Short week + tough reading + midweek preps = sermon that sounds like a lecture.
The idea still swirls in my head. I think it also still swirls in the culture. We are all faintly aware that things are not as they seem. Whether that is the sci-fi’ish stuff, or the game of shadows with terrorists or a market losing 40% in a month. If all was as it seemed, then why the corrections? Why would the next President who campaigned on immediate end to Iraq keep the Sec of Def of the despised outgoing administration?
One path is the fever swamps of paranoia and conspiracy theory – don’t go that way. The other path is to realize what the Bible says – we contend not against flesh and blood, but agaist the powers and dominions of the spiritual world. It may look like we are helping a homeless persons, but we are really giving aid to Christ. It may look like we are rich, but we are spiritually poor. It may look like we have everything figured out, and tonight our souls are demanded of us. That slight sense of things are not what they seems is a natural revelation. It should lead us to the written revelation in God’s Word – The Bible. In His Word we find everything we need to know for salvation. The last layer of that is that the only view that really matters is that of the Father which has been revealed to us in the Son, Jesus Christ.
Tough stuff to think about let along act on. Nobody else might be, but I’m glad we left the litany in as the prayer, that we spent more time in prayer. That prayer is incredibly centering. When the sermon was just not up to snuff, the liturgy can be given the load to carry. That prayer carries a huge load.