A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. Click here to view this sermon. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! In 1981, Jeffrey Stout, a professor of religion and philosophy at Princeton University, published a book called The Flight from Authority . In it, he described a social and philosophical trend in western society. Collectively, he argued, we have been on a “flight from authority” for several centuries. In the Reformation, we fled the authority of the church. Under rationalism, we ran from the authority of Scripture. With Kant, we turned our backs on the authority of reason and then morality....

Click here to listen to this sermon. “Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding?’” (Isaiah 29:15–16).   Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Like the plot of a good action thriller it goes down to the wire. At the last minute, God mercifully intervenes to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrian horde poised at the city gate. But something is wrong. The people do not see beyond the immediate threat they have just avoided. They fail to recognize the hand of the Lord or their sin and idolatry that brought them so close to utter ruin. God’s deliverance does nothing to turn them to repentance and the promises of the Messiah. And so the deliverance will only buy them...

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.   The text for this message our Luke 20:9-20. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. "The Tenants in the Vineyard" by Jan Luyken Whenever I hear this parable (like many other parables), I end up shaking my head.   Nobody acts the way you would reasonably expect.   Their actions seem foolish, at times, even absurd.   But that is actually the key to understanding any parable: Look for the point of departure from how things are in ordinary, everyday life.   And there are plenty of detours in this one.   We’ll look at them and I think you’ll see what I mean.   But first, let’s look at the context. With the parables, you always have to pay attention to whom Jesus is speaking.   Is it His disciples?   The crowds?   The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law?   In this case, it is the people who are gathered in the temple to hear Jesus teach, no...