Sermon text: John 11:1-57

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Do you believe this? A man is dead. He is put into a tomb, wrapped in burial cloths, and his body is beginning to decay. His family is mourning his death and Jesus comes along . . . tells the guy to get up and come out of the tomb and he does. Do you believe this?

I have seen people die. There is a clear line between life and death. Skin color changes. So the does skin texture. The body loses its warmth. Muscles become rigid. In death, life is gone. It dissipates slowly until it is gone. And we understand that this is final. No one comes back from it.

In our passage from John 11 this morning, the family of Lazarus knew that Lazarus was very sick and near death and they got a hold of Jesus and asked if he could come and heal Lazarus. They believed that Jesus could heal him. They had seen and heard about Jesus approaching sick people and transforming them by the power of God and making them well.

Sermon text: Luke 15:1-32

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This past week I had a chance to go work on a farm in rural northern Indiana.  I received a grant this year to spend one day a month at a farm in North Manchester, Indiana.  In the morning, myself and 5 other pastors work on the farm feeding livestock, planting crops and various other farm-related tasks.  Then we eat a lunch prepared from ingredients off of the farm.  In the afternoon we sit around a table and discuss theology.  It has been great. 

I went this past week on Thursday and one of the first jobs I had in the morning was pulling fresh eggs from the hen coop.  The whole day it was rainy and cold.  And as we were feeding the chickens, there was this one chicken sitting outside the coop sop and wet and covered with scratches and just looking awful.

All chicken flocks have a well-defined pecking order. It's their way of preventing mayhem.  The lucky chicken at the top of the pecking order basically gets to push everyone around. She gets first access to food, water, prime roosting spots and so on. If she doesn't like what anyone else is doing she has full pecking rights. She gets to tell any other chicken to bug off. The poor chicken at the bottom of the pecking order is in the exact opposite situation: everyone in the flock can peck her, and she has last rights to food and other resources. The other chickens in a flock fall somewhere between these two extremes. The #2 chicken can only be bullied by the #1 chicken and can bully everyone else in turn, and so on and so on.  This pecking order is established at a very early age and usually remains unchallenged until death.

Sermon text: Matthew 4:1-11

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One of the great discussions of Christian history has always been the question of how Jesus could be both fully human and fully God.  And we have always believed that in order for Jesus’ death and resurrection to be of affect that it must have been fully God that did it.  But also that for us to believe that death was truly defeated on our behalf, through our means, that Jesus must have been fully human.

This morning we read a wonderful passage that fits right on the line of Jesus full humanity and full divinity.  In this passage we see a man that we can fully relate to in temptation and a man that we strive to be like in his perfect overcoming of it.

In Hebrews 4:15, Paul says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin.”

Sermon text:

• Proverbs 16:16
• Proverbs 17:27
• Proverbs 18:2
• Proverbs 18:13

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This morning we are going to look at the book of Proverbs and particularly 4 proverbs scattered out amongst Chapters 16, 17, and 18, which were our E100 reading this past Friday. 

I love the book of Proverbs and prefer to refer to it as the Fortune Cookie Book. 

The book of Proverbs has been traditionally attributed to Solomon, who as we read earlier in the E100 (1 Kings 3) is the son of David and the man that was told by God that he could have anything he wanted.  Solomon asked for wisdom or a “discerning heart to govern [God’s] people and to distinguish between right and wrong.”  Most scholars don’t think it is likely that Solomon wrote the entire book, but he definitely at least wrote part of it and may have had a lot to do with most of it. 

I call the book of Proverbs the Fortune Cookie Book because it is really just a bunch of short sayings that may or may not be connected to the others around them.  But although they may not be connected to the other Proverbs around them, they are all tied together as a whole with a united purpose. 

The Proverbs cite both positive and negative rules of life.  They clarify right and wrong conduct in a whole host of different situations.  But their ultimate aim is to apply the principles of Israel’s covenant faith to everyday attitudes, activities, and relationships. 

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.