Skip to main content

Some Blatant Plagiarism


 (From time to time most preachers will preach someone else’s sermon. While its uncouth to do so too often, it can be very effective to take another’s sermon and re-work it till it fits you and your audience. That is what I have done here and I hope it is true to the original lesson {Acts 17:22-34})


Men of Hope,
 I noticed that this is a very religious community. As you walk around the streets, you don’t have to go far to see many different churches each claiming to worship God but in very different ways. It seems that we might not exactly know how he wants us to worship him. But there is a right way. Let me tell you what I’ve learned about from His own Word.
    
  The One True God, is a creator, a designer, Designers have plans for what they want in their creation. If he designed the world that way, you better believe he has a design for his Church.  He has made everything just how he wants it and just how it needs to be. He doesn’t need man’s input to figure out what to do. Man’s traditions are not equal to God’s commands. We need to listen to him, not try to tell him what needs to be done. God made us from one blood to be unified, thought we done poor job staying that way.

  God from the very beginning has tried to make it clear to us and given us the light of his word, the light of his Son, but we still stumble around with our eyes closed, occasionally bumping into some semblance of what we are supposed to be doing. That’s sad since he standing right there like a Father trying to help his children, but we fumble around insisting ‘we can do it ourselves’.

  If we are his children should we actually be listening to him?  God isn’t something we create to our whims, fashioned by our own desires and wants. Idols are made in man’s image, God made us in His image. Let’s not get this backwards.

  It is a hard truth but this foolishness has gone on for too long, we need to make a change. Whatever group we might belong to or where we find ourselves, we must conform to his Truth. God’s tired of us doing our own way; we need to go back to His Way, His Word.  Jesus set the standard with his New Testament, which is what will judge us in the end. What some preacher said or what we always done isn’t the measure, Jesus and his word is!

  Jesus has proven himself the son of God. His word will judge us. So what are we going to do?


(Now I know that for some, the idea of just doing what we see in the New Testament is a joke. Other might agree in pretense but will never make the necessary hard changes required. But I know there are some that will listen and obey what God has set for us!)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

The Mighty Gulf

  It is hard to get people on two sides of an issue to come together. Each has their own viewpoint, their perceptive, their own foibles, their own understanding.  To gain any common ground there must be something in common. Something or someone that can bridge the gulf between the two.   Could there be a greater gulf than there was between God and man? How could a holy perfect God find a way to connect to the fallen, imperfect mankind? How can one without temptation connect to those who are beset by it? How could limited mortal beings understand an omnipotent eternal God?   In 1 Timothy 2:5, we read, “ For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus .” The phrase mediator here describes a person that bridges the gap, a go-between. Jesus was one who could stand in both worlds. A perfect holy one who can understand our temptations, a man who would die yet live eternally, One who was God yet became flesh and dwelt among us. ...

How Dare You!

    Lewis Keseberg was tired of all the accusations against him so he filed a defamation lawsuit against Ned Coffeemeyer the man he saw as responsible for the rumors. The court found that Ned had indeed called Keseberg a “thief and murderer” without any proof but it didn’t rule very strongly in his favor by only imposing a fine of one dollar.  Maybe they were lenient because Ned Coffeemeyr had earlier rescued Lewis Keseberg from a terrible situation.  Maybe it was because the accusations while not proven were highly likely.  And maybe because Lewis Keseberg had admitted to eating people.   Lewis Keseberg was one of the members of the infamous Donner Party, a wagon train that got caught in the Siera Nevada mountain and resorted to cannibalism to survive. Keseberg wasn’t known as a very good person before those events and they certainly didn’t help improve his image. But to sue the very person who saved you seems to define the kind of person he was....