This is Queen Street Baptist Church. Queen Street BAPTIST Church. We belong to the Canadian BAPTISTS of Ontario and Quebec. What in the world is a Baptist?

Many people think that Baptists are simply about using a lot of water for baptisms. But it is so much more than that.

There was a school class where the teacher was trying to teach about diversity. The teacher invited the children to bring something for show and tell that represented their religion. A Jewish girl brought in a Menorah. A Roman Catholic boy brought in some rosary beads. The teacher asked the Baptist child what he had brought. He told her he brought a casserole for the potluck. I will say as someone who has been to many churches that Baptists do have the best potlucks.

I was not raised Baptist. In fact I was baptized as a baby in an Anglican church and was baptized as a believer in a Pentecostal church. But I chose to be a Baptist at a time when I was wrestling with how my own beliefs fit with the traditions I was participating in. I think there is something great about Baptist distinctives.

Having said that, this message is not about why the Baptists are the best or why you should be Baptist, if you don’t already identify as such. If you identify with another Christian tradition, this is a time for us to all learn together. There are some things here that we can all agree on.

Before getting into the seven Baptist distinctives, I need to give you a very short history lesson as it will affect Baptist thought and practice. The first ever Baptist congregation appeared in Holland in 1609. It was made up of people who had fled from England. John Smyth was the first pastor. It was a time of great religious upheaval in England. The state church in England moved from Anglican to Catholic and back again. Whoever was in power vigorously persecuted the Christians of the “wrong” tradition. Many Baptist beliefs are a reaction to this situation.

So what do Baptists believe?

1. Jesus is Lord

What is the core of the Christian faith? What is it that unites us? From the very beginning, Christians have created creeds and faith statements that tell us what is the orthodox faith. Some of these creeds are better than others. But as new groups and traditions appeared, the creeds became more detailed and precise. Again, that is not necessarily bad.

But the early Baptists were seeking to be a New Testament church. This led them to look at what the earliest Christian creed was in the New Testament. It was pretty simple. Jesus is Lord.

“Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

This does not mean that we don’t believe anything else. But this is the foundation of our faith.

I said it was simple, but it is not easy. This is the creed that got the early church in trouble with the Romans. The Romans proclaimed that Caesar is Lord, that was the foundation of the Roman Empire. When the Christians said Jesus is Lord, they were also saying that Caesar is not Lord.

What are the implications when we say Jesus is Lord. Whose lordship are we denying? We cannot have two lords. If we make Jesus o

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Today we are going to talk about the end-times. Does that sound strange to you? Does talking about the end of the world make you feel uncomfortable? Are you afraid that we might be some kind of a cult?

The truth is that we all believe in the end of the world. Think in terms of movies and television shows. One of the most popular genres is that of the post-apocalyptic world. But it goes beyond entertainment.

Long before I knew what the Bible said about the end, I feared the end of the world. Growing up during the cold war, I feared a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although that fear has subsided, there still are fears. Perhaps the end will be due to a plague developed by those working in the area of bio-chemical warfare. Perhaps the end will because of poor use of our resources and not enough control over pollution. Perhaps our planet will be hit by a meteor or a comet, as such things fly through our solar system on a regular basis.

No scientist would ever suggest that life as we know it will go on forever. Even if we could stop the aging process and cure every disease, eventually our sun will explode. The end will come one way or another.

Are you depressed yet?

I share all this to say that talking about the end of the world is not strange. It will happen. And into this conversation, the Bible has much to say. This may be a difficult topic, because like the creation-evolution debate, many people have strong opinions. Some of the things that we believe are true have very little biblical evidence.

One of the reasons that people are uncomfortable talking about the end is that such ideas have been abused. Some people, usually religious of some kind, have misled people, either because they themselves were confused or they purposely try to deceive people. This latter purpose has been the strategy of some televangelists, but I think they are a minority.

Growing up in church, the end-times were never spoken of. I had no idea that there was anything in the Bible about Jesus returning. If I thought about it at all, I thought they were the beliefs of some fringe group.

After a period of my life as an atheist, I ended up believing in God but had not embraced any particular religion. I was working for some born again Christians who had a vibrant and detailed idea of what the end would be like. They believe that Jesus was returning, perhaps in a matter of days, if not hours, and that I needed to become a Christian right away. There was something called a rapture coming and if I missed that, my only chance would be to become a Christian and be executed by the antichrist. But no pressure.

One of the dangers of focusing on the end-times is the temptation to try and predict dates and other details. There are many people today who read the news and believe it is obvious that the end was near. I have done some research and have discovered that almost every generation has had the same confidence.

Just since the beginning of this millennium, we have had many predictions of the end. Authors have sold books on the topic, people have given up their jobs, lives have been turned upside down. Each time the day and hour passes and the prediction is proved false. The damage done is that it makes people believe that the end will never come and in some cases, that the Chr

A sermon that looks at the blessings and woes in Luke 6:17-26 .

God bless you! When are you most likely to hear that? While we should hear it a lot in church, you probably hear it more when people sneeze. This tradition goes back thousands of years. The ancient Romans would say “Jupiter preserve you” when someone sneezed. Arabs often say “Praise be to God.” Other cultures have more secular responses such as gesundheit, which means “health.” Almost every culture in every generation has some sort of good wish or prayer in response to a sneeze. Our familiar “God bless you” has been attributed to Pope Gregory the Great who said it during the bubonic plague outbreak in case the sneeze was the beginning of something more serious. This blessing generally emerges out of fear. Some feared that when you sneezed, your soul temporarily left your body and the blessing was needed to stop the devil from grabbing it. Others feared the devil got in with a sneeze and the blessing kicked him out. More recently, people feared your heart stopped during the sneeze and the blessing would get it going again.

That’s all very interesting but what is a blessing? There are a number of blessing lists in the Bible, including the beatitudes. If you compare this version in Luke with that from Matthew 5, you will notice they are similar but different. Why is this? I suspect that Jesus taught on this subject a number of times in different places. He would adjust the message according to the context and what we have in Luke is specific to this context.

But we still have not defined what a blessing is.

A good definition of blessing that I found is “the distinctive religious joy which accrues to [people] from [their] share in the salvation of the kingdom of God.”

The Greek word was used by Homer to speak of the gods in their contentment and happiness living with no fear or want. Later it began to be used more for people, in the ways that we typically think of it today. It was for the rich and powerful.

But that is not how it is used in the Bible as we will see. In fact the Bible seems to be responding to the popular ideas of blessings. I will also say that blessing is almost always referring to a person rather than a thing. It is people that are blessed and not things.

Aside from people who sneeze, who would we identify as those who are blessed? One way to think about this would be to imagine God coming to you and saying, “I want to bless you, what do you want?” I think that many people would want financial independence. It doesn’t have to be a billion dollars but being rich would be nice. They say money can’t by happiness, but not being able to afford to pay the bills is not so fun. Lotteries do a great job of leveraging this desire within us with their message of “Imagine the freedom.”

What else could we want? Good health would be a great blessing. As someone who has had some serious health concerns, I am pretty thankful when doctors and medication can get me back on track. When I hear about people getting good reports from the doctors, I am very happy. This is what we want to hear. When you talk to a young couple who are about to have a baby, they will often say, “We don’t care if it is a boy or a girl, as long as the baby is healthy.”

What other things would we consider blessings? I think popularity would be one. No one likes to be unpopular. Most people want to have friends tha

Was Jesus Really God?

It was about two years ago that I applied for the pastoral position at Queen Street Baptist Church. I will confess that it was an interview process different from many others in my experience. Not that previous search committees were unfriendly, but I felt a particular connection with this one. It helped that we met in the home of one of the members. I never had tea and cookies in previous church interviews.

But that is not to say that they were unprofessional or not thorough. As we shared about each other, we discovered that Paul Collins was my former high school vice principal. He didn’t remember me, which he said was a good thing. This was the first interview I had been to where one of my high school year books was brought in as a resource. One of the other things I appreciated is that they called the person who was my pastor at the time as a reference. While he didn’t tell me what he said, he did tell me that he was impressed with the depth of questions that they asked him. I’m thankful for this because I have known people who have been hired for jobs and it is obvious no one called references.

Why do I go into all this? When a church is calling a pastor, it is important that they know who and what they are getting.

When we become followers of Jesus, it is even more important that we know who and what he is. There are plenty of theories. Muslims believe that he was a prophet but only a man. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that he was more than a man and was actually the archangel Michael. What is it that Christians believe about Jesus? Specifically, what was his relationship to God?

We need to begin with what the Bible says about Jesus. This is much more important than the later creeds. I would like to share three passages, although there are many more.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.” (John 1:1-3)

The being referred to as the Word here is Jesus. What we find here is that Jesus was God but also was with God. This tells us Jesus was divine and yet God is more than Jesus. This gets us into the doctrine of the Trinity, there is one God and that God is made of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We also see that part of Jesus’ divine activity was creation.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for all things in heaven and on earth were created in him—all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers—all things were created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:15-16)

Here Paul confirms for us what we read in John. Not only was Jesus pre-existent, that is existing and active before he was born as a baby to Mary, Jesus was involved in creation. I should mention that calling Jesus the firstborn is not a reference to Jesus coming into existence. Jesus is eternal, just as the Father is. It is more of a reference of Jesus as being the heir or the chosen one through who the Father will accomplish his will.

“[Jesus] who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature.” (Philippians 2:6-7)

Joshua 6:12-21

I want you to imagine that a friend or family member comes to you and announces they have decided to start reading the Bible. You are overjoyed, after all, it is the Good Book. You begin to wonder where they will start. Will they begin with some of those beautiful Psalms? Will it be one of the Gospels that so powerfully recount the life of Jesus? Maybe on of Paul’s letters to Timothy, where he shares his deep wisdom with a close friend.

The person then tells you that they have decided to begin with the book of Joshua because they have heard it has lots of action. Having read Joshua before and being horrified of stories where God commands the Israelites to attack cities and kill every man and woman, you break into your friend’s home and replace their Bible with a New Testament and Psalms.

Whether you are just beginning your spiritual journey or have been a Christian for decades, there are some disturbing stories in the Old Testament. Skeptics make accusations of God being a genocidal maniac, who even if he does exist, is not worthy of worship. What do we do with this?

There have been numerous attempts to deal with this problem. As you may know, some Christians are pacifists and feel strongly about complete nonviolence. I will not be dealing with that here, but I will address some of the ways they look at these passages. Some look at the passages where it seems like God is calling Israel to commit acts of violence and assert that this was an example of the misuse of religion. God did not actually command these things but Israelites who wanted war attempted to borrow God’s authority by attributing their violent desires to God. Others will not give a specific interpretation but will simply say that the God revealed in Jesus Christ would never have commanded such a thing. We might not know why the Old Testament seems to say such things but we can be assured it was not God who commanded it. Finally, there are those who accept that in the Old Testament, God did use violence to accomplish his will. But now, with the appearing of Jesus, we are called to a higher standard. This is similar to parents treating their children a certain way at one age and then adjusting that relationship as they become adults.

From my perspective, I can’t just ignore the passages or pretend that they are not there. At the same time, I will confess I don’t like them. They make me uncomfortable and I’m sympathetic with those who want to dismiss them. But we are stuck with a Bible that makes us uncomfortable. For this reason, we are going to take a look at what God seems to do in the Old Testament.

One of the common claims is that God seems to be different in the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, he seems to be a God of wrath who loves to smite. In the New Testament, he seems to be a God of grace who loves to welcome. What is going on here?

The different descriptions of God are actually not as separate as is often claimed. An Old Testament example is found in Jonah. The prophet Jonah gets mad at God. Not because God is too violent but because God is too nice and forgiving. Jonah wanted God to wipe out Nineveh but instead he shows grace.

When we look at the New Testament, we can find an example in Acts where God does some old fashioned smiting. We also see in the book of Revelation that God is not afraid of wrath. While there may be more emphasis on grace in the New Testament, it is the same God in both te

A sermon based on Mark 11:1-11.

I have been stuck in traffic many times in my life. Once I was even an hour and a half late for church when I was commuting to Toronto. But there is one traffic jam that sticks in my mind, and not just for the exotic locale. Amanda and I had taken a Mediterranean cruise and the trip finished with a tour of Rome. Of course there is much to see in Rome and we were looking forward to all the sights. But then the tour bus got bogged down in traffic. At first I thought it was just because Rome is a very busy city. We soon found out what was going on.

Everything was stopped because the Russian president was visiting and there is no rushing (no pun intended) his entourage of security and other personnel. Being that close to the Russian president (which really was not that close at all), made me think about how powerful this person was. This was not just another guy holding up traffic. This was one of the most powerful men in the world, one who could actually end all life on earth if he chose. A rather sobering thought.

This is as close as I can get to imagining what was happening with the triumphal entry and Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Yes it is a fun scene in passion plays with children in bath robes waving palm branches. But to get back into the actual event and understand what was really taking place, not just on a local scale but on a cosmic scale.

This was very important for Jesus’ ministry, in fact it is one of the most important events. Of course everything in Jesus’ life and ministry was important, every sermon and miracle. We dare not neglect anything about Jesus. But there is a sense, even as Jesus travels through Galilee, that he must come to Jerusalem to fulfill his destiny. Jesus was called by some the Son of David, that is the promised descendant of King David who would save his people. Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, the birthplace of David. But with the journey to Jerusalem, the Son of David enters into the City of David. If we imagine the Gospel as a movie, the pace is about to be turned up and it is time for us sit on the edge of our seat. Something big is about to happen. But what is it and what will it look like?

Let us try and transport ourselves back to that day almost two thousand years ago. Not as Christians who know the details and come from an Easter perspective but as observers on the road to Jerusalem.

It was not unusual that Jesus was going to Jerusalem, even though he was from Galilee and not Judea. It was time for the Passover and there were Jews from much farther away than Galilee who were making the pilgrimage for the feast.

How did Jesus make this journey? If we were thinking of Jesus as the Davidic messiah, the Saviour of the Jews, you might think that he might enter on a might warhorse or a chariot. But Jesus does not do that. Jesus enters on a colt, which is a young donkey. But it was not just any donkey, it was a borrowed donkey. Jesus could not even afford his own ride into Jerusalem. Notice that in this passage, Mark spends more verses discussing the arrangements for the donkey than anything else in the story. That seems strange. It would be like someone asking me about my recent induction service here at the church and me spending most of the time talking about the Mazda 5 that we drove to get to the church. Very strange but we will need to hold on to that thought.

So Jesus enters into Jerusalem. People seem to know that he is a des

Genesis 2:4-7

This is a topic that I approach with fear and trembling. The reason for this is that those who have opinions on this, hold those opinions very strongly. One group will believe that all those who take science seriously must hold one position and the other group will believe all those who hold the Bible seriously must hold another position. Opponents are labelled as either anti-science or anti-Bible and are dismissed.

It would be easier to just not talk about it. But from my experience, the question of human origins is very important. There are many people who struggle with their faith over this issue. What happens when a person feels like they are pushed into a corner where they have to either choose science or faith? I can’t in good conscience ignore this discussion.

My goal is not to provide a science lecture but make room for us to talk about what many people are thinking.

It may help for me to share some of my story. I was raised in a mainline denomination. We didn’t discuss issues of creation and evolution. I would say that evolution was understood as fact and that there was no reflection on how God might have been involved or present in that process.

In my early twenties, after a number of years as an atheist, I came to a personal faith in Jesus. I joined a very conservative church. I was informed that the only option for a Christian was to believe in a 6000 year-old universe and earth and a literal six day creation as described in Genesis 1. I will make a confession to you. I could believe in God, I could believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but I struggled with a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-2. I really hated reading those passages would much prefer to read about Jesus.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself in seminary training for the ministry. I was shocked to discover that some of my professors believed in evolution. This confused me as I thought that only atheists believed in evolution. I told someone at my church about this and he informed that my seminary professors were obviously not Christians. No matter what they believed about Jesus, if they believed in evolution they could not be Christians.

Since that time, I have spoken to very many Christians, who are completely devoted to Jesus, who have an orthodox theology and are serving the Lord, and yet have a wide range of beliefs about human origins. What I’m going to do is share the most popular Christian understandings of how we as human beings found ourselves in this world.

Young Earth Creationism

There are those who believe in a young earth and that would also include a young universe. The date of creation is calculated by looking at the genealogies in the Bible and calculating backward. In the 17th century, Bishop James Ussher determined that creation took place on Sunday, October 23 in the year 4004 BC. Not all young earth creationists would be so precise, but they would date the earth to being between six and ten thousand years old. This creation took place in six 24 hour days just as described in Genesis, with the earth being created before the sun. Young earth creationists would argue that dinosaurs and humans lived together and that the dinosaurs did not go extinct until Noah’s flood. It is that flood that has created the geological features that we see today. These people love Jesus.

Old Earth Creationism

Hebrews 11:1-6

Does God exist? There are some outspoken atheists who will loudly proclaim that God does not exist. They purchase advertising space on buses to get their “good news” out that God does not exist. While certain atheists are very vocal about and antagonistic against faith in God, their number is actually quite low. The percentage of the population that hold to firm atheism has not changed very much.

There are some Christians who have never doubted the existence of God. They grew up in the church, were conscious of God’s presence and have had full confidence in God’s existence.

I suspect that most of us are more in the middle, perhaps moving back and forth throughout our life.

Is it okay to doubt? It absolutely is. We see people like John the Baptist and Thomas in the Bible having doubts about Jesus. When it comes to belief in God, think about what we are claiming. There is this invisible and all-powerful and all-knowing being who is everywhere all at once.

I think that some doubt is good.

Think about some of the heroes of the faith in recent history. Mother Theresa was one of the most respected Christians of all time. After her death, letters were published revealing her doubts about God. Billy Graham has preached to more people than anyone else. But early in his career, after his friend and colleague Charles Templeton abandoned the faith, Billy Graham wrestled with his doubt. Despite this, these two have made a huge impact in our world for God.

While there are Christians who become atheists, I don’t think the problem is that they had doubts. The problem was likely that there was not a safe space in the church to ask hard questions and wrestle with their doubts. I believe opening a space to talk about our struggles will help people far more than shutting down the conversation out of fear of where it will lead.

I don’t want this to be a lecture on Christian apologetics. There is a place for that but this is not it. Instead, I’m going share my journey of faith. The short version is that I grew up in the church, became an atheist in my teens, came to believe in God while in university and then committed myself to Jesus a couple of years after that. The things that helped me believe may not be the same that convince you, but they may give you hope that the answers are out there.

The truth about me is that I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe something just because someone says it. I’m the guy who after reading some claim posted on Facebook, does the research to see if it was true and then post the correct information on the person’s wall. I can be quite annoying.

My original slip into atheism was skepticism about heaven and the afterlife. This eventually led me to discount God’s existence. I didn’t expect to ever regain faith in God.

I still remember the moment my faith in God returned to me. I was getting a ride to Brock University. During the drive, I used my imagination to go back in time to the beginning of the universe. I wasn’t thinking about Genesis or the Bible. I was trying to imagine the Big Bang and how that began. I thought about the improbability of our immense universe coming into existence by itself. If there was a Big Bang, perhaps there was a Big Banger.

I didn’t know the science then but further research proved my hunch to be correct. For a long

A sermon based on Luke 12:35-48

What is our motivation for doing good? Do we find that we do the right thing mostly when others are watching or can we do it when no one is around?

I used to work in a warehouse. While the actual work was not that fun, there were some nice people, some of whom I am still friends with. In fact that was the problem. We would often just stop working in the aisles and would start talking. Obviously our manager was not happy about this. So every once in a while, he would leave his office and walk the aisles to make sure we weren’t talking. When he would leave the warehouse, the motivation to keep quiet would almost disappear.

On a different note, one of my parenting highlights was observing something while my children were unaware. I was looking out the kitchen window and saw Abby and Faith jumping on the trampoline. Abby and Faith are not very close as Faith was quite young when Abby went into a group home. There is not much they have in common and so it is difficult for them to connect. But they do both love jumping on the trampoline. Watching them jump together was enough but it got better. As they stopped jumping, Faith walked over to Abby and gave her a big hug. It was not because we told her to, it was something she wanted to do, and it was something she thought no one saw. It is one of my best memories.

When it comes to our Christian experience, do we have any motivation to follow Jesus? Are we content with praying a prayer or getting baptized? Is there any reason for us to live a certain way after our conversion? This is surprising to some Christians but Jesus actually cares about our life between our conversion and when we go to heaven. Jesus gives us some clear teaching on this with three examples that his audience would be familiar with.

One of the things that I love about Jesus is that he didn’t just give theological lectures. He passed on deep theological truth, but he did it through stories and examples from everyday life. This includes our current passage.

The first one is about a man returning from a wedding banquet. Whether it is the man’s wedding or he was just a guest, Jesus does not say. What is clear is that the master expected his servants to be awake and to have the lights on. Then we see something that is quite radical. When the master returns home, it is not to bark orders and demand that a midnight snack be prepared and a bed made ready. Instead, the master will dress as a servant and wait upon his servants. He has enjoyed a banquet and now he shares that joy with his servants. Notice the reference to the possibility of the master returning very late. The point is, no matter how late the master returns, it is worth it to the servants to be ready.

The second example is that of an owner of a house and a break in. This one is easy for us to identify with. If we knew someone was trying to break in to our house, we would make sure we were ready. About a decade ago, we received a phone call from my mother early in the morning. She woke to the signs of a break in and was not sure if the burglar was still in the house. Thankfully he wasn’t. But if I knew that a burglar was breaking into my mom’s house at a certain time, I would have made sure he had a nice surprise.

The third example is of a master who puts someone in charge of his household while he is away. The warning is about the manager of the household taking advantage of his master’s absence by getting drunk and beating the se