Strange Wisdom

Reading: Mark 2:1-12; James 5:13-20

This week's sermon is our last on the book of James for now. If you're familiar with James you'll know that the last section includes the verses about prayer and anointing for healing, so our sermon was focused on leading into a service of prayer and healing. That in turn led into a service of communion, so the sermon for this week looks a little disjointed because it was designed for this particular service.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Preached on September 27, 2009 at PLWC.

The Ancient Science

Reading: Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

We've come to our fourth and next-to-last sermon on the book of James. This week we are seeing a reminder of the contrast between wisdom and folly. There really are two very different paths we can walk, and either one requires a choice.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gifts we covered this week: the gift of a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

Preached on September 20, 2009 at PLWC.

From Assyria to Rome

We recently finished studying the book of Daniel in our Sunday evening Bible study. Daniel is a book that covers a lot of history in a roundabout way, and much of that history is probably unknown to a lot of Christians. The Old Testament story ends with the Jews returning from exile under Persian rule, but then when you get to the New Testament the Romans are in charge. Daniel's prophecies have a lot to do with that in-between time, a period of about four centuries I've often heard called the "400 Years of Silence," which is a completely ridiculous name. A lot happened in those 400 years, and there's a growing realization these days that many of the events in those 400 years were direct causes for what the world was like in Jesus' time.

In other words, those centuries we neatly skip over were very important, almost as though we were to study American history and just skip the period of 1850-1875.

At any rate, I put together a very general timeline as a visual aid to help people see some of the flow of the events leading up to and following the Babylonian exile. No, I didn't get every single important date on there, and yes, some scholars might argue that some dates should be nudged a year or two one way or the other, but the point is to give people a general idea of how things happened, broadly speaking, during those very important years.

Click here to view this timeline (.pdf).

Something We Already Know

Reading: Proverbs 8:1-13; James 3:1-12

We're continuing through James, and this week we came to the famous passage about tongues (the tongue in your mouth, not the gift of tongues). He's telling us what we already know, but, like a swift kick in the butt, sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

Also, I've updated our discussion of spiritual gifts to include the gifts we covered this week: the gifts of tongues (spiritual tongues, not the one in your mouth) and interpretation of tongues. Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus, or click here to read the blog post introducing it.

Preached on September 13, 2009 at PLWC.

Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus

The topic of Spiritual gifts is one fraught with bugaboos. One the one hand, there are those who misuse and misconstrue the gifts to the point that they focus on them to the exclusion of the richness of the gospel. On the other hand, there are those who seize up at the merest mention of the gifts, because we certainly wouldn't want to admit that there might be a part of our religion that is out of our control or, God forbid, not respectable. There are many other hands in between these two hands, of course, and so many Christians simply throw all those hands in the air and ignore the entire topic in frustration.

My thinking on the gifts is that one sermon or one Sunday school class simply is not enough to do it justice. It is not enough to talk about the topic broadly, yet examining each gift in detail would be cumbersome to do all at once. We are therefore spending several minutes each Sunday over the course of a couple of months to talk about one or two gifts at a time, with the goal being that we will all understand them better, recognize them in ourselves or others, and put them to better use for the service of God's kingdom.

I have chosen Reversal as our overarching theme. Part of some people's consternation -- mine, at least, if no one else's -- has been that these gifts seem rather random. We can't deny the biblical truth of them, but why are they really there? They're a bit weird and unpredictable, so why does God expect us to bother with them? Part of the explanation, I think, is that these gifts represent a reversal of the effects of sin; that is, they are glimpses or foreshadows of what life will be like in God's consummated kingdom, and they therefore also represent a reversal of sorts to what life was like before the fall of humanity. I have no idea if anyone else has ever interpreted the gifts in this way, nor am I going to insist that this is strictly grounded in the Bible, but I do find it a helpful way of thinking of the gifts as a whole.

I will add a gift or two each week, and it's worth noting that these are effectively ripped out of their context in our worship services, so there may be some abrupt transitions here and there. Also, as a guide for my own thinking I have been using The New Testament Gifts of the Holy Spirit by Dr. Kenneth Cain Kinghorn, a former member of the faculty at Asbury Seminary. It is one of the more practical and well-balanced treatments of the gifts that I have seen, and I am indebted to him for it.

Click here to view Reversal: Spiritual Gifts Focus.

Four Sermons: "Some Wiggle Room, Please," "Stand Fearlessly," "Debating Wisdom," and "Favorites"

Well, I think this may be a record. I'm four sermons behind, and I apologize. Part of my procrastination came from a parallel series we're doing; we've been taking a few minutes in each worship service to focus on a few spiritual gifts so we can better recognize them and put them into action, and I haven't yet gotten those mini-sermons formatted to the point that I can post them. They'll be posted in the next few days, though.

In the last month we finished hearing the words of Ephesians and began reading from the book of James.

"Some Wiggle Room, Please"
Preached on August 16, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Ephesians 5:8-20
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Stand Fearlessly"
Preached on August 23, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Debating Wisdom"
Preached on August 30, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Proverbs 1:20-33; James 1:17-27
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.

"Favorites"
Preached on September 6, 2009 at PLWC.
Reading: Deuteronomy 10:12-22; James 2:1-17
Click here to view a manuscript of this sermon.