Pastor's Corner

King Jesus Psalm 2 Introduction If your child, or spouse, a family member or loved one had been poisoned and you had the antidote, would you hesitate to give it to them? Would you do anything you could to make sure they took the life-saving cure? In Psalm 2, we see something along those same lines. We see a poisoned people, although the poison is not some physica...

Opposition and Expectant Hope Psalm 5 Introduction At times, the psalms can be frustrating. They are not like New Testament letters for example, where the writer explains situations and gives some details about the problems as well as guidance to address them. Many of the psalms are just short and raw cries of the heart with no context. We are left wondering what is...

The Majesty of God Psalm 8 Introduction Most of us are probably familiar with the Rorschach test. This is a psychological exam, where someone looks at an indistinct image of an inkblot and states what they see or feel. The purpose of the test is to try to analyze how someone thinks, to see if the images elicit any deviant responses that could point to improper think...

Faith in Lament Psalm 10 Introduction More than a third of the psalms are laments. There is an entire book of the Bible, Lamentations, where the author grieves about the suffering he is experiencing in and around him. What is lament, biblically speaking? I like the definition given in a book about this topic, where the author says, "Lament is a prayer in pain that l...

Driving Out Idols Psalm 17 Introduction On August 31st, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 took off from Anchorage, Alaska in route to Seoul, South Korea. In just a few hours it would be shot down by Soviet military jets, causing the deaths of all 269 people on board. This tragedy was caused by many mistakes that can be tracked back to a simple error. It seems that th...

The Lord's Supper 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 https://www.nlbcma.org/sermons/sermon/2022-05-08/foundations-of-the-church-ep-1-the-lords-supper Introduction Have you ever walked into church on Sunday morning and noticed the communion elements up front and thought, "oh man, it's communion Sunday, that means the service is going to go long today!" Anyone else ever think that ...

Baptism Colossians 2:6-15 https://www.nlbcma.org/sermons/sermon/2022-05-22/foundations-of-the-church-ep-2-baptism Introduction Imagine with me for a minute that you had never seen or heard about baptism before. Now imagine you see a baptism service? What would you make of it? Many years ago I was at a church picnic with a different church and there was a pool with a hi...

Membership Ephesians 4:11-16 https://www.nlbcma.org/sermons/sermon/2022-05-29/foundations-of-the-church-ep-3-biblical-church-membership Introduction We can learn a lot from warthogs. Have you ever seen what they do with mongooses? It is called a symbiotic relationship, meaning two creatures live together in a mutually beneficial relationship. A warthog will get covered...

Gathering Hebrews 10:19-25 https://www.nlbcma.org/sermons/sermon/2022-06-05/foundations-of-the-church-ep-4-gathering Introduction We like to think that in our day and age we are very different and much more advanced than generations before us. And in some ways that is true, but people are still people and history always repeats itself. Take for example, when the plague...

Serving 1 Peter 4:8-11 https://subspla.sh/wgw3kdn Introduction Over the past several weeks we have been looking at the foundations of the church. We have discussed communion, baptism, membership and gathering. And now, in conclusion of this mini-series, we come to the capstone of them all, serving. This is tying everything up together and putting all we have learned an...