Sermons From First Baptist Church Of Lawrence, Ks

Story One The people of God worried about the future before them. Their leader, Moses, had left on a hiking expedition some time ago, and they had caught glimpses of him as he climbed to the top of the mountain. But now the mountain was filled with smoke and fire and trembled with the power of God, and they wondered if Moses would ever return. In fact, some had given up hope. Many had begun to grumble. They melted their gold down to create a symbol of earthly virility and strength, because they thought they would all be better off if they returned to the old ways. Back to the bondage of requirements and coercion and certainty. Back to the security of slavery to the ways of the world. Little did the people of God know what awaited them! For before long, Moses would descend the mountain, holding the Torah. The law. The sign of the covenant of God with God’s people. Torah would not be simply a how-to guide, a to-do list, a prescription of “supposed to’s.” But it would be a description of a life that

Law or Faith Galatians 3:1–9, 23–29 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” 7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.23 Now before

I love road trips. I always have. When I was a kid, it was trips to see Grandparents down the country roads in Illinois. When we got married, Kimberly and I would drive across the country to B&B’s in small towns or out in the country. When we had kids of our own, we would strap them in the car seats and head to Kentucky or Arkansas, or one big Clark Griswold trip out to South Dakota and Montana and Nevada. Of course the mother of all road trips was our sabbatical a couple of summers ago, when we put several thousand miles on the minivan in one summer! And over the years in ministry, I remember fondly youth trips to Green Lake or Colorado or down to Georgia to camp. Veteran youth leaders will tell you that ABY and GaGa ball and the like are great, but there is nothing like the bonding experience of a road trip. I would suggest that Luke must have been a big fan of road trips, too. Remember how he reported in Chapter 9 that Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem.” The teaching and healing ministry of the G

Do you all know the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads?” It is a way to poke fun at sensational news broadcasts, which seem to believe that if a news story is about a death, or a fire, or a tragedy, or even a dangerous situation, then it should lead the news cycle! Even if other things are happening that have much more impact on the way that people live their lives, “if it bleeds, it leads.” For the last 2,000 years, I think that the Church has gotten a little caught up in this. If there is one thing you know about Stephen, it is probably the fact that he was killed. Stoned by those who disagreed with him. And the Church has focused on that fact more than much else that he did! He is often heralded as the first Christian martyr. It is hard to find a picture of him that doesn’t somehow involve stones…there are ancient icons that have these rocks hovering by his body…and even Sunday school curriculum shows some pretty graphic, bloody pictures of Stephen. I mean, he is patron saint of stonemasons, for crying out

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Several weeks ago, now, you woke up in First Century Palestine, somehow becoming the apostle of Jesus known as James, Son of Alphaeus. You looked like James. You sounded like James. You even understood the language that the women and men around you spoke. You fell asleep in Kansas, and you woke up as one of Jesus’ disciples. Over these weeks, you have followed Jesus, as he has taught and healed and ruffled feathers through every small town between Galilee and Jerusalem. And finally, you can see the city on the hill, rising in the distance. Jerusalem awaits. Along the way, you have had a few sleepless nights, tossing and turning your way through every science fiction theory, trying to figure out what is happening. You have seen enough sci fi movies to know that there are at least two options for what is going on. The first is the Back to the Future hypothesis. That is the idea that if you go back in time, you have the potential to change history. You save your mother,

Let me start with a statement that probably seems painfully obvious to a lot of you: I have no idea what I am doing up here. Of course, I have had plenty of years of experience preaching, and actually have an advanced degree in it. But I never took a class in pandemic preaching: “How to Preach to an Empty Room and an iPhone 101” The education and experience I have is not based on this situation, and I don’t even get to shake your hands at the end of the service these days, for you to tell me what you like (and don’t like) about my sermon. I have no idea what I am doing up here. Meanwhile, I along with the SLT are trying to figure out a schedule for a return to in-person worship, balancing the return of kids to school…and the appearance of more and more variants…and the impact of social isolation after all these months…and now talk of a third wave here in the Midwest. I won’t speak for the SLT, but I would say for my part, I don’t have all this figured out, for sure. We’ll know more in hindsight in a few

Act I Once upon a time, there were once six brothers, who will remain nameless for the point of our story. They were not the richest brothers on the planet, but they sure had enough money to live comfortably. All six brothers made sure that they had the “right” clothes, ate at the “right” restaurants, drove the “right” cars, and lived in the “right” neighborhoods. They never were quite ostentatious with their money, but always found subtle ways to remind people that they had it. All six continued to live in the community in which they had been born. A few of them lived in the same neighborhood where they had been raised as children. Again, they didn’t live in the nicest houses on the block. But they paid lawn services to keep their yards the greenest around. They proudly displayed their security system signs to ward off would-be thieves and remind everyone else that they had things worth stealing. And they spent plenty of money on landscaping and decks and backyard oases so that the backyard parties tha

Luke 10:25–42 I am going to ask you to suspend reason with me for a few minutes this morning. Imagine with me a fantastic scenario. One night, a cold night in Kansas in the middle of a global pandemic and a mediocre season of KU basketball, you fall asleep in your own bed. But when you wake up, something is very different. You have somehow become James, son of Alphaeus, one of the Apostles of Jesus. It obviously takes you a little while to figure this out, but you recognize from Sunday school this name that people keep calling you, you can see that you are one of twelve followers of a Teacher that sure acts a lot like Jesus, and can tell that somehow you have been transported into the body of a man in First Century Palestine. Inexplicably, you have become him. Somehow, you can understand the Aramaic that they are speaking. You look like James instead of yourself. And find yourself following in the footsteps of the most important man who ever walked the earth. It’s like Quantum Leap meets the Gospel of Luke

We welcome Pastor Cristina Adams to the pulpit as both our new Associate Pastor for Children, Youth & Families and as our preacher in observance of Baptist Women in Ministry Month of Preaching (formerly called Martha Stearns Marshall Sunday). Luke 9:28-45 Listen: An Invitation for Lent Last Sunday we left Jesus and his disciples after two healing stories. People were amazed at Jesus’ power. Luke says that “fear seized” those that saw the healings “and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’” (Luke 7:16). Words of Jesus’ greatness and power spread across the land. Today we skip ahead to chapter 9 and meet Jesus and three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, on a mountain, where they had gone to pray. Jesus did this quite regularly. He knew he needed time alone to spend with his Father and listen. But this prayer time became a prayer experience like no other. For while Jesus was praying, two men, Moses and Elijah, appea