Pastor Michael's recent Sermons.

To Fast or not to Fast (Ash Wednesday, 2020)

Mark 1: 12-13; 2: 18-22 To Fast or not to Fast So you came today for an Ash Wednesday service. Ash Wednesday is the service that begins the season of Lent. This is a season where we are fasting to prepare ourselves to celebrate Jesus‘s passion; preparing ourselves for the rebirth of the church into another year ministry and service. Lent is designed off what Jesus did in the stories that were read today. Jesus went off in the wilderness and he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights

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The Transfiguration (Sunday February 23, 2020)

Mark 9: 2-8 The Transfiguration Today is transfiguration Sunday. It is a day of celebration that we typically celebrate, hence the white color of celebration, on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. And we read this story, the story of Jesus going up on the mountain to be in transfigured in front of the eyes of Peter, James, and John. There’s a lot of different things that you can learn from this story, which is good because we look at it typically multiple years, similar to the

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Herod and the Prophets (February 16, 2020)

Mark 6:14-29 Herod and the Prophets We are continuing today our trip through the story of the New Testament. If you remember back three or four weeks ago, we were talking about Jesus‘s ministry within the Galilee, the northern region of the area that the Jews were occupying around the holy land. This is around the Sea of Galilee, in the north of the modern state of Israel. And we were talking about what Jesus was doing: that he got into the wilderness, he was tempted by Satan

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God in the Ruins (February 9, 2020)

Luke 19: 39-40 God in the Ruins This past week I went to Israel as part of my continuing education for, at least according to the budget, last year and this year here at the church. I spent the last eight days in Israel. I want to thank you for the opportunity to do that. It is my hope, and certainly in my prayer was that Carolyn would bless you last Sunday, and I hope you were blessed and that you had a wonderful worship experience. I want you to know that we went to the Wes

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The Stories of Jesus (January 26, 2020)

Mark 4: 1-20 [21-34] The Stories of Jesus This spring we’re going to be looking at the story of the New Testament, what is actually happening from the moment of Jesus’s birth all the way through until the last few things that happen in the New Testament. And if we’re going to look at that, one big part of what happens with Jesus is that Jesus teaches. And in particular, he begins to teach in parables. So we’ll need to look at what we do with parables, what they are, and how w

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Audience or Congregation? (January 19, 2019)

Mark 1: 40 – Mark 2: 5, 12 Audience or Congregation So today we have two stories of Jesus beginning his ministry. We have a story of Jesus healing a leper that is come to him, and then the story of Jesus healing a paralytic man who has been brought to him by his friends. There’s a lot that goes on here. And these aren’t the only stories of healing that Mark puts here at the very beginning of his gospel as he’s introducing us to who Jesus is. I think these are the most influen

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Calling All Disciples (January 12, 2020)

Mark 1: 9-11, 16-20 Calling All Disciples We continue our look at the story of Jesus in the New Testament. And we’re going to, over the next few months, look at the story of the church throughout the New Testament. And we’re going to begin looking at the story of Jesus, looking at the story within the Gospels up until about Easter. And look at that were left with a question of what the order of events is; what is the timeline? What is the actual story that is being told if yo

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What Child is This? (December 22, 2019)

Luke 1: 8-17, 26-38 What Child is This? Today we have the parts of Scripture that are known as the annunciations, or the announcement of a pregnancy; in this case for Elizabeth and Mary. But they’re not the only annunciations. They are special; certainly the annunciation to Mary is special. But they are building off of the annunciations that exist in the Hebrew Scriptures that we’ve been going through the past several months. Those annunciations do exist, and they would have

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Living in Expectation (December 8, 2019)

Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11 Living In Expectation A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”. These words from the prophet Isaiah might well be the

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Jesus is Coming! (December 1, 2019)

Jeremiah 33: 14-18 Jesus is Coming! So a couple of weeks ago I went to another church for a meeting, and they had a question on the whiteboard of the youth room. That question was “When does the Christmas season begin?” They had written up a bunch of answers from passersby, from the youth themselves; different times when the Christmas season begins. Obviously there’s the traditional time of when the Christmas season begins: there’s the time that the vocal portion of the Inter

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Starting Again (November 24, 2019)

Ezra 3:10-13; Haggai 2:3-5 Starting Again The last couple of weeks we were discussing a time at the end of the northern kingdom of Israel. The northern kingdom falls to the Assyrian empire, which takes up just slightly more than the land that is currently in modern day Syria. But that Empire comes and destroys the Israelites in the north. And they actually continue south, and they siege the city of Jerusalem. We’re told that God himself fights off the Assyrian army. So the As

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Good and Evil in the Sight of the Lord (November 17, 2019)

2 Kings 22: 3-11, 13, 15-20; 23:1-3 Good and Evil in the Sight of the Lord Josiah’s reform is one of the most interesting passages in Scripture for me, one of my favorite passages to really look at and meditate on. It has a lot of stuff that can be taken to our own lives, and show us the way in which we are to act, and interact with the Lord, and with our world. But in order to truly understand what is happening here, and truly understand what Josiah is doing, we need to tak

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God Is Calling (November 10, 2019)

Hosea 11: 1-12 God Is Calling Hosea is a prophet of God sent to the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom of Israel. It’s during the time of the split, shortly after Elijah, and right as Israel was about to be conquered by the Asyrians. Some think he preached actually into the time after Assyria’s conquest. Hosea is an interesting prophet. If you have a chance to read the book this week, there’s a lot in there that is stuff to mull over that we’re not going to completely ge

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Not Alone (November 3, 2019)

1 Kings 19: 1-5, 8-10, 13-18 Not Alone The time of the Kings in Israel and Judah is a time marked by turmoil for the people of God. The books of Kings and the books of Chronicles list off the rulers of Israel and Judah, but the stars of the books are not the rulers. Most of the rulers, not all but most of the rulers, in these two kingdoms are listed as people who were not doing what they were supposed to do; they did not follow the commands of God, and therefore listed as peo

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Faith of the King (October 27, 2019)

1 Kings 12:1-17 Faith of the King Last week we were crowning the king of Israel; both King Saul and eventually King David. And this week we are at a point where we’re crowning David’s grandson, a man named Rehobalm. I want to briefly talk about what happened in between those two moments. How did we get here from where we were? The Kingship of David, and the Kingship of Solomon, are the most important Kings in all of Israelite history, at least according to Scripture. They cer

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We Need A King (October 20, 2019)

1 Samuel 8: 10-22; 2 Samuel 5:1-5 We Need A King In 1859, a man named Joseph Norton in San Francisco declared himself the Emperor of the United States: Emperor Norton the First. He sent a letter at some point to Congress telling them to cease-and-desist with making laws, that he would take care of that from now on. The people of San Francisco really loved this. They would play along. They would follow him around. He would issue decree, and they would would go along with them;

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Faith In Strange Places (October 13, 2019)

Ruth 1: 1-18 Faith In Strange Places So this is the story of Ruth, and the story of the judges. We’re told at the very beginning of this book that this is the time where the judges ruled over Israel. This is a period of roughly 300 to 500 years between the time where Joshua conquered the land of Canaan and the time that Saul is crowned king. And this is a time that is pretty lawless. Israel is mostly a loose confederation of 12 tribes, with the Levites being the religious org

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Teaching Through Remembering (October 6, 2019)

Deuteronomy 5:1-5, 23-31 Teaching Through Remembering So we’re going through the Bible and we’ve arrived here at week five in the fifth book of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible are called the Torah, which means law in Hebrew. And specifically the law comes mostly from Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. But really, Genesis tells the story of what happened up to the Exodus, and then we have Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers telling the story of the Israelites’ travel thro

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The Call of a Burning Bush (September 29, 2019)

Exodus 3:1-15 The Call of a Burning Bush We continue our journey through the story of the Bible, and we take a little bit of a jump this week. We now move to Egypt, and we move to the Moses story. So very briefly, Jacob and his sons wind up in Egypt. One of his sons, through a long complicated story: Joseph, winds up as the basically the CEO of Egypt. And he is able to move his family into prime real estate for Shepherd‘s. But eventually that generation dies off and there ari

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Wrestling (September 22, 2019)

Genesis 32: 9-13, 22-30 Wrestling So we continue on in the story of the Bible, and we arrive at Jacob wrestling with God. As we come upon our scene, Jacob is alone and God appears and wrestles with him. But let’s go back and figure out why Jacob is alone. Jacob is alone because he is scared of his brother Esau. Why is he scared of his brother Esau? He and his brother have had a interesting relationship throughout his life. Jacob’s name either means “to grab” or “heel.” He is

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The worship experience for March 15, 2020 can be found here.