SERMON REFLECTIONS
10
Aug '26
Receiving the Least: Greatness in God’s Kingdom (Luke 9:46–50)
10
Aug '26
The Scoreboard We All Deny Keeping
Somebody tells you good news, and before you have finished congratulating them, your mind has started calculating. You are working out where the news puts them and where it leaves you. We arrive at Thanksgiving dinner with our children’s accomplishments loaded and ready; we keep a running tally of how many times we have done the dishes lately. We can hear about somebody’s promotion and feel a piece move three squares up the leaderboard that we pretend we don’t care about or even use.
The twelve men who lived closest to Jesus kept the same leaderboard, and Luke tells us precisely when they got it out.
“An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.” (Luke 9:46)
In almost any other setting, that would be an ordinary sentence about ambitious men. However, two verses earlier, Jesus had said this:
“Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” (Luke 9:44)
He is bracing them for His own murder, and within two verses they are sorting out the heavenly seating chart. Rather than softening the collision of these two conversations, Luke explains what led to this disastrous turn of conversation.
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03
Aug '26
What Is a Christian? Who Sets the Standard? 1 John 2:3-6
03
Aug '26
Years ago, a woman in our congregation who opened her home to foreign exchange students brought me a question she could not answer on her own. The girls staying with her were Muslim, and they were curious about her faith. One question kept surfacing at her kitchen table: what is a Christian? She wanted something clear she could actually say out loud.
Try answering it in a single sentence, and you will feel how quickly the ground shifts. Ask on a city street, and the answers come back all over the map. I am a conservative American, so I suppose that makes me a Christian. Christianity gave this country its founding principles, and I agree with those, so count me in. I believe in God, and I try my best. I expect He will let me into heaven. I accept that Jesus of Nazareth was a real man in history who died on a cross. I was baptized. Some churches would add that you need a particular haircut, a certain style of clothing, and one approved version of the Bible in your hand. Every one of those answers is popular, and not one of them is right.
Underneath the confusion lies a problem that has nothing to do with religion.
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27
Jul '26
An Advocate and the Mercy Seat – 1 John 2:1-2
27
Jul '26
We are a country that loves a courtroom. For a while it was Judge Judy playing on the television bolted to the wall of the doctor’s waiting room, and before that it was a murder trial that stopped the whole nation in its tracks, everyone leaning toward the screen to see which way the verdict would fall. There is something in us that cannot look away from a trial. Part of it is the fascination, watching the case turn on a technicality nobody saw coming. Part of it is the frustration, watching an attorney take a set of plain facts and bend them into whatever shape he needs the jury to see.
I have sat in that room more than once. Over my years here I have been called for jury duty six times, and one of those times I served as the foreman, so the picture I am about to draw is not something I read in a book. Imagine a trial where the defendant knows he is guilty. The prosecutor knows he is guilty. The defense attorney knows his own client is guilty. The judge on the bench knows it too. Every person in the room agrees on the facts, and there is no dispute to settle. Then the verdict comes back, and it is not guilty. Something strange is happening in that courtroom. Stay with that scene, because the passage in front of us is going to walk us right into it.
John hands us a couple of verses loaded with legal language, an advocate, a defendant, a charge, a verdict, and one enormous theological word that we cannot afford to skip past. Some of us feel our shoulders tense when the teaching turns to doctrine, as if the deep end of the pool were roped off for stronger swimmers. Consider why God gave us His word in the first place. He gave it to be read, to be understood, to be worked down into the way we actually think. He did not hand us a book and expect us to back away from the hard parts. These verses are basic Christianity, and He means for us to know them.
“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)
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24
Jul '26
Why Jesus Corrected His Disciples’ Joy (Luke 10:17-24)
24
Jul '26
Somewhere around Sunday night, most of us total the week. The conversation that went well goes in one column, the one that went sideways in the other. The lesson that landed, the lesson that thudded. The kid who was receptive, the kid who rolled his eyes through the whole thing. We tally it up, and the number that comes back out tells us how we feel about ourselves, about our walk, sometimes even about God. When there’s a good week, the joy runs high, but a hard week means it drains out through the floor.
The seventy-two came home from their Jesus-mission running the same math, and they came home thrilled. They had every reason to be. What they did not yet know is that Jesus was about to take their joy apart in front of them and rebuild it on ground that would still be holding them years later, on the weeks the math came back ugly.
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21
Jul '26
The Stain We Keep Trying to Hide: Walking in the Light of 1 John 1:5–10
21
Jul '26
Picture a living room with a nearly new sofa in it, the kind a family saved for and fusses over, and then picture a child crossing that room with a cup of grape juice he was told to keep in the kitchen. You already know how the story ends. The stain soaks in fast, the cushion gets flipped before anyone notices, and for years that sofa carries a secret on its underside. Most families have a version of that story, and every one of us is a living, breathing version of it. We have all stained the sofa of our lives. Every honest person can testify of breaking God’s law, missing the mark of His holiness, and stepping outside the boundaries He has set. Sometimes we do it in small ways and sometimes in ways that still make us wince to remember. The real question is never whether the stain is there. The real question is what we do with it, and that is exactly the question the apostle John takes up in 1 John 1:5–10. This passage is about sin and how believers are to deal with it, both the sin behind us and the sin still ahead of us.
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07
Jul '26
Why Does God Get to Decide What’s Right and Wrong?
07
Jul '26
Somebody cuts in front of you in line. A friend shares something you told them in confidence. Your boss takes credit for your work. What comes out of your mouth in those moments? Almost always some version of “that’s not fair.”
Notice what you just did. You appealed to a standard. You assumed there is a way people ought to treat each other, and that the person who wronged you should have known it. You didn’t invent that standard on the spot, and you expect the other person to be bound by it even though they never agreed to it. Every human being on the planet does this, every day, in every culture. We all live as if right and wrong are real.
Where do these standards come from? That’s really what people are asking when they ask, “Why does God get to decide what’s right and wrong?” Sometimes the question comes with an edge, something more like, “Who gave God the right to boss me around?” Either way, it’s a fair question. Asking it is not rebellion. It’s the first step toward an answer.
Let’s try the alternatives first
Suppose God doesn’t decide. Then who does?
Maybe the majority decides. Right and wrong are whatever most people agree on. But we’ve run that experiment. Majorities have approved of slavery, and majorities have approved of genocide. If the majority defines morality, then the lone voice saying “this is wrong” is by definition mistaken, and moral progress becomes impossible. Nobody actually believes that. We celebrate the people who stood against the crowd, think of reformers like MLK or Frederick Douglass.
Maybe each person decides for themselves. Your truth, my truth. This one sounds generous right up until someone else’s personal truth involves harming you. The moment you say, “You can’t do that to me,” you’ve abandoned the theory. Personal morality only works if nobody’s moralities ever collide, and they always collide.
Maybe the powerful decide. Whoever holds the most strength writes the rules. Most people recoil from this one immediately, and they should. But notice something: if there is no God, this is where things actually land. Strip away a moral lawgiver above humanity, and rules become whatever the strong can enforce. The very people who resent the idea of God’s authority usually resent the rule of raw power even more.
Every alternative puts morality on shifting ground, and a shifting standard is not really a standard. It’s a mood.
What Christians actually claim
The Bible’s answer starts in its first sentence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God gets to define reality because God made reality. That includes moral reality. An author has rights over her story that no character in it has. An architect understands the building in a way no tenant does. The Maker of human beings knows what human beings are for, and “what something is for” is where right and wrong come from. A watch that keeps time is a good watch. A life that runs according to its Designer’s purpose is a good life.
But hold on, because that answer alone could still leave you with a tyrant. A god who is merely powerful and merely first could make arbitrary rules, and obeying him would be nothing nobler than ducking a bully. That is not the God of the Bible, and this is the part that changes everything.
Scripture never presents God’s commands as arbitrary. It presents them as expressions of His character. “You are good, and you do what is good; teach me your statutes” (Psalm 119:68). God doesn’t consult a rulebook above Himself, and He doesn’t roll dice. Goodness is what God is like. His commands are simply His character written down for creatures like us. Asking “why does God get to define good?” is a bit like asking “why does the sun get to define daylight?” It’s not that the sun won an election. Light is what the sun gives off. Goodness is what God gives off.
Many people believe God’s rules exist to spoil their fun. However, Moses told Israel to keep God’s commands “for your own good” (Deuteronomy 10:13). For your good. God’s instructions are not a fence built to keep you from happiness. They are a fence built at the edge of a cliff to keep you from falling. The Designer’s instructions and the creature’s flourishing are the same thing, because the God giving the instructions is the same God who designed you and loves you.
But it doesn’t always feel that way
Let’s be honest. Sometimes God’s standards feel restrictive. Sometimes they cost you friendships, opportunities, or things you genuinely want. If you’ve felt that, you’re not broken, and you’re not the first. The oldest lie in the world, the one told in a garden at the beginning of Scripture, was exactly this: God is holding out on you. His rules exist to keep something good from you. Take control, define good and evil for yourself, and you’ll finally be free.
It turns out that creatures who define their own morality don’t become gods. They become the kind of world you read about in the news.
Humanity took that deal, and we’ve been living in the wreckage since. It turns out that creatures who define their own morality don’t become gods. They become the kind of world you read about in the news.
So how do you know God isn’t holding out on you? How do you know His motives are good? Christians point to one event. The God who wrote the moral law was wronged by every one of us who broke it. He had every right to collect the debt. Instead, He came in person, in Jesus Christ, and paid it Himself. The Judge stepped down from the bench and took the sentence. Whatever else you conclude about God’s rules, you cannot conclude that the One who went to a cross for you is indifferent to your good.
The Bible says it this way: “God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). Not His threats. His kindness. God’s authority and God’s affection are not two different things pulling against each other. They come from the same heart.
The real question underneath
Here’s the honest bottom line. “Why does God get to decide?” usually isn’t an abstract philosophy question. It’s a trust question. It’s asking, “Is the one in charge good, and is He for me?” And that question has an answer you can examine. Read one of the accounts of Jesus’s life, Mark is the shortest, and watch how the Son of God uses authority. He touches lepers. He feeds crowds. He welcomes the people everyone else wrote off. Then, He dies for His enemies.
That’s who decides what’s right and wrong. Honestly? We could do a lot worse than a King like that. In fact, we have. Every alternative on the list is worse, because every alternative eventually hands the gavel to someone who did not die for you.
If you’ve got a question you’d like answered in this series, we’d love to hear it. And if you’d rather talk in person, our doors are open on Sunday. Bring the hard questions. They’re welcome here.
