Sermon text: 2 Kings 25:8-21

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 In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel shares a vision that he had where God set him in a valley full of dry bones.  And as Ezekiel is standing in this vast world of deadness, God asks him, “can these bones live?’

“Can these bones live?”

There are times in life when we stand in the despair of our lives with our hopes and dreams mocked and destroyed and dead dry around us.  And life has been sucked from our very existence.  The air feels stale and we are cold not only to ourselves but others as well.

Sermon text: 2 Samuel 7:1-17

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• Family Fun night
• E100 Timeline – Becky and youth
• Read 2 Samuel 7:1-17
• Inspiration for sermons can come from some pretty odd places
  • MC Hammer – You Can't Touch This
    • Starts - “My, my, my music hits me so hard – makes me say, 'O, my Lord' – Thank you for blessing me – with a mind to rhyme and two hype feet.”
      • Goes on to say, “you can't touch this” a hundred times
      • My favorite line of the song is when MC Hammer even advertised the weight loss advantages to his awesome music, “this is it, for a winner, dance to this, and you're gonna get thinner.”
      • And then at a couple of points after telling us how awesome he is, MC Hammer just says, “Stop, Hammer time.”
        • This is where he busts out his best dance moves and shows everyone how awesome he is.
    • I don't know why, but this is where my mind went to when reading our text this week.
      • Story about David
        • David was a righteous King of Israel and a biblical giant
        • In our passage it appears that God shows up to tell David, “Stop: God time”
        • And then this is the heretical part – I picture God doing an awesome dance – saying look how awesome I am
          • The difference is that God really is awesome and MC Hammer isn't so much
          • Before you think I am too heretical for talking about MC Hammer, don't forget another one of his hits, Pray – he says, “we got to pray, just to make it today.”

Sermon text: Ruth 1:1-22

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1. Celebration of Matt Muehlhausen.

1. Elimelek and Naomi move from Bethlehem to Moab because of a famine
   1. Two sons
   2. In Moab, Elimelek dies
      1. Two sons marry local Moabite women (Orpah and Ruth)
      2. Two sons die 10 years later
      3. Just Naomi, Orpah and Ruth left
   3. Naomi hears from folks back in Bethlehem that God has now provided food
      1. Naomi is going to go back
         1. she must feel “about time” or “too late”
      2. As the 3 are on their way back Naomi tells the women to stay
         1. because they deserve kindness as they have been kind (selfless)
         2. they will be provided for (their benefit/gracious)
            1. both women WANT to stay with Naomi (attractive)
               1. Tell bad mother-in-law joke
         3. Naomi can’t provide for them
            1. Naomi feels “bitter” (her world had turned on her in Moab)
            2. Orpah stays in Moab, but “Ruth clung to her.” (1:14)
               1. Ruth was DETERMINED (READ 1:16-18)
               2. If I am hot, I keep shooting, if I am not hot, I shoot until I am hot
            3. The town is pumped to see Naomi
               1. They know her as “pleasant”
               2. Naomi not the same woman, now “bitter” (Mara)

Sermon text: Joshua 6:12-21

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1. Prepare/Enrich discount this week, brochures in the back.

1. Paint a picture of where we are right now in the story of God
   1. Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
      1. Promised to be the ancestors of a favored people/nation and given a special land for settlement
      2. Jacob and his family went to Egypt during the famine when Joseph was in power . . . and the people had babies and more babies
      3. End of Genesis and beginning of Exodus – Jacob dies and so does Joseph and his generation
         1. new ruler that knew nothing of Joseph comes to power in Egypt and makes the Israelites Egyptian slaves

1. Moses is born and in a God-controlled series of events he ends up being raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter
   1. Moses grows up and has a run-in with a burning bush
      1. God says, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” Exodus 3:10
      2. Exodus then is about the plagues, then what John discussed last week, the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and into the desert
      3. Israelites make their way through the desert under Moses’ guidance and God gives them the law starting with the 10 Commandments in Exodus all the way through Leviticus
      4. In Numbers, we hear more about the Israelites’ journey through the desert – moving towards the Promised Land ever so slowly
      5. The same throughout Deuteronomy
      6. Moses leads the Israelites across the dessert and to the banks of the Jordan; After 40 years, he is a river away from the land that God has promised for generations and God tells him, “You shall not cross the Jordan.” Deuteronomy 31:2
      7. Moses sees the land from the top of Mount Nebo and then he dies at the very end of Deuteronomy

Sermon text: Genesis 45: 1-28

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This week we finished the book of Genesis in the E100 Bible reading plan. And I think it is important that we understand where we have gone thus far. Genesis answers for us several questions. It tells us how we got here and who created us. It tells us about when sin entered the world. And it tells us about how God began to communicate with us.

One of those primary ways of communicating that is very clear early in the story of God in Genesis, is that God intends to reveal himself uniquely to a line of people and he begins in a sense with Abraham. And Abraham becomes the first of the 3 biblical patriarchs. Isaac, Abraham's son is the second. The third is Isaac's son, Jacob. The God of Abraham becomes the God of Isaac and then the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This provides a theme that became crucial in God's revelation to the Hebrews in Egypt, on their journey to the promise land, and is often repeated in the rest of the Old Testament.

Now this is important as we get to our passage this morning concerning Joseph because though it seems that these chapters are just about Joseph, they are in reality about Jacob and how Jacob ends up in Egypt. These chapters are designed to bring the details of Jacob's life, the third of the great patriarchs, to its conclusion. Throughout the story there is an underlying emphasis on matters relative to Jacob's approaching death and events related to it. Details about the death and burial of both Jacob and Joseph, together with their requests to carry their remains back to Canaan, eventually provide closure to the narrative.