Sermons on Malachi
Persevering in the Faith
Two weeks ago, deep sea explorers mined what now appears to be the richest ship wreck treasure in all history. The company named “Odyssey Marine Exploration” brought home seventeen tons of colonial-era silver and gold from the Atlantis Ocean. An estimated five hundred thousand pieces were carried in plastic buckets from the wreck site. The estimated worth of this find exceeds $500,000,000, a sum that is unimaginable for most of us. This must have been an incredibly joyful time in…
God’s Thoughts on Our Giving
Sadly, the Church of Jesus over her history has often shown herself to be greedy for money. In the days prior to the Reformation, in the early fifteen hundreds, the Church devised a plan to sell indulgences to people. The Church was teaching the unbiblical Doctrine of Purgatory. The Doctrine of Purgatory teaches that believers in Jesus die and that most of them, except for a rare few, enter into a place where they suffer miserably for a certain number…
The Justice of God
God is very clear, throughout Scripture, as He reveals Himself to be just in all of His dealings with man, and yet the heart of natural man commonly argues against God’s justice. The unredeemed struggles with affirming God’s justice because God executes His justice so differently than we would. Think for a moment, how might you administer justice in this world? You probably would have stopped Sung Hu Cho’s massacre before thirty-two people were gunned down at Virginia Tech. You…
Divorce and Apostasy
God’s shepherds do not have the authority to decide which topics to preach about and which topics to avoid. As a pastor of Jesus’ church, it would be a sin for me to refuse to teach on certain issues because they are too “theological” or because they are too “sensitive” or because they are too “controversial” or because they are too “offensive”. A pastor is called to be God’s herald; that is to say, God’s messenger or God’s ambassador, a…
A Charge to Christian Leaders
The Greek story of Antaeus is a myth of warning. You may remember that Antaeus was a giant who was the offspring of Mother Earth in Greek mythology. He always slept on the ground in order to maintain and to increase his strength, for he drew his strength from the earth. One day, he and Hercules engaged in ferocious fight to the death. Hercules would life Antaeus up and slam him to the ground, but Hercules noticed that each time…
Unworthy Worship
“God loves adverbs!” This puritan saying reminds us that God is interested not only in what we do, but also how we do it. For example, in 2 Corinthians 9, God not only calls us to give offerings to Him, but to give them cheerfully and not reluctantly. Or, in Galatians 6, God not only calls us to restore a brother who is caught in a sin, but to restore him “gently”. In Luke 18, Jesus teaches His disciples not…
Does God Really Love Me?
A burning question pressed constantly upon my mind when I was a senior in high school. This question often turned me into knots during the day and sometimes kept me awake thinking about it at night. I wish I could tell you that this question was deeply theological, such as, “How can we reconcile God’s absolute sovereignty with man’s responsibility?” Or, I wish I could tell you that this question was profoundly sociological, such as, “How do we care for…