There are a whole lot of Christians for whom the inerrancy of Scripture is the foundation of faith. I’m not one of those Christians. Trust me, here…The Bible is amazingly powerful, sacred and fascinating. I live with a text every week. I’ve been preaching it pretty much non-stop for 25 years! Here’s the thing, though: I worship God, not the book.
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So, as we are getting started this morning, let’s remember a few things. First, we have four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Of those four Gospels, only two contain stories regarding Jesus’ birth: Matthew and Luke. The other two begin with Jesus as an adult. The two Gospels which do tell birth stories tell very different stories.
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I’d like to begin this morning by thanking you for being in church on the Sunday after Christmas.
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So, a few weeks ago, we spent time with the prophet, Jeremiah, and his vision of a new covenant, a new relationship between God and the people.
Read MoreHave you bought a car lately? We all know the drill right? You walk onto the lot and some secret alarm goes off inside the dealership: “Attention sales people! There is a customer in the lot!”
Read MoreI’ve learned a lot from my dog over the last eight years.
Read MoreOur text this morning is the classic example of a story that we learned as children but ought to revisit as adults.
Read MoreOne of the most profound experiences of being a parent of multiple children is that they are just, plain different.
Read MoreThis text challenged me this week. It challenged me to look at it and then look at it again. It challenged me to rethink not only what this story is about but what God is about, too.
Read MoreSo, before we think about anything else this morning, I want you to remember what it was like to learn to ride a bike. Do you remember that day?
Read MoreSo, in the last two weeks, we’ve pondered two essential features of what it means to walk in faith in this world: perspective and presence. Faith has the potential to help me to see things differently, to not just default to what I think is everyone else’s point of view or default to the point of view that I’m told any rational person would take. I look…and then I look again. At the same time, faith doesn’t drive me to focus on some other world, whether heaven or hell. Rather, authentic faith brings me fully into the present moment, not to ride the emotional roller coaster that life can easily become, but to stand in the present and see the real choices that are mine to make. The bottom line is that faith should lead us to live differently, to play by a different set of rules.
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