A Famine Not of Bread

Click here to listen to this sermon. “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the Lord, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name! For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 100). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! You’ve surely heard of how early Christians were tortured and threatened. Those threats posed a temptation for them to give up on Christ. You may know stories of personal rejection and humiliation that others less famous faced because of their faith, which created painful pressure for them too. Today there are folks like Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop; Baronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers; and Kimberly Davis, th...

"The Wicked Vinedresser" by Eugene Burnand Click here to listen to this sermon. “Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit” (Matthew 21:33-34). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Are you familiar with the term “reprise” when it is applied to a song? A song reprise is usually a repeat by the same artist of the same song with some improvements or change in style or music of that song—like “Let It Go” in the soundtrack for the recent Disney film Frozen . Or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the Beatles album of the same name. You might call our Gospel text a “reprise.” Jesus essentially draws His parable from the song of the vineyard that God had sung through Isaiah seven centu...