The lost sheep, Luke 15: 1-7

Many years ago, when my daughter Melissa had just learned to walk, we moved to the house that we are presently living in.  And not long after we moved in, some friends dropped by in the middle of the day to see the house and give us a house warming gift.  We gave them a brief tour of the property and were talking for a while, when suddenly I became aware that Melissa wasn’t around.   I called out her name, expecting her to be right around the corner, but there was no answer. Immediately, all of us started looking for

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The cost of discipleship, Luke 14: 25-

For the last couple of chapters or so, we have been looking at a running message that Jesus has been preaching concerning the characteristics of the kingdom of God. And perhaps the key to that entire sermon was His pronouncement in chapter 13 vs. 24 that the way into the kingdom of God was by a narrow gate, and few there were that would enter it. Jesus gives a variety of illustrations and examples that show that simply a form of religion, or nationality, or good intentions did not qualify one to enter the kingdom of heaven. The summation of

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An invitation to the kingdom; Luke 14: 15-24

Obviously from our scripture text this morning, I am not planning a typical Easter message.  We celebrate Easter every Sunday morning and we certainly celebrate Easter this morning, but I will not be preaching an Easter message, per se. However, millions of people all over the world are celebrating Easter today.  And undoubtedly many people are attending services who rarely go to church at all except for on the major holidays like Easter and Christmas.  And I don’t want to disparage people that only come to church on major holidays.  I would always want to encourage people to come to

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Life at the crossroads; Luke 13:31-35

I’m sure many of you have heard the famous story concerning a young black musician that lived in the 1920’s and 30’s named Robert Johnson.  According to a mixture of actual history and  folklore, Robert Johnson was a Mississippi blues singer and songwriter, who according to legend, sold his soul to Satan “at the crossroads” in exchange for his remarkable talent on the guitar.   Robert Johnson was born and raised in Mississippi and started playing blues guitar in the late 1920s. His wife and child died in childbirth around 1930 and afterwards he is said to have become bitter

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Striving to be saved; Luke 13:22-30

I like the old Welsh hymn that we sung today.  It is a good hymn, teaching sound doctrine, and one that I find refreshing in a time when so much Christian music is favored not because of what it says, but because of the way the music sounds.  But though the origin of this hymn preceded the Welsh Revival by about 20 years, it found a certain measure of fame from it’s use in what became known as the Welsh Revival of 1904, 1905.   There were a number of revivals or spiritual awakenings that happened both in this country

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The hypocrisy of the church, Luke 13: 10-21

One thing that I have grown to love and appreciate about Luke’s gospel, is that he doesn’t ever seem to just add random biographical selections from the life of Christ.  But Luke strategically weaves together historical events into a theological commentary that endeavors to teach us important doctrines in a systematic way.  And so the key to understanding Luke is to find this thread that ties these incidents and passages together. I heard Alistair Begg refer to this idea as finding the melody line in a music score.  And perhaps that is a good analogy.  We need to always remember

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The need for repentance, Luke 13: 1-9

A few years after I left college, I was working in the hotel business and on one occasion I had a long weekend break from work.  An old college buddy of mine named Ivan happened to call and we made plans to go to Charleston, SC for the weekend.   At the time, I had fallen away in my walk with God and was, to use an old fashioned term, in a backslidden condition.  Ivan wasn’t living for God either.  But both of us had been raised by Christian parents and attended Christian schools, and so we both were more or

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The signs of the times, Luke 12:54-59

As most of you know, I was traveling last week to a pastor’s conference in California and while I was on the trip I came into contact  with a lot of people as a matter of course.  And from time to time as I traveled to various places and waited in line at airports or car rentals or wherever, people would out of a sense of friendliness would speak hello and say something about the weather.  And I found myself reflecting that perhaps the most common topic of conversation today is that of the weather.  It is a rather innocuous

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Not peace but rather division, Luke 12: 49-53

The other day I was engaged in a conversation with a young man who is not a part of this church, but who nevertheless endeavored to explain to me what, in his opinion should be the defining characteristics of Christianity and the church. This young man proceeded to tell me that the message of Jesus Christ was one of love and inclusiveness.  That Jesus came to bring peace and togetherness.  That love and acceptance should be the hallmarks of the church and that judgment and exclusiveness are never Christian virtues. And afterwards as I was thinking about what he had

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The judgment of the faithful and the unfaithful, Luke 12:35-48

As we come to this passage of scripture today, we must remember that we are entering into the middle portion of an ongoing sermon of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, we must keep in mind the context of this sermon, what has been said so far.  For Christ is building a message, precept upon precept.  And in order to correctly understand what we are looking at today, we must remember what Christ has already been preaching, and consider it in that context. So what has Christ said so far in His message?  Well, He started out criticizing the Pharisees who He said

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