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Showing posts with the label Trinity IX

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

- August 02, 2026

The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...

Sermon - Trinity IX 2024 - Luke 16:1-13

- July 28, 2024

Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, circa 1540 Making mammon a servant of eternity The parable is about using mammon for the sake of our eternal home A right use of mammon doesn’t save, only Jesus. But a wrong use of mammon can condemn us. How ought the Christian to view mammon How to use mammon for the sake of our eternal home Talking about money can be a sensitive topic for a lot of people. It’s considered a very private subject and would be a breach of privacy if someone were to snoop and look at our financial situation, to see how many debts we have, or how much (or little) we have in the bank account, how much money we make a year, how much property we own, the state of our investments. Some people love to talk about money, and others hate to talk about money. Either way you slice it, our wealth is easily made into an idol, something which we trust in and don’t feel comfortable losing. This is the very definition of the word mammon: a treasure that a person t...

Sermon - Trinity IX 2023 - 2 Samuel 22:26-34

- August 06, 2023

King David, Peter Paul Rubens, 1616 The Lord saves His humble little Christians The Lord rescued David. The Lord rescues us. How do you react and what do you do when it seems like everything is falling apart and breaking? When you were a kid this usually just happened when your tower fell down that you were building. But upon growing up the stakes are higher and the things that fall apart are much more significant. A marriage falls apart, children apostatize, friends leave you, you lose your job, a major project ends up a complete failure, the list could go on. Sometimes we blame others for our problems, but other times we blame ourselves and feel like failures. Maybe I’m not good enough, smart enough, young enough, strong enough; maybe I have the wrong personality, the wrong ideas, the wrong everything. Sometimes it was our fault that things fell apart, but other times it’s just something that happened, and here we are now. So what do we do? How do we react? We respond in faith. The L...

Sermon - Trinity IX 2022 - Luke 16:1-13

- August 14, 2022

Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, circa 1540 Jesus’ parables can be quite difficult to understand and accept, and today’s is no exception. On the cover it appears as if Jesus is praising a lousy wicked man. This manager gets fired because he’s wasting his boss's possessions. Then, he’s too lazy to do manual labor and he’s too prideful to beg, so instead he takes his boss’s records and pretends to still be employed so as to falsify the bills that people owe the master, so that the master loses more money but the debtors like the manager. This means that he will have gained a bunch of friends and built rapport with them, so that when they discover he’s getting fired they despise the master and love him. The master either gives him his job back since the debtors like this manager, or the manager still gets fired but now the debtors hate the master and will care for the manager since their debts were lowered. Either way the manager wins since he played the polit...

Sermon - Trinity IX 2021 - 1 Corinthians 10:6-13

- August 01, 2021

The Brazen Serpent, James Tissot, 1836-1902 If you were to die today, are you absolutely sure you’d go to heaven? That’s a question often asked by door-to-door evangelists of unbelievers. Unsurprisingly, it’s an ineffective question for an unbeliever, because they don’t even believe in the premise of an afterlife, so they could care less about heaven or hell. But for us Christians, it’s a rather relevant question and something many of us think about from time to time. If I died today, would I go to heaven? Some Christians answer that question with uncertainty; they’re not sure where they’re going when they die. That’s a sad state for a Christian. Our salvation is certain because our salvation is dependent on God, not us. God paid the price for our forgiveness, He paid it with His own priceless blood, and therefore our forgiveness is certain. This salvation is apprehended through faith, and yet our faith is also dependent on God, not us. God the Holy Spirit gives us faith as a gift; we ...

Sermon - Trinity IX 2020 - Luke 16:1-13

- August 09, 2020

“ There was a rich man who had a manager , and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. ” In this parable the rich man, the master of the house, is God our heavenly Father. What are the riches which belong to the Lord? “ The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. ” Everything created by God, from the concept of time to the atoms which makes up everything, all of it is the Lord’s. The house-manager, the steward in the parable, is each and every person on earth. We all share the charge given to our first parents, Adam and Eve: “ Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. ” Typically, a rich man hires a steward to take of his stuff because the rich man has too much stuff to take care of on his own and needs to employ others because he’s not sufficient for the task. That’s not the case with God though. God is more than capable of taking care of all of this earth Himself. So the reason Go...