Psalm 130

Sermon

Good Evening Church! I was Glad when they said to me let us go and worship in the house of the Lord!

Last time I was here to share God’s words with you all, I started by talking about how much I am terrified of preaching something like this, where you have the whole Bible to pick from. This is because I truly believe that the whole bible is the inspired word of God and useful for teaching, for reproof and for correction. So there is this weight to make sure you pick the right part of Scripture to preach on, because I would hate to rob each and every one of you.

Well, for the sake of keeping everything the same, I will start this one with a similar confession. I LOVE preaching to MY church. I love being able to bring God’s word to bear on the hearts of people that I know and love and who know and love me. But I am terrified of situations like this. A few weeks ago one of the members of our church asked if I get nervous before a sermon and i said quickly NO. I have prayed over it, run through it and am ready to go. Well in truth this sort of situation is more difficult.

SO to help me out a little let me start with this: I try and live out What Paul talks about in Ephesians 4:5 in speaking the truth in love. But here is my honest opinions, it is hard to speak the truth to people you don’t love and you don’t really love people that you will not speak the truth to. So let me start by saying this, as brothers and sisters in Christ, all part of the holy family joined together with Christ as the head, all bought with a great price, I love you all. But I don’t necessarily KNOW you all. I don’t know what struggles are all represented in this room, I know the stories of about half of you all, your hurts, your idiosyncrasies or (one of my favorite words) foibles, but for others we have just met or will meet here at a shared meal after service, or possibly we will just see each other and truly meet as we worship together in Glory. But if we are going to keep this idea of truth in love at the forefront Let me start with I love you all, now heres some truth.

I don’t know If i should be sharing all these pastoral secrets from the get go but the truth is this: Life is hard. I used to have a sort of mentor that would say: Life’s hard, then you die. WE can paint over this with thoughts of the goodness of God (which is true, God is good) of the richness of grace and mercy given us in Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ (again, true, we have a depth of grace and mercy and love that we cannot even begin to quantify) but at the heart of all this life is a life that sometimes is hard and difficult. Loved ones get sick and die, For many pastors as soon as you get your first pastoral position you go out and buy a black suit. Why? Its for Marrying and burying.