| Type |
Series |
Date |
Title |
Abstract |
| Regular |
None |
2/20/2011 |
Self conscious vs. God-conscious |
This sermon is about what it means to seek first the kingdom of God. Are our ambitions in relation to the approval of people? Is our life a calculation? If so, then we will be always fraught with anxiety. Jesus speaks of a way of care-free living where we ask for what we truly need and are assured of God’s faithfulness in providing it. The Lord’s prayer encapsulates this kind of simple piety. When our life becomes more God-conscious than self-conscious we will have found the key to living without worry, and only then will we be fit to be called disciples of Jesus Christ. |
| Regular |
None |
1/23/2011 |
The Leadership Class |
This sermon is the first in a series on the sermon on the mount. It connects the qualities and conditions which are called “blessed” in the beatitudes (poverty, meekness and purity of spirit, mercy, peaceableness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, mourning, persecution) with the qualities of a person empty enough of ego to begin the walk of discipleship. Jesus wants those who can reflect his light and savour in the world, and so be salt and light in the world themselves. |
| Regular |
None |
3/14/2010 |
Selfishness |
This sermon is about the opposition between love and selfishness. Using the Lord’s supper as an illustration of the Christian ethic of love, mutual service and self-giving, Paul draws a contrast between this and the ethic of slavishishness and selfishness that pertains at the table of the false gods (whom Paul calls the idols or the demons). Christians who have eaten at the table of the Lord should no longer have anything to do with the ritual eating and drinking that tied them to idol worship. But what is the Christian to do then at the majority of social occasions in Corinth where idol meat is served and where the company is likely to be mixed (some pagan, some Christian)? Paul’s rule is that the Christian is free to eat anything, but that that freedom ought to be tempered by a) what serves the needs of the neighbour (that will sometimes mean abstaining if the brother or sister has a weaker conscience) and b) what gives glory to God. Therefore the ethics Paul commends on this matter are very situational/contextual. Christians continue to believe that eating at the Lord’s table enables us to “participate in” Christ ie. to take on something of his mind and heart. So how has our eating and drinking at the Lord’s table changed us into a greater Christ-likeness? For surely all people are on a journey upward into the kingdom of love, or downward into the kingdom of selfishness. The habits we develop in this life concerning the exercise of love or of selfishness really do change us, and really do fit us either for heaven or for hell. |
| Regular |
None |
3/7/2010 |
Idolatry |
Some of the false teachers in Corinth are appealing to the freedom Christians have in Christ (“all things are lawful for me”) to justify behaviour that is heedless of God’s Word and will for us, and thoughtless toward others. What the Corinthians are doing and the offense it causes can only be understood in the cultural context of 1st century Achaia (Greece) where shrines to pagan gods and to the emperor abounded. These temples served as the abattoirs of the ancient world. Leftover meat from religious sacrifices was sold in the temple restaurant and in the marketplace. The temples were also the brothels of the ancient world, since they employed prostitutes for use in the “religious” mysteries. Because some in the Corinthian congregation had come out of a pagan background, and had participated in worship rites in the pagan temples, even the smell of the meat might trigger a bad conscience, and thoughts of the former life. Paul pleads for freedom to be tempered by consideration for what is beneficial toward self and neighbour. He also pleads for freedom to be tempered by discernment about what is ruling our lives: if we are unable to forego a “freedom,” perhaps we are a slave to it. Most passionately Paul pleads for freedom to be tempered by a sense that Christians are not their own – they have been bought with a price and are consecrated, as temples of the Holy Spirit, to the service of Christ. Paul says this particularly of the body, since there are some false teachers in Corinth who are trying to draw a dualistic division between the soul and the body, as if God did not care about what the body did, with respect to food and sex choices. Whereas the city of Corinth is given over to idolatry, Paul argues that the Christian ought to be totally given over to the love of the one God and of neighbour. The two great commandments are an antidote to idolatry since they exert God’s claim over our every faculty. Idolatry is still a temptation for us today, and Paul’s advice about the kind of considerations that ought to discipline our freedom is still very apropos. |
| Regular |
None |
2/28/2010 |
Immaturity |
It may take a long time to mature in Christ to the place where thoughts as well as actions are disciplined and a loving heart replaces a selfish one, but most Christians learn to put away first the very glaring external sins that cause scandal. Paul, however, found such sin in the Corinthian congregation, and with it an attitude of superiority and self-justification. Paul calls such sin, where we talk a good talk but walk a slovenly walk, immaturity, and it prevents him from talking about the deeper mysteries of the faith with the people, since he has to keep reminding them of the basics. Paul’s pastoral answer in the face of such sin is to sweep it out entirely, like the thorough house-cleaning the Jews do prior to Passover, to get rid of every speck of leaven in their houses. Such sin, such Christian immaturity, like leaven, can work upon a whole congregation, until all of them become immature and careless about how they live. This is an important word for us in our day when church discipline has reached such a pass that one is liable to be labeled “judgmental” or “censorious” if he cannot just wink at sin in the church like a “man of the world.” Instead of leading a double life Paul wants his people to live in sincerity and truth, because the Passover lamb (Christ) has been sacrificed for us. Our cleansing has come at a price, so we ought not lightly to wallow in dirt again. |
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