Sermons & Worship from October 2016

Genesis 8:1-5, 13-22 Introduction to scripture: In the year 2000, George Barna conducted a poll which asked people, “If you could ask God only one question and you knew God would give you an answer, what would you ask?”  The most common response was, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”1 This was also a question that one of you posed in my “Ask the Pastor” series, and so in this final sermon of the series, I am…

II Samuel 21 Introduction: In my series on “Ask the Pastor,” I received a request that said, “I’d like to hear more about the women of the Bible.”  In most of the stories that you learned in Sunday School, the leading characters were men and women appeared only in the supporting roles of wives and daughters.  This is partly because the Bible was written for and by a patriarchal society and of course, was passed down through the generations by…

Judges 11:1-6; 30-39 [Intro to scripture] I’ve been preaching a series called “Ask the Pastor,” based on questions that people raised last spring and as I’ve said before, some of these questions are really difficult ones and I know that it’s impossible to answer them in one sermon which is going to be the case for today’s question. The best I can hope to do is open some avenues for thinking about them. Today’s question is one that many Christians…

John 14:1-10 In his book, Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain said that he once spent an hour teaching a cat and a dog to be friends after which he put them in a cage together. They got along quite well so he taught them to be friends with a rabbit which he then also added to the cage with good results. Over the course of the next two days, he continued to introduce new animals to the cage until…

Genesis 9:12-17; Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 I saw a cartoon recently in which a man stands at the Pearly Gates greeted by Saint Peter and by a small very excited dog. St. Peter says to the man, “So you’re little Stevie! [Your dog] has been going on and on about you for the last 60 years.” Those of us who are dog lovers like to imagine ourselves in that scene, greeted at the gates of heaven not only by our loved ones…