Sermons by Rev. Joel Lynn

          Today we continue our sermon series on the book of Jonah. Last time we spoke of the great evil and violence of Nineveh, Jonah’s desire to thus flee far away from having to go and be a prophet there, and the resulting storm that caused Jonah to be thrown overboard and swallowed up by a whale. And now Jonah has been spit up by the whale onto dry land. And Jonah is given a second chance. The word of God comes to Jonah calling him to go to Nineveh a second time, and this time he obeys. But my hunch is that he is still a little halfhearted about this mission to which he has been called. Because look at what message Jonah goes to proclaim to them: he says, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” As far as I can tell Jonah is doing the bare minimum that he can do to still plausibly claim to God that he’s fulfilling his prophetic role in this city. Because I’ve never preached a sermon so short in my life. If I were Jonah I’d be going in...

        Today, we celebrate Reformation Sunday. And one of the focal points of the Reformation, of course, came in the year 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. Primarily, Luther sought to contest the practice of the selling of indulgences, this idea that if you donated enough money to the church that you could be granted forgiveness of sins. This practice went against so much biblical truth. Jesus said blessed are the poor, and yet this practice seemed to give the rich extra favors in making it to heaven. The selling of indulgences reminds me of Acts chapter 8 where we encounter Simon the Sorcerer who thinks that he can buy from Peter and John the power of the Holy Spirit. He was of course sharply rebuked. The power of God is not something that can be bought. Neither can salvation be bought. As it says in Psalm 49:7 there is no price that one can give to God as ransom for their lives. Our debt is too big. On...

       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...