All posts tagged Jesus

Our Generous God – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

-Is God 3 or is God 1? Yes! 

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

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

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

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

-Book recommendation

READ/PRAY (pg. 1027)

  1. Rich Through Poverty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Taking Versus Trusting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Which Way Are You Living?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tales from the Trail – Sermon Manuscript

-THANK YOU!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Our Travels

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

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

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

-Clay Edens at Hope in Oakwood 

-Bryan Lair at Trinity City in St. Paul

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

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

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

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

-Aaron at Resurrection in Burnsville 

-Mike Richards at CrossPoint in Bloomington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Human Being vs. Human Doing

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

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

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

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

-Work is good (Gen. 2:15)

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

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

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

-Work isn’t God.

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

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

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

  • Guard Your Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Psalm 1

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

–Psalm 119

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 – prayer is a place to be honest. 

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

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

-Kyle Strobel quote

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

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

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by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025

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

John 20:1-31 – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

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

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

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

-NT Wright

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

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

READ/PRAY (pg. 963)

  1. Peter and John (1-10)

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

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

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

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

-But something unexpected happened as Marry arrived

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and Mary (11-18)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and the Disciples (19-25)

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

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

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

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

-Suddenly, Jesus joins them!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cuts through it all to bring peace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Unfortunately, 1 disciple misses this event:

  • Jesus and Thomas (26-29)

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

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

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

-Thankfully, Jesus is accommodating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and You (30-31)

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

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

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by mikethestrand on April 20, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 20, 2025

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

John 11 – Sermon Manuscript

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

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

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

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

-A couple things to look for throughout this passage: 

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

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

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

READ/PRAY (pg. 953)

  1. Jesus and His Disciples (1-16)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and Martha (17-27)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and Mary (28-35)

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

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

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

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

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

33

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Jesus and Lazarus (36-44)

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

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

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

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

-Carson, For the Love of God

-Dallas Willard

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

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

41-42

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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by mikethestrand on April 13, 2025  •  Permalink
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/

Father Abraham – Sermon Manuscript

-One of my favorite things about the Christmas season is getting all the Christmas cards.

-We don’t do it because my wife doesn’t believe in them, she just likes looking at them and seeing all the people we know (is it a Midwest thing?)

-We got what I’m guessing will be our last one this past week from a family friend of my parents, with kids my age (best friend from when we lived in ND), and it was amazing looking at all the grandkids and easily being able to tell which of the kids they belonged to! Many of you have commented to me that you can very easily tell who my kids are and that they’re siblings!

-But the reality is the similarities don’t just stop at the physical because the habits and patterns of my kids are also a reflection of me and Cara, and my kids regularly do things that I hear and think “I remember this one!”

-And as you get older, you start to realize just how many of your reactions are the exact same as your parents! And if you were to talk to your parents you’d hear similar stories! One of the most helpful things you can do is sit down and trace out your family lineage to start to see some patterns develop (just like every time you go to the Dr and they ask your entire family medical history)

-For those of us who are in Christ, we have our biological family, but we also have a spiritual family that we’re a part of, and just as it is helpful to trace your biological family history to learn more about yourself, it’s vital to trace your spiritual family history to learn more about yourself (and God)! One author I’ve read has said “Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa’s still in your bones!” So let’s read about our spiritual family:

-READ/PRAY

-Why study Abraham right now? (because it’s in the Bible!) Because Abraham is the origination of the story of God’s people. 

-One of the keys I hope you take away from this sermon series is that God is always at work, even while we wait. Nothing is wasted, nothing is careless or pointless in God’s plans. As we read the biblical stories (like Abraham), we learn that God uses incredibly broken people to accomplish His purposes. We see things we should copy and things we should never do!

-Each year I pick a new word that I focus on for ministry that year, and my word for this year is “slowness” which I think is modeled in Abraham’s life. He was 100 before he had his child that was promised to him. Imagine waiting all those years! And a podcast I listened to this week was saying that the promise came when he was 75, meaning he waited 25 years! Our world today pushes and trains us to expect everything IMMEDIATELY! In the technology class, we heard an author say that technology has trained us to want things easier and everywhere-er, but God’s plans don’t always go along with easier and everywhere-er, do they? How often do you find yourself getting frustrated that your growth is taken longer than you wanted? Or that your prayers aren’t being answered as quickly as you expected? Abraham will teach us the way God works in people’s lives isn’t according to our timeline.

-This will be a bit of a different series, compared to what we’ve done over the past year! How should we read and interpret a story about someone (narrative), and how do move from faithful interpretation to faithful application in our lives?

-First, we should read this as history. I believe what the Bible records is true: real events that took place in time and space. We can become so accustomed to these stories that they lose their humanity and become almost like fairy tales for us. Abraham lived and walked on earth! He had hopes, dreams, desires and he was called out by God to start a new line to bring about redemption.

-Second, we should be reading this story as Christians, which means looking for hints of Jesus in them. Walking on the road to Emmaus. All Scripture points us to Jesus: either in preparation of or looking back to. Paul tells us all the promises of God are yes (fulfilled) in Jesus, so we respond “amen.” The other piece of reading it as Christians is what Paul writes in:

–Gal. 3:7-9: what we see here is anyone who puts their faith in Jesus is now a part of Abraham’s family, so when we read the story of Abraham, we’re getting a picture of our spiritual family history, and one of the realities I want you to walk away with is no matter how broken your biological family history is, God’s family history has the potential to redeem and restore whatever has been broken.

-I preached through Genesis 1-11 in the Fall of 2021, so if you want to go back and listen to those you can for more detail, but we’re going to take today to situate ourselves in this book with an overview of the first 11 chapters. 

  1. In The Beginning…

-Many of you may have this memorized: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Another way of translating the Hebrew here is: WHEN God began to create, which changes the focus of this a little bit. The focus of Genesis 1 isn’t how, it’s a who and a why. 

-Who creates? God does, He speaks and it appears, creation bends to His will. This is contrary to all the other religions of the day when Moses was writing this. The fact that the stars are a throwaway line in the midst of everything else is significant, because in the other religions the stars are gods! But this God is unique because He creates the stars with a passing word. Don’t miss that the focus is God.

-The second piece is why? For things to be very good, for creation to be in relationship with God, out of His love and plan comes this creation to acts as God’s ambassadors on earth, and there’s order to the creation where 3 days build out the areas, and the corresponding 3 days fill those areas. What we get at the end of Genesis 1 is this beautiful declaration from God:

-Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. Adam and Eve are given a job: to work to extend the borders of the orchard of Eden until it eventually fills the entire earth! In order to do that, they’re going to need more people (multiply). God has given them everything they need! Think of this in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: God has given them air, food, water, shelter, there’s nothing to harm them so they have safety, He is in relationship with them (Gen. 3 talks about God walking in the garden at night), self-esteem because they are naked and unashamed, where Maslow gets it wrong is that the top is worship, it doesn’t come from within us, it comes from outside us, from God. God provides all these things for Adam and Eve, and where God intends it for good, humans use it for evil.

-God’s intent: People, place, possession (land, seed, blessing)

-What we’re going to see is the initial shrinking of this blessing, to the eventual fulfilling of this blessing in the new heavens and earth (Revelation). Humans are created to be like God, spreading His rule across the world.

-But God’s intent goes askew in Gen. 3. The 1 rule God gave was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which they do when tempted by Satan. But the fallout from it isn’t what you would expect, instead of being cursed, the serpent is cursed, and the ground is cursed, and God continues caring for His creation. A key to understanding the rest of the OT story is the enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the women (children of God vs. the children of man) Remember we’re looking for glimpses of the gospel message being preached here: think of these wounds – how bad is a heel wound? What about a head wound? But think about what we saw in Revelation last year – how is Satan described there? A dragon, a huge serpent, and can trace that theme throughout the rest of the Bible: are you a descendent of the serpent or a descendent of Adam, the son of God?

-This section ends with banishment from the garden, which is a gift, because if they had remained in there and eaten the tree of life they would have stayed in their state of rebellion, but God cared about them enough to send them away “east of Eden” to provide an ultimate way for them to approach Him. 

-And the story just keeps getting worse. After sin breaks their relationship with God, then we see the way sin breaks the relationship between humans, and Cain kills his brother Abel. And it continues spiraling out of control until Gen. 6:5 says “every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.” Wow! What a fall from the state of perfection that it was before! 

-Then we get the account of Noah, where God determines He needs to wipe out every creature because of their wickedness. Noah and his family are the only ones who survive, on a floating zoo, as the world breaks down around them, and the description God gives to the flood through Moses is as if the world is being de-created. The waters that were separated come together, the lands that were parceled out are covered, and the creatures are destroyed, except for the ones called out and protected by God. And Gen. 8 begins saying “God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside.” Which should make us think of the very beginning where the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Moses is telling us this flood is a major reset, where God is starting fresh with a new people in a new place to have possessions and blessings from God.

-And once again, we have an epic fail. Noah plants a vineyard and gets drunk. Once again, the fruit of the vine leads God’s chosen one into sin, just like Noah’s first father had done.

-God’s good plan each time seems to be spoiled! And then Noah’s descendants decide that they want to try to become like God, just like Adam and Eve did, so they build a tower that you’ve often heard referred to as Babel, but it’s the same word for Babylon later in the Bible, and if you were here last year for our Revelation series, that word should also have special meaning for you! Think back to what we saw of God’s commission to Adam and Eve: fill the earth and subdue it, spread out so God’s kingdom covers the world like the water covers the sea, and what do the people want to do? NOT scatter. Throughout the Bible, Babylon (the city of man) stands in for all those who are opposed to God’s ways and instead pursue idolatry. So right at the beginning we see the ways humans continue running further and further away from God, and in the Babel story there’s no one who’s righteous, up until this point the story had been tracing 2 lines, this is almost as if everyone forgets about God. And in His mercy, He confuses their language so they can’t continue building against Him.

-There’s another theme that emerges in throughout these opening chapters of Genesis:

  • The Family Records of

-While God’s plan is the entire world being blessed by serving and ruling with Him, that plan needs willing and obedient partners, so some of what we see taking plan in Genesis is tracing the seed of the woman down through generations, and each time the reader should be thinking “Is this the one?” 

-Each primary section of Genesis has this phrase “the records of,” translation of the same Hebrew word, signifies the way the storyline is being traced forward, almost like a fast forward button, then it pauses on one person in the story to focus on them.

-But what’s important to note is the way God continues propagating the human race: through children. So the seed of the woman is continuing to spread down through the centuries, you can trace the way the family line goes. One thing to note is these kinds of lists aren’t the same way we do genealogies today, so some generations can be skipped to make a point (Adam to Noah is 10 generations, Noah to Abram is 10 generations, intentionally connecting the 2 lists) I say that because throughout the Bible the generation lists aren’t exactly the same, and there’s a reason for that! Doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong, but it isn’t trying to answer the same questions we’re asking in the 21st century!

  • Abram

-Now we can finally get to today’s text about Abram! But I wanted you to have all that history, because we’ll see some of the same patterns emerge in Abram/Abraham’s life (spoiler alert, there’s a name change coming!)

-What’s unique here is this seed of the woman is specifically called out from all the families of the earth. Even as sin continued corrupting, God was preserving a remnant for Himself, even people who weren’t faithfully following after Him, which is a reminder for us that grace, God’s gift, isn’t something any of us can earn. Look at what we read in Joshua 24

-So God takes an idol worshipper, and begins stirring in his heart to move, there’s some debate about where Ur was, but here’s the general trajectory of their journey.

-One thing to note is that the ANE was a BRUTAL place! Violent, depraved, dangerous, everything including your survival depended on the tribe you were in. Didn’t have police, national guard, laws to follow, it was survival of the fittest (or most connected). To leave your clan meant almost certain death. So Tarah setting out from his family connections meant something significant was going on. That’s the first piece to note – God works even in people that aren’t following after Him!

-The second piece to note is what does the text say about Abram’s wife? Unable to conceive. What had we just read about the seed of the woman? It means that you need kids to continue the line! So what is God doing here focusing on a barren woman? Much less a barren woman, living in an idolatrous place, worshipping idols instead of the one true God?

-Friends: the primary point from today’s passage is nothing and no one is outside the reach of God. God picks a seemingly insignificant man in a seemingly insignificant place and accomplishes His perfect plans with this guy and his barren wife. 

-This is a small picture of someone else who is born to a barren woman (a virgin) who also accomplished God’s plan. The mother is an insignificant woman in an incredibly insignificant place who God uses to accomplish His perfect plans. This also tells us that if you’re still breathing, God’s still not done with you or anyone you know! Continue trusting God, continue walking with Him, and trust that His plan is better than anything you could come up with anyway (which we’ll see throughout Abraham’s life!) This is going to be a wonderful series learning about and from one of the great patriarchs of our spiritual family, with gospel glimpses of a perfect patriarch to come and set the brokenness right.

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by mikethestrand on February 2, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 2, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/02/02/father-abraham-sermon-manuscript/

The Practices of the Church – Sermon Manuscrip

-Family habits/practices

-Christmas was a BIG deal in my family growing up! We’d have a whole services before we were allowed to open presents. This was in addition to whatever church services we were also a part of. In my younger years, I latched on to this and planned out the whole thing (mostly so I’d know exactly how much time was left before I could open presents). 

-Got together with my cousins this year, we pulled out the same lyric sheet we’ve used since before I was born.

-Summer time at the cabin, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, every family has celebrations that mark the changing of seasons, but in the family of God, what are those things? How do we mark time according to God’s plan?

READ/PRAY

-Last week we looked at the reality that God has always had a people he’s called out from the world to be His representatives to the rest of the world (Jesus says we’re supposed to be salt and light: preserving and shining into the darkness)

-3 markers that must be in place to be considered a church: preaching the gospel, regular celebration of the sacraments (or ordinances, we’ll get to that), and church discipline. 

-Preaching of the gospel is commitment to the Word of God, church discipline is something I’ve talked about before (Matt. 18 gives clear instructions), but what are the sacraments of the church? And how many are there? Because if any of you have any Roman Catholic friends, they would tell you there are 7 sacraments (the word matters greatly, but hold on to it): 

-When Protestants came along, and with it a renewed focus on God’s Word alone, the question became how many did Jesus give us? 2 (very small minority say 3, based on John 13:14 “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” Most Protestants have argued that’s a call to service, not an ordinance)

  1. What is an ordinance? 

-What term should we use? Historically, it’s been either a sacrament or an ordinance, and I use them interchangeable, although generally Protestants have preferred ordinance to sacrament to distinguish our beliefs from RCC.

-Sacrament refers to a mystery, the mysterious way grace is given from God to his people. Ordinance refers to “ordained” and attempts to bring the focus on the things Jesus ordained for His followers to do. 

-The other piece to note is what makes these sacraments effective? Is it merely taking a shot of grape juice and tiny cracker getting grace? RCC would say yes, we would say no: it’s connected to the Word & faith

-What does the EFCA say? Here’s statement 7 of our SOF, notice the later half of this statement: 2 ordinances, express the gospel (connection to God’s Word), requirement of faith, and they both “confirm and nourish” that is they do something. 

-There are spiritual realities/implications to literally everything we do, that was one of my biggest takeaways from the series in Revelation last year, we’re either actively living out the realities of heaven, or we’re actively living out the realities of hell.

-And we see this playing out in real time around us right now! Rise in people who say they’re “spiritual but not religious” or I was just reading this past week about people who believe in miracles has gone up for the first time in America in years! That’s where Paul will say “whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God,” we’re supposed to do everything as a way of living as citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth. 

-This should excite you! It excites me! Because it means everything we do has a deeper meaning and significance than any of us realize. We have the opportunity to live holy, set apart lives which has bearing on our eternal existence. That’s why what we do on earth matters! Friends, the way you spend your time, the way you spend your money, the way you spend your words all are loaded with eternal significance. 

-Which is also true of the sacraments or ordinances. Seemingly normal, insignificant things that are loaded with massive spiritual implications and meaning. Things that God has chosen to bind His people to each other and to Himself! Practices that Jesus began and connect us all the way back to Him, practices that tie us to all of the church throughout all of history.

  • Baptism 

-First is baptism, because it’s meant to be one of the first steps of obedience for a Christian. If you read through the NT you see faith connected to baptism repeatedly, and it all starts with Jesus in the great commission at the end of Matthew.

-What’s the sign that someone is a disciple? Baptism! Notice that it gives us 1 instruction too: in the name of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)

-Initially, baptism was immediate. As soon as someone was saved, they looked for water to dunk them in. As time went on, they started realizing that some people were claiming conversion for cultural influence, so they added a season of catechesis, education and training in Christianity to ensure that those who wanted to be baptized were truly saved and walking with the Lord.

-However, because of this intimate link between salvation and baptism, one of the debates was whether or not someone who wasn’t baptized was actually saved! One debate was imagine that someone confesses that Jesus is Lord, and on the way to the waters of baptism, they fall and break their neck and die, will they be with Jesus? Yes – salvation comes by faith alone in Christ alone apart from anything else, BUT that doesn’t mean that baptism is an optional tag on for a Christian. 

-Gregg Allison quote. To be a Christian means working to obey and follow all of Jesus’ commands, one of which is baptism, and just to be frank, it’s probably the easiest of all of Jesus’ commands! How many of you have perfected “turning the other cheek.” Or perfectly “love your neighbor just as you love yourself”? 

-Just as I shared last week that church membership isn’t essential to be saved, I’ll say the same thing about baptism, it’s not essential to be saved, but it is essential to be obedient to all of Jesus’s commands (which Jesus also says in the great commission)

-What should baptism look like, and who should be baptized? EFCA is an anomaly here, because historically this has been a divisive issue in the church, and it breaks down between credobaptism or pedobaptism (creedal vs. infant), should we baptize babies or is it for believer’s only?

-EFCA statement

-That being said, I am convictionally a credobaptist and wouldn’t be comfortable baptizing an infant for a few reasons. First is the word “baptize” means “to immerse,” which is also what we see with Jesus. He was laid all the way under the water, then brought back up to a heavenly affirmation of His calling.

-Second is because of what we see throughout the rest of the NT in the connection between salvation and baptism. If it’s a picture of salvation, then it should take place after salvation. Think of what Peter says in Acts 2 after his incredible sermon where 3,000 people are saved, “Repent and be baptized.” That connection must remain together.

-The third reason is the picture baptism serves, which we see in Romans 6. Here Paul tells us that as we go down into the water, it’s like we were buried with Him, signifying that we have died to our old ways of living. The early church even went so far as to have the person being baptized take off their clothes in the baptistry, and then put on new clothes after their baptism to signify that they have crucified their old selves and put on a new person following after Jesus. And that’s the significant part, is that you don’t stay under the water (even though my son told me the last time we had a baptism that he didn’t want to be baptized yet because he was scared I’d leave him under the water), we are raised with Jesus, which gets us to a final picture of being washed clean.

-So why does the EFCA allow infant baptism? Because VERY quickly the early church moved to adopt infant baptism as a sign of the children being a part of the household of God. And since true, orthodox Christians have differed on this issue, the EFCA allows both. I have dear friends that are pastors who were baptized as infants and I could allow them to be full members of South Suburban without changing their baptism position, which I think is a gift!

-The last reason I still hold to believer’s baptism is because of the baptism instructions we read in one of the oldest writings on church order called “The Didache” (Greek for “teaching”)

-We see the Trinity command, notice “living water” which means moving, natural water. So important that in excavations under St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva (4th cent), they’ve found this baptistry: notice the water coming in, and a pipe to let it out

-Then cold water, but warm is acceptable. If none of that is good, get a water bottle on the head! AND fasting leading up to it! Not something to take lightly!

-So who should be baptized? Any and everyone who has put their faith in Jesus!

-Summary: baptism is the first marker, signifying that you have been buried with Christ, had your sins washed away, and raised up to the newness of life. But there’s 1 additional piece to it, that we get as we trace the continual development of Christianity. Nicene Creed (happy 1700th birthday!) says: one baptism. 

-Meant to signify the entry into faith, thus it’s only supposed to happen once. How many times is a baby born? Once! Supposed to be the same thing with baptism. Unlike the next one, which is a regular and ongoing act meant to look back to our baptism.

  • The Lord’s Supper 

-The first thing I want you to note is the connection between baptism and the Lord’s Supper (we’ll get to the names). The earliest instruction to the church says that only those who have been baptized are to participate in the Lord’s Supper. Why is that? 

-Because the Lord’s Supper is meant to be done carefully and sequentially. Remember, as Protestants we believe that there are 2 ordinances, and they are meant to be done in order: baptism as the entry, the Lord’s Supper as the ongoing reminder of the baptism we have celebrated, but it doesn’t make sense to celebrate one if you’re unwilling to celebrate the other, so baptism should happen before you take the Lord’s Supper, as far as the passage quoted, I’m not sure that’s the best verse, but the ordering does make sense!

-So let’s think about this further. First, the name. What should we call it? Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the eucharist, the breaking of bread? Our SOF calls it “Lord’s Supper”, but the what does that mean, and what do all the other names mean?

-Communion refers to “sharing” or “participation,” we are sharing together a cup and bread, we are participating in what Jesus told His followers to celebrate

-Lord’s Supper refers to the language in the Gospels that say after supper Jesus instituted this new rite that His disciples continued practicing together

-Eucharist refers to thanksgiving, which is what we’re supposed to do as part of this celebration together

-Breaking of bread is picked up from Acts 2 where it describes the practices of the early church

-All of these refer to the same event: where Jesus on the night before he was betrayed took bread and wine, elements of the Passover celebration that he shifted in focus from the Exodus to Himself. 

-3 components: past, present, future. Past: tied to the Passover, the most significant even in Israel’s history. Celebrated annually to remember how God provided for His people in the midst of their slavery to Egypt. Each year, Israel was commanded to celebrate the night that God passed over their sins and brought death every firstborn son of Egypt. This was to point forward to the day when God would bring death on His own firstborn at the cross.

-Present: it’s a way of reminding of what God has done in our lives to save us and redeem us, and bring us together as 1 body and people.

-Future: Jesus also told us that He wouldn’t celebrate this again until He returns

-But what does it take for us to actually celebrate the Lord’s Supper? Can we use Oreos and Mountain Dew or do we need bread and wine? Let’s see what Paul says:

-The issue is divisions, which he says means what they’re celebrating “is not the Lord’s Supper.” (20) Which means one of the purpose of this celebration is unity.

-One of the purposes of communion is to demonstrate that we are united together in 1 body, even though all of us come from completely different backgrounds. Just think of what the church is supposed to signify: people from different background, countries, cultures, demographics, sexes, vocations all gathered around 1 thing: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet how often are we divided over things that don’t matter in eternity? Money, politics, house, cars. Friends, none of that matter when we approach the cross. 

-But what’s the main thing about this celebration? Jesus “in remembrance of me” Do you remember Jesus as we partake of these otherwise ordinary things together?

-Spiritual things are taking place around us regularly, but we don’t have the eyes to see them. And somethings (Lord’s Supper) are meant to be spiritual realities of the gospel and do we realize that? Even in partaking in this celebration or thanksgiving, we’re proclaiming the realities of the gospel!

-But Paul goes on to explain what else we need to consider when we celebrate this:

-Unworthy manner. Growing up I always thought this was general sin, but Paul gives more instructions:

-Examine, recognize the body. Yes, sin is a part of it, but particularly Paul is talking about sin that leads to division in our body. Each time we celebrate communion we’re supposed to think about how this unites us together as a body and continue working to preserve the unity among our body. This isn’t just a “me and God” thing, this is supposed to be a “we and God” thing. 

-This gets to something I said last week: that church discipline is a subset of the ordinances, because the practice of excommunication is meant to be disinviting someone from participating in the means of grace God has given, including the Lord’s Supper. Historically, some pastors would interview the entire membership of the church before the Lord’s Supper and give tokens to those who could come, more could be said but I need to keep moving: 

-Sick and ill: something more than just a spiritual thing, it has physical implications too. Yes, this nourishes us bodily, but in the same way it nourishes us spiritually, it gives grace to us.

-Real celebration: 

-Welcome one another

-Gather together

-I don’t know about you, but if there was something God had given to us that we would allow be to receive God’s grace on a regular basis, I’d want to celebrate that as much as I could, wouldn’t you?

-Been thinking the past year about “Holidays” (Holy-days) and the way we think of time because of my trip to Geneva this summer. In Geneva, the church bells told people what time it was. Who tells us what time it is today? Apple? Google? Target? Amazon?

-What habits or practices help to shape and form us into followers of Jesus? What clocks do we keep to help us in following after Him? What if we started to arrange our schedules and practices around God’s plans instead of our own? Think of the way the early church changed their worship practices: Saturday to Sunday. If you’ve ever been a part of a church that changed service times you know how big of a deal that is! (Cheyenne moving 30 min back) 

-If the Lord’s Supper is supposed to be a marker of God’s people, wouldn’t you want to celebrate that more than 1/month? Moving forward, we’re going to be celebrating 2/month, and we’re going to change some of the ways we practice it, because historically people would come forward and receive the elements (more in Sermon Scraps)

-One last piece to note about the sacraments is who recognizes and affirms baptism and the Lord’s Supper? It’s not meant to be an individual act that is meaningful to 1 person, it’s meant to be done by THE CHURCH. 

-You can’t baptize yourself, it’s done as a sacrament of the church. You can’t take the Lord’s Supper by yourself, it’s meant to be a practice (marker) of the church, which means it can’t be done by yourself

-COVID conversation about celebrating communion alone with your family

-2 sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s supper as markers of His people. Have you participated in them both, and if not what are you waiting for?

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by mikethestrand on January 12, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 12, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/01/12/the-practices-of-the-church-sermon-manuscrip/

The Called Out Ones – Sermon Manuscript

-Starting a new series for January that’s a continuation of what we’ve done the past couple years, “Theological Tune Up” but the tune up is only going to be connected to 1 thing: the church. 

-The 1 thing I’m most passionate about is the church. The church is what Jesus died for, the church is what Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against, and the church is what is going to last into eternity.

-The church isn’t viewed with a lot of trust today! Most people like to complain about the church, point out the problems in the church, run away from the church, but if God has promised that He will build His church, then if we claim to follow God that includes following Him in working to build His church.

-For today’s sermon, the most helpful book, and what I’m borrowing heavily from is The Local Churchby Edward Klink (EFCA Pastor in Roscoe, IL)

-We’re going to be looking at some important things about the church over the next few week: next week we’ll look at the practices of the church (baptism and communion), we’ll also look at how the church functions with men and women working together (complementarianism), and finally we’ll look at the implication of that in the offices God has called for the church to function (elders and deacons)

-It’s been interesting over my life seeing the engagement of people toward the church shift in some pretty dramatic ways.

-Growing up it was fairly trendy to engage in church. Even if you weren’t super involved, people still wanted some associating to the church (90s) but that’s looking back with slightly rose-colored glasses, because I was told that we were facing increasing hostility and persecution from the world (hence my parents homeschooling me to provide a safe environment for me). I even have a distinct memory of my mom telling me in early Middle School that it would break her heart, but even if someone were to take me away from her she wouldn’t be able to deny Jesus. You want trauma, let me tell you about it! 

-Starting in the late 90s into early 2000s came what became known as the “emergent church” movement. One of the leading churches was in Minneapolis called “Solomon’s Porch” (to the surprise of no one, it no longer exists). They started asking questions about the way church was run, so at Solomon’s Porch they sat on couches and had conversations, not sermons. I got to attend another emergent church called Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, where instead of having a platform on one side, they had a platform in the middle of the room. Asked TONS of questions of Christianity, but never seemed to resolve any of them, so pretty soon they tore down even the essentials of the faith (which is why many of them now are self-proclaimed speakers, writers, and activists)

-After that was what was called the “missional church” movement, where it was thought that the problem was the buildings and institutions, so we need to focus our energy outside the walls and become “missional” in everything we do. After all, God is a sending God (sent His Son, sends the Spirit, sends us as his missionaries). But if that’s true, then where and why do we ever meet? And why does Paul talk about the churches meeting in specific locations in His letters?

-And all this was before every church went livestream during COVID (remember those days??) and I think that even further revealed the ways we think about the church are so broken. I talked to some people who enjoyed being able to “attend” different churches each week because everyone was online!

-Also add in the rise of the EX-vangelical, the deconstructing of faith (including famous people like Joshua Harris who write I Kissed Dating Goodbye), the general distrust of institutions, and the church looks to be on either the losing side, or the wrong side of history. I even know of someone who used to be a pastor at an EFCA church nearby that is now working on trying to create “micro-churches” which are basically Life Groups that are all independent.

-So why on earth would someone devote their life to working in the church? What’s the point of fighting against these cultural tides and what should the church actually look like? Is the micro church more accurate than us gathering in a large room each week? 

-The reality is there are benefits to every component that I’ve mentioned, but they take either an implication or a periphery of what the church is called to be and make it the primary identity marker, which means everything is going to be off because of that.

-If you ever mow your lawn and pick the wrong spot in the distance to aim at, doesn’t your entire mowing line get thrown off? My back yard is a weird shape so I make it work, but it still bothers me! 

-We need to understand what God has called to the church to do and be PRIMARILY so that we can distinguish between the essential, the good or helpful, and the things that we really shouldn’t be spending our time on. 

READ/PRAY

-Let’s begin with what is essential: Belgic Confession of Faith (1561): 3 markers according to this. 

-EFCA:                

-Here we see some additional pieces, such as “all who have been justified” that is the members of the church must be believers. We also see the interplay between the invisible church and the invisible church. See every believer is immediately brought into the invisible church, but that also means they must look to live out that spiritual reality in the physical reality of a local church. 

-This is why I’ve talked so much and so regularly here about church membership since I first came! Whether you want to admit it or not, membership is the expectation for a Christian, it’s not salvific (just like baptism isn’t salvific), but it’s essential to your sanctification (growth in holiness). I’ve preached on this before, and we’ve got a membership class coming up on Feb. 9, so if you want to hear the whole reason I think membership is important come to that class! But to summarize, I’ll quote from the book I mentioned earlier: 

-Gospel, ordinances (sacraments), church discipline (which is a subset of the sacraments, and requires church leadership, we’ll get to that next week)

-These are the things that MUST be in place for a church to be called a church, if you don’t have 1 of those 3, by definition you don’t have a church. What’s fascinating to me is how often 1 of 2 of these get thrown out for convenience.

  1. Called Out By God

-When we talk about the church, we’re referring to the Greek word “ekklesia” which is a compound word made up of “from” and “to call” so literally the church is to be “called out from” or the “called out ones.” Generally in English we translate it as an “assembly,” “gathering,” or “church.”  

-But the key I want you to remember from this is that the church is meant to be those who are called out, and not just called out, but called out by God Himself. This is what the EFCA SOF is getting at when it says “The true church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of believers.” 

-The difficulty is that there are people who come to church each week who aren’t believers, and each church is going to have strengths and weaknesses, just like individual Christians have strengths and weaknesses. 

-One of the most helpful things the elders have used on a regular basis in the midst of our conversations about the way we structure our church is this graph. On this side of eternity, there will be no perfect church ever! Even when people who are Christians spend time together, there’s going to be conflict and issues because sin impacts all of us. But that doesn’t mean we run away from the church, it generally means we need to double down on our commitment, confess were we’ve sinned against others, forgive as Jesus forgave us, and work through the issues TOGETHER. This is how we move to a more pure church, TOGETHER. You literally can’t have a church by yourself! And at the same time, at some point the lack of purity in a church means they move from being a church to not being a church. However, the bar there is fairly basic, remember 3 things: gospel is being preached, sacraments or ordinances are being practiced, and church discipline is taking place (often we don’t know when it’s happening, Matt. 18)

-Back to the called out idea, God has always had a group of people that He has called out to be His faithful representatives to the world. Starting with Adam and Eve, then calling out Noah, then calling out Abraham from among the nations, then calling out the nation of Israel, then calling out His Son, and then now He calls out people to move from the world into being a part of His Kingdom, which is represented by the church, as we heard when we read through 1 Peter (we’re getting close to getting there!) But first, a brief overview of God’s calling out throughout Scripture.

-First, God calls out to creation in calling it, he separates the skies, the waters, the lands. Then He calls out to a person (Adam) and commissions Him to join with God in caring for the creation and expanding God’s rule over the rest of creation. But then Adam wants to BE God instead of obeying God, and He chooses sin instead of obedience, and then we read this fascinating account of God’s response.

-Even in sin, God’s response is to continue moving toward His people.

-Then God calls out a specific person, and tells Abram His plans.

-And the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham did this by faith, and in Galatians Paul tells us that this promise is fulfilled in the church.

-History moves forward, and Abraham’s descendants are sold into slavery in Egypt, but then God decides to save them through Moses, and God calls out to him from a burning bush while he’s working as a shepherd for his FIL.

-Last picture I want you to see of this is when God speaks to Isaiah to remind His people who has created them. 

-Friends, this is vital for us to understand. God is the one who calls and creates a people. It’s not something we do in our own power or strength, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. This is also true of the church! No person can create a church in their own power, it’s only done by God’s sovereign hand. So when we talk about the church, we ALWAYS need to remember that we are talking about God’s church. We’re just stewards, tasked with caring for a church in this time and place, but God is the only one who can claim ownership of every church. That’s why it’s so important for us to focus on the church!

  • By God We Are…

-With that, we can now come to Peter, where we see that the church has been called out from darkness into marvelous light. Look at all the descriptions: chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his possession, proclaim the praises, God’s people.

-4 things, seen in your outline, but before we see what we are, what does this mean the church is NOT:

-Church is not: 

-a social club. Not gathering to socialize around any human activity. Socializing is a component and will happen naturally, but that’s not the definition of a church. 

-a community organizing group. Not meant to create community, community is the byproduct of being brought into the family of God, but it is not a church

-merely a building. As we’ll see in a minute, the church needs a building, some kind of place to meet, and it helps to have 1 spot where we can gather, but the church can gather even without a building

-a voluntary society. This is why we need to remember that God is the one who creates the church. If we’re a Christian, we commit to the church.

-a political action committee. As Chuck Colson used to say “Salvation doesn’t come on Air Force One.” Jesus rules above any political conversations that take place in our world. Earthly kingdoms rise and fall, but Christ sits forever on His throne ruling through His church.

-a metaphor. We tend to talk more about the invisible church and give secondary importance to the visible church of which we’re participating now. Church isn’t just a reference to a theoretical idea, it’s referring to a real thing.

-coffee with friends. That’s an outworking of it (especially when it’s good coffee), but that’s not a replacement for the actual weekly gathering of God’s people.

-A human endeavor. Only done by and for God.

-Look at how the NT describes the church.

  1. Present – a chosen race 

-A component to being a part of a specific lineage or family is location. Think of how much time people spent on their ancestry (I’m 100% Norwegian, thank you very much). This idea that we are a chosen race means that we’re supposed to be God’s ministering presence in the world.

-Think of it like a country and an individual. Anyone who owns a home has a spot to call their own within the boundaries of a country. Similarly, each local church is a part of the universal church (visible vs. invisible), but God places each church in a location for a purpose! To shine as His marvelous light into the darkness.

-This means the south metro should know that we’re here! If we’re commissioned by God to shine as a light, we must bring that light into the world with us. We need to look for ways to be present and engaged in the area God has placed us. This is where we need to acknowledge the reality that the church is an institution AND an organism. NT wording lean toward organism (body, flock), but the rest of the NT writings lean toward institution (a way of conducting ourselves)

-Believing the truth of the Gospels will lead to organizing yourself by the way the Epistles describe.

  • Priests

-Priests work as a go between so humans can meet with God. 3 components to this: corporately, individually, restricted.

-Corporately: we are to be a blessing to the world. We work to bring good into every sphere of human endeavor in which we participate. If we believe God is God then nothing is outside His oversight. Work, play, eating, resting are all to be brought underneath His Lordship. 1 Cor. 5 describes us as ambassadors, God is working to reconcile the world to Himself through the church:

-Individually: each of us is responsible to do that in our lives. All of us are meant to know God’s Word and be changed by knowing and applying God’s Word.

-Restricted: some people are set apart, recognized by God and the church as leaders, we call these pastors/elders. Not better, just called to a higher level of service. I have the freedom to read and study with the hours that many of you spend working to provide for your families or take care of your home. It’s not better, it’s a different calling, we’ll get to that in a few weeks!

  • Pilgrims

-Not Thanksgiving pilgrims, “a holy nation” a people who aren’t at home here. The early church was actually described as living as foreigners, only making use of their earthly citizenship when it served to help them spread the gospel. We need to be careful to regularly remember that this world isn’t our home. We’re not primarily Americans, we’re primarily Christians, our heavenly home will never disappear! 

-Church is supposed to be a picture of that! An embassy in a foreign land where we’re reminded what our home looks like!

  • Proclaimers

-“So that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you.”

-Our response matters in light of who God is. We proclaim the truths of the Bible in order for us to be reminded each and every week who we are, why we’re here, and what our aim in life is. On top of that, the Word of God compels us to proclaim to the world those exact same realities: Jesus is the King, and only by obeying Him and entering into His church can the world make sense.

-The church matters, and should matter to us because it matters to God. And God also has told us how the church should function and operate, and it comes down to us living in the reality of God calling us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, where we’re now a part of a body, a temple, a new people who are under God.

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by mikethestrand on January 5, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 5, 2025

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End Time Ethics – Sermon Manuscript

-Spend some time giving thanks together for the ways God has worked among us over the past year, but before we look back, I want to take a minute and help us look forward into the next year. 

-Saw an Apple commercial this past week that was talking about the need to get an Apple Watch to motivate you through “quitting Friday” (the 2nd Friday of January)

-As we look forward to another year, what things has God been impressing on you to focus on in your spiritual life? How are you going to take 1 step closer to Him over 2025? It can be easy to assume your spiritual life because it’s less tangible. With physical health you can tell – you can lift more, you can run further, but how do you measure growth in love toward others? How do you measure being more holy?

READ/PRAY

-Begins “The end of all things is near” we’ve spent the last year studying Revelation together, and this is another reminder that we’re living in the last days, and have been living in the last days since Jesus ascended to heaven. But what do we do with that reality? Peter tells us 4 things we should do because we’re living in the last days:

1. Pray 

-How do we pray? The opposite of “The Gentiles” in the previous verses – self controlled and sober minded.

Juan Sanchez 1 Peter For You “We are not to lose our heads; we’re to think clearly. We’re not to set dates; we’re to be ready. We’re not to withdraw from society; we’re to proclaim God’s excellencies. We’re not to panic.” (148)

That is: to pray more effectively

-How are you planning to grow in your prayer life over the coming year?

-Asked at seminary: how’s your prayer life? I’ve always felt like I’m “supposed” to say “it could be better” here’s the thing: God takes the little and makes it that much better. Think of the 5 loaves and 2 fish. A little lunchable. So don’t give up! Keep praying with all you’ve got! As much or as little as you can, God loves when you engage with Him! There’s always room to improve, but don’t give us just because you’re not where you want to be. Start where you’re at and take 1 more step.

2. Love.

Alluding to Prov. 10:12 “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”

In a sense, it’s true that love covers EVERY sin! 1 John 4:8 “God is love” John 3:16 “For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It’s because of God’s love that sin our sin is payed for! And it’s only through God’s love that we can be forgiven.

“Above all”…this is the root of everything we as Christians are called to do

-We are commanded to love each other. Period. No ifs ands or buts. 

-These verses are very similar to 1 Cor. 12-14 where we’re reminded that love is the supreme virtue. You can be as gifted/talented/charismatic that you want, but if you don’t love you’re as helpful as a clashing cymbal. 

-We’re actually commanded to love each other in the same way that Jesus loved us. 

-Poster of the “one another’s” Again, no one is perfect at this, but what can you do to take 1 step closer to loving like Jesus loves over the coming year?

3. Be hospitable

-An article I shared before titled ‘Why Hospitality Beats Entertaining’ has been quoted back to me numerous times by people in the church (you should go read it) but the point is that this doesn’t mean our houses need to be perfectly cleaned to be hospitable.

-In the 1st century this would have involved a lot more intrusion into their lives because they didn’t have hotels, so as Christians traveled this was a command for people to open their homes to each other. 

-Friends, hospitality is supposed to be the norm for Christians. Whether your good at cooking or not, whether your house is perfectly clean or not, look for ways to invite people in, because the point is to be involved in each other’s lives. We’re supposed to love each other like family, and engage each other like family. 

-“Without complaining” Individualism leads to complaining. Individualism leads to NOT being hospitable. Individualism is a sin that needs to be repented of. Think of Mary and Martha. What was Martha’s response? 

4. Use Your Gifts

All spiritual gifts are a form of service. Remember, these are done IN LOVE

The point of your gifts isn’t to build yourself up, it’s so “serve one another.” 

My wife has a gift of discernment without being condemning. I don’t know how she does it! 

“as good stewards of the varied grace of God.”

James 1:17 “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”

You, ALL of you, have been given a gift by God to serve others. How are you doing at stewarding that gift? Maybe you have the gift of encouragement. Maybe you have the gift of setting up tables. Maybe you have the gift of hospitality. Maybe you have the gift of teaching.

Peter specifically mentions 2 gifts: speaking and serving.

“If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks God’s words” the message, the words of God. Everything we do is supposed to point people back to God. We’re called the aroma of Christ. I LOVE that imagery

C.S. Lewis “You have never encountered a mere mortal. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.”

Every conversation you have either points people to or away from God.

“if anyone serves, let it be from the strength God provides.”

We’re all commanded to serve in some way! But remember it’s serving from a never ending well that God supplies. 

Proverbs 21:31, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”

Galatians 6:9-10 “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” 

“so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”

Benediction (in many letters)

Everything we do is meant to be an act of worship. Our entire lives. 

“through Jesus Christ” Jesus as our only worship leader

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by mikethestrand on December 29, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 29, 2024

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Jesus Did You Know? John 1 – Sermon Manuscript

-End of our series, looked at Mary, Joseph, Herod, and we’re going to end this week looking at Jesus. 

-Not a lot about Jesus’ life to be able to accurately or fully answer this question, the Bible tells us a bit about his birth, we have 1 account of him as a 12 year old in the temple (Luke 2), but then all the accounts jump straight to Him as a 30 year old adult, so we’re somewhat in the realm of speculation when we try to answer this question.

-But I do think it’s important for us to talk about Jesus! If you haven’t figured it out yet, He’s going to come up every week here! He’s literally at the center of all of creation, He’s literally at the center of history, and He’s literally the center, the focal point of all of Scripture. One of the commentators I was reading this week was saying that the fulfillment of the OT isn’t the NT, it’s Jesus. The OT points forward to Jesus, and the NT looks back to Him.

-What’s hard today is what do we do with Jesus? You may have heard this quote attributed to Gandhi:

-On the one hand, this is disappointing because the name “Christian” is meant to signify “Little Christ” aka little representatives of Him, but this is also at the crux of Christianity: we can’t completely be like Christ, which is why He had to become like us! 

-But the other component to this quote is that obviously Gandhi wasn’t a Christian, but he liked what Jesus taught. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone that doesn’t like Jesus, or the Jesus they have in their mind, because often people haven’t actually studied much about Him, they go on what other people say, and it’s amazing how much of their interpretations tend to be more of a reflection of themselves than Jesus Himself! So today I want to look at what Jesus’ plan was, what did He know, and why did He enter into His creation? Because the reality is we can’t separate Christmas from eternity!

READ/PRAY

  1. The Word (1-3)

-“In the beginning”

-I hope by now you’re starting to learn that in order to interpret the NT correctly, we need to know the OT. 1 story from beginning to end. Pointing back to Gen. 1, almost as if he knows the other Gospel accounts that start with Jesus, this one tells us the story of Jesus goes back even further than his birth. John is saying: you think the birth is amazing, let me tell you the true beginning!

-Friends, this is what I said earlier: the reality is that the Christmas story begins before the dawn of creation. Our kids often ask where they were at various events in our lives before they came and we tell them it was before they were born, and Cara has trained them to say “When I was just in God’s mind?” That’s exactly right! Before the earth was here, when it was just in God’s mind, Christmas, the arrival of Jesus, the one and only God-man was the plan. This tells us that even when we go back and read Genesis 1 we should read Jesus in that event, which is where John goes next:

-“was the Word.” What word? What is meant by the word “word”? A whole lot, it turns out, because once again that single word contains a host of OT allusions that we need to understand! 

-First, the immediate context: what did John mean when he used this word? 1st cent. context can be essentially distilled down to basically 2 things: inner thoughts of something: some have argued translating this word as “reason” where we get science, bio-logy (study of bios created things), psych-ology (study of the psych) the-ology (study of God). Second option is an external message or speech, like we use WORDS. 

-And then, as always, what is meant by this throughout Scripture? How does God use words? Since we’ve already been there, and John’s readers would already be thinking about creation, how does God create? Through words. God’s act of speaking has consequences and demands a response! Out of nothing comes something, it can’t help itself since God spoke it, is MUST happen. God speaks, it happens, there’s no waiting, no fighting of anyone else. Have you ever considered how violent other creation myths are? Think of the Big Bang, the beginning of EVERYTHING is an explosion! Other stories talk about various gods fighting and the wreckage of that fighting is the creation. Here it almost is like someone sitting in a La-Z-Boy playing armchair QB, but in this case the creation actually responds!

-Throughout the OT there’s also references to God revealing Himself through words (prophets), and delivering His people (think of the whole Egypt story where God tells Moses “Go TELL Pharoah MY WORDS”)

-But then the most significant place where we see God’s Words is when God reveals Himself to Moses. They’d been led out of Egypt, God had called Moses to the mountain to tell His words and commands to him (10 commandments written by God on stone), Moses comes down to the people partying and worshipping a golden calf, so he goes back up the mountain to meet with God and beg Him to not destroy the nation. During his conversation with God, Moses asks “Let me see your glory.” 

-Does that seem a bit weird to you? What does Moses want? He’s looking to see God fully instead of mediated or clouded (pillar of fire or cloud). Think of the way Jesus is described during the Transfiguration: whiter than the whitest bleach can cause, the disciples can hardly look at Him! And that’s small stuff compared to the full glory of God!

-But notice, how does God say his goodness or glory passes by Moses? By proclaiming His name. God is connected to His name, you can’t separate God from His name, so then when we think of John describing Jesus as the Word, you can hardly find a better word (pun intended) to describe the God! I like the way Carson summarizes this idea:

-All this biblical background with just 1 word! And we’re only on the 6th word of this whole section, and John goes on to identify this Word as being with God and being God. So not only is there all this wealth of allusions in this word, but John leaves no room for interpretation or misinterpretation about what he’s talking about, he’s clear that this is the 2nd person of the Godhead, God the Son, who was the agent of creation, which means everything only exists because of Him, apart from Jesus everything would go back to nothing. Yet many people don’t realize all that is contained in this word, which is why John goes on:

  • The Light (4-13)

-We’ve had the Word to describe Jesus, but says that in Him is LIGHT. Well that has different connotations than the Word!

-John here says that light and darkness can’t coexist, which is true! He is the true light that shines, that reveals where there is darkness.

-Darkness did not overcome: master, comprehend. Darkness can’t comprehend the light, it doesn’t have a way to understand it, the light seems like foolishness to it. So how can the darkness be made aware of the light? Need a witness.

-John: witness, used 3x! “He came as a witness to witness about the light. He came to witness about the light.” I love that word! What are you a witness to?

-Think of that quote from Gandhi that I shared earlier. Does your witness make much of Christ or do you get in the way? Look at the sun (don’t actually look at it) but how can you see anything in the world? Isn’t it because of the shining sun? The sun is so bright that it’s literally the way we see everything in the world, apart from its light we would live in darkness.

-But what about when something gets in between the sun and the earth? Something like the moon? We call that an eclipse, and it’s an eerie experience! We were living in CO when the eclipse came through in 2017 and it was odd to experience darkness during the day! But I think that’s a picture of what we can tend to do with the light of the gospel. How often do we get in the way and refuse to let God’s light shine out because we’re too scared, or because our lives aren’t actually marked by the light of the gospel? Or what about when we add things to the gospel message, things that God didn’t say we needed to do? Look down at vs. 12 – it’s very simple: believe in His name. Trust that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world who came to earth as a baby, but grew and completely and perfectly obeyed God, letting the light of God shine perfectly into the world.

-The Word (that gives light) was in the world, the world only exists because of this Word, but the world wanted to be their own god instead.

-A.W. Pink. (pastor in the early 20th century) This is what we see in Gandhi! He’s blind to the fact that the Messiah, the Savior who came to save the world from their sins has come to the world. Friends, are you blind, or do you see and acknowledge that Jesus is God?

-This is where we’re already seeing that it’s not enough to just like Jesus as a cool dude. Like if you’ve ever heard the icebreaker question: what 3 people would you have dinner with, dead or alive? Jesus is almost always on the list, right? The thing is we already have a whole bunch of stuff that Jesus said about Himself, and God thinks what we have is enough! 

-His own people: we saw that last week. Scribes, rulers knew the right answers, but didn’t follow through on the correct response.

-All those who were supposedly watching completely missed it. If you’ve ever seen a street “magician” (really illusionist) performing you’re aware of this. The whole goal of those people is to distract others from what they’re really doing, which is why it’s often called sleight of hand, they’re essentially forcing you to focus on one thing while they do something else.

-What’s ironic in the Christmas story is that’s not what God did. It’s not like it was a massive secret! He sent angels to shepherd, He sent wise-men to Herod, He sent an angel to Mary and Joseph.

-Children of God: comes only by belief, demands a response “To all who did receive Him.” What’s amazing about that is the only thing it takes is receiving Jesus! Think about the Christmas carol ‘O Little Town’ “Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.” Then you become children of God, that’s all it takes

-What is this birth thing John talks about? He’ll expand on it in chpt 3 (which we don’t have time to go to), but he contrasts it here with 3 things, that feels unnecessarily repetitive and redundant, don’t they? We get it John, it’s only “of God” but what do you think all these things John’s talking about mean? 

-Natural descent: this is referring to genealogy. In Jewish circles, genealogy was literally make or break for you! Either you were Jew or you were of the “ethnicities.” So if you were of the wrong blood-line, you weren’t a part of God’s people. But this thought continues today! The assumption that you’re a Christian because you’re American (less so today) or that you’re good because your parents took you to church. Friends, I hate to say it, but your bloodline has no bearing in the kingdom of God.

-Will of the flesh: this has to do with sincerity. Originally, this is a husband and wife coming together to produce a baby, there’s desire there for children, earnest to earn the gift of a baby. But friends, all the sincerity in the world can’t make you a child of God. You see this with people who assume they’re good because they went through the right motions: I went to church all growing up, I went to Awana all the way through, I did confirmation. Once again, John is telling us here that none of those things can save you, which gets to the third one:

-Will of man: effort. No matter how hard you try you won’t become a child of God. I listened to a podcast this week that was comparing Christianity to other world religions, all of which have some element of effort required to achieve salvation, but Christianity doesn’t have that, which is why so many people struggle with it and add works to salvation. 

-There’s only 1 way to become a child of God: But of God. God redeems you and adopts you as His child. That’s it! It’s only by believing in His name! But what did it take for it to be that simple? 

  • The Flesh (14-18)

-Back to the Word, but this is weird, he became flesh and tabernacled (moved into the neighborhood) How can the eternal Word step into time? 

-To understand this one, we need to understand both tabernacle and (tabernacling) God dwelling among His people. Throughout the OT, God’s manifest presence was confined to the tabernacle (then the temple), so that His people wouldn’t die. Just as light can’t coexist with darkness, God’s glory can’t coexist with sin. So when we read that the Word, who was with God and IS God, became flesh that would have made NO sense, much less tabernacling among us, if God is with us we’re done for! But John keeps going:

-And we SAW his glory! Remember what we saw with Moses back in Exodus, no one could see God’s glory and live, and here John says WE SAW HIS GLORY! Suddenly, the God who was completely separate, unobtainable, unapproachable is here, walking and talking with us. Do you see why Jews struggled to believe Him?

-Full of what? Grace and truth. We need BOTH! This is the amazing thing about the gospel – we get the truth that we are far worse than we ever dared imagine, but we also get the grace that we are far more loved than we could ever dare to hope. Christianity is the 1 religion that can deal with the complexity of the world, because Christianity is the 1 religion that is true.

-From Him, we have received grace upon grace, better translated as grace instead of grace, grace on top of grace, but it only comes through the truth, the truth that Jesus is God and came to take away the sins of the world, which includes you if you’ve believed in His name.

-Jesus is better even than Moses, which is another reason we should be thinking back to Ex. 33-34 when we read John 1

-Jesus reveals the unseeable God in seeable form. John’s epistle begins this way: beginning, heard, seen, observed, touched, then passed down, JOY

-One of my favorite Christmas songs begins with “Joy to the world the Lord is come.” Joy is possible, but it only comes about be believing in Jesus, who had planned from all eternity to come to earth as a baby boy. To live the perfect life that we could never live, and die the death that we all deserved to die to give us joy and the opportunity to hear Him, to see Him, and to some day touch Him. Joy that nothing can take away, joy that lasts even when you don’t get the Christmas gift you wanted. Joy that can and will last into eternity all because the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood, which means we now can become children of God.

-And now, as we look forward to celebrating Christmas this week, we have the reminder that we are now the ones who are supposed to move into the neighborhood and shine as lights in the darkness. The Christmas story, the story of Jesus first coming culminates in a second coming where we’ll be with Him forever! And until that second coming, our job each Christmas is to continue overcoming the darkness, through joy.

-So church, by joyful, always.

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by mikethestrand on December 22, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 22, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/12/22/jesus-did-you-know-john-1-sermon-manuscript/

Herod, Did You Know? – Sermon Manscript

-I shared 2 weeks ago how I feel like a bit of a Grinch at Christmas because it’s so easy to just become numb to it (especially when they put up Christmas decorations in October) But last night, I had a visit from 3 ghosts and I’m now a new man! If you haven’t watched or read A Christmas Carol, that comment makes no sense to you! The best version is the Muppets, and it’s not even close

-Every good story needs an antagonist, a bad guy. Scrooge, Voldemort, Sauron, Thanos, even the new Barbie movie needed the enemy of “the system” (cleverly disguised as Mattel) to fight against! 

-And the Christmas story is no exception, except this story is real, with real stakes! No CGI was used in this production. This bad guy is Herod, and he’s really a bad dude!

READ/PRAY

  1. Some Righteous Dudes (1-15)

-Last week we saw the righteousness of Joseph, who was thought to be the father of Jesus (Luke 3:23), he took Jesus and Mary’s shame on himself, willingly. 

-We’ll get to Herod after we look at these “wise men.” 

-Magi (where we get magic, sorcery), men who were in the upper realms of society and gifted in astrology.

-“From the east” where is the east? We’ve spent a lot of time over the past year tracing how the Bible fits together and the way it alludes to previous stories that we should hear, so when we come across this phrase, Matthew’s picking up on previous themes.

-Daniel tells the story of siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon. Where’s Babylon? To the east! The Jews were taken into exile into the east, but even when they’re in exile God still blesses them. Daniel 1:17 (Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, also known as Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Lion’s Den and fiery furnace), 2:2 (additionally, what was a common practice in Babylon? Magi) Many scholars believe these Magi are in the same lineage as what we see in Daniel. After centuries of oppression of God’s people, those nations who were oppressing them are now coming to worship the one true God.

-Balaam was talked about a few times in Revelation, he’s the one who had a donkey talk to him after being beaten by Balaam. Balaam was hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel, but instead of cursing them, the only thing he can do is bless them. Look at what he says to the king of Moab: Num. 24:17. And where does Balaam come from? 23:7 FROM THE EAST.

-And the last thing we need to know about the east occurs all the way back in Gen. 3:23-24. The Bible begins with everything being very good, in harmony with each other and with God but then our first parents disobeyed God, committing treason against Him and were banished from Eden, but notice which way they were banished, drove the man out, and as he was sent out a cherubim was stationed to prevent him from returning into the garden, they’re sent “East of Eden” as John Steinbeck summarized it. So the significance of wise men coming “from the east” is that God is finally bringing harmony to what was broken all the way back in the beginning.

-Matthew writes this Gospel to demonstrate the way Jesus fulfills all of God’s promises, hence so much quoting of the OT here.

-“Star-led wizards” (Douglas Sean O’Donnell), from the east (where the enemies of God’s people are) who are coming to worship the king of the Jews. That’s a reversal of fortunes from what had happened to the Jews! God’s way of saying that even these wizards can worship the one true God.

-Why did they come to Jerusalem? Apparently they knew some of the OT promises, but not all of them, so they came to the capital of Israel

-Contrast the response of these wizards with the response of the chief priests and scribes.

-Religious and political leaders of the day, they had the right answer, but what did they do with it? Nothing. 

-Friends, this is one of my biggest concerns with our world today is ambivalence to the realities of Jesus. I could understand Herod’s response of anger because Jesus means everything changes, what I don’t understand is not caring, and my concern in the church is our hearts aren’t led to worship when we think of Jesus, we check a box that we go to church, or we’re here because our parents made us, but it doesn’t actually affect us. If Jesus came and lived on earth (which he did) then everything in our lives has to change.

-C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. Something about us has to change, which is true for these Wizard/magicians

-Something different about this star unlike a normal star that we see in the sky: sounds more like the fire that led the Israelites in their wilderness wanderings, something supernatural that God used to guide these people.

-Just as we don’t know much about Joseph, we don’t know much about these guys, but we know they were wealthy, and that they were obedient, they responded with worship. 

-Gifts were kingly gifts! Much better than the diapers and blankets babies get today! Not only did these guys understand the stars, they also understood dreams, and when they left they didn’t go back to Jerusalem.

-Just as we saw last week with Joseph’s obedience to the first angel appearing in a dream, same thing here when an angel appears to him in a dream. It seems that he woke up as soon as the dream was done and fled!

-Don’t miss the humanity of this: left home, vocation, extended friends and family, become refugees to save his adopted son. And how do you think they paid for this move? Most likely with the gifts from these wizards.

-Even when it seems like a powerful ruler can thwart God’s plans, he can’t. (Psalm 2) Nations rage and people’s plot against God and His anointed, but God laughs.

  • An Unrighteous Dude (16-18)

-Did you notice how many times Herod was called a king: vs. 1, 3, 9, contrasted with the king of the Jews

-Herod was a vindictive and jealous man. Killed wives who crossed him, sons who crossed him, as well as any enemies he didn’t like. Was referred to as “The Great” but that was just due to his building programs. Rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem (where Jesus would preach from)

-Look at vs. 3 “Deeply disturbed” better translated as “greatly agitated” or “in turmoil” how would “all Jerusalem” be bothered by this?

-2 proposals: leaders of Jerusalem, or people would be terrified that Herod would go into a rage and kill someone (which he does)

-Herod’s response should have been to actually do what he tells the Magi he’ll do: worship. But that’s not what he does, he responds differently to Jesus: (vs. 16)

-The irony is if Herod was the true king of the Jews, what he should have done was searched the Scriptures and obeyed. See Herod wasn’t even a Jew, so if someone was born who was the in the correct lineage they would have a legitimate claim to the throne – more than Herod would, which is why he flies into a rage, he’s livid!

-So he does exactly what he’s done before – kills any and all potential threats to his power, in this case all boys 2 and younger. Just imagine the implications of that: a city where the little boys who used to run around and play in the streets are gone. Boys ripped from their mother’s arms to be killed.

-Once again, I want to point out that you can often tell who the enemy of God is by how they treat the youngest of us, because God is on the side of most vulnerable, which is who we as Christians should care for as well. Just think of God’s commands throughout the Bible: to not pursue power and wealth, but to look to how we can care for others, literally the opposite of what we see here in Herod! 

-What’s most ironic to me is that he’s known as Herod the Great, and what does Jesus tell us greatness looks like? Greatness is service in God’s kingdom. If you want to be truly great, it means humbling yourself and looking to serve others instead of looking to get from others and how you can be served.

-Because Herod isn’t living as God intends people to live, the response for this part of the Christmas story is weeping and mourning (quoting from Jer. 31:15)

-I understand some of you may feel this way as we approach Christmas. It’s hard to be joyful when you’re weeping and mourning, and part of the reason we have an Advent season is to remember that in between Jesus’s 2 comings is waiting and longing and mourning. Friends, the Lord knows! Trust in the Lord, He hears every cry and knows the mourning that you’re walking through, so bring it to Him

-One of my favorite components of Christmas is it’s the 1 time of year where we listen to music in a minor (sad) key. It’s (somewhat ironically) the 1 time of year where it’s ok for us to admit we’re not ok.

-I often think of Psalm 23 when I’m struggling: “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me. Your rod and your staff they comfort me.” Even when we’re in the depths of despair, God is with us. His rod and staff both protect us from enemies and help to guide us on the right path, but that means we have to trust in His plans for each step along the way.

  • God’s Plan (19-23)

-What happened to Herod the Great? He died. How great is a king who ends us as a footnote in the introduction to the story about the true, everlasting King of kings?

-Herod died in 4 BC, and his kingdom was split among 3 sons and his sister (another Herod Antipas who was around during Jesus’s ministry)

-An angel appears to Joseph again and tells him it’s time to move back to Israel, and once again Joseph immediately obeys, but settles in a different place than before: Nazareth.

-We know from Luke 1 and 2 that this was where Mary and Joseph were originally from, but there’s no OT passage that Matthew quotes here, but what he’s most likely doing is pointing out how despised Jesus would be, he’s taking the sum total of how the prophets talked about the coming Messiah and summarized it as “being from Nazareth.” Nazareth was scorned even by people who lived nearby. No one would willingly claim that as their hometown, kind of like when people show up to churches in MN wearing Packers jerseys, they’re asking for the scorn of the people!

-Remember, God’s plan has always been to take seemingly insignificant people and places and use them for His ultimate purposes. He didn’t choose Israel because it was the biggest and best, He chose them in spite of all their external attributes, and it’s the same for us. God chooses what the world despises and then transforms and glorifies it to magnify His name.

-Think about the Christmas Carol – Scrooge is the one who seems to have everything the world wants: money and power. Yet how does that work out for him at the beginning of the book? Not so well! In this story, Herod is the one who has everything the world wants: money and power. And how did that work out for him? 2 words: Herod died. And despite trying to stamp out his opposition, the king that he was aiming to kill is still alive today.

-What we see in the midst of this entire story is the way God’s perfect plan can’t be stopped. Even when it seems like evil has the upper hand, even when it feels like everything is failing around us, God is still at work. Think of what Joseph says to his brothers at the end of Genesis: What you meant for evil God meant for good. What Herod meant for evil, God used for good, the ultimate good or providing salvation for the world!

-Eucatastrophe – a good catastrophe, everything sad will come untrue. God takes even what is intended as evil and somehow and some way uses it as good in our lives, but only if we’re trusting in and walking with Him. Friends, this reminds us that even when it feels like our lives are falling down around us, keep walking with God, because it’s worth it receive God’s gifts at the end.

-We’ve seen 3 responses to Jesus in this story, and as we come to the end the question in front of us is: which response do you have to Jesus? Anger, apathy, or adoration

-Anger: some people are legitimately angry about Jesus, but that isn’t the trend today. You saw that quite a bit in the early 2000s with the so called “4 horsemen of the new atheism” but even they are far less angry now than they used to be! In fact, one of them (Richard Dawkins) has recently come out saying he is a cultural Christian! He said he appreciates much more of what Christianity has brought to the world than any other religion, and he enjoys the cultural trappings, particularly at Christmas and Easter (hymns, decorations, etc)

-And maybe you’re not angry at Jesus broadly, but are there areas in your life where you harbor a “Herod spirit” against Him? This is more than being a Scrooge, this is an area where you’re not completely trusting that He cares about you and you’re angry at Him for not fitting within your plans, refusing to realize that His plans are far better than yours. Tim Keller. Keep praying!

-Apathy: this is knowing about Jesus but not letting it change anything about you, and I think this is the most dangerous place to be. You can see this with people who have almost been inoculated against Jesus – they know about Him, they’ve read the Bible, but it hasn’t actually changed anything about their lives. They view Jesus as an optional add on instead of the essential component to everything in life.

-Think of the difference between the Operating System and the Apps on your phone. Without the OS your phone is an expensive paperweight, AND without your OS the apps are pointless. Similarly in our life, without Jesus, everything else in life is pointless. It can seem enjoyable, but that joy only goes so far and eventually you’ll need to chase something else to find that same hit of joy. With Jesus, He literally changes everything about us so that we can finally make sense of our lives, of our joys and sorrows, and help us understand what our lives should look like:

-Adoration: this is what Jesus wants from everyone, and will someday demand from everyone when He comes back again. When we understand who Jesus is, this is the only way we can respond! He helps us to appreciate the gifts He’s given us (food, drink, books, nature, friends, family), He helps us understand that those things aren’t ends in themselves, but they help us to understand His love and care for us.

-There can be a tendency this time of year to shame people for enjoying the sentimentality of Christmas with the reminder that “Jesus is the reason for the season” and while that’s true, the way we experience Jesus today is through the gifts He’s given us, so friends, this Christmas season it’s ok to be sentimental and enjoy all the experiences that come with Christmas, but view those as opportunities to adore Jesus because He came to earth for you!

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by mikethestrand on December 15, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 15, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/12/15/herod-did-you-know-sermon-manscript/

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