Weekly Sermons

Jesus said, John 8:36 “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”  I like that verse, don’t you?  But if we are free, then why do we still struggle with addictions, negative emotions, besetting sins and other issues that make us feel like slaves?

The answer to this question can be understood in light of a 150+ year old document in Washington D.C.  On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation.  With a single stroke of his pen, he changed the legal status of 3 million slaves… 

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would “convict the world of sin” in John 16:8.  Besides filling the 120 believers assembled in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was also released upon the earth, preparing people to hear the Gospel message.

Masculinity is under assault today.  This is not news, however.  It’s been happening for a long time.  If men are not portrayed as bumbling idiots in the entertainment media, worthy only of being the butt of someone’s joke, then they are portrayed as angry and abusive jerks. Today, we are not sure what a man is any longer.  The media’s caricature of men has created an identity crises for males in in America.  It’s hard to know if we should follow our instincts and be men after the traditional role models or just flow with the new normal – which is the elimination of maleness by an infusion of femininity that is producing some new transgender hybrid that looks like a man but exhibits the sensitivities and nurturing instincts of a woman.

The man was from Africa.  He was a dignitary, a diplomat, an official in his nation’s government.  He was in charge of the treasury.  He was a sophisticated, wealthy and educated gentleman.  Besides speaking his native Cushitic and Aramaic, as a government official tasked with matters of finance and trade in the Roman world, he also was fluent in Greek and Latin... 

…and he was familiar with at least one other language.  We know this because he was reading a Hebrew manuscript when his story was told in Acts 8.  It was a particular manuscript written by Isaiah over 700 years previously.

Christianity has a special connection to weakness.  Although counterintuitive in many ways, Jesus came preaching a message of weakness rather the human strength.  This is because we are all weak in certain areas of our lives.  We have this in common.  From preachers to politicians; from factory workers to postal workers; from professional athletes to policemen, the headlines remind us everyday that human beings are extremely flawed.