Text: Matthew 1, Luke 1-2 | Listen to Message Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room Woven into the glad tidings and great joy of The Christmas Story are the mini-narratives of three individuals who were not ready to receive Jesus as King. 1. King Herod missed Jesus because he didn’t want to lose power or control (Matthew 2:1-18). Herod had spent his entire life strategically consolidating power through a series of marriages, murders, building projects, and wars. A practicing Jew, he’d convinced the Roman Senate to recognize him as the undisputed “king of the Jews” – and a client-king of Caesar....
Text: Luke 20:27-44 | Listen to Message Christian Heretics More and more nationwide research confirms the disturbing data behind the shocking (infuriating?) headline: “Survey Finds Most American Christians Are Actually Heretics” (The Federalist, October 10, 2016). For example, of self-described Evangelical Protestants, . . . Over 1/3 don’t read the Bible even once a week. Only 55% believe the Bible is the Word of God and should generally be interpreted literally. 8% don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. 38% believe humans evolved rather than being created by a direct act of God as Genesis describes. 28% strongly agree...
Text: Luke 20:9-26 | Listen to Message Checking Our Addiction to Power One of the most stunning claims in the Bible is that the Jewish religious leaders knew Jesus was the Messiah . . . and they killed him anyway. Let that sink in: God’s people had waited more than forty generations for their Savior-King, and when he came their spiritual guides concluded that he was not the kind of Messiah they wanted, and they had him murdered. Why? Because they loved power and control more than they loved God. This is what Jesus shows us in “The Parable of The...
Text: Luke 19:45-20:7 | Listen to Message Jesus’ Ultimate Authority Jesus approaches Jerusalem and makes his way directly toward the Temple. The Temple was the center of Jewish worship at the time. It was where the presence of God dwelt, where they had access to God, it was where they made sacrifices to God, and it was where a high priest mediated between God and the people. Instead of finding the Temple a place for reflection, prayer, teaching, and worship, Jesus found the outer courts filled with merchants selling animals for sacrifices and exchanging foreign money for the temple tax. The...
Text: Luke 19:28-44 | Listen to Message When Jesus Isn’t What You Wanted When Jesus went up to Jerusalem for what would prove to be his final Passover, the crowds were overcome with ecstasy and exuberant expectation. Their Messiah was coming at long last to deliver them! “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” and “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” they shouted. They were right. The King was coming in the name of the Lord. And there would be peace and glory in heaven because of what Jesus was about to do. But...
Text: Luke 19:11-27 | Listen to Message Work for An Eternal ROI In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the familiar “Parable of The Talents.” When we hear the word “talent” we think of a special ability or a natural endowment, but in those days a “talent” was a monetary unit. Jesus’ parable actually connects the two ideas: different servants received different allotments of money from their master, illustrating the fact that we all receive different gifts/abilities from the Lord. In that parable, Jesus’ point seems to be that each person ought to focus on making the most of his/her unique gifts, abilities,...
For the second time in just 35 days, our hearts are filled with a mix of grief, anger, and fear, because of an unprecedented mass shooting in our nation. On October 1st, a gunman smashed out the windows of his 32nd floor hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and opened fire on a country music festival below. 58 people were killed and an additional 546 were injured, making this the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. On November 5th, another gunman walked into the First Baptist Church of rural Sutherland Springs, Texas and shot up the...
Text: Luke 19:1-10 | Listen to Message Who Sought Whom? The story of Zacchaeus is so familiar it even has its own children’s song! Most of us have heard about the wee little man who climbed up in a sycamore tree to see Jesus. But do we really know the point of the story? In this story about Zacchaeus, Luke wants us to see two things: what happens when we really meet Jesus and how it is that anyone meets him in the first place. On the surface – and initially – it looks like Zacchaeus sought out Jesus. Though he...
Text: Romans 1:16-17 | Listen to Message Why The Reformation [Still] Matters 500 years ago, a 33 year-old German monk left his monastery, walked across the town of Wittenberg, and nailed a poster to the door of Castle Church. Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” – as they came to be known – were an invitation to public theological debate, primarily with one Johann Tetzel. Luther was challenging Tetzel over the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences to raise funds to renovate St. Peter’s Basilica back in Rome. That was October 31, 1517. The Protestant Reformation was born. And the rest, as they...
Text: Luke 18:35-43 | Listen to Message Eyes of Faith “God, if you show me __________________, then I will …” Do you ever find yourself thinking this way – as if you need to see in order to believe? Do you ever put conditions or prerequisites on your faith? This is the way people were in Jesus’ day: “Lord, show us a sign and then we’ll believe that you’re the Messiah.” One of his own disciples, Thomas, went so far as to say he would never believe in the Resurrection unless or until he saw the risen Jesus with his own...