First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL

1 Samuel 3:1-10 1 Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3 the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5 and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. 6 The Lord called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8 The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli,...

Session 2 Romans 1:14- 3:20 Bob mentioned last night that since there are so many churches where people give their lives to Christ, there ought to be “The Church of the Renegeth,” people who take back their lives from Christ” I assured him that though there is no denominational structure, that “church” has a huge membership and a large number of people attending it every Sunday. Or, as a fellow told me a while back, an awful lot of people are “home-churched.” Paul’s opening chapters in the Epistle to the Romans set the stage for him to address the condition of those who live under the illusion that they are in control of their own world. He addresses the practice of idolatry, the worship of self in place of God; and the exchange of the glory of God for the dehumanizing life of sin. In Chapter 2, he dissects the role of the law as it relates to God’s righteousness. (I am indebted to the work of Paul Achtemeier in his commentary on Romans in the Interpretation series for much of...

Week 1: Introduction This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes. … We find in this letter, then, the richest possible teaching about what a Christian should know: the meaning of law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace, faith, justice, Christ, God, good works, love, hope and the cross. We learn how we are to act toward everyone, toward the virtuous and sinful, toward the strong and the weak, friend and foe, and toward ourselves. Paul bases everything firmly on Scripture and proves his points with examples from his own experience and from the Prophets, so that nothing more could be desired. Therefore it seems that St...

A sermon for December 24, 2010 Listen, I want to tell you a story. I don’t think it is factual, but it might be true. It begins as all good stories do: “once upon a time…” Back in the olden days, good stories began with “it came to pass in those days…” That’s the old fashioned way of saying “once upon a time.” Anyway, I have a story to tell you, about angels and stars and a baby. It is the same story you hear every time this year, with all the same characters and the same plot. But first I want to tell it from a very different point of view, so come with me as we zoom out from the manger, out farther, and farther from the stable, over the city of Bethlehem, high into the dark night sky, and beyond, beyond time and space and geography into a dimension that we call heaven. Now, listen. I want to tell you a story: Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown round the splendours and glories of the universes by a senior and experienced angel. To tell the truth, the little an...

T oday, on a wintry Saturday, we buried Helen Snow, who died just before her 94th birthday. By all accounts she was the kindest and most loving woman you could ever hope to meet. I've been reading Tom Long's book Accompany Them With Singing , and thinking a lot about the Christian funeral. It seems to me that at a funeral, we need to try to accomplish an awful lot in a very short time: we want to remember, to mourn, to give thanks. And as pastors, we want to somehow capture a handful of hope and pass it gently into the laps of those weeping people on the front row. We try to do that with our words as well as our deeds. 1st Corinthians 13: 4-8a, 13 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. 13 ...

When our astonishingly talented and creative worship planning team sits down to think about Advent, we like to consider the season as a whole. We ask ourselves a lot of questions. What do we hope will happen? What do we hope people will experience in worship? What are the particular needs of our congregation this year? This year, although we never discussed it explicitly, we were all feeling a sense of the general hurry, rush and anxiety that pervades this season. People are busy; they feel overcommitted; there is not enough time to do everything. Sometimes, during this season of increased demands, the church can be one of the main culprits! In our desire to fulfill every dream and rehearse every tradition, to keep up every custom, we end up placing greater burdens on ourselves. We increase our anxiety and decrease our peace, in order to prepare for the Prince of Peace! I’m intentionally scaling back my own activities this year, in order to focus on those which are most important ...