All posts in category Worship

In One God – Sermon Manuscript

-My parents offered to watch the kids last night, so Cara and I got to go out for a date night, and we tried a new to us place called Crisp & Green in AV. Decent salads and smoothies if you’re looking for a salad! But they had something on the wall that serves as a perfect illustration of why we need to study something like the Nicene Creed: 

-I’m not sure about you, but I’m not looking to a salad place to tell me what to believe! Also, what does it mean to be 100% authentic? There’s all sort of different creeds that people hold to today (one of which is always be 100% authentic to yourself). But what is a Christian creed? What do we claim to believe in?

-We’re going to kick this series off reading from Deut. 6:4-8 (pg. 157)

-Our bread and butter here is picking a book of the Bible and walking through it. But how do we know how to interpret what’s in the Bible? Another way of asking this question is: how do we know which interpretation is the correct one? I share this regularly when I preach, but there are debates about all sorts of things in the Bible! The correct translation of specific words, the authors meaning behind the words, why some authors use words differently (if you want to wade into the waters look at the different ways Paul and James use the word “works”). One way the church (when I say that, I’m referring to the universal church) has tried to answer that question is by creating creeds, or statements of belief. Generally, these occur in response to specific questions or issues that are brought up as people start digging into Scripture, and the earliest debates in the church were focused on the question of how Jesus could be God. How could a first-century Jewish man who ate, walked, breathed, and slept be the Creator and sustainer of the universe? Especially when at the core of the Jewish faith is the confession that the Lord our God the Lord is one. I’ll mention this now as a teaser, but the big debate centers on this picture: where does Jesus fit in the understanding that God is unique when there’s a hard line between God and creation, does Jesus go above or below the line?

-One of the first things we have to admit is that in order for us to know God, He has to come down to our level. John Calvin, in his institutes, said, “God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children.” He’s saying that any talk God does to us is like baby talk, which is good for us, but it also means there are things that are said that we can’t fully understand, if we could completely understand God then He wouldn’t be God, we would! So then as we dig into what God has revealed, it takes some work and effort for us to figure out exactly what is meant in this “baby talk.”

-We also need to do some (what I have previously called) “Theological tune-up” from time to time! It’s worth trying to take some of what the Bible says and putting it together into a coherent system of belief (which is called systematic theology). I’ve shared this picture before, but it bears repeating as a reminder of how we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. Exegesis is working to answer the question what does the text say? Biblical theology answers the question how has God revealed His word organically and historically, tracing various themes and ideas throughout the whole Bible. Historical theology answers the question how has the church historically understood this text? Systematic theology answers the question what does the Bible say about certain topics? And finally, pastoral theology answers how should humans respond to God’s revelation? We need all of these disciplines, but they’re often segmented off from each other, and in preaching the tendency is to do exegesis and then jump to pastoral theology without doing any further work. This series is intentionally taking some time to drill down into systematic theology, how do we put together what the Bible says about God? And all of these areas of study shape and inform each other in a feedback loop to help us grow in our understanding of what God has spoken to us. We need all of them working together to help us.

-I also like being late to the party, last year was the 1700th anniversary of the writing of the Nicene Creed, so I thought we should look at it, but I’d rather look at it after everyone else has already done it! My hope by the end of this series is that some of you have this creed memorized! So instead of doing a key verse in the sermon notes for this series, I’ve printed off some half sheets that have the whole thing on them, and the elders are also working to memorize it to recite at our meeting next month (so feel free to ask them how they’re memorization is coming). We’ll ALSO be singing a song after the sermon each week that helps us learn the words to this creed and move to a proper response. The words are also going to be on the screen each week, so would you please recite this creed with me (modern translation that I linked to in the sermon preview)

  1. What is a Creed?

-At the most basic level, a creed is an articulation of right belief, it’s where we get the word orthodoxy from 2 Greek words: orthos meaning straight or correct, and doxa meaning praise or belief. And that’s just 1 of the orthos, because for Christians the end goal isn’t just orthodoxy, the end goal of correct belief is orthopraxy (praxis Greek doing or practice) which is guided by orthocardia (right emotions), this is loving God correctly with all our heart, mind, soul, strength. This is meant to be a means of aligning what it is we believe with each other.

-Sometimes creeds were called symbols (from the Latin symbolum) which served as a sign or a token of being on the same side. For example, imagine a soldier is approaching a building at night, it’s dark outside, so the soldier standing guard says, “Halt! Who goes there?” and this army has a response that means they’re on the same side (open sesame). Another meaning of the symbolum is a pledge of allegiance giving from a solider when they were inducted into the army, they were given a creed something to recite that served as their confession in. Similarly for Christians, when they were baptized, they were pledging their allegiance to this God. 

-There are a number of what we could call “creeds” throughout the Bible (different than other creeds because these are all inspired), but there are numerous phrases that were used to identify God’s people throughout Scripture. One of the common phrases I’ve heard from Evangelicals is “No creed but the Bible.” And I understand and empathize with that impulse, but as soon as we say that we’re actually enacting a creed! And even more difficult: what do we do when heretical groups claim the same thing, as we’ll see with Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses? Really briefly, a few examples of what could be viewed as creeds throughout the Bible:

-We read this one earlier, Deut. 6, and do you see how this is God’s people pledging their allegiance to Him alone? God’s Words are to be at the forefront of everything they do.

-Another example is found in 1 Cor. 15, Paul quotes something that he says he received. That is he didn’t make it up or come up with it, it was passed down to him, and then he passes it down to the churches he plants and supports. 

-Another one is thought to be found in 1 Tim. 3, which again focuses on Jesus.

-Finally, there’s a few different places where we have a VERY short creedal statement, I’ll use Rom. 10:9, but it’s also found in 1 Cor. 12:3, Phil. 2:11, and that is the proclamation that Jesus is Lord. It’s a confession of truth, of aligning ourselves to this specific God who took on flesh as the God-man Jesus.

  • Why Study a Creed?

-The first and most important reason is because creeds provide guardrails that serve as protection from heresy. One brief caveat here before I continue, that word is used far too loosely today by so many online organizations that become “heresy hunters” who are trying to condemn as many people as they can! It’s not a Christian virtue to constantly be looking for problems in others. I have a pastor friend who likes to say that Christians are called to operate with the perspective of love, which means we assume the best about others, we don’t operate with the perspective of skepticism, that’s not a Christian virtue. That being said, heresy is still a real thing that we need to be aware of! So a few examples of groups today who deny the Nicene Creed, and why we need to understand what this creed is saying:

-We’ll start with Jehovah’s Witnesses (of which Michal Jackson was a part of, and so was Prince). On their website under what they believe they say: 

-Do you notice that they’re quoting the Bible to back up what they believe? Does that mean that they’re orthodox in those beliefs? Absolutely not! In fact, I often see JWs at the library when we take our kids there, with their displays to try to convince others to join this heretical cult! 

-What about the group formerly known as Mormons (LDS)? Here’s a quote from their website from an article titled “Becoming Like God.” Distinct beings, unity of the divine. What is divine, and what are beings? But Joseph Smith said some pretty crazy things too, like: Does any of that sound like what we read in the Bible, or like what we read about in the Nicene Creed?

-One more modern-day example: United Pentecostal Church International (oneness penecostalism) again deny the Trinity. There aren’t 3 persons of the Godhead, they are 3 “modes” or perceptions of God. They even explicitly state that they baptize only in the name of Jesus.

-Do you see how they’re taking the Bible and twisting and distorting it to fit their ideas? They even reference various verses but then ignore or gloss over any verses that don’t fit within their ideas. This is why we need creeds to correct the areas where we may be tempted to twist the Bible. As an example, my kids will often ask the question “Does ____ believe in God?” So YouTube stars, actors, basketball players, etc. And that’s fine for their age, but as you get older you know it’s not enough to ask that question, you need to go to the second question of WHICH God someone believes in. The Nicene Creed tells us which God is the God of the Bible that we should worship.

-Secondly, it allows us to avoid what CS Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” Friends, we are not the first Christians to live! God has been at work among His people for millennia, and it helps us to know and love God by learning from the examples of those who have wrestled through various issues in the past.

-A secondary question to the above is why study of THIS creed (besides it being the 1701st anniversary of it). Because it’s the most important creed in church history. It’s the only creed that has been affirmed by every branch of orthodox Christianity (not the eastern orthodox church), thus serves as a good foundation for “theological triage.” If you haven’t heard that before, you haven’t been coming here very long! We need a way of ranking specific doctrines, because denying some of them would land put you in heresy, but other doctrines have a wide margin of belief to them and you’re not in doubt of worshipping the wrong God. 

-If you noticed when we recited it, it’s broken down nicely into 3 sections that all begin with “We believe” and each section refers to 1 person of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The trinity is what separates Christianity from every other religion that has ever been created, and whatever language we use for it is going to fall short in some area. We’re entering into the realm of the divine when we talk about theology, which means there’s going to be things that our human minds can’t completely comprehend. There’s also no analogy that accurately describes the Trinity (egg and clover they’re all separate, water can’t be all 3 at the same time, human as father, son, and husband only gets to the relational aspect of the trinity but breaks down into modalism). 

-In an attempt to simplify some of this conversation, there are 7 statements that are true about God, which are all found in this picture. So if you can start to understand this picture, you’re starting to grasp the one true God who has revealed Himself to His creation. 1. The Father is God. 2. The Son is God. 3. The Holy Spirit is God. 4. The Father is not the Son. 5. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. 6. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. 7. There is only one God.

-I’ve shared this story a couple times before, but it bears repeating as we begin this series. In seminary, you’re required to take some theology classes, which means we got to read a few books about theology. In talking about the Trinity, my professor said because we’re in the realm of God, we have a “mystery” card to play, but that doesn’t mean as soon as we enter into that realm we jump to waving the “mystery” white flag, we need to put in the work before we jump to the mystery. Our focus over the next 4 weeks is going to be exploring the beautiful doctrine of the Trinity, what theologian Fred Sanders calls “the happy land of the Trinity.” Even the word “trinity” isn’t in the Bible, it’s a word that humans came up with to describe this picture: tri (3) unity.

-Why was this creed written? In response to an early church debate that was taking place. There was a bishop (elder/pastor) named Arius who was trying to uphold the unity (oneness) and uniqueness of God. If God is one, then that means that even the Son had to be created by God. He was picking up the terminology from one of the most well-known Bible verses: John 3:16 (in the old NKJV that I memorized it in), begotten means there was a beginning time, right? That’s how it works with humans, I begot my kids, there was a time before they existed. Unfortunately, we can’t project the way humans work unto God. So when Arius was reading this, he equated begotten with created, but that’s not what is meant by this statement. God’s begetting is connecting to the way they relate to each other, not the way ordering of the Godhead (we’ll get there, don’t worry!). But Arius began teaching this, and apparently even created catchy songs that were spread across the Mediterranean by sailors (Athanasius said the songs weren’t even very good).

-Recently converted emperor Constantine, in order to protect the unity of his kingdom convened this council that met in Nicea to determine who was right: Arius or Alexander (bishop of Alexandria). Over 300 bishops convened, and there wasn’t a clear winner at the beginning. But it’s important for us to know that they didn’t set to determine ALL orthodoxy (inerrancy and the books of the Bible wasn’t even a discussion topic, contrary to Dan Brown’s presentation) primarily focused on the deity of Jesus, and worked to clarify the relationship God had between Himself and how that impacts us today.

-I mentioned Fred Sanders earlier, but I love the way he summarizes the way we respond to God: 

-We’ll be discussing more about the council each week as we work our way through the creed, but with all that background, let’s look at the first section:

  • God is One

-We believe: instead of a mere intellectual ascent, this is a way of ascribing allegiance to the one true God, who has declared from the beginning that He is one. He has no parts, He cannot be divided, He is completely united in being. This begins in the same place that shema began as a way to acknowledge the past history of God’s work. One note on this creed, the authors worked their hardest to use only biblical language, and they were successful with all except 1 word. But you’ll need to come back next week to find out what that 1 word is! There’s also some debate over how to translate this opening phrase, some manuscripts have the plural (we), others have the individual (I). One purpose in having this creed is to give something for those who were getting baptized to agree to! So in that case, it’s I believe, but WE all affirm along with those getting baptized.

-Second, the first things He’s called is Father, and this gets to His relation to His Son, Jesus, and because of what Jesus has done it also describes His relation to us. He’s not just the father though, He’s also the almighty. The words used by this creed were used to refer to some other gods too, in this case it’s a way of saying that God is the ruler over everything.

-He’s also the maker (or creator) of heaven and earth. This is a way of saying everything (like when someone says I’ve been working day and night, you don’t take it to mean there was no breaks), it also echoes the language of Gen. 1

-Lastly, it alludes to Col. 1:16 when it says that God created the visible sphere and the invisible sphere. But this also is a way of denying the Gnostic heresy that said Jesus was just 1 of a plethora of gods in the supernatural realm.

-This is the shortest section of the creed because this wasn’t really up for debate. Even the heretics believed in the unity of God, but what do we do with it today? We believe. Belief is more than just a mental check box (like saying you read the terms and conditions of every app you download), this is confessing our allegiance in this God who is completely united and can’t be divided. This God created everyone, including you and me, and what’s the most amazing about this God is He doesn’t leave us alone. He comes down in flesh to bear the penalty for our sins and then comes down to indwell those who confess that they believe in His name.

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by mikethestrand on May 10, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on May 10, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/05/10/in-one-god-sermon-manuscript/

Malachi – Sermon Manuscript

-This book is a perfect end to this series because Malachi is essentially giving an overview of what all the previous prophets had been talking about and shares what God is going to do when He comes (and keep in mind the 2 futures that we’ve been talking about a few times now throughout this series, 1 future of Jesus’s first coming, and another future of His second coming). We have the advantage of reading this after the first arrival of Jesus, we can read and understand this in some ways that the first readers would have lacked some clarity on. The way God chooses to reveal things isn’t always as clear as we might want them to be, but God does reveal His plans and purposes to us if we’re willing to put in the work to understand what He’s said!

READ/PRAY (pg. 849) 3:1-4

  1. The Message of Malachi:

-Remember last week that the latter half of Zechariah was pronouncements, oracles from the Lord. Now look at the beginning of this book:

-Our translation says pronouncement here, it’s coming from the Lord, some of your translations might say oracle, some might say message. We don’t know much about Malachi, and there’s debate about whether or not that’s even his name because in Hebrew that translates to “my messenger.” I’m going to go with it’s his name because of the 11 other books we’ve looked at in this series that all begin by naming the prophet.

-This book contains a series of 6 “disputations,” think of it like a courtroom where Malachi is taking an accusation from the Lord, then go goes on to present the counterarguments from the people, then he delivers God’s response and verdict. I served in youth ministry for 4 years, so this reads like a teenager rolling their eyes at their parents. And yes, each of the emojis corresponds to one of the books, so now that we’re at the end you can go back through and match them all up!

-Chiasm – symmetry to them with a focus on the middle, which is where the 3 points of this sermon came from! 1&6 go together, 2&5, 3&4, and right in the middle is the section we read together where the Lord is promising to send a messenger to prepare the way for the Lord’s arrival. Let’s take a look at the first and sixth “disputations” (or courtroom scenes) 

  1. The Righteous and the Wicked (1:2-5, 3:13-4:3)

-God begins with His love, which makes sense because we know from the NT that God is love. And the people’s response is HOW? Because they’re not feeling that love right now. Isn’t it amazing how so many modern questions and doubts people have come up in the Bible? It’s almost like God knows exactly how humans work.

-But it’s not just between God and humans that we see this reality. This is true in marriage, in parenting, in working (working is much less so because I’m guessing you’re not told from your boss that they love you, unless you work at a church!) But love has become so convoluted today that when most people today hear of love their mind goes to acceptance, and those are not synonyms! Love means you care for someone else and desire the best for them, regardless of how it makes them feel. That’s why discipline is a part of love. It would be unloving for me to let my kids get away with throwing a fit, or with running out in front of a car, or eating nothing but candy all the time. It’s similar with God, because God loves He will discipline. If there was never any discipline or correction in your life God wouldn’t love you. Hence the people asking God how He loved them.

-God says that He loved Jacob (who was eventually called Israel, who had 12 sons who became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel), but Jacob was a twin, and not just a twin he was the younger twin. And in that culture, that meant Jacob wasn’t supposed to receive any inheritance or recognition, it was all supposed to go to Esau, but God inverted the normal ordering and gave His love to Jacob, but He hated Esau. 

-That’s another part that grates against our modern sensibilities, and maybe this comes across to you as harsh! What we miss is the judgment God is giving to Esau’s descendants (known as the Edomites) wouldn’t have been seen as overly harsh to them. We talked about this back when we looked at Obad. The prophet there talks about the destruction of the Edomites because of their lack of concern towards their brothers the Israelites. Actions have consequences, and a lack of concern for other humans leads to punishment from the Lord.

-This first disputation tells us that God’s standards aren’t the same as human standards. There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s recognition and favor, but when God blesses us with His favor, then He does expect us to represent Him and live righteous lives (unlike Esau) 

-The 6th scene jumps to 3:13. God begins by saying the people talk harshly against Him, and as we saw previously the people immediately ask “HOW!?” they ask the exact same thing here.

-This time, God says that the way they’re harsh is by assessing their obedience and service to the Lord through a human lens, instead of looking at their lives through the lens of eternity (as the righteous are supposed to do). The people are saying it’s useless to serve God, that they look around at other peoples who don’t even try to obey God and it looks like they’re all prospering and flourishing, that there’s no consequences to someone who ignores or tests God. But they’re not seeing the whole picture. I saw an article that Randy Alcorn wrote this past week (author of the book Heaven that I would encourage you to read!), that was titled “For the Christian, the future is always better.” 

-But maybe you feel the same way as the people here! I know there’s times and seasons where I do! Think back to the parenting issues I talked about earlier, in the short term it’s a LOT easier to just ignore my kids, to not correct them, to let them do whatever they want, but I have a longer goal in mind for them than right now. I want them to become responsible adults who can love God and love other people, which means you have to learn about delayed gratification!

-Just to make sure we get this point, God ends this section in vs. 18 by saying: do you see how you can tell who is righteous or wicked? One serves God, the other does not serve God. What do you do? Do you serve God, or do you refuse to serve Him and just work to serve yourself? That’s our way of looking at it, from God’s perspective the question is: are you righteous or are you wicked?

  • Unacceptable Worship (1:6-2:9, 3:6-12)

-Second and fifth scenes focus on worship, particularly worship that God will not accept. This focus throughout these books has been the biggest surprise to me. I know God cares about worship, I know He wants us to worship Him correctly, but I didn’t realize just how much it came up in even the minor prophets. And we’re not off the hook for this today! God brings up 2 specific issues of incorrect worship: 

-First, the animals. God says that there is honor given to someone in a position of authority, so sons honor their fathers, slaves honor their masters, but God isn’t honored by His people even though He is their father AND their master. What’s even worse is the people know better. In vs. 8 God tells them to try bringing that offering to the governor. They know He wouldn’t accept it, which means they’re treating God even worse than their political leaders. And on top of that (it gets worse!) look at what God says in the beginning of chapt. 2. This gets us to the second issue: not only are the people offering these lame animals, the priests are accepting them! The priests are supposed to be the ones who are telling the people how to live near this holy God and what it means to worship Him, and here they’re taking these unacceptable offerings and offering them to God. Look how God describes these priests in vs. 7-8: The priests are even more culpable because they’re leading people away and have violated God’s commands for them.

-And then God circles back around to worship in chapt. 3. Look at vs. 7: The tenth here is what was expected for the people to give to the Levites and was also used for the poor, that tenth (also referred to as a tithe) is viewed as God’s. He required the people to give it back to Him, so by not paying it they were robbing from God. But there is a level of irony to even marking out 10% as devoted to God because how much does God actually own? Hint: it’s much, much more than 10%, EVERYTHING belongs to God! He created it, it only continues existing because of Him, but by setting aside the 10% to God the people are demonstrating their trust in Him. God even goes on to invite the people to test Him out. If they prove faithful in their tithes, God will respond by opening the floodgates of heaven and pouring out His blessings.

-Because we live in the USA in 2026, this doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to live in a mansion and be a multi-millionaire. I hope some of you do get that (or are already there) because the church needs people who are wealthy and people who are poor to work together to show a picture to the world of the different classes of people loving and caring for each other, even though our bank accounts look different. Instead, what God expects from us is that we view everything as His and respond with generosity to those around us (church and others). I preached a series on this last Fall, so I’m not going to go any further on this today, but living obediently to God does affect our wallets. God calls us to respond to Him in faith and obedience, which is what the final 2 scenes are about:

  • Holy Living (2:10-16, 2:17-3:5)

-The middle sections (3&4) are connected to the worship that we just saw, but then God goes on to connect it to the way the people are living. The third one begins with the people crying out to God because He won’t receive their offerings (see how it’s connected to worship?) There are 2 issues that God addresses here: the men are pursuing marriages with women who worship other gods, which means (secondly) some of them are divorcing their wives to chase after these other women.

-The big key is that the horizontal relationships are a reflection of the vertical relationship. That means if we love God, truly love God, it necessarily means that we will love others and treat other humans with dignity, honor, and respect.

-The problem is that God doesn’t receive their offerings anymore, so they ask why, and it’s because they have acted treacherously against their wives. He goes on to say the point of marriage is to create godly offspring. Part of the reality is that just makes sense sociologically. Part of the reason Islams and Mormonism grows is because they have more babies than other religions!

-Vs. 16 has been mistranslated over the years and has led to some pretty big issues in the church. NKJV translates this verse as God saying that He hates divorce, but that’s not in the text, that’s adding a pronoun that’s not in the Hebrew and adjusts the verbal form from what is actually in the text. Our translation gets it right! Contextually, it’s better to think of the husband as the one who hates and divorces his wife as committing injustice against her. He has covenanted with her, and by divorcing her is unjust towards her. The reason this is important is because the church has previously said that God hates divorce, therefore all divorce is wrong, and I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Moses gives stipulations for divorce, Jesus gives stipulations for divorce, and Paul gives stipulations for divorce. That doesn’t mean it should be the first option (or the second, or third), but it’s also not an unforgiveable sin. There are times where it is (to use the Malachi word) just to pursue divorce. And that’s where we need other people around us to help us navigate the complexities of living in this broken and fallen world, and unfortunately one of the realities of that broken world is divorce. And I know some of you have been affected by divorce, it is messy! And even the no-fault divorce that we have today is such a misnomer, because there’s always fault (and usually from both parties!). Divorce isn’t God’s intent for marriage, but He permits divorce because of the effects of sin today.

-Vs. 17 gives us another aspect of holy living that I don’t think we ponder very often, we get frustrated when people are blessed who aren’t following God, and we can tend to erroneously think that God is blessing their evil pursuits. I’ve shared this example before, but look at Michael Jordan, who I revered when I was growing up (but let’s be honest, what kid growing up in the 90s didn’t) He got to play basketball and hang out with Bugs Bunny. But when he turned 50 (in 2013), ESPN wrote an article titled “Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building,” and it is heartbreaking. He said he would give up everything to be able to go back and keep playing basketball, which tells you what his god is! It’s wrong for me to look at his life and say I want what he has when I look at the fact that I have Jesus! I don’t need anything else.

-And in response to this accusation, God says “Just wait,” He’s going to send His messenger to prepare the way for the Lord, He’s going to refine and purify them so that they can be acceptable to God once again. But it requires them to live different lives than they had been living.

-The ending of this book is a great summary of the Bible, and it references the previous sections of the Bible! The law that was given to Moses (first 5 books), and then Elijah as representative of the prophets, which the NT tells us is fulfilled in the arrival of John the Baptist. I think the last 2 sentences are talking about the way the family was broken down in the days of Malachi, but with the arrival of Jesus a new family is born that doesn’t depend on us to uphold, but is completely dependent on God. And that’s where we need to think about how we apply what we’ve seen in these books to our lives today:

  • What Does Holy Living Look Like?

-First, Get worship right. Worship is us responding to God with all that we are and all that we have. As Jesus commands us, we’re to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s a way of summarizing our everything. Jesus is quoting the shema there from Deut. 6. The Hebrew word “strength” is may-od which my Hebrew prof in seminary loved to tells us is “much-ness” or “exceedingly” I just love that idea love God with your exceedingly muchness! It doesn’t make a lot of sense in English, which is why our translations say strength, but it’s meant to convey ALL that you have and are. But when I say get worship right, we have to acknowledge that there are ways of getting worship wrong. We can focus on the wrong things, we can have the wrong motivations, we can even use our acts of worship to sin against God (as we’ve seen all over these prophets). We’re commanded to worship God not just on Sundays, but that worship is supposed to spill over into our jobs, our homes, our hobbies. All of those things are gifts and tools that God has given to us for our enjoyment, for our growth and maturation, and to be used to bring honor and glory to Him. 

-Second, Get family right. Malachi focuses on marriage and the overflow into raising godly children, but under the covenant that Jesus ushers in, we’re supposed to focus on a different family: the church family. The nuclear family had a HUGE priority in the 1st century (and rightly so!). You relied on your family to survive, to function, to work, it took everyone contributing. But Jesus begins a new focus in Matt. 12. We saw this reality in 1 Tim. Last Fall too. Paul says we’re supposed to treat older men in the church as fathers, older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, and youngers women as sisters. Friends, this church family has significance in our lives! Paul even goes a step further and refers to the church as the “household of faith” in Gal. 6:10. Do you view this church as your family?

-Third: get hope right. Set your sights in the right direction and on the right person. Friends, these prophets would have given everything they owned to experience what we view as normal and boring. If you have been saved, you have God living in you. That doesn’t mean life suddenly gets easy (in many cases it actually gets harder!), but it does mean that we have a different direction and goal to our lives. God repeatedly called these prophets to continue hoping in Him because He had made promises to His people, and God calls the same thing for us today. Even though we live in between Jesus’s 2 comings doesn’t mean our lives are easier, or that we need the reminders less. Church, God is in control! Nothing catches Him by surprise, nothing can catch Him unprepared or unaware. He has promised that He will return to fix all the brokenness and provide a place for you to live with Him forever. That’s what our hope is in.

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by mikethestrand on May 3, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on May 3, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/05/03/malachi-sermon-manuscript/

Zephaniah – Sermon Manuscript

-I think that stories based on events that happened during WW2 have led to some of the best movies: Fury, Unbroken, Saving Private Ryan, Darkest Hour, Life is Beautiful, Midway, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, The Pianist all incredible movies of the resiliency of humans, and the destruction of war. But all those movies are from the perspective of the Allies. Where we celebrate the victories, how do all those movies portray the Germans? As the bad guys. We look at those various battles in triumph, but how would the other side view those events? As humiliation, right? Think of D-Day, when the Allies cross the English Channel and began their attack of the Western Front of the Nazis. Do you think the Germans were celebrating that day? Absolutely not! See, every war has 2 sides to it. Similarly, Zephaniah is going to give us 2 sides to the Day of the Lord. We talked about this back in Joel, but this is the book that talks about it the most.

READ/PRAY (pg. 835)

  1. The Message of Zephaniah

-The intro to this book gives us the opposite of what we’ve seen for a while: 4 previous generations of people! Why is this significant? 

-3 names: Cushi, Hezekiah, and Josiah, intending to give us a starting place for Hezekiah

-Cushi: refers to the land of Cush, significant because of what God promises and it would make Zephaniah bi-racial

-Hezekiah is described as the best king of Judah in 2 Kings 18, he destroyed the competing “worship” sites in Judah. One of the most fascinating things about him is in preparation for the Assyrian invasion, he dug a tunnel under Jerusalem to reroute a river and provide water for the city during the siege, and you can go visit “Hezekiah’s tunnel” today!

-The last significant name is Josiah, who led a major reform movement in Judah and became king when he was a child (2 Kings 22). When he was king, he began repairing the temple, and in the repair the book of the law was uncovered (Deuteronomy) which gave the stipulations the people were supposed to follow and obey. And Josiah took this seriously! He re-enacted the covenant ceremony with the people, who recommitted themselves to obeying God’s laws.

-These names are pointing out that Zephaniah is going to be in the same line as his great-great grandpa Hezekiah, one who is faithfully following God and encouraging the people toward obedience of God’s law. There’s debate about how far into Josiah’s reign this takes place, with most people I read saying it’s most likely shortly after he found the book of the law and began enacting it, but it hadn’t yet taken root in the people.

  1. The Day of the Lord in Judgment (1:1–3:8)

-Zechariah mentions “The Day of the Lord” 22 times throughout it, which tells me it’s his primary point in writing! One scholar said, “There is a compelling simplicity about Zephaniah’s message: he has only one topic, and he never digresses from it.” (Alec Motyer)

-We’ve talked about it before, because it’s a theme that’s been running across all these prophets, so just as a refresher, “The Day of the Lord” is a future moment where God would come in judgment to pay back the enemies of His people. Throughout this time period, the Israelites were excited for the day of the Lord because it was viewed in a completely positive light, where the other nations who had attacked God’s people would be judged. But the warning from the prophets is that the judgment would be negative, not positive!

-And that’s where Zephaniah begins his rebuke of the people. Look at this first description from God: He says He’s going to completely sweep away everything! And there’s intentionality in the way this destruction is described. If you think back to Gen. 1 when God created the world, this is the opposite of creation, it’s meant to make us think that the day of the Lord is going to be a de-creation. But it doesn’t take long for Him to remind the people that this isn’t just for people “out there” because right after this promised destruction of the world, look at vs. 4

-God is also angry with Judah, the 1 remaining people of God, and even worse He’ll destroy the promised city of Jerusalem. But notice how God describes the problem: the people are worshipping Baal, a fertility god who was thought to bring rain to them which they needed in order to live. And apparently there’s no difference between the pagan priests and the supposed priests of Yahweh. And if that’s the priests, the one who are supposed to be leading people in the worship of the one true God, what about the rest of the people?

-They’re worshipping the stars instead of the one who made the stars. On the one hand they’re worship God, but at the same time they hedge their bets and also worship Milcom (the false god of the Ammonites). This is called syncretism that is combining the worship of the true God with the worship of all these false gods, and we do the same thing today! We say we trust God completely, but we also make sure we don’t get too sold out to following after Him. Both Baal and Milcom are gods that the surrounding nations worshipped, and as I have read about the Israelites, you can take them out of Egypt, but the rest of their history is working to take the Egypt out of them. And that’s the same journey for all of us in our Christian life: God has taken us out of the world, but the rest of our earthly lives is working to take the world out of us. Unfortunately, the temptation is always there! Also unfortunately, it’s incredibly hard to find those areas that you’re still holding onto worldly ideas, we often don’t even realize them until either someone points them out or we react poorly to those areas being inconvenienced.

-I think I’ve shared this story before, but when one of the idols of my heart that I have to be conscientious of is when I feel dumb, and one of the precipitating reasons that has come to the surface in my life is because we drive older vehicles. Towards the end of me going to seminary, my car started having these weird issues where it would suddenly lose all power and acceleration, so the fastest I could go was like 15 mph. First time it happened, I pulled over, waited about 15 min, and suddenly it started and drove with no issues. But over the next week it KEPT happening and I just got ANGRY. And in one of my angry outbursts, I realized my reaction wasn’t the corresponding to the situation in front of me, and then it hit me: cars aren’t that complicated, I should be able to figure this out, and the fact that I couldn’t made me irate! Now I know you all already know this, but I needed to remind myself that I’m not God! I don’t, can’t, and won’t know everything, which means there’s going to be areas in my life that I am just ignorant about. This is an area where I know that I’m not God, but I don’t want to have to rely on Him, much to my shame and disgrace. And we all have areas like that in our lives, where we need to pray for the strength to fight those idols, those places where we struggle to trust God, where we still want to do our own things and live our own ways. The only consolation is we’re not alone in that! We see it in Zephaniah, which means it was true 3,000 years ago, so humans are still humans.

-Notice that in the very next verse, Zephaniah gives us the right response: be silent. Have you ever noticed that’s the response of people in the Bible who encounter God? Every time they realize that God is so much more holy than they are, so they fall on their faces and acknowledge their sin. Which is why it always make me chuckle to myself when so many songs that we sing in church are asking God to be present here, to reveal Himself to us, to show us His glory, because the Bible shows us that it’s a terrifying thing! With 1 caveat: if we’re covered by the blood of the sacrifice (Jesus) we don’t have to be afraid of approaching God. In fact, the book of Hebrews tells us we should have the opposite approach to God: we come before Him in confidence because of what Jesus has done, which is exactly what Zephaniah is talking about here.

-I think I mentioned him a few months ago, but I watched another interview with former Senator Ben Sasse yesterday where he was asked if he’s ready to die. He was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal pancreatic cancer in December, and you can tell if you watch this interview. But his response was fascinating, and it caused the interviewer to begin to cry, because he said, “I don’t feel ready, but to whom would I go? I have confidence that when Jesus said to the disciples, he didn’t want to be identified as the Messiah yet, keep these crowds away, don’t tell them about the water into wine miracle at the feast, but he says you can’t keep the children from me. And we’re told that we get to approach the Almighty, we get to approach the Divine and call him Daddy, Abba Father, that’s pretty glorious. And I know that that’s what I need.” 

-That’s someone who understands this reality here: we approach God in reverence and silence because He is so far above us, but that same God welcomes us in as His children, with open arms, for those are following Him, but for those who aren’t, it’s a completely different story.

-On that day, there will be punishment from God on those who have been disobedient to Him, but the punishment from God ALWAYS fits the crime. He calls out those who take on the habits and practices of the nations (foreign clothing) instead of living as God has commanded them. He also promises to punish those who take on the superstitions of the nations (skip over the threshold, like “don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back”) No one will be left out of this persecution, and the rest of this chapter describes all the ways God will bring about this punishment. And do you remember what I said earlier about the day of the Lord? Look at the warning about this day in vs. 14-15:

-It doesn’t sound like the greatest day in the world, does it? It sounds horrible! But it gets even worse: distress, their blood poured out.

-And this day will also reveal where people are putting their confidence. Look at the beginning of vs. 18: even in Zephaniah’s time people were thinking their riches would save them. Once again, we see that the human heart hasn’t changed, has it?

-The beginning of chapt. 2 is a shift in focus, because in the middle of this promised punishment is a change of tone. Here the call is to repent before all this punishment comes. One of the reasons we have these warnings in the Bible is to prevent people from continuing on in their sin and facing this punishment. 

-And do you see what repentance looks like? It looks like seeking the Lord, AND it looks like seeking righteousness and humility. Another way of saying this is if you seek after the Lord, you will start to look like the Lord (although imperfectly). And this section ends saying PERHAPS you’ll be saved, but we know from the message of the NT that this sparing is guaranteed because we know how to be on the right side of history (which doesn’t mean going along with whatever is trendy in our culture), it means we’re obedient to the Creator and Sustainer of everything. 

-The rest of chapter 2 is God continuing to talk about the punishment coming to the nations, but there’s a specific ordering to this following the 4 points of a compass around Judah: Philistines to the West, Ammonites and Moabites to the east, Cush in the south, and Assyria to the north. And who’s in the center of that compass? Judah, but remember, they’re assuming that the Day of the Lord is going to be the destruction of everyone else, so they would hear this expecting everything to be ok for them! But then God focuses His attention on 1 city, and contextually you would expect this to be something like Ninevah or another one of the Assyrian cities, and look at how terrible this city is: 

-Rebellious, not obeyed God, hasn’t responded to God’s discipline, hasn’t trusted the Lord, and hasn’t sought after God. Not only is the city running away from God, but her leaders are even worse! Princes and judges have become like wild beasts who are looking to exploit other people. The prophets and priests aren’t leading people to follow the Lord, they’re only looking to their own interests (which is a perennial problem in Israel, and as the leaders go, so goes the nation). So remember, I said contextually that it seems like it’s talking about the rest of the nations, but then look at the first line in vs. 5:

-This is talking about Jerusalem, the city where the Lord lives. God’s own people weren’t spared from the punishment, in fact theirs is even worse because they were supposed to be different from all the surrounding nations, but instead they’ve acted exactly like them. But in contradiction to the His own people, God is completely righteous and holy. Even when His people are running away from Him, God stays the same and continues being faithful to Himself and His promises. God never changes, that’s one of the greatest realities about God. 

-The last thing God says in this section is that in that day, there will be people from every tribe and tongue and nation who will stand condemned before Him because they refused to follow Him. This is the reality of life in the world God created, which is why He gives us all these warnings. Follow and obey Him now, because someday it will be too late.

  • The Day of the Lord in Salvation (3:9–20)

-The best news about this book is that while the ending is bad news for those who haven’t followed the one true God, for those who have listened and obeyed Him, the ending is joy and salvation.

-Do you see how great this day will be? The end goal is that everyone will be able to call on the name of the Lord and serve and obey Him perfectly. And it’s interesting that the Lord mentions Cush here, because that would include the family of Zephaniah, the people who were once spread out will come and worship the Lord together from all areas of the world. AND there’s a story in Acts that shows the fulfillment of this promise. 

–Acts 8 tells the story of Phillip who was told to go to a specific place and share the gospel message with an Ethiopian. Ethiopia is the same place that was called Cush during the time of Zechariah. God’s promises always come to pass, as we see here from Zechariah. 

-But that’s not all! Look what God goes on to say:

-The punishment has been changed. Those who trust in God are spared from this suffering because the king has come and lived with them, which changes everything for His people. Now that He is with them, they have nothing to fear. Then God doubles down on this promise, but look at the description He gives: 

-A warrior who saves. This helps us understand some of what the early disciples were expecting when Jesus came, a conquering warrior who would overthrow the shackles of oppression from the Romans. What they didn’t realize was the enemy they were thinking about was too small. The Romans were nothing compared to sin and death. God’s plans are so much bigger than anything we could come up with. And look at how God responds to His people: rejoicing,  quieting us, and delighting in us. Isn’t that amazing? God delights in spending time with His people.

-And the very last verse, God tells us what the last day will look like for those who have followed after Him: He will gather His people together to honor them, to encourage them, and to give them a place in His kingdom forever. And we know this is going to happen because of the last phrase in this verse: if God has spoken, it’s guaranteed to happen.

  • The Day of the Lord for You

-But now that we’ve looked at this book, we’re left with the question: which side are you on? For some, the Day of the Lord is something to get excited for because it means everything we’ve been hoping for will come true! But for others, it’s a day to fear. I heard a pastor onetime say that for those who are following Jesus, this world is the closest to hell we’ll ever live. And the reverse is also true: for those who aren’t following Jesus, this world is the closest to heaven they’ll ever live. 

-The Day of the Lord isn’t just a topic that’s seen in the prophets, we saw it when we looked at Revelation together last year. Look at how John describes that day in Rev. 6: 

-Notice that no ones left out, just like God promises in Zechariah that He’ll be looking EVERYWHERE for those who haven’t followed Him. These people are begging to be buried alive in an earthquake because God is that much more terrifying. When that day comes, if you aren’t walking with the Lord, it’s going to be the worst first day of the rest of your life. But you have a choice, right here and right now to not have that day be terrifying.

-For those of us who are walking with the Lord, we have a different reality, a completely different response to the Day of the Lord. For us, it’s going to be a day of celebrating, rejoicing, and giving thanks for because our faith is now sight. Everything we’ve hoped and prayed for has become real. But in this in between time, where we live between Jesus’ two comings, the book of Hebrews reminds us how we’re supposed to live with an eye on that day. 

-It begins with a reminder of how we’re supposed to follow God: through a confession that Jesus is that Warrior King who conquered Satan, sin, and death through his victorious resurrection, and now provides the way for us to come boldly before the Father. That confession is what saves us and makes us new people. And once we’re new people look what we’re supposed to do: consider one another. This is a way we imitate our God, by looking to other people above and beyond ourselves! But then it gets weird! Because we’re supposed to provoke each other. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a situation where it’s positive to “provoke” someone else (this may be a reminder that I have young kids at home because there’s a LOT of provoking that goes on!) but have you ever considered that provoking can be a good thing? According to this text, there’s a way of provoking each other that can lead to love and good works. Now I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could use more of that provoking in my life! Most of the provoking I have around me is to get angry about what’s taking place politically or socially. That doesn’t make me more holy, that doesn’t make me more like Jesus, and that doesn’t help me to represent the one true God to the watching world. And the author doesn’t stop there, do you see the way we provoke each other positively? By gathering together. Friends, this weekly meeting is more than just a social hour, this gathering around the throne of Jesus Christ is a spiritual battle where we provoke each other positively to grow in our love and our good works. This gathering is meant to be the place where we’re encouraged to continue following faithfully after Jesus. Out there, we’re going to be tempted to question, tempted to doubt, tempted to reflect the world instead of the Creator of the world. But in here, we get to encourage (provoke) each other to love and good works. 

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by mikethestrand on April 12, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 12, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/04/12/zephaniah-sermon-manuscript/

Obadiah – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

READ/PRAY (pg. 819)

  1. The Message of Obadiah:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Judgment on Edom (1-14)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Judgment on the Nations (15-18)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Inclusion of the Nations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Response of God’s People

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos – Sermon Manuscript

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

READ/PRAY (Amos 4, pg. 813)

  1. What is Social Justice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Message of Amos:

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

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

  1. Judgment on the Nations (1-2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Words to Israel (3-6)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Visions for Israel (7-9:10)

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

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

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

  • Restoration (9:11-15)

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

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

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

  • Amos for Us Today

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

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

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

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

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

Praying with Paul – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

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

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

READ/PRAY (1048)

  1. What Does Paul Pray For?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Growth (2 Thess. 1:11-12)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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1 Timothy 6:11-21 – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

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

READ/PRAY (pg. 1053)

  1. Pursue (11-16)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Hope (17-19)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Guard (20-21)

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

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

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

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

-Grace be with you all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Generous with our Treasures – Sermon Manuscript

-We have some “Table Topics” at our house that our kids love pulling out and asking us at dinner. One of the questions in the box is “if our house was on fire, what 1 thing would you take with you on your way out the door?” We tweaked it slightly, because the parents both wanted to take the kids, so assuming everyone in your family was safe! Now this is slightly abnormal, but I’m going to ask you to 30 sec. right now, and share what you would take with the person sitting next to you, and if you don’t know them yet, introduce yourself!

-What things would you take with you, go ahead and shout out a couple of them! When this question first came up, my answer was a guitar that I really like, and that’s probably what I would stick with, but I’m not sure anymore because most of the things I have are replaceable (minus some of the old pictures I have of my grandparents)

-The issue in front of us today is how do we grow in generosity with our treasures, and my guess is whatever you would take with you if there was a fire is your treasure. So now that you all have your treasure in your mind, what would it look like for you to be generous with that? For me, my guitar has been a way I’ve made money to provide for my family, a way of encouraging others with music, I’ve let other people use it when they didn’t have a guitar – it’s been a tool that has fostered relationships and meaning beyond just something for me!

-I would argue that treasures is more than just money, but not less than that. Treasures are any gift God has entrusted to you to take care of.

-Theologians have long argued that there are 3 conversions every Christian faces: conversion of the head, then conversion of the heart, and finally conversion of the pocketbook. Story of Sam Houston.

READ/PRAY

Gray Matters research

READ/PRAY

  1. Grow in This Grace

-When do you start being generous? Many people I talk to view it as something that is reserved for those who have already “made it” or those who have a lot of expendable income. The difficulty with that is even if your income increases, the expenses tend to rise with the, so each time there’s a raise, it doesn’t give any room to be more generous, it gives more room to expand your portfolio of things.

-In the midst of this comes the churches of Macedonia. Not sure what the affliction is, but compared to the capitol city of Corinth, Macedonia would have been relatively poor. Not only were they poor, but Paul describes them as facing a severe trial. Most likely, this would be due to them becoming Christians and being ostracized from many of the work places and not being able to participate in the local economy. And even in the midst of that persecution and poverty, they continued looking to be overwhelmingly generous. Friends, do you look to do the same?

-The privilege of sharing (4)

-Ordering: give to the Lord, then to others. Connected, can’t separate. Almost as if you can tell where someone’s heart is by the way they live.

-Connect to Rom. 12:9-13

-Giving as an act of grace (7)

-If you love, you will give. Refusing to be generous is the mark of an unrepentant heart. Even people I would have major issues with theologically would argue this point! Think of all the people who trumpet that “God is love,” but don’t go on to be generous. That’s an oxymoron, according to this text (kids, if you don’t know an oxymoron it’s 2 words that together don’t make sense, like “jumbo shrimp”)

-The call for anyone who is following Jesus is to daily strive to become more like him, and how did Jesus act with generosity? He used his generosity to elevate others. He gave everything away.

-But this doesn’t mean taking a vow of poverty. I’ve shared this with a few people this week, but I read an article recently talking about the ways pastors approach ministry has shifted between those retiring or getting close to retiring, and my generation (my dad vs. me) It used to be that being called to be a pastor was being called to poverty! There was a funny article that poked fun at this back in 2016 that included lines like “Congregation members began to question his opulent lifestyle in early April as he was spotted eating at Denny’s with his wife for their fourth wedding anniversary, but the scandal didn’t fully break until he was seen rolling up in the gaudy $1,500.00 vehicle, complete with sunroof, cassette deck, FM radio, air conditioning, and a full three out of four automatic windows functioning properly.” And “As part of the official referendum, Coles must donate the Corolla to charity and get something more appropriate for the ten-mile commute he makes seven days a week, such as a reliable, modest Schwinn or Huffy.” Thankfully, this approach has changed dramatically over the last 20 years (sometimes going too far the OTHER way), but notice in our text, giving is done “according to what a person has,” (12) and friends, as your pastor I’m not of the hook! I also give to the church and other ministries as the we can. This is for all of us!

-Paul goes on to say it’s for equality. (13) God brings people together for the purpose of sharing with each other. Start being generous now, so that when you have a surplus you’re already trained to be generous!

-This was first modeled in Exodus, where the everyone had just enough manna. That was meant to serve as a picture of how God would continue providing for all of God’s people in the future.

-I shared this passage a couple weeks ago, but I think it bears repeating again because at the heart of this is where are you banking your treasures? You’ve got 2 options: earth or heaven.

-And then Jesus says that you can tell where your heart is, what you truly believe in, by the way you handle your treasures. Do you view your treasures as a gift for you to steward, or do you view it as your right to continue accumulating more and more? I onetime read that we have so much storage space in America (ANOTHER place to hold all our “stuff”), that if we converted storage units to apartments we could solve the housing problem in our country. What does that tell us about where our priorities as a nation are?

-And I think this helps us make sense of another parable Jesus tells in Luke 12. A man has been getting more and more wealthy, accumulating more and more things, and he finally reaches the point where he thinks he’s made it, where after years of toil and trouble he has reached the point where he can live and do whatever he wants to do. And Jesus calls him a fool, because what the rich man doesn’t realize is that’s his last day on earth. He’d spent his life working to a point of building treasures on earth and neglected building eternal treasures.

-And church, this runs completely contradictory to most financial planning, even Christian financial planning! We’ve so often equated stewardship with just saving, but what if that’s wrong? Now again, please don’t hear me saying that saving is bad or wrong! We’re back to what is the motivation leading you to save? Is it to be a rich fool who can sit back and pursue a life of ease, or is it to allow you to expand your generosity toward others?

  • How Much is God’s?

-This should be an obvious answer, but I think it’s worth considering together because I think we often forget this, and I think a large part of it is because the news focuses on doom and gloom to sell and keep us coming back. In 1970, an environmentalist named Paul Ehrlich stated: 

-Does anyone know how many people died of starvation last year? 9 million. Now each one of those deaths is an image bearer who is worthy of honor and respect, but how close was the environmentalist? God has actually designed the world for the flourishing of His creation. The original task in the garden was to fill the earth, and let me tell you, as someone who used to live in the least populated state in the country, there’s more room to be filled! (If you don’t know, that’s Wyoming, which is significantly less than the population of just Minneapolis & St. Paul)

-The reason this question is important is because I think it gets assumed in any conversation about money instead of carefully and intentionally reflected on. God knows exactly what we need, AND often provides for us in abundance so that we can be a blessing to others.

-Friends being wealthy isn’t a sin! Being wealthy CAN be a sin if you don’t use that wealth to bless others, just as being poor isn’t a sin, but it CAN be if even in your poverty you’re not blessing others. We’re back to that see-saw I talked about a few weeks ago. 

-One of the passages that gets to this concept is in 1 Tim. 6. We looked at these first verses a couple weeks ago, but this text goes on. And the last verse in this section is one that often gets misquoted, I remember hearing that the love of money is the root of evil, but that’s not what the verse says, is it? It says, “A root,” and that changes the way we interpret this passage. It also doesn’t say money is the evil, it says the love of money. Friends, money can disappear in an instant. I’ve heard some stories from 2008 that are a reminder of that reality, and there was some irony to when I took this class on generosity, because it was when the stock market dipped in relation to the announcement about tariffs, so the professor on the first day said to not check your retirement accounts! 

-So when we think about the question: what is God’s, the answer is everything! EVERYthing is His, and He gives it to us as gifts (James 1:17) to steward, to take care of, for a season. 

-Friends, this is where we start to see that everyone is not exactly the same, which should be obvious. Some of us are tall, some are short, some have good rhythm, and some of us can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Which is also true with treasures. Some of us are good at making money, and others aren’t as good, and this is why God calls us together into a church body to come alongside each other in our times of need. Did you know that we have a benevolence fund that is used to help people out in times of crisis in our church family? Since I’ve been here, we’ve used that to pay for medical bills, car repairs, rent, food, and that account continues growing, so if you need help, please let us know!

-BUT there are some caveats to that (1 Thess. 3:10), and there’s an understanding that we can’t help everyone around us. 

-God has provided for everything we need – sometimes if the money doesn’t come in, it’s because God is leading us in a different direction, (which is why I said last week our annual budget is a step of faith), but if we’re keeping in step with the Spirit, following faithfully after Him, and trusting that He’s continuing to guide us we can trust God will provide for us for everything we need.

-I was talking to a friend after we found the lightning struck and wrestling through how much that was going to cost, and at the end of the conversation he prayed for me (and us) and in his prayer he thanked God for the lightning strike as something that didn’t catch God off guard, which was the gut punch I needed! Instead of complaining, do we trust that God is working all things for our good and His glory? That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but that gives us hope even when it’s hard, or expensive like a lightning strike!

  • What About Tithing?

-Under the old covenant, God’s people were required to live in a way that showed the world what life under the one true God could look like, which Micah led us through this year! God gave good rules for how to be able to live with a holy God. What we see as oppressive should be viewed as a good gift of God’s mercy, grace, and love.

-And under the old covenant, a tithe was the way God’s people provided for many of the social, religious, and civil services they needed to operate as a nation. Therefore, tithing was a legal obligation for Israel (just like paying taxes is a legal obligation for us today). AND there were 3 different “tithes” in the OT: Levitical tithe (Lev. 27:30-33, Num. 18 regular to cover the work of the Levites in caring for the temple), festival tithes (Deut. 14:22-27 to provide for the many festivals celebrating God’s provision) and a charity tithe (Deut. 14:28-29 taken every 3rd year to provide for the less fortunate: aliens, fatherless, widows, orphans) this last one would be like us giving a 10th to all the poor and needy in the southern suburbs! Add all these up, and annually the Israelites tithed about 25%! How close is the average Christian to THAT tithe? 

-But I think we can take this a step further and I would argue that tithing has passed away with the Mosaic covenant. We no longer need to follow the same rules and laws because now we have a new rule under a King who has fulfilled all the laws demands because we never could. Tithing was a part of the Mosaic covenant, and tithing was the means God used to support that covenant. And we could look at each of those 3 tithes as things Jesus has fulfilled: instead of Levites we are ALL priests now so we’re supposed to care for each other, instead of festivals celebrating Passover, harvest, or booths, we have a festival each week to celebrate the salvation won by Jesus, AND we have a new community called ‘the church’ that comes around those who poor and can help provide for them in the midst of their needs. 

-So tithing isn’t required for those of us who are in Christ, but Jesus calls us to something even greater: extravagant generosity. Quote.

-Friends generosity is a high calling, and it’s completely contradictory to our natural way of living. Generosity is only possible if Jesus has transformed your heart and baptized your wallet. Generosity is the means God has chosen to provide for his new covenant people today, and it demands all of us being extravagantly generous to each other, and those around us.

-A heart that has been transformed by the gospel will be demonstrated by a baptized wallet! And that also includes us as a church. 

-One of the things I’m coming back from sabbatical hoping for us is a renewed focus on our whole church being generous. This isn’t just for us as individuals, this is for us a community, too! And friends, we have a generous church! Over the last 2 years we’ve had 3 years’ worth of giving come in. We have financially supported 2 churches in the area (1 in Bloomington and 1 in St. Paul). When I came here, I was focused on church health, and we’ve gotten a lot healthier. The reason I want us to be healthy is so we can be a place to be a blessing to other people and churches in the area, and we don’t always know when those opportunities will come up! 

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by mikethestrand on August 31, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 31, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/31/generous-with-our-treasures-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
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 17, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/17/our-generous-god-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
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025

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

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