This week started off for me with a question from the Monday morning women's Bible study. It's always a little unsettling to hear, "Can you come here? We have a question." But it was a good question, and we had a good time discussing it. The question had to do with the Nicene Creed, which we recently recited together on a Sunday morning. Our church does not have a long his...

Note: to help with my own preparation for this Sunday's sermon, I decided to write out the basic points in the shortest, simplest way I could think of. That turned out to be a children's story. Here it is, as this week's article: Once upon a time, there was a good king. His name was Josiah. One cool thing about Josiah is that he was only eight years old when he became k...

For a while now, I've been chewing on the idea of incorporating Psalm singing into our worship services. I've introduced a couple of Psalms settings by singing them as we gather before the service starts. You might be wondering, why sing Psalms? While it is practiced in some churchesand there are even some churches that only sing Psalmsmost churches today do not regularly ...

We can't know what's in someone's heart." I read that all-too-familiar sentiment expressed on social media recently. A Christian ministry had released a video that attacked some other Christian leaders, associating them with demonic opposition to the gospel. Many people rightly rebuked those responsible and called for an apology. Predictably, though, someone came to their ...

When we start something new, such as a new marriage or a new job or even a new church, there is typically a "honeymoon" phase. The honeymoon phase is when we're excited about new opportunities and optimistic about the future. Everything seems perfect. Then the honeymoon ends. We find out that we're all sinners. Our relationships with others don't have to grow very deep be...

Well, Pastor Mike recently finished a sermon series from the book of Ecclesiastes, and while he's on vacation, I'm planning to preach on a couple of passages from the book of Jeremiah. These books have reputation for being the most depressing parts of the Bible, (along with Lamentations, of course). Ecclesiastes points to the futility of life apart from God, and Jeremiah p...

You can probably quote this sentence from the US Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." An "inalienable right" is a right that can't be taken away. And yet, as history as s...

Jeremiah is an anti-Moses. There are many parallels between Moses and Jeremiah. For example, they both responded to God's call with reluctance, saying they were unable to speak well. Jeremiah's preaching also draws heavily on Moses's preaching in the book of Deuteronomy. But, Jeremiah is a kind of "anti-Moses." Whereas Moses led the people out of captivity in Egypt to the ...

This Sunday, we will begin a new sermon series on the book of Obadiah. We will also be finishing our sermon series on Obadiah this Sunday. Obadiah is the shortest book in the Old Testament, with only 21 verses. But even though it's short enough to cover in one sermon, Obadiah deals with a big issue: sinful pride. I attempted to begin-and-end this sermon series several wee...

Imagine that you're a visiting a new Bible study group. You're introduced to the group, there's some small-talk, then what seems like hours of prayer requests for people you don't know anything about followed by a brief opening prayer. And then the group leader says, "Open your Bibles to the book of Obadiah." Before you were nervous; now you're terrified. Where is the boo...