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Stewardship Prayer

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-13 Central Verse: “…but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:14b-13 Central Truth: This is the second lesson in our stewardship series and it focuses on Prayer. This may seem like an odd verse to focus on prayer within our membership vows but we must take the time to begin to understand in the most basic elements what prayer is. Prayer is communication with God. With communication there are two important attributes to the conversation. The first is listening and the second is speaking. Most people would put speaking as the primary for conversation but it is just the opposite which is listening. When we speak about prayer in its most basic components we are talking about conversation. Most of the time it feels like we do all the talking. We fill up the silence of our lives with it. This relegates the ro
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Stewardship: Presence

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Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20 Central Verse: “…And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20b NRSV Central Truth: We are a distracted and distractible people. I have to be intentional about putting my phone down in the evenings. We are pressed to give attention to everything and everyone on an equal basis, the call apps like Facebook and Twitter are almost irresistible to some and while it is possible to have meaningful relationships over these apps the time spent is often wasteful rather than fruitful. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew we receive what is commonly known as the great commission. I’ve heard many sermons talking about the great commission and I’ve done more than a few sermons on it myself but the key part I want to focus on is the last verse. That Christ promises to be with us. Christ promises his presence in our lives all the way to the end of the world. Because of all the important things to talk about in this section I have noticed t
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Decalogue

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Central Verse: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;” Exodus 20:2 NRSV Central Truth: There has always been a tension within the church in relation to the law and grace. As Christians we tend to swing too far one way or the other. We are constantly in danger of being legalistic, that is focusing primarily and exclusively on the letter of the law, then the flip side is we risk erring on the side of no personal responsibility for actions. The Decalogue has always had a special place in this conversation about law and grace. Even some of the biggest founders of Protestantism had divergent views on how to deal with the Decalogue. Martin Luther says, “The Ten Commandments have no right to condemn that conscience in which Jesus dwells, for Jesus has taken from the Ten Commandments the right and power to curse us.” . John Calvin states “We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us
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Testing, Testing, Testing!

Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7 Central Verse: “The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” Exodus 17:2 NRSV Central Truth: The cycle of complaining continues. There is no water therefore the people complain to Moses, who then takes the complaint before God. God provides very specific instructions for Moses in order to answer this need. The result is God, through Moses, brings forth water from a rock. Notice there is an escalation this time around. In verse four Moses claims to God that the people want to stone him. Of course, we have known way of knowing that people intended to stone Moses. This could be one of those situations where people are complaining and the leader goes to the next logical step and outlook of the complaint. There is another escalation that needs to be pointed out and that has to do with God’s command to strike the rock. This is the same wording used in the earlier E
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Murmurs

Scripture: Exodus 16:2-15 Central Verse: “And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the LORD has heard the complaining that you utter against him – what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the LORD” Exodus 16:8 NRSV Central Truth: In times of plenty we typically forget about God. We have a tendency to only remember God when things go bad in our lives. A classic example is the story of a person who is never in church but in a moment of panic yells “Oh God!” as if they suddenly remember that God exist. This scripture follows a pattern that has been established in the Exodus story, that pattern is that the people perceive a threat in this case dehydration and starvation, they complain against the leadership, the leaders bring it before God and then God saves the people. A difference to notice here is that God responds right away to the murmurs of the people. In fact God seems more concerned wit
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Oppression vs. God's Deliverance

Scripture: Exodus 14:19-31 Central Verse: “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.” Exodus 14:31 NRSV Central Truth: This is another story that is particularly difficult for many of us to fathom. We rejoice in the idea of God delivering his people from slavery into a new life. However, when we read the text closely we notice that not only does God deliver his people but God also kills, or “tossed the Egyptians into the sea.” (Ex 14:27b NRSV). This means that God killed an army. It’s easy to toss this idea about as no big deal, we are meant to be concentrating on the people of Israel and their deliverance. However, for many of us we have a theology that defines God as love, these actions beg the question about how can God be love if destruction and death are a part of that? There are no easy answers to this situation we find ourselves in. We could focus on everything in the t
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Tyranny of Time

Scripture: Exodus 12:1-14 Central Verse: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” Exodus 12:14 NRSV Central Truth: This is a text that is primarily focused on the liturgical notion of faith. The story of Moses has been action packed up to this point and here at the culmination of the plagues we stop not just to be told about something the people of Israel are supposed to do, but how they are to do it. Typically the image we carry of this text is the Charleston Heston movie. This image is of people seriously eating together attempting to avoid accidental death by God. Viewing this text through the lens of a popular movie has, instead of breathing life into the text, solidified it as a significant historical event with very little meaning outside of its time. When we take the events out of their context like the movie but place it back into the contex
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