Sermons by Rev. Joel Lynn

       Today we are starting a sermon series in the book of Jonah. And it begins with Jonah being called to the city of Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a little bit Northeast of Israel and would be traveled to by land, so what does Jonah do? He gets on a boat and seeks to travel as far West as he possibly can by sea. Basically, he’s trying to go in the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. The last thing he wants to do is go to Nineveh. So, he sought to flee the command of God by traveling to Tarshish, a city in Spain. You have to remember that at this point no one in Europe or the Middle East knew about the new world of the Americas, so Spain was literally the furthest west point that Jonah knew of that he could possibly travel to.          Have you ever felt God calling you to do something that you really didn’t want to do? To give up something in your life that you’d rather keep? To befriend someone you’d rather avoid? To do something that felt ...

                              Today we are diving into 1 Timothy 6:6-10 and 11-17 which contains the verse that we have been focusing in on as our theme during this stewardship season. Yes, our scriptural theme this season has been 1 Timothy 6:18: “be rich in good deeds.” It’s a really meaningful teaching. But this teaching is actually found in the midst of a rather large section teaching on the topic of money. And it focuses on 2 warnings about money and 2 recommendations about money. And we’re going to look at all of it…             The first warning that Paul gives is that wealth is not lasting. Just as we came into this world with nothing, we will leave this world with nothing. And this teaching shows up so many places in the Bible that the truth may seem obvious to us nowadays. It showed up in our call to worship from Psalm 49 that told ...

                           T oday is World Communion Sunday, a day in which we will celebrate communion on the same day as potentially billions of others around the world. Today is a wonderful reminder that Christianity is made up of far more people than just our little church here, and made up of far more people than just our Presbyterian denomination or just the American church or just the western church. Christianity is being practiced by people of nearly every nation and language. Indeed, you might be surprised to hear that there are more Christians in Africa than any other continent, and Latin America has the second highest number of Christians. Today, be reminded that as a Christian you are united to believers across time and space, across geographical and historical boundaries, so much so that in a lot of ways you have more in common with a Christian who lived in the middle east a thousand years ...

               As we continue in our sermon series on the book of James, our passage today from James 3:1-12 is all about the power of the tongue and the need to control our words and speech. But it begins with what is at first a seemingly unrelated warning. James warns us that “Not many should desire to become teachers. For teachers will be judged more strictly.” And I think this is true both in terms of how teachers will be judged by others and how teachers will be judged by God. When one seeks to become a pastor or spiritual leader, they are immediately put into a fishbowl type situation where others are looking at them far more closely. With the average church member, people don’t have very high expectations of how they should be or act, but with teachers, the expectations are often enormous. The slightest slip up and they will be judged harshly.              I think James is t...

                      When we come across our passage today from James 2:14-26, we are almost walking into the middle of a conversation. And the issue with walking into the middle of a conversation is that you are missing everything that was said before you walked in that might give you some important context for what everyone is talking about. So, let me try and slowly build up the backstory of what James is responding to here. James begins by asking, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?” And he’s asking this, presumably, because some people are saying that there is much profit from having faith, even without works. And here’s why they are probably thinking that: because a key part of the gospel message of salvation is this: you are not saved by good works. The law of God does perhaps make one worthy of heaven if one keeps it entirely. But the problem of course is t...

          Our passage from James 2:1-9 today features James scolding various churches because they have been engaging in favoritism, they have been giving preferential treatment to the wealthy people in their churches, giving them the prime places to sit, and extra attention and care. I wonder, do we still have the same issue today? After all, in some ways we have made great strides toward class equality. For example, America has always had a very different culture than say England. When America was starting, England was still defined in many ways by this elaborate class system where one was entitled to much better treatment if they were a king or queen, a prince or an earl, a noble or a knight. Nor is America a place like how India used to be when it was divided into a strict, hierarchical caste system from the Brahmins down to the untouchables. In America, class distinctions seem much more leveled, though not nonexistent. In democracy, everyone’s vote cou...