August 20 Sermon: I Was Glad
We all have places that we love to go. Special destinations that mean so much to us or maybe it is someplace that you desire to travel to but you haven’t made it there yet. These might be places that have significant meaning to you or it might be places that have nostalgic meaning to you. I’m guessing you can think back to a place from your childhood that was a super big deal for you to go to and you have strong memories connected to these places. I don’t remember how the conversation came about but just this past Friday Kris and I were chatting in her office and we reminisced about places we ate at when we were young. Strong feelings of nostalgia sprung up in both of us as we recalled going out to eat at Godfather’s Pizza at the corner of Minnesota Avenue and 33rd street in Sioux Falls.
August 13 Sermon: Not to Us
Back when we were going through the Ten Commandments earlier this year I drew out several times how the Ten Commandments and really, Genesis and Exodus, spend a lot of time pointing out the idea of a distinction between the creature and the creator. For example, in the first commandment we saw that God is the creator and he alone is worthy of worship. In the pagan worship of their neighbors there was not a distinction between the creator and his creation. In paganism, all is one, there is no God who is outside of creation but everything is summed into the one.
July 30 Sermon: My Salvation, My God
We’ve all desired something and desired it deeply. These longings that we have can often end up consuming our thoughts and become our focus. Often this goes beyond just what we think about, these desires can often end up directing our lives, even without us even realizing it. It frames not only how we think but it can cause us to act in different ways. These yearnings often also shape our loves and the path of our lives soon follow. This is why it is so important that we are mindful of our thoughts. This has been true in any time but as I was pondering this concept the past week I was once again drawn to the affluence of our time.
Dwell in the World: Psalm 12
We find ourselves in Psalm 12 and once again we see the psalmist feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world around him. Right away with the first three words here in this chapter we have David asking for rescue from Yahweh. In this instance it isn’t David calling out to have his health restored in a sickness and he isn’t asking to be saved from a military attack or coup. Instead, the concern that we see being expressed here is that the godly one is gone. David says that those who are faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
July 23 Sermon: Lead Me to the Rock
There are times in life where we just feel like giving up and like there is no point in us continuing with the path that we are on. Whether these are substantial, life altering decisions or frustrations we have building up over small things. We have all gotten to the point in our lives where we want to give up or change course. We have seen situations like this in another psalm that we have looked at this summer. In that psalm we saw that the writer just wanted to give up and die but God provided rescue and sustained the psalmist that he might bring glory to his name.
Dwell in the Word: Psalm 11
We come to the eleventh chapter of the Psalter and we have another psalm that is attributed to David. Here we see some strong imagery about how David understands his relationship to Yahweh.
As we have seen many times so far in the first ten chapters and will continue to see as we move through the Psalms, the occasion for the writing of this psalm is a time of turmoil and where the psalmist is under attack of some kind. And we start out here without any indication that anything is wrong.
July 16 Sermon: Surely
Let’s be honest. As you read through the pages of scripture there are many times where you come upon passages that can make us feel uncomfortable. And this is only naturally because there are difficult passages in scripture that speak of things that can come up against many of our modern sensibilities. We live in a time that is very different than the one in which the Bible was written. Things were naturally very different and even some simple customs might seem off to us just because it is nothing like anything we would ever even imagine doing. There are also times where the way sin has been softened in our culture even makes us as Christians balk at some of the bold statements about what is sinful.
July 9 Sermon: Not Even One
There is a spiritual and theological truth that is very easy to objectively verify. That truth is the doctrine of original sin. You see it everywhere when you observe the world around you. Sin and depravity are everywhere. You can observe it in the big problems of the world when we see moral decay all over the place. You can see it in the issues that happen closer to home as well with a plethora of examples we could list of things that show us the world is broken. We can see it in our homes when we have struggles and conflict within our own families but at the end of the day, we must also acknowledge that the greatest proof of this depravity is the sin that we know is in our own hearts.
Dwell in the Word: Psalm 10
We come to Psalm 10 and we see a question that many of us have most likely asked. God, why do you seem so far away and why are you hiding yourself in the worst of times? You may have asked this question in time of personal difficulty or when someone you know was experiencing hardship. You may have also had this question come to mind when there was something going on in the world that you were deeply troubled about. This is something all of us have considered and it is a blessing that we see these things talked about openly in the pages of scripture because there is an answer to these thoughts that can plague our minds.
June 18 Sermon: I Love the Lord
There are many different types of prayers that we find in the book of Psalms. As I mentioned last week, we see everything from prayers of praise to prayers calling for harsh judgment on the enemies of God. This week we are looking at Psalm 43 and it is a prayer crying out for deliverance. No matter how well off your life has been, my guess is that at some point you have prayed to God for deliverance from a situation. It could be something as simple as praying that God help you through a stressful situation or it could have been a prayer asking to be delivered from the most intense circumstances of your life. Regardless, deliverance is something I think that we have all prayed for at some point in our life. And in those type of situations, we have all probably been to a point where we have felt like we just wanted to give up.
June 11 Sermon: Send Out Your Light
There are many different types of prayers that we find in the book of Psalms. As I mentioned last week, we see everything from prayers of praise to prayers calling for harsh judgment on the enemies of God. This week we are looking at Psalm 43 and it is a prayer crying out for deliverance. No matter how well off your life has been, my guess is that at some point you have prayed to God for deliverance from a situation. It could be something as simple as praying that God help you through a stressful situation or it could have been a prayer asking to be delivered from the most intense circumstances of your life. Regardless, deliverance is something I think that we have all prayed for at some point in our life. And in those type of situations, we have all probably been to a point where we have felt like we just wanted to give up.
June 4 Sermon: Who Is Like the Lord?
There are some things that we find really hard to describe. The world is packed with all kind of things that can leave us speechless. We could struggle to find words because what we have witnessed is incredible and you struggle to believe what you have seen. Maybe it is because you feel that you can’t do what you have seen justice and so you stumble over your words in an attempt to plumb the depths of your vocabulary to get the right words. Or perhaps you can’t find the words because you and the person you are trying to explain it to don’t have categories to frame what you are trying to explain, and you just can’t get on the same page to really describe it well.