Video of Sermon

I am going to shock and awe you with two posts in one day!  Here is the video link of me preaching my miracle sermon yesterday.  It was at my field work church at Hope Lutheran in Highland, IL.  Enjoy!

Parable Sermon

Greetings.  I am just trying to survive this week of finals. I am already running on little sleep, but I will make it.  Yesterday was a good day.  I preached my miracle sermon in church and it went very well.  Mom and Dad were able to make it down from Decatur to hear me preach.  Everyone gave me positive feed back and for the most part really liked the football tie in to the sermon.  I thank the good Lord that He was with me and that it went so well.  I video taped it, and my friend who works in IT is converting it into a easy accessible file.  As soon as it is done, I will post a link on here so you are able to see the video of me preaching this sermon.  I got my Parable sermon back with a good grade so I decided I would share it with you guys. This is my post for today.  Enjoy!

Text: Luke 18:1-8

Focus: Luke 18:8 “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Title: Waiting around! 

            In three weeks we will be celebrating Veterans Day! A day that we set aside to remember all the brave men and women who have fought and still fight to defend their country.   However today I want to stop and think about the families of all these soldiers.  The wives, husbands, children, parents, siblings, and friends who have all had to say goodbye to their loved ones, not knowing if they will ever see him or her again.  And as they go back to their normal daily lives; right back to the rush of life, their loved one who is gone is always on the back of their mind.  They constantly miss him or her, worrying, fearing they may not come back, and they just long for him or her to come back to them.  The longer they wait, not receiving any letters or calls, not hearing any kind of news, just hoping everything is OK, the harder it seems.  There is nothing they can do but hope while they wait. 

            Even if you do not have a loved one in the military, we all know what it’s like to wait.  Spending two months away from my girlfriend while she did her clinical, I was very impatient while I waited to see her again.  I think she actually enjoyed the break away from me, but I hated being apart from her.  We all have experienced some point in our lives where we had no choice but to wait for something. 

            Our text for today is a parable that comes immediately at the beginning of chapter 18 in Luke.  Jesus is talking to His disciples.  However, before we look at the parable, we need to step back to the end of chapter 17 where Jesus’ conversation with His disciples begins.  Here at the end of 17, Jesus is explaining to them about when the kingdom of God will come.  With this he lets them know that terrible and tough times lie ahead of them when the Son of Man will no longer be with them.  He compares the day when the Son of Man will be revealed to the horrible times of Noah.  When the world was so gruesome and so sinful that God killed everyone and everything other than Noah and the animals on the ark in the flood.  He also compares it to the time of Lot, when the city of Sodom was so unbearable to God, He destroyed it with fire and sulfur from Heaven.  These extremes of disastrous times are what Jesus compares the day when the Son of Man will be revealed to.  These are the days that lie ahead of the disciples and all followers of Jesus as the end times approach.  Then, immediately after Jesus forewarns them of the days when they will desire to see the Son of Man, He tells them this parable.  You see this is important because some people take this parable of the persistent widow to be all about persistent prayer, and it is.  I mean look at verse 1, “and he told them a parable to the effect that they always ought to pray and not lose heart.”  Luke tells us this parable is about prayer.  However, the generic “meaning” of this parable that most people get out of it is, “If I really, really, really want something, I just have to keep praying for it and God will give it to me.”  This is not what this parable is about.  This parable is the silver lining to the alarming conversation they just finished with Jesus.  Jesus tells them you are going to see some of the worst times ahead of you, but be like this persistent widow.  Be like her in the sense that as she waits for the judge’s decision, she doesn’t give up.  She keeps going to Him and asking Him to help her; she is persistent in asking the judge to give her justice.  As the world becomes this dark and immoral place, we need to be persistent in asking for justice.  Except we do not turn to a secular judge, we turn to the Lord, the one true Judge.  Verse one tells us this parable is to teach the disciples to pray and not lose heart, and then in verse 7 and 8 he says, “And will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night? Will He delay over them long? I tell you He will give justice to them speedily.”  We are to be like the widow, persistently asking for God’s judgment to come and take us out of this present evil age we live in, we need to be the ones crying out day and night knowing He will not delay over us long, but will bring His justice speedily. 

            You see we are the family of our loved one who has left for war.  Jesus came to Earth, to live a life of temptation, die on the cross, rise from the dead, and ascend back to Heaven.  He ascended to Heaven to sit on His throne as victorious King winner of the war.  But He left us behind, to live our daily lives, to go about the busyness of life, longing for Him to come back to us, wondering when He will come back for us.  And at times it seems there is nothing we can do but hope while we wait. 

            I want you to imagine a five year old boy, sitting at his desk in his room wearing his favorite, dirty, sweat-stained, Cardinal’s ball cap.  He has on one of the multiple David Freeze jerseys he owns.  There is a huge poster of Freeze over his bed, a Cardinal’s baseball sitting on his desk beside a David Freeze framed baseball card.  This little boy, lives and breathes Cardinal baseball and stands up and cheers every time Freeze walks up to the batter box.  His imagination is filled with one day being just like Freeze playing third base for the Cardinal’s wearing number 23.  And as he sits at his desk, he writes a letter to his favorite athlete.  He signs it, stamps it, and mails it to Mr. Freeze.  And for the next couple weeks, all the boy can think about is getting a letter back from the ball player he looks up to.  As soon as he gets off the bus after school every day he runs to the mailbox to check and see if there is a letter back yet.  And as time passes, day by day there is no letter.  His friends begin to make fun of him for thinking David Freeze would actually take the time to write back such an unimportant kid.  They mock him by telling fake stories about getting letters back from their favorite athletes who they wrote to.  His older brother antagonizes him by sarcastically asking him day after day, “Did you get a letter back yet?”  His parents try to convince him to focus on other things because they do not want to see him get his feelings hurt.  And the longer the boy waits for a response, his hope begins to fade and his fascination with Freeze beings to dwindle. 

            This is what happens to us as we wait for our Lord to come back on that final day when the Son of Man is revealed.  We try to live as faithfully as we can, and stay strong in our faith as we wait and hope for Him.  However, the world makes fun of us for thinking that Jesus would actually care enough about us sinners to come back for us.  Skeptics tell us this “Jesus” doesn’t even exist and we are waiting for an imaginary idol and are wasting our lives on a hopeless dream.  People mock us by sarcastically claiming to be a believer or asking where God is during disasters.  Our friends who are supportive but not religious try to kindly tell us we should focus our attention on other things.  And the longer we wait, our hope begins to dwindle.  We slowly give up hope to the point where we haven’t been to church in two months and don’t even feel guilty.  We realize we haven’t opened our Bibles in a long time.  We even begin to make jokes about our sinful deeds leading us to hell as if eternal condemnation is funny.  We put life, relationships, careers, or hobbies ahead of our faith and before we know it, we aren’t really waiting for Jesus to come back at all because we are just too busy with everything.  In fact if He came back now it would be a burden rather than a blessing because we like our earthly life and aren’t quite ready for it to end yet. 

            But this is the very point Christ is making at the end of verse 8 when he asks the disciples, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?”  Jesus told the disciples you are going to have to wait, and times are going to be extremely difficult, but will you still be waiting for me when I come back?  Like a soldier who finally comes home from war, after all he has been through, and for so long he has waited to just be back with the ones he loves, and he expects to find his wife still faithfully and loyally waiting for him, his children to still love him as a father, his siblings to welcome his back and his parents to be proud of him.  He would be completely distraught if he came home and found his wife remarried because she gave up waiting on him, and his children won’t even call him dad because they have forgotten who he is.  Jesus is going to come back and be revealed as the full glory of God, and He wants to find us faithfully waiting for Him, strong in our faith, still desiring Him and longing for Him.  He is our victorious King who has won the war.  He fought the battle on Calvary on the cross and He won the War on Easter morning when He rose from the dead.  He has been on His throne as our triumphant king this whole time, and on that day He is revealed, He will come to bring His judgment and end the horrific times once and for all, locking the Devil, sin, and death behind the gates of Hell permanently.  But just as this parable ends in question, I ask you today, when this glorious day comes, will our King find faith on this earth?

            Because you see Jesus didn’t just leave us behind, our only option is not to just sit and hope as we wait.  God gave us the gift of prayer.  He gave us a direct communication line to cry out day and night, begging for His judgment to come.  He gives us the graceful means to be the persistent widow who doesn’t just sit and wait, but continues to ask for justice.  We can go to God in prayer any time anywhere and know He hears us.  No matter how terrible or horrific these end times get, we have the silver lining of this parable to remind us we have the gift of prayer.  And we are not praying to an unrighteous judge who finally gives in, but we are praying to the one true and perfectly righteous judge who will give us our justice because we are His elect and He will give us that justice speedily.  So as the world and the Devil try to surround us with doubts and fears of Jesus not coming back while we are here waiting, we are not alone, and we can cry out through the gift of prayer, “Come Lord Jesus, Come quickly.”  Amen.  

How will they know?

       Greetings to you all. I have some very sad news to share, I am completely clean shaven. I had the goatee for a while, and then yesterday I shaved it down to the mustache for a day. I got quite a few comments on the mustache, but not many were compliments. So this morning I shaved everything off, even my side burns, and my plan is to let the whole beard come back in as one length. This is the first time since I was 19 that I have had zero facial hair. I do not like the way I look without facial hair. It doesn't even seem like I am myself, because I do count my beard as part of my identity. However, it will grow back and everything will be back to normal.
        I had a great weekend with Erin. Friday night we went on a double date with her friend and her friend's fiance  Her friend's fiance, Tim, is a really cool guy. He golfs, drinks good whiskey, loves sports, and is just a down to earth guy. I think we will get along great as we will spend more time together in the future. Then Saturday her and I ran a few errands after I got off from work, and then went to the Schlafly's brewery tour. She had never gone, but this was my third time. Then Saturday night, my friend Stein had a Ground Hog Get Down party. Apparently he has wanted to have a party for ground hog day for a long time. It finally just happened to land on a Saturday so he finally got to throw his party. It was a blast. He made chocolate pudding with crumbled Oreo's on top, (dirt dessert) and put gummy bears in it with just their heads sticking out so they looked like ground hogs. A lot of our friends were there, both married couples and single guys. Again, it was a lot of fun and Erin got to meet a lot of people for the first time. Then we got a bunch of snow. I didn't go to field work Sunday morning because I wasn't sure if the roads would be clear since it snowed all night, but also because the main highway out of town was closed for construction and I didn't want to have to try to find the detour route in bad conditions. Pastor said they had three inches in Highland and there were very few people actually in church. I did go to the late service at a church close to the seminary with Erin. Then she headed back and I took my usual Sunday afternoon nap. My friend Sam and his wife Liz had me over for their Super Bowl party. So it was definitely a good weekend.
       My thought for the day comes from Systems class today. Even though it was a heated debate that seemed to be mostly a waste of time to me, it did lead me to thinking about one thing in particular. The conversation went in so many different directions I do not even know how to describe it to you. However, one topic we got on was how do we know if someone truly believes in their heart the Gospel message of Jesus. Basically the debate came down to God can look in our hearts and know if we have faith or not, but we do not have that luxury. We as pastors cannot look into someone’s heart and know if they have the true faith or not. So how do we know if someone is a believer or not? We discuss with them if they believe or not, we get to know the person, we see how they live their life, and help them to understand their faith. So what I got out of this should it be questionable if we are a “believer” or not? Shouldn't we live our lives in a way that let’s everyone know without doubt that we are Christians? I know this is easier said than done, and it is a message that is heard quite often. And yet, how often do we take it to heart and make sure the way we are living, the way we interact with people, the way we talk, etc. truly is always in a Christian way? There are songs about they will know we are Christians by our love, and motto's of a loving, kind Christian attitude, and even the old bracelets of WWJD. All of these are reminders that we should live a life that can be seen and heard in a way that gives the glory to God. We strive day in and day out to live a life that is in a manner that everything we do gives glory and honor to His name. So, it’s an old message, nothing I am taking credit for. However, it’s one that as sinners trying to live a life of love in a present evil age cannot hear too often. The more we stop and intentionally think about living this way, the easier it will become to actually be able to do it. We do not do this because we think it is what saves us. But we do it because it is what He who has already saved us has called us to do. All Praise be to Him who calls us as His redeemed children to live a life of love, the life that was made a perfect example by our Lord Jesus Christ!
Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the blessings you so freely and abundantly bestow upon us. We ask that we may always receive them with thankful hearts. We also ask that You give us You Spirit to strengthen us, guide us, and help us to lead a life that praises, glorifies, and honors Your holy name. We pray this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with You and Your Spirit, one God, now and forever more. Amen.