A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over” (Matthew 18:15). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you enjoy confrontation? No hands. That’s what I was expecting to see. Most people, unless they’re a sociopath, do not like to confront others. People who enjoy confrontation should be disqualified from doing so. They will never do it in the right spirit of love. Nevertheless, somewhere along the line it may become necessary to talk to others about their shortcomings. Although we should be willing to overlook minor offenses, there are some problems that will only grow worse if they are not dealt with properly in a straightforward way as Jesus urges us to do in our text. The following story illustrates this truth in a more personal way. Larry irritated almost every person in ...

To listen to this sermon click here. Or here. The text for today is our Gospel lesson, Matthew 18:1-20. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” We might think of Abraham or Moses or the apostle Paul. When the disciples asked Jesus that question, however, they wanted to know which one of them would be the greatest. They all expected to have positions of importance in Jesus’ kingdom, and each of them would have liked to be Jesus’ right-hand man. It’s natural in any social group to establish some sort of pecking order. You see it out on the playground, in the classroom, in office politics, and unfortunately, even in the church. We all measure ourselves in comparison with others. We jockey for position and hope to come out near the top. So we can understand why the disciples wondered about their positions in the kingdom Jesus was going to establish. But Jesus’ kingdom is not like any earthly kingdom. ...