Pastor's Corner: WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?

 GET UP! (or, “An Analysis of our Paralysis”) John 5:1-16 Introduction : Back in the early 1970s the philosopher [!] Jim Croce mused, “After all it’s what we’ve done that makes us what we are.” Well, our past certainly affects who we are, but does it define us? God says, “If any man be in Christ—a new creation!” (2 Cor 5:17). Which is it, what we’ve done, or, what God, our Creator and Redeemer, is doing in us?  Sometimes we live like we are not quite sure—we start replaying in our minds the mistakes, failures, and hurts of the past and we get stuck there—we effectively can be paralyzed in terms of our potential to live a victorious Christian life.  That is a shame because that is a win for the enemy. The miracle story we come to today is of a man with a physical infirmity that has continued for 38 years—and there are clues in the context that, seemingly, it was somehow related to past sin in his life.      So far in our study of the Fourth Gospel there has ...

  THE NEWS THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING: HE LIVES! -  John 20:1-18 Introduction: One of my great-grandmothers was a Ukrainian immigrant. They came over early in the 20th century. She died around 1970. One thing I remember about her, is the beautiful eggs she decorated at Easter time. It was traditional. Not just colored eggs, but carefully, artistically designed patterns. Some of those eggs would be eaten, others had the egg carefully removed from the shell before it was dyed so that they could be displayed longer. A strange thing, so beautiful on the outside, it looked like an egg, but a hollow shell, empty. Paul said a similar thing would be true of Christianity if it were not for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus…  17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  19 If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to ...

  JESUS, THE PASSOVER KING:  Palm Sunday 2025 John 12:12-16 Introduction: It is Palm Sunday, a day when we traditionally remember the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem the Sunday before His crucifixion. I have decided to look at a passage we have read before on this day, jumping ahead in the Gospel of John (the only Gospel that actually specifically mentions “palms” at the Triumphal Entry!) to John 12. In view of our four months studying the Fourth Gospel (we started December 1st of last year) I wanted to see how John’s witness to this event might speak to us even more deeply with the additional context we’ve so far considered.        We’ve seen already in John that Jesus is Lord, He knows our need, He tabernacled for a while among us in this fallen world (Jn 1:14), and ultimately, He bore our sorrows and carried our grief (Isa 53:3,4). The four Gospel accounts testify to the truth about who Jesus is, and about why He came. The God who is has spoken!...

 TRUST GOD John 4:43-54 Introduction: Most of us have probably prayed for a miracle at some time. Some of you, perhaps, and can relate immediately to this nobleman, this servant of a king who came to Jesus looking for help for his deathly ill son. It may be that you have seen a child desperately sick.  Perhaps an injury, perhaps a sickness, maybe even the doctors offering little hope, and you yourself helpless to take the pain away, to help the one you love. You would switch places in a heartbeat if you could, you would give anything.       I’ve witnessed such grief in my family. We were there through the weeks my nephew, 5 going on 6, my sister’s son, was treated for leukemia, diagnosed at the end of October, chemotherapy, a series of crises, pancreatitis, an emergency surgery, and death all within about seven weeks. Devastating. I saw the pain my parents experienced when my brother lay dying in a coma, hooked up to a respirator, after crashing his motorcy...