her why she’s so sad, she answers the only way she could know how – Jesus is gone, so she doesn’t know what to do.

-And Jesus is standing there and asks her a question.

-Could still be dark, could be the sun shining in Mary’s eyes, could be supernatural (there’s other instances of people spending time with Jesus and not recognizing him), but she thinks he’s the gardener who managed this area.

-Notice how Jesus responds. 1 simple word. He just says her name. But that’s all she needs. How do you respond when someone you love and care about calls your name? It’s not like being at church and hearing “Mommy” and watching 10 moms turn and look, this is more like when you’re growing up and in trouble and your dad calls you by your full name! You know exactly what’s going on!

-And that’s all it takes for Mary, her weeping turns to rejoicing! Her fears disappear, her tears of sadness turn to tears of joy as her Savior is standing right in front of her

-I don’t think it’s too much of a guess to think that she fell at his feet in worship

-But Jesus gently rebukes Mary, who’s trying to desperately cling to Him and not let go. She doesn’t want to lose him again. Jesus is communicating that something is different now than it was on before the resurrection, in fact, it’s something that he had promised previously, in John 16:7 “It is for your benefit that I go away.” His ministry is now shifting from ministering with his disciples to ministering through his disciples, but we’ll get there in a bit.

-Then Mary serves as the first witness to the resurrection and she tells the rest of the disciples this good news.

-Maybe you relate to Mary today! Maybe you feel like you’re trying to hold on to Jesus as tightly as you can, but you feel him slipping away. Even in the midst of her fears, she still is obedient to Jesus.

  • Jesus and the Disciples (19-25)

-The first 18 verse take place on Sunday morning, John then skips ahead a few hours to the evening.

-I would conjecture the disciples were wondering if the previous verses actually happened to them. Doesn’t our mind tend to play tricks on us like this? One of my favorite verses in the Gospels related to the resurrection is Luke 24:41. It shows the entire range of human emotions in the way the disciples respond. I don’t think the disciples really believed that Jesus rose from the dead.

-The reason I think they still weren’t convinced was because of the rest of this verse: they’re in a room with a locked door because they’re scared of the Jews

-It makes sense! The Jews just killed their Teacher, wouldn’t it make sense for them to take care of his followers too?

-Suddenly, Jesus joins them!

-Basically 2 Harry Potter options here: either Voldemort where the doors fly open, or he apparates straight into the room

-First words out of his mouth make it seem like he’s oblivious to what’s going on

-“Peace.” Really Jesus? You think it’s peaceful right now? His body was just beaten to a pulp, he was hung on a cross, and he’s focused on peace? This is such an important theme, he mentions it a second time in vs. 21.

-Wouldn’t it be nice if there were true & lasting peace in our world? Can you even begin to imagine what that would look like? Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Houthis, Sudan, Somalia. And what about different wars, like maybe a family conflict, conflict at work, or even internal conflict?

-Jesus came to make peace possible. Apart from him dealing with the sin of the world there’s no hope for lasting peace, lasting reconciliation, or even a smidgeon of hope that peace can come.

-Part of the reason He talks about peace is because He’s aiming straight for the hearts of the disciples, do you think they’re feeling like things are peaceful right now?

-Everything they’d been hoping in had broken, everything they’d banked on  disappeared, and then his body was gone! In the midst of all that chaos, Jesus

cuts through it all to bring peace.

-Then he goes for their heads and demonstrates that it’s really him, shows them his scars, this makes the disciples glad.

-Lastly they’re commissioned. Just as Jesus was sent by the Father, his disciples now need to carry on the exact same mission.

-This theme carries through vs. 22-23. There are some weird things in these next couple verses, so it helps to keep the idea that Jesus is sending his disciples out.

–22 First weird thing, he breathes on them. What is Jesus doing here?

-Referencing back to 2 OT passages: Gen. 2:7, God breathes into Adam’s nose and brings him to life. Then Ezek. 37 where Ezekiel is brought to a valley of dry bones and told to prophesy over them, but they’re not alive until the breath of God is in them. Just as in the first creation God breathed into his creatures, in this new creation that Jesus is enacting through his sacrifice, so again God breathes into his people and makes them a new creation, filling them with the Holy Spirit.

-Then there’s another weird verse (23). What Jesus is doing here is getting back to His commissioning of His disciples. Jesus was tasked with bringing the kingdom of heaven down to earth, so now as His disciples share the gospel message in word and deed with the world, the response people give to this message will be as if Jesus was really there. The way God’s message goes out now is through his people, we today have the same authority as Jesus to preach the gospel, to tell the world how to have their sins forgiven.

-Unfortunately, 1 disciple misses this event:

  • Jesus and Thomas (26-29)

-Thomas has a normal response. Again, I think there’s a tendency today to miss the shock of the resurrection.

-“Doubting Thomas” doubtless would have thought he was the only one who was clear headed about this whole thing! Everyone else is losing their mind

-He needs to witness it with his own 2 eyes, otherwise he’ll never believe.

-Thankfully, Jesus is accommodating.

-A week later, the disciples are doing the same thing they had done when Jesus appeared the first time. Doors locked again.

-Again, Jesus joined them and began the exact same way, but this time Thomas was with them, and then invites Thomas to fulfill his wish. Then exhorts Thomas to believe instead of faithless. The Greek uses the same word with a negative; “don’t unbelieve, believe”

-Because Jesus himself shows up, Thomas then acknowledges that Jesus truly is God.

-Maybe you’re like Thomas, and you don’t actually believe the resurrection, and you think maybe you’d believe too if you’d seen Jesus come back to life. But did he really?

-This gets us to the last part of this chapter – this reality demands some kind of response.

-Jesus’ last statement in this chapter is a blessing to those who haven’t seen, but have believed. That’s any Christian today! Anyone here who has believed in Jesus did so without seeing him in the flesh. But someday we will see Him!

  • Jesus and You (30-31)

-John, the narrator, adds some commentary here, reminding us that not everything Jesus did is recorded in the Gospel stories. John was selective on which stories/signs he used, and the ones he picked were done to either urge you to believe, or if you already believe to encourage you to remain faithful, which will leave to eternal life, a life of peace.

-All of us today are called to be like one of these disciples in this story. Which one are you going to be like, how will you respond to the reality of the resurrection?

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by mikethestrand on April 20, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 20, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/04/20/john-201-31-sermon-manuscript/

John 11 – Sermon Manuscript

-Break from Abraham to follow the church calendar (ordering the year around significant events in the church, most of the year is called “Ordinary Time”)

-John’s Gospel is probably my favorite of the 4. Emphasis on the Jesus being God. Gospels are all about the same story, centered on the same person. One author has described them as “extended passion narratives.” Have you ever noticed the way they’re structured: only 2 of them talk about his birth, only 1 of them adds any information between his birth and the beginning of His ministry (Luke at the temple). And then it feels like it rushes through the 3 years of his ministry and then spends a TON of time on the last week of His life (Matt. 21-28, Mark 11-16, Luke 19-24; John 12-21)

-John’s Gospel is a beautiful work of literature, centers on 7 signs, contains Jesus’s 7 “I Am” statements (1 of which we’ll get to today)

-But John’s Gospel also has 2 significant resurrection stories. John brackets his passion narrative with Jesus raising someone from the dead, and then Jesus being raised from the dead. This week, we’re going to look at the first one:

-A couple things to look for throughout this passage: 

-Jesus is jealous for His glory. This event is in here to model/demonstrate that He is worthy of worship.

-Jesus interacts with people based on what they need, not what they think they need. Every interaction is different, every response is different

-The end goal is for people to believe in Jesus.

READ/PRAY (pg. 953)

  1. Jesus and His Disciples (1-16)

-This section serves as a bit of a background to this unique relationship. 

-One of the things that should stand out to us as we walk through this passage is the humanity of Jesus. Yes, as I said at the beginning, I love this Gospel because it emphasizes the divinity of Jesus, but Jesus is also fully human, living a fully human life with all of the implications that come with being human.

-John gives us a little more info on Mary, apparently when he was writing this Mary anointing Jesus’ feet was well known! Doesn’t happen until the next chapter so if you want to read that account keep going beyond where we’ll be today!

-John also assumes you know the account from Luke 10, Martha the worker bee, and Mary the lazy one who just listens to Jesus and doesn’t help prepare the meal

-Then find out Lazarus is Mary & Martha’s brother – I’m going to guess Lazarus was the middle child. The neglected and overlooked one.

-Because Lazarus is sick, they decide to reach out to Jesus to ask for help

-Jesus, who knows everything (including what will happen in the future) says what seems like a weird phrase “will not end in death” Most likely Lazarus was already dead at this point, it took a bit for the messengers to get to him. The ultimate outcome isn’t death, but it sure goes through death before the end!

-Jesus says something similar to the situation back in John 9, blind man, disciples ask whose sin is responsible for the man’s handicap, Jesus says in vs. 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned. This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.”

-Jesus will stop at nothing to ensure He is receiving glory

-With that said, look how Jesus responds. Vs. 5 tells us that Jesus loved this family. This is one of those instances I wish John had more info. What kind of a friend was Jesus? How close of a friendship was this? Back in vs. 3 Lazarus is described as “he whom you love.” Jesus had close friends – people he enjoyed spending time with and who enjoyed spending time with Jesus.

-Now, what would a normal response be when you find out your best friend is sick and you could help them? Drop everything and go! Look at vs. 6.

-Jesus waits TWO EXTRA DAYS! So much for loving them and wanting what’s best for them! The Greek is actually even more explicit than the English, it says “Jesus loved them, THEREFORE he stayed longer” explicitly connecting the love for them with His actions of staying longer.

-Remember what I said earlier, about Jesus stopping at nothing to be glorified? Here’s why Jesus did this:

-There was a Jewish superstition connected to death. How do we know someone’s dead? We have machines that tell us their heart stopped, Dr. tells us they’re dead. They didn’t have that in the 1stcentury. Sometimes people would be declared dead, funeral would be held, and then on the way to bury them they would wake up. How would you feel carrying a coffin, and then you heard someone knocking from the inside? This led to this Jewish superstition that after someone dies, their soul kind of lingers or hovers around the body for 3 days to see if they resuscitate, and only after 3 days is someone actually dead. If he hadn’t waited, people wouldn’t have believed it was a miracle. Jesus waited to demonstrate that even death is defeated by Him!

-So Jesus brings his disciples into his plans, and they remind him of what he appears to have forgotten! (referring back to John 10:31 after his Good Shepherd speech, “Again the Jews picked up rocks to stone him.”)

-Jesus uses a seemingly weird illustration here. Look at vs. 9-10

-He’s saying that it’s not his time to die. As long as it’s “during the day” (walking according to His Father’s will) he doesn’t need to be afraid, he’s untouchable!

-“The disciples (and all Christians) could not be more secure as they enter life-threatening situations (e.g. Judaea), than when they are right where they are supposed to be: “In him.”” (Zondervan, Klink, 499)

-Isn’t that incredibly comforting? We have nothing to fear when we’re “In Him”

-The confusion worsens, because Jesus tells them Lazarus has fallen asleep, which they think is good news! A little rest is always good for a sick person! So he has to explain again, Lazarus is dead. 

– Thomas, on behalf of the whole group, sarcastically responds “might as well go die with him!” (Him is referring to Jesus here) Little does he know exactly how prophetic this is! Lazarus is dead, Jesus is going to die, why not all join in the fun?

  • Jesus and Martha (17-27)

-This section begins with more back story. Bethany was near Jerusalem, and apparently this family was pretty well known, so many Jews had come to console Mary and Martha.

-Customary to hire professional mourners. Group to come grieve with you. Jewish customs demanded that even a poor family was to hire AT LEAST 2 flute players and a professional wailing woman. Since it appears that this family was well off, they would most likely have had a much larger wailing group.

-Martha’s response in vs. 20 is abnormal, as typically those coming to mourn with the family would go to the house. Perhaps it’s for privacy, perhaps Jesus is avoiding the crowds, but either way Martha hears Jesus has come and goes to find him while Mary stays home. 

-Notice what Martha says here “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.” She’s accusing Jesus of not caring enough, yet just a breath later she realizes what she said and admits God will answer whatever Jesus asks.

-So Jesus assures her that Lazarus will rise again. Common to Jewish thought, at some point, he will rise again! Jesus corrects her – that future resurrection is already here, because I’m here! Jesus is both the resurrection and the life, just as you don’t need to fear as long as you’re “in Christ” so we don’t need to fear death as long as we’re “in Christ.”

-“What to the Jews is a future hope is to Christians a present reality.” (Zondervan, Klink, 504)

-And all you need to do to live forever is believe in the one who is the resurrection and the life. Just as Jesus asks Martha here “Do you believe this?” Is a question every person in the world needs to be asked. Because if you believe (like Martha) that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you don’t every need to be afraid! 

-Jesus is jealous for his glory, so even in the midst of Lazarus dying, he points Martha to himself

  • Jesus and Mary (28-35)

-Martha then leaves to go tell Mary that Jesus is here (in private!), so now it’s Mary’s turn to go talk to Jesus. There’s a lot of background info here (Jews follow, assuming she’s going to the tomb to mourn some more, Jesus doesn’t go into the village but stays at the same place Martha and he met)

-Notice what Mary says in vs. 32. It appears that Mary and Martha had decided the best way to approach Jesus. But Mary stops there. Where Martha continued on acknowledging that he was God, for some reason Mary doesn’t. She does however, fall down at his feet, it’s almost as if her body can’t help but worship Jesus, but her mind can’t keep up

-Sometimes it seems like the hardest thing in the world is to get up to go to church, or read your Bible, or spend time praying. We need to remember we’re complex creatures, we can’t segment our lives into various components. Sometimes we just need to go through the motions and wait for our mind to catch up!

-Sometimes it is a white-knuckled, grimace, and get through it. In the midst of those difficulties, look back to how God has provided for you in the past, because that’s the same precedent that will carry you into the future. Quote I heard “I speak the truth in the light so I can whisper it in the dark.”

-Jesus then responds a little differently than he did to Martha earlier

33

-“Deeply moved in his spirit” is better translated as angry, so Jesus was angry in his spirit and greatly troubled. Jesus was worked up over what was going on. Then the question is: why was he angry? Was he angry at the group of mourners? Was he angry with Mary for her response? 

-2 options: angry with the sin brokenness and fallen world, or angry toward the unbelief of the people in front of them, who are grieving like pagans who have no hope.

-Jesus reconciles both anger and love at the same time. Jesus can be angry toward the broken, fallen world, AND angry at the unbelief currently demonstrated in front of him, while at the same time being completely loving toward them. Just as the world can be at enmity with God (James 4:4) yet God still loving the world (John 3:16). God can say that with no contradiction.

-We need to remember how Jesus acted in the midst of grief taking place around us! There is something so unnatural about death. Something screams within us that this isn’t right, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be! And it’s not. We don’t grieve without hope, instead we grieve with hope.

-I was listening to a sermon from Tim Keller on anger recently, and he pointed out some things that Jesus’s anger in this passage can teach us, too.

-We’re actually commanded to be angry. I’m guessing you’ve never heard that at church before! But the direction to our anger matters GREATLY! In fact, Keller actually says that no human emotions are sinful. God created us as emotional, God Himself gets angry, but the way we direct our anger can either be holy or sinful. 

-When my children sin, I can get angry with them and direct my anger AT them, or I can direct my anger at their sin. One makes my kids the problem, the other gives us a common enemy to attack. Jesus here is angry at sin and its’ consequences, but he still responds with love towards people, serving as as model for the way we should respond to sin.

-And look at how Jesus responds to his close friend in the tomb, the shortest verse in the Bible! Jesus wept, which the Jews take as a sign his close friendship.

-Jesus isn’t weeping for Lazarus, he’s gonna be alive again in just a couple minutes! No sense weeping for that, Jesus said all the way back in vs. 11 he was going to wake him up, Jesus is weeping because of the state of the world. Death isn’t normal! Sickness, sadness, cancer isn’t the way things are supposed to be! We’re made to have life to the full, life in perfect union with God and each other, anger directed at our sin not at other humans. 

-Jesus is the 1 true perfect human to ever live. He’s more human than any of us! Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to know what this world could be like, but all you see if death, despair, and grief?

  • Jesus and Lazarus (36-44)

-Jews (as is typical) have 2 responses: some saw Jesus’ weeping as how much he loved Lazarus, others said he should’ve saved him.

-We begin this section with the same word from vs. 33, Jesus is angry once again when he comes to the tomb. More background description (cave)

-Jesus orders the stone be removed. He also will order the people on unbind Lazarus after he’s raised. Why doesn’t he move it supernaturally to have it automatically done? 

-It’s not “let go and let go” it’s trust God and get to work!

-Carson, For the Love of God

-Dallas Willard

-Martha jumps out again at Jesus and tells him not to have the stone removed because (as the KJV says) he stinketh!

-Don’t forget, Jesus will stop at NOTHING to receive glory – so that’s what he tells Martha. Then he prays. But his prayer is a little different, don’t you think?

41-42

-Apparently he’s already prayed for the Father to raise Lazarus, so he just jumps straight to the point, he’s praying for other people.

-Sometimes, prayers are done to serve as a model to those around you. Yes, prayer is primarily you talking to the Lord, but sometimes prayer is done to strengthen and encourage those around you.

-Then, finally, Jesus calls out to Lazarus “with a loud voice.” Many scholars quip that it’s a good thing Jesus specifies a person, because otherwise every dead person would have obeyed!

-The text doesn’t even make mention that it was Lazarus, instead “The man who had died.” Lazarus isn’t the point of the story! And then the story ends. Jesus’s fame continues to spread, the Jews continue to plot against Jesus to eventually kill Him, and someday afterwards Lazarus will die again.

-But did you notice the other resurrection? Look back up at vs. 25

-Jesus says whoever believes in Him will never die, and then he asks Martha a question: do you believe? And does she? Yes!

-Friends, this is the bigger deal, and the bigger miracle than someone raising physically from the dead. The physical resurrection is actually meant to point to what’s taking place spiritually here with Martha. This is the moment where she’s spiritually brought from death to life, and we went by it pretty quickly earlier because we almost take it for granted that this is possible.

-If you have been saved, if you confess with your mouth what Martha did here, and believe in your heart (your innermost being) that God raised Jesus from the dead, you are saved. You are made alive in Christ, and best of all, you never have to be afraid of death ever again. Lazarus is just the picture, what Martha experiences is the substance. And we can have that exact same experience today! 

-We get to celebrate this reality today through baptism: the reminder that those are saved are laid in the water like Jesus was laid in the tomb, and then brought up into new life to never die again. Have you believed in Jesus, and taken this step of obedience? Have you been raised from death to life? Because if you have, you are now “In Christ,” you have nothing to fear, not even death!

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by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/04/13/john-11-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 21 – Sermon Manuscript

-A common proverb today is: “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” I apologize to anyone who’s not a Millennial, but I immediately thought of a movie that came out in 2003 (remake of a 1976 film), called ‘Freaky Friday’ 

-If you haven’t seen it, it’s a story about a mom and teenage daughter who aren’t getting along, they fight all the time, have a lot of resent between them, and one day they wake up having switched bodies. One of the best moments is the day they wake up, and Jamie Lee Curtis runs to the mirror and screams “I’m old!” And I’ll be honest, that gets less funny each year! Part of the reason this has been on my mind, is if you hadn’t heard, Freakier Friday is coming out this summer. I know fashion is cyclical, but this is one I didn’t expect a sequel to!

-We’re continuing to follow the life of Abraham, and what this story does is somewhat allow us to walk a mile in his shoes. We’ve seen the ups and downs, Abraham as the hero and Abraham as the villain. People are complex, aren’t they? That’s one of the reasons I love the Bible – it doesn’t sanitize the stories!

READ/PRAY

  1. The Child of Promise (1-7)

-The first thing I want us to notice is who’s doing the acting here? After last week where Abraham doesn’t even acknowledge the one true God, suddenly the first word in this chapter is Yahweh. We’re once again struck with the way God continually upholds His end of the covenant, despite Abraham’s unfaithfulness. This first verse is just between Sarah and the Lord, and remember how Sarah responded to the Lord’s promises to provide a child? Laughter! And how does God respond? Faithfulness, steadfastness.

-The first word in this communicates something to us: who’s in charge of this process? Not Abraham, not Sarah, the Lord. God is orchestrating all these events at just the right time.

-This is one of the main things I hope you take away from this whole series: your life begins and ends the same way this chapter begins: the Lord comes. In fact, I would argue that this is one of the predominant themes throughout the entire Bible: God living and dwelling with His people. 

-Micah just did a brief teaching on this idea at a school this week, but Scripture traces the idea of a temple from cover to cover, the temple is the place where God can live with His people. Eden is created as a temple where Adam & Eve live together with God in perfect harmony, then when that union is broken through sin, there’s only division unless God intervenes, which He does again and again. The ark is built as a temple where God’s creation is saved from the wrath to come, Abraham repeatedly builds altars to the Lord, which serve as a temple. He’s promised a land where God’s people will live in prosperity, where God will dwell with them, and in that land a literal temple will be built where God will live with His people, and then the best part of this story is that God Himself comes into time and space and becomes the means by which a physical building is no longer required to be right with God. We’ll be celebrating that reality in just a few weeks with Easter – the temple who became flesh died and rose again, allowing outposts of God’s temple to be spread across the entire world! We as Christians are now called temples of God. What a glorious picture, beginning all the way back here with Abraham. Our stories can now look like this, where we’ve refused to acknowledge God, God meets us, fulfills all His promises, and makes us His temples forever.

-This time, Abraham is obedient to the Lord’s command. God had told Abraham what the child would be named and what the timing of circumcision was supposed to be for all his descendants. 

-And what’s most amazing is Abraham’s age: 100. Think back to the first sermon in this series from Gen. 12, when did God first come to Abraham? 75. Abraham had been waiting this entire time for this promised son. Do you think you could wait that long? 

-Once again, the theme of laughter appears. Remember I told you a few weeks ago to keep the idea of laughter in mind, because it was going to serve as a minor theme moving forward, all that laughter has built up to today. Isaac’s name will be a reminder of the laugher and joy of the Lord’s provision for His people! But as we know, there’s more people involved in this story.

  • The Child of Flesh (8-21)

-Another theme we’re supposed to trace through the story of Scripture is 2 lines who are opposed to each other: the line of a women and the line of a serpent. After the fall in Gen. 3 God promises that there will be continual fighting between the family of the women and the family of the serpent, and this continues all the way to the end where a giant serpent (actually a dragon) is still trying to fight against the woman. Kids, ask your parents about that story, it’s in the last book in the Bible, Revelation! This story also has a comparison between 2 lines, but it begins as Isaac grows.

-Abraham throws a great feast on the day Isaac is weaned (other ancient documents state this takes place at 3 years old). Why throw a party?

-It was a miracle to make it to 3 years! Many children died very young, remember they didn’t have the same medical advancements we take for granted today! Things that we have medicine for could have been a death sentence here.

-One of the fascinating things about this account is Ishmael is never mentioned by name in this story, first referred to here as “the son,” 

-We’re supposed to begin contrasting these 2 boys: one son of the promise and one son of the flesh. What does this son of the flesh do? Our translation says mocking, the word is the same as has been used repeatedly in this story for laughing, but a different kind of laughing, you can laugh WITH someone or you can laugh AT someone, these have 2 different implications.

-“Drive out” used in Gen. 3:24, 4:14 (Cain) Sarah is pushing here for the disinheritance of Ishmael, forcing him away from Abraham

-Last time, Sarah drove her away by mistreating her, this time she’s making Abraham do it, which is difficult for him because it’s his son. 

-God reconfirms His commitment to Abraham, even to his illegitimate son. God’s promises are far beyond what we could ever imagine! Even though Abraham took matters into his own hands, God will still bless Abraham’s line.

-It seems that Abraham is a morning guy, we saw him up early after S&G, he’ll be getting up early again in next week’s chapter, but I also think that this is demonstrating the similarities between the 2 sons of Abraham (come back next week for more!)

-Hagar and Ishmael are sent off, and I want you to notice how Hagar responds through the rest of this story, because I think it’s a warning for us to not become immune to the way the Lord is working. 

-First, she wanders away from Abraham. Who has been blessed by the Lord and promised to bless everyone else?

-Then she leaves her son, doesn’t look to take care of him, she’s more worried about herself. Don’t want to be too hard on her because I can’t imagine losing a child, but we’re going to see Abraham do the opposite next week when he offers up Issac to the Lord.

-She weeps, but not to anyone in particular, because look at vs. 17, who does God hear? Ishmael, but God talks to Hagar. How many times does God need to appear to Hagar for her to begin trusting in Him? 

-And how many times do we need to hear God’s promises before we start to believe them? Friends, this is why it’s so important to come to church every week! The point of us gathering isn’t just to see your friends, it’s to help us remember God’s promises. I heard a description I really liked of the way many people view church: we come to church to get our weekly steroid shot to get me through the week, but the point of church is to be reminded who God is and then see His Spirit transform us to become more like Him. All week, our gaze is continually pointed back to ourselves, we need this weekly reminder to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus.

-After promising to bless Ishmael, God opens Hagar’s eyes so she sees that she was right near a well so Ishmael is saved, and then blessed. And where does she go to find a wife for him? Back to her homeland. Once again, she’s not trying to stick close to the blessed man, not trying to follow the God who continually provides for her.

-The place that had been his banishment becomes the place where Ishmael creates his life. He settles in the wilderness, creating his home and life there, but still apart from the blessed one – his Father Abraham. Now the Ishmaelites (descendants of Ishmael) come up again throughout this story, particularly in relation to Joseph, who is pulled up from a well and sold to Ishmaelites on the way to Egypt (which becomes the means by which God saves the people of Israel). Then the conclusion of this book (I would argue) is found on the lips of Joseph who says: Gen. 50:20.

-I want all of you today to realize that nothing can change God’s love for you, His commitment to you, and His desire for you to live right! You’re never too far gone, you’re never too sinful, and the Bible promises us that nothing can ever separate us from His love. God demonstrates this reality over and over and over throughout the pages of the Bible, through all of history, and all the way down to today! If you want to hear how God continues working today, just find someone who’s been a believer for more than a year and ask them to tell you how God has provided for them, in most cases THROUGH being a part of a church

-I had 2 opportunities this week to reflect on this reality in my own life (sorry, but I’m up here which means you get my stories). 

-First was I was asked to record a brief video of someone who mentored me in some significant way. When I started preaching every week (2019) a preaching professor agreed to mentor me for a few months and completely changed everything about my preaching. I’d preached a handful of times before that, I’d done a preaching cohort in college and then a preaching class in seminary, but none of that affected me the same way someone intentionally pouring into me over a 3-month period.

-Second reminder was from a class I’m taking this next week where the pre-class assignment is to write a paper on your philanthropic memories throughout your life. One of the most significant came after my freshman year of college. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but college is EXPENSIVE! In order to pay for college, I did manual labor: painting and remodeling, and made decent money doing it! But this summer I also had the opportunity to do an internship at my home church (Northfield EFC) but the church didn’t pay as well as my other job, so I hoped God would provide some way for me to go back to college. At the end of the summer, the church took a love offering and it more than made up the difference, allowing me to continue in college! 

-Friends, God always follows through, always keeps His promises, and always brings about good for His children, even when or as the world falls apart around us. I can guarantee that God will be faithful even when you’re not. Which is where this story goes next:

  • The Child of God (22-34)

-Back to Abimelech, the guy who had taken Sarah into his harem. But last time it looked like Abraham was the one needing something from Abimelech, this time their relationship is reversed: Abimelech is needing something from Abraham.

-Abimelech is looking for a commitment from Abraham to him and his children to ensure they’ll endure even as Abraham endures. Since Abraham is living nearby he’s essentially looking for a peace treaty.

-Yet apparently there’s been an issue: a well Abraham had dug was overtaken by Abimelech’s servants. A small spat between friends, but not something to interfere with their commitment to each other.

-Where Abimelech had previously blessed Abraham, now Abraham returns by blessing him. Think of what God said he’d do: bless Abraham, so that those who bless him would be blessed. What are we seeing with Abimelech is that very promise coming true. Covenant being enacted (similar to what we saw with the covenant between God and Abraham, this time it’s between these 2 men), but 7 ewes are pulled out.

-7 ewes as a special gift to solidify the ownership of the well. It doesn’t say why 7 ewes, doesn’t tell us the significance of this act, just that part of their pact between each other comes from these sheep! Which leads to:

-Called Beer-sheba: literal translation is “well of 7” referring to the ewes, but the Hebrew word for seven and oath is the same, so intentional play on words, by calling it Beer-sheba they’re emphasizing their oath to each other, demonstrated through the gift of these 7 sheep. Every time someone refers to this place, they’d be reminded of their oath to each other!

-Abimelech leaves, and Abraham plants a tree, potentially pointing back to the place where the Lord had previously met with Abraham: under the oaks of Mamre. We’ve seen Abraham near trees at multiple significant moments in his life, connected to where Abraham meets the Lord (Gen 12:6 Abram goes to the oak of Moreh, Gen. 13:18 moves to the oaks of Mamre of Hebron, Gen. 18 Abraham is at the same oaks when the 3 visitors come, here he’s building a tree). And I would argue this is continuing the temple theme from the garden (or if you remember our series on Gen. 1-11, better to call it an orchard) of Eden. Perhaps pointing back to the original garden when Adam and Eve lived in perfect union with God.

-He’s once again calling on the name of the 1 true God, the everlasting God. Abraham’s life in Beer-sheba becomes marked by worship, by walking with God, but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, has it? Very high highs, very low lows, does that ever sound like your life as you look back over it?

-How do you think Abraham would feel if he knew we were talking about his life 4,000 years later? And not just talking about his life, talking about every aspect of his life! The times where he was faithful, AND the times where he was faithless.

-I think the primary thing we should take away from this story is summarized well by Paul in 1 Cor. 6. He begins this little section by talking about who won’t be a part of God’s kingdom, and it’s terrible stuff! Stuff that every Christian knows to avoid. But he doesn’t stop there, in vs. 11 he says: some of you did this! 

-We tend to only see and share the sanitized parts to our story and gloss over or dismiss the negative parts, but friends just as we’ve seen in Abraham’s story, God takes the broken pieces of your life and redeems them. 

-Share your story! 

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by mikethestrand on March 30, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 30, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/30/genesis-21-sermon-manuscript/

Genesis 20 – Sermon Manuscript

-About 10 years ago a guy went viral at a Gophers hockey game. If you’ve never been to a sporting event, they do all sorts of random activities to keep the crowd engaged. Took the kids to a Timberwolves game this weekend, and Ellie LOVED the halftime show: it was dancing. What we see as commercial breaks at home are times they do activities to distract you from becoming bored. One of the activities they used to do (I haven’t seen it in a while) is a “kiss cam” where they’ll pick couples out from the crowd, show them on the big screen with the expectation that they’ll kiss. This guy got on the screen, and pulled out this sign:

-Yes, he was there on valentine’s day with his sister. And he made the sign just in case this happened! This is a picture of what Abraham does in today’s text.

READ/PRAY

  1. Sister-Wife (1-2)

-Parallels between previous account(s) – both Lot and Abraham failing to protect the women in their lives

-Last time was Gen. 12, where Abraham fled the land because of a famine, this time there’s no famine, Abraham just continues his nomadic ways

-Last time, he at least admitting how beautiful his wife was, this time he just says she’s his sister, doing exactly what the guy at the hockey game did!

-But things didn’t go as well for Pharoah. Severe plagues strike the house, Pharoah confronts Abraham about this and sends him on his way. Yet as we’re going to see in today’s passage, apparently this was a routine in Abraham’s life in this season.

-Location of Abraham’s travels: Negev (south), scholars think Gerar west of Beersheba, Sodom and Gomorrah on the east side of Dead Sea, Mamre on the west side

-And he’s back to his old lying ways! Apparently Sarah still has some looks to her (that either Abraham has grown used to or assumes) because the king takes her into his harem, and he assumes everything is going to be just fine!

-Remember something I said toward the beginning of this series: this was a BRUTAL time period to live! It was completely a dog-eat-dog world where whoever was the strongest always won. There wasn’t such a thing as “human rights.” I read a fascinating article this week from Tom Holland, a British historian and one of the hosts of The Rest is History podcast, who grew up attending church, but didn’t really find Christianity stimulating enough (at least compared to dinosaurs, Greeks, and Romans), so he became at atheist. This article is almost 10 years old now, and Tom, who is an expert on Roman history, finally realized that the entire world we take for granted today is built on the foundation of Christianity, so without Christianity the entire Western world doesn’t make any sense. He wrote an entire book about this topic called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. He says that Christianity has so embedded itself in the Western world that it is thoroughly Christian, even though it doesn’t admit or realize that. Another author, Glen Scrivener (Aussie who now lives in England), has picked up on this idea and says the world today is trying to build castles in the air. The foundation for our entire civilization is built on the understandings and ethics of Christianity, without admitting or understanding that. And many people in our world are starting to wake up to that reality! 

-And part of the reason I bring this up is because it’s something we need to keep in mind as we engage our friends, neighbors, and coworkers who don’t know the Lord (or you if you think this stuff makes no sense). The world apart from Jesus is a brutal place, it literally is survival of the fittest. But Jesus’ arrival changed all of that so that now we actually view humans as worthy of dignity, care for the poor and marginalized is a virtue, not a vice, men and women are equal in value. Those don’t come from secularism, those come from the pages of the Bible. And they’ve become such the norm in the world today that we take them for granted. But friends, use this reality as an evangelistic opportunity!

-I said all of that to make the point that Abraham’s concern is legit. If you have a beautiful wife, others may be tempted to kill him to take his wife as their own, and there would be no stopping them. So Abraham (and apparently Sarah is ok with it) offers an alternative story to cover himself: Sarah’s his sister, and we’ll get to the rest of that at the end of this story because it’s not a complete lie, it’s just not the whole truth.

-And just like last time, there are consequences to this decision:

  • God Confronts Abimelech (3-7)

-Remember that the primary person throughout this story is Abraham, but this story then shifts to focus on what happens to Abimelech after he takes Sarah into his harem. This is the first time God appears in this story, and it’s not to Abraham.

-Remember what happened in last week’s story? In the midst of the destruction of S&G, who talked to the Lord face to face? Abraham. Yet even Abraham isn’t always the one to whom God appears. God acts on behalf of Abraham and even will appear to an idolatrous king to ensure Abraham is protected and being obedient.

-And notice how God appears to this king: in a dream. Does God meet people in dreams? Apparently so! He does throughout the OT, and there are even stories of God meeting people in dreams in the Middle East today! Muslims in closed countries being confronted by the living God who continually accommodates Himself to our levels and reaches people in ways they need to be reached. I’ve never had a dream where God met with me, but I do know that if God ever did come to you in a dream, He wouldn’t contradict what He’s already revealed in Scripture!

-God’s condemnation of Abimelech is because he’s taken a married women into his harem.

-At this time, adultery was seen as the “great sin.” Many ancient documents have been uncovered that refer to this as the unforgiveable sin that no one should commit. It was a different story after wars and conquests, but willingly committing adultery was the worst sin imaginable! Which makes sense of Abimelech’s response here and shows the consequences for sin against God’s people. Abimelech is threatened with death!

-But Abimelech questions God why he would be destroyed if he hadn’t yet committed this horrendous act. And the wording Abimelech uses would be familiar to us, because it came up repeatedly last week (made less clear by the English translation), but vs. 4, the word he uses at the end is the same word Abraham used last week in his asking if God would not destroy the city for 50, down to 10 innocent people, but last week it was translated as righteous. So once again we’re struck with this realization that righteousness isn’t inherent to these people, it has to come from somewhere else. 

-It’s also important for us to realize who is being described as righteous in this passage, because up until this point Abraham has been the righteous one, but this story shifts things significantly. And we see that even righteous Abraham didn’t always live up to his end of the bargain in his covenant with the Lord. The pagan king and Abraham in this story have switched places from what we’ve typically seen of Abraham, particularly of Abraham from last week’s story! Abimelech is the one who actually lives according to God’s plans for humanity, while Abraham is following in the ways of the world and living like he’s descended from the serpent!

-So God responds that He knows exactly what has happened and He has prevented Abimelech from committing this sin.

–Prov. 16:9 God’s in control, even of the acts and affairs of godless, idol worshipping kings. And God tells Abimelech what the next steps need to be in order to preserve his life: return Sarah and ask Abraham to pray for him because “he is a prophet.”

-What is a prophet? A prophet is at the core someone who speaks on behalf of God. That’s it! Unfortunately it doesn’t always mean someone who liveslike God. Now that shifts under the new covenant (that is after Jesus) because the Spirit now indwells everyone who follows Him. The Bible has a wide assortment of people who speak on behalf of God who aren’t following after Him at all! One of my favorites was in my Bible reading this week: Balaam in Num. 22. It was one of my favorite stories growing up in the church, Balaam is a prophet who is hired by a king to curse Israel, and as we’ve been learning in our series with Abraham, you shouldn’t try to curse God’s people (this came up in Rev. too!). This prophet is visited by God and told to only say what God wants him to say, and he continues on his way to curse Israel for money, but along the way an angel is positioned to kill Balaam. Fortunately for Balaam his donkey sees the angel and keeps running away from the angel, to which Balaam gets angry and beats the donkey. Then the Lord opens the mouth of the donkey and the donkey talks back to Balaam, and the funniest part is Balaam doesn’t change his mind then, he argues with the donkey. Anyone here ever get into an argument with a donkey? After this argument, the Lord opens Balaam’s eyes so he sees the angel, and then has a conversation with the angel. Friends, God can even speak prophetically through a donkey! 

-Generally, God’s people are supposed to follow and obey His voice. Think of all the times Israel is punished for disobeying God. But that’s not the case here. What’s fascinating is God doesn’t threaten to publish Abraham, despite his lying and manipulating ways. God is continuing to uphold His end of the covenant, even as His covenant partner continues to disobey and live in deplorable ways. But you know who is living stand up and obeying the voice of the Lord in this story? This king, let’s see what happens next:

  • Abimelech confronts Abraham (8-18)

-How long did Abimelech wait? Nothing! “Early in the morning.” Contrast this response with how Abraham has been behaving in this story. Who has Abraham been obeying? His own selfish desires for ease and protection at the expense of his wife? Abimelech immediately calls together all his people to tell them what’s been going on.

-And what’s the response of all these men? Terrified! Friends, this shows us what our response should be when confronted by sins regardless of our intent. According to the information given to him, Abimelech wasn’t sinning, but as soon as he’s confronted he immediately responds without making excuses, without blaming Abraham (even though he has every right to). It seems that this people are an embodiment of Prov. 9:10, if you want to pursue wisdom, fear the Lord, not other humans, or even the devil! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it’s only by following after Him that we can live a truly wise life.

-And one of the ways that we demonstrate that wisdom is by how we deal with our sin. Friends, you’re not going to catch God off guard, you can’t out-sin Him, so bring your sins to the only person who can deal with them! 

-After sharing with all his servants, he moves out to Abraham, and the first question he asks Abraham is significant because that exact same question had been asked before, but previously God was asking the question. 

-In Gen. 3:13, after Adam and Eve had sinned, God is going through each creature and questioning them, and God’s question to Eve is the same thing God asks Eve, signifying to us that just as Eve sinned, here Abraham is demonstrating that he’s listening to the voice of the serpent instead of the voice of the Lord, and this pagan king is actually obedient to the 1 true God and speaking on behalf of God to Abraham. Yet God doesn’t acknowledge this king as a prophet, that’s Abraham. Another reminder that God’s ways aren’t ours!

-And Abimelech continues on with the questions: Abraham brought guilt on the kingdom, betrayed confidence, tried to get him to commit the “great sin” that no one should ever do, you get the sense that Abimelech is rightfully outraged!

-And look at just how lame Abraham’s reply is: No fear of God in this place. Look up at vs. 8 again. What’s the response of Abimelech and all his servants? Fear of God. But in this story Abraham is revealing himself as the one who doesn’t fear God!

-And to make matters worse, Abraham continues that she is his sister: his half-sister. But that’s only half true, because she’s also his wife. A partial truth isn’t true! He’s intentionally keeping things hidden.

-But there’s more that make this even worse. First, think back to last week, and one of the things I pointed out that you can see in your Bible is when God is referred to by His divine name “Yahweh” it’s in small capitol letters LORD, it’s throughout last week’s text. Abraham doesn’t use that word in either case this time. One commentator on this passage said that if Abraham is accommodating himself that far to this king, it’s the lowest point of faith in Abraham’s life. 

-Additionally, the word Abraham uses for “wander” is used to refer to pointless wanderings, sometimes it’s used to refer to deceiving or leading astray. And some people argue that Abraham is going so far as to say that “when the gods had me wander.” Even more deception and refusal to identify himself with the 1 true and living God, despite Abimelech’s accusations. 

-And what’s the outcome? Despite Abraham lying, refusing to identify with Yahweh, he still comes out wealthy AND with additional land. 

-I think this recounts Abraham and Lot, where Abraham allows Lot the choicest land, here Abraham is promised the same thing from this king, but this time Abraham is the recipient of the blessing.

-Then he turns to Sarah, and I think we should read this dripping with sarcasm I’m giving “your brother” all this silver. This was an extraordinary sum! The same total as 200 bride prices at the time! The king is bending over backwards to ensure he’s not punished by the Lord, but no punishment is given to Abraham.

-The text doesn’t say how long these events took place, but it was over a period of time that was long enough for them to know that infertility had fallen upon this house. And this was shortly after the Lord had promised that Isaac would be coming within the year, if the Lord hadn’t intervened Isaac’s lineage would have been in doubt! If there was ever a time to work to protect your wife, it would be in this season! Sarah could very well have been pregnant during this whole story! Yet once again we’re given a picture that righteousness can only come about through an act of God, nor through the obedience (or disobedience) or humans. However, we as humans still have a responsibility:

-There are 3 things I think we see in today’s text for us, the first is a caution and the other 2 are a reminder for us.

-Pursue God’s will – 1 Thess. 4:3 (perseverance in holiness)

-The bad news about this is your sanctification won’t be complete until the Lord returns or calls you home! But the good news is that God’s Spirit is guiding you in this so you don’t need to try to do it by yourself!

-Abraham offers us a caution here: don’t continue in your sin! Don’t keep playing with it, cut it off and the root so that you can continue pursuing God’s will! It’s not hidden, it’s not a secret: it’s holiness, it’s becoming more like God. We saw that with the angels last week: those that spend time with God end up reflecting Him, so are you pursuing God’s will? 

-Be a prophet – 

-Lots of debate on what’s often referred to as “sign-gifts,” the ones that we don’t see as often today: healing, prophesying, speaking in tongues. I think we have too narrowly defined some of these things, particularly prophesy. In Joel, we read from the Lord that someday he will pour out His Spirit on all humanity, and the sign will be men and women prophesying. And we see this is fulfilled in Acts 2, where Peter stands up and tells everyone that they’re not drunk (everyone heard someone speaking in their own tongue the truths of the gospel)

-As I said earlier, a prophet broadly defined is someone who speaks on behalf of God. And guess what, every single one of you can do that today by reading God’s Word. Allow God’s word to soak and saturate your heart and mind so that what comes out when people talk to you is what God has done and is doing in you. Look to be a prophet!

-Remember to pray – 

-I still can’t believe that Abraham is called a prophet, he’s called righteous, and God continues upholding His end of the covenant, despite Abraham’s continual sin. And what’s incredible to me in this story is God still listens to Abraham despite his sin. This reminds us that there’s nothing you can do to separate yourself from God’s love. God invites you to pray! James 5:16tells us:

-And who’s counted righteous? Anyone who’s been saved and covered by the blood of Jesus! Friends, our prayers are powerful! They don’t just end at the ceiling, they don’t just stop when the sound waves die, God listens and responds to our prayers. I love the way one pastor said it: pray what you’ve got.

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by mikethestrand on March 23, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 23, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/03/23/genesis-20-sermon-manuscript/

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