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March 17 Midweek sermon: Blood |
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Fourth Wednesday in Lent March 17, 1010 Blood John 19:31-36
A person can easily argue that the pride and glory of our modern civilization is our technology. It has become so important to many people to own the latest and the best technology, that what they covet is getting to be quite out of proportion to what they can actually use. Do teenagers really need razor thin music devices that can carry thousands of songs? Is it really that necessary for computer games to be perfectly lifelike to the point of almost removing players from the real world? Must we have TV sets that deliver pictures that can display a million different colours with perfect clarity? Why must we have a virtual electronic world that can compete with the real one, when we don’t even have the real world figured out? It seems that there is what you could call an “arms race” when it comes to technology. There seems to be a competition to have the most novel, the most brilliant, the most powerful technology available, no matter what the cost, and no matter how high the piles get of perfectly good discarded electronic devices at the dump. Why are we talking about technology when our subject this evening is blood? It is because there is a strong connection between technology and the shedding of blood. This is something that you can’t help but to understand if you ever visit the war museum in Ottawa. That museum makes it very clear that warfare throughout history was the main driver for the advancement of technology. Mankind has understood for a very long time that the latest and best technology brings a great advantage over those people who do not have it. Superior technology often puts the person who possesses it at a great competitive advantage over those who do not. This year, our Lenten series has used metaphors based on the human body to once again remember the price that Jesus paid so that we would be saved. We have looked at tears, the heart, the hands, and the voice to see what these things represent in the Bible. Today we are looking at the metaphor of blood. What we see is that most of the time blood is mentioned in the Bible, it is actually in regard to competition. Blood is risked in the struggle to gain the upper hand. Blood is shed in the struggle for victory. Blood is shed in the ultimate struggle for control of this world and for the control of human destiny. We thank God that Jesus shed His bled to gain the victory over sin and death so that we have hope even in the greatest struggles of our lives! |
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Midweek Sermon: March 24, 2010, "Feet" |
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Fifth Wednesday in Lent March 24, 2010 Feet
Do you appreciate your feet? If you are like most people, chances are that you only really notice them when there is something wrong with them. You certainly notice your feet when you have a pebble in your shoe, or when you have stubbed a toe, or if you have an ingrown toenail or something. Otherwise, feet tend to be in the “out of sight, out of mind” category. That is understandable, of course, because we just don’t need our feet like we used to. Consider how many of your waking hours are spent sitting at desks, in front of computers, in front of the TV, and of course, in a car or a school bus. We simply don’t use our feet as much as we used to! Granted, it is still very important to your independence and your well-being to have healthy feet, but in the worst case, there are always wheelchairs or motorized scooters to help you get around. The people of Bible times needed their feet much more than we need them today. Without healthy feet, all you had to look forward to was the life of a cripple. If you had no family to look after you, bad feet meant that you were reduced to being a beggar. In Bible times, your feet were about much more than getting you from one place to another. Your feet were an investment in your future. They were something that you had to give great thought about as you did all that you could to protect them. Our Lenten series this year has made use of the human body as a source of illustrations to help us to understand the history of our salvation. God, who took upon Himself a human body in Jesus Christ, dedicated that body to meeting the requirements of the Law. Jesus took up that body, setting aside the majesty and of His divinity, and used that body in order to save us. Today, we will look at the feet and see how Jesus used feet for our salvation. We will see how blessed were the feet of Jesus as they humbly brought His body to that place where it would be sacrificed for the forgiveness of our sins! |
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March 7 Sermon: Christ fulfills your potential before God! |
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Luke 13:1-9 “Up to Potential?” A sermon by the Rev Roland Kubke March 7, 2010
Third Sunday in Lent: Ezekiel 33:7-20; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9
Have you ever known someone like Clint, a boy I knew in junior high? In those years, he was one of those kids who had everything going for him. He was very bright, athletic and popular. He came from a good, Christian home. He was a nice guy, but then something happened to him in grade nine. He got involved in alcohol and drugs and all sorts of other things. He dropped out of school and spiraled downward. By the time he should have been graduating from high school and should have been stepping into a future filled with potential, he was lost in hopelessness and despair. Clint was one of those kids that went down the road that many parents fear the most for their children. He was an extreme, but not uncommon, example of how people can waste their potential as sin takes over from the grace such a person once knew. Clint’s life did not end there, however. By the time he told me his story, Clint was glowing with the joy of someone who had received a second chance from God. He had reconciled with his parents, gone to college to get his high school diploma, and was heading to a Bible college in order to train to be a missionary. Clint was so filled with gratitude to God that I have no doubt that God is using him now to do wonderful things in the name of Jesus Christ! Our Gospel lesson this morning speaks about that second chance that God gives to sinful people. A man had a fig tree that did not live up to its potential. It was provided everything it needed to do what a fig tree should do and bear figs. The tree did not respond, and it deserved the fate of any fruit bearing tree that refuses to bear fruit. It deserved to be cut down. However, the gardener asked for one more chance, and the fig tree got that chance. The gardener did not give up on that tree, just as Jesus Christ does not give up on us! Jesus Himself is our second chance at God’s grace! He is our second chance to know the mercy and the forgiveness of God. Thank God that He has given us all a second chance in Jesus! |
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March 14 Sermon: God is willing to take a risk in forgiving you. |
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Luke 15:11-32 "Too Willing To Forgive?" A sermon by the Rev Roland Kubke March 14, 2010
4th Sunday in Lent: Isaiah 12:1-6; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3,11-32
Thomas Mann wrote a very famous novel, “Buddenbrooks”. This novel actually won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. Buddenbrooks is about a rich merchant family in northern Germany. It is about a devout, elderly Lutheran woman who ruled the family and controlled its great fortune. Her unfailing trust resulted in a great tragedy when she hoped beyond hope that she could restore her wayward son. This son spent his days entertaining friends, drinking away the allowance he received from his mother, and avoiding decent upright living at all costs. He had the habit of not caring at all about his mother and all the things she believed in while the money kept coming to him. Yet, as soon as the money ran out, he always knew where to find her. Each time he came back, he put on a lavish display of repentance. He would cry and throw himself down at his mother's feet. He would swear that he was a changed man. He would pull out a Bible to show he had returned to the Faith. He would do everything he could to show that he would follow the straight and narrow, if only his mother would forgive him. Every time her son did this, the mother would accept him back. Every time she accepted him back, he would stay only long enough to get his allowance again, and then he would leave. By the time the novel ended, this son had managed to squander the family fortune and destroy the family name. The mother had never stopped hoping that her son's repentence would be real, and in the end, her son's abuse of her love killed the family. Her son's name was Christian. The author named this son "Christian" because he questioned God's grace. He thought if the Christian church were to fall apart and disappear, it would be because God, like the mother in the novel, is too willing to forgive and too willing to take back those people who return to Him! When it comes to the parable of the Prodigal Son, Thomas Mann would have been much happier if God were not so eager to give everybody another chance! He would have been much more content if God's grace were not so easy to abuse. To Thomas Mann, God's grace would make a lot more sense if it were not offered quite so freely! How fortunate we are that someone like Thomas Mann did not write our Gospel lesson this morning! How fortunate we are that God Himself made sure that this parable would come to us just as Jesus has spoken it! Here we see that God's ways are different than our own and we can thank God for it! In this parable we see how God takes a leap of faith on our behalf so that we can leap ahead in faith! |
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