Only God's Love is Steadfast

I am always amazed and blessed that God gives me the opportunity to share his Word. Here is my sermon from May 20, 2012. The scripture passage is 2 Samuel 10 and read from the ESV.

God Spares the Guilty

I once again had the privilege of preaching at Faith Community Reformed Church this past Sunday. The sermon is based on 1 Samuel 24 where David spares King Saul's life.

One of the important lessons that I learned was the importance of having water handy. My mouth was dry and a had a bit of a tickle in my throat.

God is King, God is Sovereign, God is Calling Us to Obedience

I had the honor of preaching this past Sunday at my church. The sermon was based upon 1 Samuel 3 and here is the video. One word of caution is that I had to boost the volume and there is a very loud cough at about the 35 second mark.

Normally I have been posting my sermons on Vimeo but because of their upload limits I had to post this one on Youtube. I will probably be migrating all of my sermons to Youtube in the future.

The sadness found in the rest of the story

I had a very surprising response to writing my sermon for last week. Balaam was the first non-sympathetic character to be the main focus for me. I've done sermons on other characters that were acting badly before but overall these characters still remain sympathetic. For example Jacob cheats his brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing but is still the father of the nation Israel. He does some bad things but is still considered a man of God. King David commits adultery, murder, lies and does a bunch of things that make him a real scoundrel. But he is still considered a man after God's own heart. 

Balaam on the other hand has one positive story about him but overall is a bad guy. The problem that I ran into is my experience with Balaam had always been that one positive story. Who doesn't love a story with a talking donkey? 

I had no idea of the rest of the story. 

It turns out that Balaam ended up getting killed while fighting against the Israelites after he taught King Balak and the Moabites how to lead the Israelites astray through sexual immorality and idol worship.

That one positive story makes me want to like Balaam. I really want Balaam to turn out good. I would love to sit down and hear him talk about his experience with the donkey. It would be like being able to talk with one of the Pevensie children. But from the way that Balaam is treated in other scripture references, it seems that it is a long shot that he died having a right relationship with God.

And that saddens me greatly.

It also makes me realize the importance of sharing the Good News of the forgiveness found in Christ. Without that forgiveness we are all lost. We have all done things that we know are wrong and those things separate us from God. The Apostle Paul does a great job of pointing out this fact in the first nine chapters of Romans. His argument can be summed up in two verses:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

After this nine chapter argument Paul states:

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved...For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!"

We as the church have as our number one priority–over everything else that we do as a church–is to share that good news with others. Yes we should be helping those with physical or mental needs but if we don't share the Gospel then we are seriously neglecting the greatest need of all of humankind. 

Intentions Speak Louder Than Actions

The story of Balaam and his talking donkey is a very interesting and cautionary tale. One of the biggest lessons that we can learn from it is that why we do things is just as important as doing the right thing.

Sermon on Balaam and his talking donkey given at Faith Community Reformed Church on 11/20/2011. It is based on Numbers 22:22-35 and I read from the ESV.

Uncle Andrew, Mr. Ed and Balaam

The scripture passage for this Sunday is Numbers 22:22-35 which is the story of Balaam and his talking donkey. I find the story of Balaam to be an interesting one and the talking donkey may be the most interesting part. But whenever I think of Balaam having a conversation with a donkey I think of two things. The first is the old TV show "Mr. Ed."

I loved watching reruns of Mr. Ed growing up but of course that was back in the days before we had cable and there weren't many mid-afternoon TV options if you weren't much of a Judge Wapner fan. It never struck me as odd to have a talking horse as a TV star and I was always amazed at how they were able to match the speaking and the movement of Mr. Ed's mouth.

The second thing that I always think of is C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia."

In the book "The Magician's Nephew" we have the story of two children, Digory and Polly, as they experience the creation of Narnia. It is a great book that was the sixth book of the series to be published but is the first book in chronological order. In the book we meet Digory's Uncle Andrew. Uncle Andrew is an unsympathetic man that is very selfish. Through the use of magic rings the kids, Uncle Andrew, a cabbie named Frank, his horse Strawberry and Queen Jadis end up in Narnia just as Aslan is creating the land.

Aslan gives certain animals the ability to speak:

"Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts be divine waters."

It was of course the Lion's voice. The children had long felt sure that he could speak: yet it was a lovely and terrible shock when he did."*

And that was a fairly normal response to the first encounter with speaking animals by those that were "Friends of Narnia." Uncle Andrew, on the other hand, had a very different response:

And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's Song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, "Narnia awake," he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings.**

Balaam's story is far different than an episode of "Mr. Ed" or even anything that happened in Narnia. It is a story of intrigue and deception. It is a story of blindness and sight. It is a story that I am really looking forward to exploring on Sunday morning.***

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* C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, (New York: HarperCollins, 1983), 138-9.

** C.S. Lewis, 149-50

***Video of the sermon should be posted on Monday, November 21, 2011 or Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Our Golden Calves

It's easy to condemn the Israelite people for telling Aaron in Exodus 32 to make them a god to worship but we do the same thing. The difficulty in identifying our false gods is that we are not always obvious about it.

This is a sermon given on 10/16/2011 at Faith Community Reformed Church. It is part of a series journeying through the Old Testament. The scripture passage is Exodus 32:1-20 and read from the English Standard Version.