Sermon text: Acts 10:1-11:18

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I like to people watch.  And often as I sit in some public place and just watch people I like to ask myself what Christianity has to offer various people. 

So I see a guy sitting on a bench waiting for a bus.  He looks pretty worn.  His pants have holes in them and he is holding a brown bag with a bottle in it.  Some kids walk by him and they stare, but they don’t make eye contact.  Then they laugh with each other after they have passed.

Or I see a couple sitting together having dinner and by all estimates they look happy, they have nice clothes, their kids are cute and not screaming more than would be expected.  I watch as they go outside and get into their nice vehicle and drive away content.

Or the other day in the bank while I was waiting to speak with someone I watched a middle-aged man in a nice suit talk with other employees of the bank.  He was confident and firm, yet still kind and easy to listen to. 

Sermon text: Acts 11:1-11

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Introduction:

WSJ Article about Extreme Home Makeover foreclosures

Tiger Woods

Countless Politicians

Movie stars with drug addiction and suicide

Recently I pulled out my cordless drill to do some projects in our backyard. I put the battery in the drill and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I put the other battery in the drill, but again nothing happened. I then charged the batteries overnight again, put them in the drill, but again nothing happened.

There is not much you can do with a cordless drill without any power. I can use it like a screwdriver, but that is not very effective. A drill needs a power source to function the way that it is designed to function.

Christians need a power source to function the way we were designed to function as well. All humans have life in us, but then there is a more significant power source for those in relationship with God.

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.”