Guerrilla Christianity

Sermon #136

Ambition is a human quality and at times it can be an admirable trait.  After all, if someone does not strive to better themselves they become stagnant or slide back into oblivion.  But when it comes to the Kingdom of God, ambition, Jesus tells us, is not a characteristic to be desired.  In today's reading we meet James and John, two brothers who were fishermen, who took their ambition to great heights whey they aksed t...

Sermon #304

Laity Sunday is a day when we celebrate the work of laypersons in the church of God.  On this Laity Sunday we at Hudson UMC asked our Lay Leader Wayne Niebauer to describe a time when he felt abandoned by God, and how he could point to where God was at work in that moment.  We often feel like in our hard times we are all alone, and yet when we look back at those times we can often see how God was at work, and it is in t...

Sermon #7

Well this week we have a bonus sermon, one that I gave a couple years ago when I was a layperson.  From the Gospel of John, this message centers on Peter's declaration to Jesus, "You have the words of eternal life."  We sometimes forget that we can only be satisfied in Christ.  We try to fill our lives with things that the world tells us to value.  In this message, from the Summer of 2012, we look at what the world has to...

Sermon #294

What we find in the words "I Believe in... the holy catholic church, the communion of saints..." can be troublesome to some.  How can we profess belief in one church when there are so many denominations?  Often it is used against us as Christians to say that we can't even agree with each other.  And yet, there is undeniably something universal about the body of Christ, and what we affirm in this section of the Creed is ...

Sermon #616

A priest is one who intercedes on behalf of the people to God, to make sacrifices to atone for sin.  The high priest is one who makes atonement for the sins of all the people, in this case, the people of Israel.  But the high priest is himself a sinful person and so he must first make atonement for his own sins before making atonement for the people.  This is not the case for Jesus Christ, who was tempted in every way t...

Sermon #457

The episode of David's sin does not simply end with his repentance.  As is often the case, the wreckage of this single momentary lapse in judgment follows not only David but also his immediate and extended family for many years, and even affects the nation of Israel as it descends into civil war, led by David's third son Absalom.  We often do not think about the consequences of our sin.  Forgiveness may be available thr...

Sermon #293

We turn our attention in the Apostles' Creed to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  There is much misinformation regarding the Holy Spirit given in the last hundred years or so, and so we take a look at some of the myths about the Holy Spirit and debunk them, then examine how the Holy Spirit works in the life of the baptized christian to bring about the purposes of God here on earth.

Text: John 15:26-27; ...

Sermon #615

God promises a rest for those who follow him in faith.  To the Israelites, he promised they would enter into his rest in the land that he promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Yet they refused and instead feared the people of the land, and God made them wander in the wilderness for forty years.  The rest that he promises to believers today is an eternal Sabbath rest, purchased by the blood of his own son, Jesus Christ...

Sermon #456

This dark chapter in David's life brings in a new person to the story, Nathan the prophet.  Although David had hidden his sin from others, he had not hidden the sin from himself, and he certainly did not hide it from God.  When Nathan confronts David with the made-up story of a rich man who stole a poor man's lamb, David was enraged.  Yet when Nathan confronted David with his own sin, David repented of his sin and confe...

Sermon #292

Our exposition of the Apostles' Creed brings us to the end of the Christological statement of faith.  We who have embraced Christ by faith for forgiveness of sins can rest assured in the final judgment.  But what about those who have not?  Jesus said he will come again, and he talks about his return as a time of judgment - what the Old Testament calls the "great and terrible day of the Lord."  Jesus came once as a savio...

Sermon #614

After having asserted that Jesus, as Son of God, is greater than Moses (considered by the Jews to be the greatest prophet), the writer of Hebrews now looks at a particular event in the history of Israel, saying that even though God brought all of Israel out of Egypt, not all of them entered the promised land, but most perished in the wilderness due to their unbelief.  And so the writer of Hebrews is exhorting his reader...

Sermon #455

[This sermon was recorded in 2021 but was never released.  In an effort to complete the Prophets & Kings series from that Summer, we are going back and releasing these sermons in 2024.]

In our series so far, we've only seen the good in David.  He is faithful to God, he is faithful to Saul even when Saul wants to kill him, and he is faithful to the people of Israel.  But something changes here in chapter 11 of 2 Samu...

Sermon #352

I can think of no better message to kick off the eighth season of Guerrilla Christianity than this message which was preached at the Pitman Grove Camp Meeting in 2019. Very few Christians today share their faith in Jesus Christ, and perhaps it is because we have no idea who Jesus is. The writer of the book of Hebrews offers us the foundational testimony toward building a solid Christology (the study of Christ and His na...

Sermon #613

Without a doubt, the greatest figure in the history of Israel was Moses.  He was the one who led the people out of slavery.  He was the one to whom God gave the law.  He was the leader of the Hebrews in the wilderness for 40 years.  And yet, the writer of Hebrews insists that we ought to consider Jesus as greater than Moses.  After all, Moses delivered the law to Israel, but Jesus brought grace and truth to all the worl...