1 Corinthians SeriesCorinthian Idol Introduction: No timeWe need to hurry today. We are already running out of time. There’s no time for an intro today. No funny story or inspiring quote. This sermon is too important. There’s no time to wasteToday we are going to continue our journey through the book of 1 Corinthians by  covering chapters 8-10. These were the chapters that have been pressing on my heart the most over the past four months as I prepared for the summer. Here the broken church of Corinth faced the issue of idolatry. Section 1:The Corinthians had yet another problem. On top of factions, sexual immorality and lawsuits the church was divided on yet another topic. I’ve never seen a church with so many issues! There were some in the church would were eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. You see, in those times the temples of Poseidon, Aphrodite’s and Demeter would have sacrifices of goats, lambs and other animals. Some of the meat was burned for the gods, some was given to the priests and the rest was divided up. Some temples would have ritual feasts where everyone would eat together to celebrate the Gods. Often these were more social affairs then religious ones. The rest of the meat was sold in the market. With the number of temples and different God’s in Corinth it meant that a lot of the meat sold in the market had been “sacrificed” to one God or another. One one side people thought this was no big deal. After all, they have the author of creation on their side. The LORD of lords. Why should they fear other Gods? To these believers they thought the meat was no big deal. On the other side, people were FREAKING OUT. They were horrified that believers were eating meat sacrifice to idols. They were being idolaters. Idolatry by the way, is a big deal in the Bible. Simply put, idolatry means putting another God before the LORD YAHWEH. For example: “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God..”"Let there be no strange god among you; Nor shall you worship any foreign god.”He who sacrifices to any god, other than to the LORD alone, shall be utterly destroyed.Simply put, worshipping idols instead of YAHWEH, the God of Israel is kind of a big deal. Section 2: The ritual of MarriageAnd because it’s such a big deal Paul works hard to set the Corinthians straight.He acknowledges that the first group of believers is correct. The idols have no power. They are just wood, or stone or paper. They have no ability to interfere with the life of believers. Yes, there are demonic spiritual powers but eating meat sacrificed to idols was not going to corrupt believers. They were secure in the power of God. However, not all believers understood this & that was a big problem. Paul describes two types of Christians in this matter. Those who are “strong” and those who are “weak”. Often when we look at this passage in english. We think that strong and weak refer simply to there consciences, what they feel bad about. That there are some who have weak consciences and we need to almost tip toe around them. That’s not what paul is getting at. Deep study into the words “strong” and “weak” show that they had to do with class. The strong were “ those with “social power, influence, political status and wealth” [and a] “a traditional Roman value””Meanwhile the weak were “not only “of low social standing” but… [craved] for identity, recognition and acceptance by “the strong”So what paul is worried about is these “weak” members of the church who crave to be like the strong ones. They had come out of idol worship and were still new to faith. They hadn’t come to fully realize the power of God and were still new to a C

1 Corinthians SeriesSex Matters Introduction:Sex sells. It’s an old saying but it’s still true today. Advertisers all over the globe use sex to sell there produces. If an advertiser can find a way to make a provocative, they probably have. For many people today sex and sexuality has been normalized. It’s no longer taboo to talk about, especially for people of my generation. Back in the broken church of Corinth, they were having their own problems regarding sex. We already talked about the man who was sleeping with his step-mother. He thought he could do whatever he wanted. But it was more then just him. like I said before, their were those within the church who not only accepted that man’s sin, but actually applauded it. Today we are going to continue our series in first corinthians by examining chapter 7, the issues of sexual immorality within the church of Corinth. As sex and sexuality become more and more celebrated within our society is more important then ever that we understand why sex matters and what spot marriage should play in Christian life .Section 1: A Shattered View of SexThe truth is, the corinthians were all over the place in how they viewed sex. Just like in chapters 1-4 a number of factions had developed within the dying church. They couldn’t agree on what role sex should have for those who had been saved and called to live out holy lives. A lot of this confused stemmed from the greek & roman portions of the church. See their was a common view among these societies that the physical was useless, corrupt and evil. That the physical was nothing compared to the spiritual. Only spiritual matters were important. This is why the greeks were so obsessed with Wisdom. They wanted to focus on the things that really mattered. So when the issue of sex came up and the church was falling apart., everyone began to interpret it differently In one camp there were those who lived by the motto “Everything is permissible”. They believed that since they were redeemed in Christ, that physical things just didn’t matter. That the holiness within them meant they could do anything they wanted. So this group would go and sleep with the temple women or there slaves. They thought that no sin could touch them now that they had committed their lives to Jesus. The second group took a different approach, they decided to abstain from sexual relationships all together, like monks. This group decided that sex didn’t matter at all and it would be best to stay away from it. However, a number of people in this group were married. So they were suddenly changing their relationships removing sex from their marriages. I can imagine that didn’t go over well. The final group was more understandable to us today. I’m not sure if they were caught up in the greek “all physical things are bad” mentality. This group was younger men and women as well as widows who were seeking out marriages. This group felt that the best way they could live out holiness was to be in a relationship. So they began to get married often without thinking through the consequencesBasically the Corinthians had no idea of what Christian sexuality should be! As the church was falling apart many were falling back into old patterns. They wanted to do what they wanted to do and they weren’t concerned about what god was calling them to. Listen, this is story that is playing out in church’s across Canada right now. I’ve seen time and time again young men and women not knowing what a Christian sexuality should be. In a world that tells them sex is ok and almost always appropriate our young people don’t know what to do. The theology of sex and marriage is something church leaders have taken for granted. Up until 20 years ago premarital sex and unmarried long-term couples were taboo. Yet now, they aren’t. Christian sexuality a topic we need to talk about more, not less. Section 2: The ritual of MarriageAnd let me just say, Christian sexualit

1 Corinthians SeriesThe Court of Public Opinion Introduction:“ A good reputation is more valuable then money” That’s a quote from Publilius of Syria, a freed Roman slave who lived during Jesus’ time. Living free in Roman he even managed to win a coveted award from Julius Ceaser for his writing abilities. Publilius understood Roman culture and ended up writing a book of ancient Roman proverbs, quotes the Roman’s lived by. One of them was this, “A good reputation is more valuable then money”. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been taught that a good reputation is one of the most valuable things you can have. Without a reputation no-one will ever trust you. When our reputations are broken we have no credit with people and no-one will take a chance on you.  The truth is, our world has tried to move away from reputation. We’ve used the internet to move away from actually trusting one another’s reputation. They’ve tried to replace reputation with fact and trust with proof. Sometimes, this is a good thing. I’d rather have proof that climbing a tree in a lighting storm is safe rather then just trust someones word. Yet in other places it’s impossible to move away from reputation completely. In places where science doesn’t rule, like relationships, counselling or life decisions a good reputation is necessary. People need to trust to work together. As long as people exist and live in community, a good reputation will be vital to healthy living.Today we are going to continue on in 1 Corinthians by examining chapter 6. Due to the nature of this passage, it’s really complex, we are only going to look at the first half, concerning the issue of lawsuits.Section 1: A History of CorruptionsSo… As Corinthian church was falling apart anger and tension began to raise among the congregation. Amidst the sexual sin and division over preachers members of church were becoming frustrated with one another. We don’t know what the issues were exactly other then they were insignificant civil matters. Maybe one member had stolen from another, or broken a contract, or damaged something, or injured someone. These were all small issues that, in the corinthians eyes, that demanded justice. These kinds of insults couldn’t go unanswered!So, they took each other to the local court, which was run by the Roman Empire. Well what Paul is about to say does apply to how we use our courts today we need to understand is that these roman courts weren’t quite like ours are today. Especially out in the Colonies like Corinth. The thing is, Roman Colony Courts had no ability to dispense justice because they were know for being wildly corrupt. Even the Emperor himself, Cicero, “complained that excessive favor, great resources, and money with which to offer bribes hindered justice in the provinces east of Rome”This meant that rather then dispensing fair justice for all the Colony Courts would just work to maintain power for the rich and submission for the weak. Whoever had more influence would win. However there was more under the surface. Money or retribution was often not the chief concern in Roman courts. Instead one’s reputation was at stake. To loose a civil cause was to be seen as weak and foolish in the eyes of the rich who controlled the court. So if you got into a civil cause and you were someone of influence, you would do everything you could to win otherwise your reputation was destroyed. Basically the courts in Corinth became a popularity contest. It was a court of Public Opinion. It was a matter of pride, of phussio. Puffed up arrogance. That core problem within the church. We don’t know whether the issue in Corinth was between rich Christians and poor Christians or between only the rich, what we do know is that in Pauls eye it was all foolishness. Section 2: Paul’s PushbackLike usual Paul is not impressed with the Corinthians. He sees there desire to sue one another, to seek out retribution as unwise. He gives three

1 Corinthians SeriesThe Long Road Back Introduction:Everything needs to grow, and everyone. Whether a plant, a child or even a city, the human race is characterized, unified really, by its desire to see things grow. Most people what to be more then they are. When I was a kid, I fell in love with history, with understanding the human race as a whole. I loved looking at different civilizations, cultures and languages. Honestly part of it was just that I wanted to be Indiana Jones. As I got older I realized I had a gift for academics and I was sure that I wanted to get a PHD in history. I wanted to know more then anyone else about human civilization. So I spent all of my time growing my academic abilities. Well others joined sports or bands I spent my weekends wandering through the libraries of Edmonton. But then, something changed. As I started to go to church and find out who Jesus is I felt something in my heart. A calling, a command. As I prayed I felt that God was telling me to become a pastor, something I had no desire to do. I didn’t want to preach, or run a youth group. I had a dream! I wanted to learn history! All of a sudden, the growth I was experiencing stopped. The opportunities I might have to fast track into a history program fell through. My weekends at the library became less and less interesting. I was like a car running out of gas, just coasting on fumes. No more grow. It left me feeling frustrated and terrified in equal measure. Today were going to look at another lack of growth, this time within the Corinthian Church. As this multicultural church was fighting amongst itself, divided over preacher-factions and other issues; sin had crept inside. One of the young men in the church was in a sexual relationship with his own step mother. Not only that but the church was proud of this. Paul wastes no time giving a harsh correction to this young man.  Chapter 5 shows us the final measures of Church Discipline when all other solutions have failed, Excommunication. Excommunication still happens in our churches today, even in this very province. Well excommunication is a complex issue, we are going to look at 3 important truths about excommunication that every believer needs to know.  Section 1: Excommuncation is RareFirst of all, 1 Cor. 5:9 tells us that Paul has already sent a letter to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians isn’t actually the first. This issue of sexual sin has been an ongoing problem for the Corinthians. Paul isn’t flying of the handle. The Corinthian’s have already ignored his advice on the matter!I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.It’s also important to remember that this young man is committing a sin that isn’t just heinous to Believers but to the world outside the church. It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality  among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated  among the Gentiles. Not even Romans or Greeks thought a man sleeping with his step mother was ok. The world does have some boundries, some things that are just too far. It was unthinkable. In our world today it would be like if someone came to our church claiming to be a Christian well claiming that pedophilia was acceptable. Everyone knows that is vile. No-one, not even the people furthest from the church would argue that what that person was doing was wrong. A church wouldn’t even have to have a conversation about distancing themselves from someone like that. That was the level of shamefulness this young Christian was bringing to Corinth. And he was p

1 Corinthians Series Introduction:  Factions of FollowersWelcome to Corinth, with it’s greek gods, it’s merchant economy and its multicultural population… Corinth was a church in Crises. The entire place was falling apart. There was no unity, no love, just fighting and bickering and arguing. It looked more like a market place then a church.So, in responds to this broken Church the apostle Paul, one of the leaders of the early church, sends a letter, a letter of correction and rebuke to deal with the church’s numerous problems, which all came from their Phussio, their spiritual arrogance. There refusal to see each other as brother’s and sisters of equal value. [slide 1]There first problem was that of Division. Over the past twenty years the Corinthian Church had been established it had seen a number of Christian leaders. Well this should have been seen as a blessing to the church, the Corinthians were making it into the a curse.As people began hearing this different teaches they began to pick there favourites and become groupies around them, talking badly about the other preachers and their groups. They were turning preaching the gospel into a popularity! 1 Cor. 1:11-12  For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow ChristDifferent factions around different preachers of God’s word. Because this is what people do, People always return to what they are familiar with, what they like, when things fall apart. Their self-important pride was destroying them, reverting them back to who they were before Jesus. This popularity contest idea was common for both the Greeks and Romans of Corinth since they both believed in pantheons, a group of deities. While they worshipped all the deities, they would pick their favourite, arguing that their chosen god was better then all the others. What they had done this time, was make a Pantheon of Preachers. and let me tell you, Paul was not impressed. Today were are going to look at 1 Cor. 1-4 and see the surprising way in which Paul address that preacher-factions within the church. Section 1: Upside down Wisdom [Slide 2]So Paul is absolutely floored by this development. How can there be factions within the church? His immediate response is harsh, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. “Paul wants the Corinthians to understand just how much they have missed the mark, that their way of viewing leaders is a symptom of their pride. so he opens up his argument against factionalism by talking about wisdom.  See, Everyone wants to be wise or intelligent. We all want to be respected. That’s human nature. No-one likes to look foolish. No-one likes to look weak, or helpless of vulnerable. Yet that is exactly what Christian’s are supposed to be. Paul says that ”the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”. Paul says that Christian’s will always seem weak, helpless, valnurable and foolish to the world. It’s in the very nature of the message that we preach. A god, who came as a baby, lived a normal life and was killed by his own people. That is what saves us? Everything we do seems foolish.[slide 4]See, people have been asking followers of Jesus to justify our faith from the beginning ”For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,”The truth is that we can’t justify it. Today instead of signs or wo

1 Corinthians SeriesThe Melting Pot Introduction:  They thought that their armies would be strong enough because they had spend years preparing. The situation had been obvious too them. War was coming. They thought they could whether the storm, survive where others had failed. This city would be different. They would reclaim there lost freedom. They would rule themselves once again.They couldn’t have been more wrong. Around 150BC the city of Corinth rebelled against the Roman empire. They were sick of living under the rule of others. They wanted the right to rule themselves. So they declared war on Sparta, one of Romes allies. Well the Corinthians thought they could handle Rome, they were sadly mistaken. In 146BC  general Lucius Mummius (Moo-me-oozes) attacked the City of Corinth. Legions of Roman Centurions broke the city. Yet this was no simple capture. They didn’t want to retake Corinth, they wanted to make an example of it. So Lucius assaulted the city, captured it’s people, sold them into slavery, took anything he could find of value and burned the rest to the ground. The city was completely annihilated. In 76 BC The Roman Emperor Cicsero (Key-ka-row) visited the ruins, this is what he said, “the sudden sight of the ruins of Corinth had more effect on me than the actual inhabitants”. To see an entire city wiped away. In 44 BC, a hundred years after Corinth’s destruction, the new Emperor, Julius Cesear (U-lee-use Ki-Zar) decides to recreate the city. Raise it from the ash.This week we are going to do something a little different. We aren’t going to be looking at a Scripture. We aren’t going to dive too deep into theology. Instead we are going to look at the background of 1 Corinthians. My hope is that you’ll see how similar Corinth is to our own Country and perhaps our town. Section 1: The New BloodSo Julius Cesear, the new Roman Emperor decides to recreate the city of Corinth. This Old Greek city that tried and failed to rebel against the Empire. This seems like a strange decision, why rebuild a city that you purposefully burned to the ground. The location of Corinth had an extremely strategic value. It was a prize too great to pass up. Corinth is located by a narrow isthmus, the smallest part of Greece it separates two seas by only a space of six kilometers. Since the beginning of the empire, Emperors had dreamed of carving out a canal near Corinth. If you look at the history books you’ll see that emperors never stopped talking about this canal.  This would allow ships to travel unimpeded. While this canal was never finished during the Roman Empire they did manage to create a diolkos, a land canal. Ships were beached on one side and dragged by slaves the six kilometres to the other side. Well it wasn’t as effective as a water canal it did save weeks worth of travel and gave not only an economic advantage but also military one to whoever was in control. It allowed quick and safe travel from Italy into the Mediterranean sea. Cesear desperately wanted that advantage back because he was planning a war. He was attacking the Parthian Empire, which is modern day Iran. The canal of Corinth would make his campaign easier so rebuilding the city was a logical step. It would be called Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis (‘colony of Corinth in honour of Julius)So Cesear orders the city rebuilt. He fills it we veteran soldiers, skilled laberors and free Roman Citizens. All was ready for the war to come. But then, on the Ides of march in 44BC Julius Cesear is assassinated, murdered by the senate of Roman. The war is cancelled. History is a little fuzzy at this point. but this is my best guess.  since those loyal to Cesear had already been sent to Corinth, the senate just decided to leave them there. turn the war city into an economic city. It’s two birds with one stone. They keep those who are loyal to the dead emperor far away and get a new centre of commerce. So more people come to the c

More then a warrior Fathers Day Introduction:  So I know that most find people find school awful. But it was usually pretty easy for me. High school especially. I breezed through classes like math and science. Gym sucked, but I did it the summer so it was only two weeks. I had a guitar class and a work experience class which were basically free credits. Overall I found school to be pretty simple. But, there was one thing. There was one part of school that filled me with the same dread and despair as everyone else. It came up every single year and I hate it more then anything else to do with being a student.Well I loved english classed, I absolutely despised the Poetry unit. I don’t know how it is out here in Saskatchewan but in Alberta we had to do a unit of Poetry every year from grade seven to twelve. Every year it was like hell for me. The teacher would read a poem out loud or give it to us to read and I would just… sit there. I would sit there and either not understand what the poem was about, or not understand why it took someone so many words to describe something! Like, why did you find the need to write an entire page on what snow was like, and more importantly where did you find the time. Even as a teenager I was way to busy for that garbage. Every year I struggled with poetry. When I finally finished high school I thought I was done with poetry. My torture was over. Unfortunately, Bible college was just more poetry!In fact, an entire third of what is written in the Bible is poetry! I managed to pick the one job outside of an art major where I needed to understand poetry. I had to spend class after class dissecting ancient biblical poetry at vanguard. Great.Luckily, over the past years I’ve found an appreciation for biblical poetry. I’ve found that God has hidden such a depth of knowledge and wisdom for us within the words of the Bible. Today, we are going to look at the poetry of Proverbs, specifically Proverbs 16:32. It’s one of the first verses that really connected with me and one that has far a far deeper meaning then it would seem on the surface. Section 1: Poetry in Montage Proverbs is a really weird book. It’s not a narrative like other books in the Bible. There is no story in it. It’s not a prophetic book, where someone is warning God’s people to turn away from sin. Instead it’s simply full of these little quippy two line poems that give advice. They usually talk about either how people should behave, or how the world works. For example “The crucible is for silver and the furnace is for gold but the LORD tests hearts.”. Thats about how the world works. Meanwhile our verse talks about how people should behave Whoever is slow to anger is better than a warrior, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. So that verse seems really simple right? Anger bad, patience good. Well, yes and no. That is the point this verse is trying to make. But there is more depth. If you understand that its a poem, it because a far more meaningful passage. To understand this proverb we have to understand the book itself. The title Proverbs is the Hebrew word literally means Comparisons. Proverbs is the Book of Comparisons. Thats how proverbs poetry works. You have two lines and when they are played together they become more then the sum of their parts. You might have two lines that are complete opposites to contrast one another. Or in our case you have two lines that are very similar to each other. Both lines seem to say anger is bad with slightly different words. You might be wondering what I did when I first saw this proverb. What is the point? Why say the same line twice? Why not just say it once and be done? Well, like me you’d be missing the point, because we do this in western culture all the time. See, our proverb isn’t just poetry, it’s poetry in montage. Sergi Eisentein, a famous Russian filmmaker seen as the father of montage believed that

Knowledge by Ritual Series 2/2 BaptismIntroduction:  Most of the time, the beach is a really fun place to be. On a sunny day most of us love to be on a beach, we would love to enjoy the water or maybe lay under the warmth of the light. Most of the time the beach is great. But not every time. When I was sixteen my youth pastor took a group of us on a mission trip to Mexico. We had to wear these awful yellow shirts, which I promptly ruined at the first opportunity. That trip was the first time I ever got to preach, to share the word. It was the first time I really understood how big God’s love is. I wish ever teen could have that experience. On the last day of the trip, after spending the week digging trenches and caring for orphans, we got to have an afternoon off. It was awesome! We got to go to this little market and buy a fee souvenir. And then… unfortunately… we were off to the beach. Now understand, this beach was really nice. Everyone enjoyed the sun and hanging out together. At first it was really a great time. That was, until one of the girls went out into the water.For those of you who haven’t been to the ocean, real beaches have something called a rip current. A rip current is a strong, narrow jet of water that moves away from the beach and into the ocean as a how the waves interact with each other.Basically it’s a small park of the beach, impossible to find, which will very quickly drag you out to the ocean. This girl from our missions team managed to find that spot. What started as a fun afternoon turned into a terrifying situtation as this girl, who was not a good swimmer quickly got dragged farther and farther form shore. Our youth pastor rushed into the water, swam out and dragged her back all the way back against the current. I’m pretty sure he was running on pure adrenaline. We realized that day how dangerous waters can be. This week we are going to finish our talk on rituals by looking at baptism. Next week we will be having baptisms at this church for the first time in over 10 years. I can think of no better time then now to look at this important ritual. Section 1:Water is Wet?For those of you who weren’t here last week, we need to a quick recap. We’ve been talking about how the only way for people to Know something is through rituals. Rituals are simply normal every day practices that are strategically deployed.  So teaching your child the difference between colours using a game, that is a ritual. Sitting down every day at the same time to practice guitar? that’s a ritual too. Rituals point to towards something bigger, something we’d miss otherwise. You need to actually do a ritual to know what it’s trying to teach you. I can’t make someone a master guitar player unless they sit down with me to practice. So baptism is one of the few rituals that all church’s still practice. Well Christian’s disagree about baptism means we all agree that it’s extremely important. Baptism is really just a ritualized bath that points to something greater. But to understand why baptism is important we do need to look at what the symbols mean. Like I said last week, understand the symbology of a ritual is good, but acting it out is better. That’s still true. Here though, we have a problem because our view of water has changed a lot from the Israelites. For us water is just wet. It’s fun to play in. It’s good for drinking. But for the Israelites this wasn’t the case. In fact, the ancient Israelites saw water as being extremely dangerous. It’s an idea that rooting the very beginning of the Bible. Water was a destructive force. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.“ To the Israelites, water was seen as being “without form and void”. For them great bodies of water like the sea was seen as being inhospitable to humans. Storms destroyed ships, salt water was undrinkable and

Knowledge by Ritual Series 1/2 Communion  Introduction:  How do you know the sky is blue? I know you can see it, but how do you KNOW that it is blue? How do you even know what blue is? It’s hard to explain right? Well, I’ll give you the answer. we know because someone helps us to know. Parents spend hours and hours and hours teaching their children colours, or letters, or numbers. Parents put all that work in so that kids KNOW these things. But if you asked the kids “how do you know what blue is” they will usually say “ I just do”. They are oblivious to the countless hours you put in to teach them. (typical) They think that the knowledge they possess is just natural  The truth is this, Knowing anything for certain is difficult. To know something means you have to learn it again and again and again until it finally sticks to you. The Bible is really aware of this problem. A  lot of the bible talks about how people know anything. In fact the first three chapters of the Bible are all about who can know what and why that is. If you look throughout the Bible there is a lot of instruction for how people can know things are true. This is where it gets really…weird. Because we’ve been taught that for use to know something, it has to be scientific. It has be a repeatable experiment with physical effects on our world. If we can see it, it can be true. The Bible, it doesn’t really act that way. The Bible holds that we can know things through rituals. In fact the Bible believes that rituals and rites are the best way for people to learn. It is only by ritualizing something important that people will come to know the truth of a matter.For the next two weeks we are going to look rituals in the Bible, specifically communion and baptism. These rituals are still core to our church today. Well other rituals have been dropped over the centuries, these ones have endured the test of time.Section 1: What is a Ritual?So first question first, What is a ritual? Is it a bunch of mystical words?When I think of rituals I think of the scene from the temple of doom, where the priest is chanting over and over again as people watch quietly in anticipation. Honestly, that’s a really poor picture of what a ritual is. Like most things, Hollywood distorts reality.Instead a ritual is a normal daily practice that is strategically deployed. So teaching our children how to know colours is a ritual. You sit down with them again and again until they can know the difference between red and blue. What is the normal practice of a game is strategically deployed to give knowledge. In the Bible this happens all of the time. normal practice are turned into reminders of important ideas.Passover for example, is basically a ritualized bbq. Passover was a festival ritual to celebrate God “passing over” the Israelites. When the Israelites were slaves back in Egypt God sent a plague to punish the country. Anyone who believed in God would sacrifice a Lamb and paint their door with it’s blood. Those houses were spared “passed over” well every other family lost their firstborn sons. So God instated the ritual of passover. Once a year, when everyone was collecting the spring barley harvest, the people of Israel would come together and sacrifice lambs together. The whole city would come together and would kill the lambs, drain their blood, cook them over a fire and eat together in remembrance of God passing over them. That the judgement of God had skipped them. It’s just a big old bbq. The difference between passover and an ancient bbq wasn’t big. It was something they did all the time. Just like their isn’t a big difference between baptism and a shower. The difference is that a ritual points something bigger.Section 2: Why have rituals? So you might be asking about now, why any of this matters? Why do we need to have rituals? Even communion. Why do we have to seat down once a month to eat bread and drink juice together. Can’t

Mother's Day Sermon 1/1 Introduction:  Have you ever just been done with someone? Like really, properly fed up with their nonsense? My brother is about 12 years older then me. And for as long as I can remember we have always picked on each other, as brothers do. Nothing abnormal about that. Like most brothers, we would look for any way to get under each others skin. Once when I was really little I finally got a turn to play the Nintendo. I was so excited Trenton got to use it all the time but it was finally MY turn. I don’t remember much but I do remember Trenton unplugging it in the middle of the game and running away laughing. Everything I had done that afternoon, lost!So, I was mad, like unreasonably angry, and I decided it would be a good idea to take every pencil in the house and shove them down the vent in my brothers room. (He had a test the next day) That’ll show him! Not really though. I just ended up making my dad spend an entire afternoon fishing pencils out of the vent. He was not happen. But my mom. Man, my mom had a look that would stop me and trenton dead in our tracks. I think ever mom does have that look.  She would stop whatever she was doing. She’d stop breathing, Her eyers would narrow and her lips would tighten. The moment we saw that we had messed up. That the line had been crossed. Today, in honour of Mother’s day I want to look at Matthew 15:21-27. It’s a story of how Jesus interacted with the women of his day. On the surface, with no context, it looks really harsh. It looks like Jesus is uncaring, critical and rude towards women. But this isn’t the case. Instead Jesus is showing how valuable women are to him. Section 1: Missing the PointSo our story begin with Jesus  & his disciples heading to the region of Sidon, a non Jewish land near Israel. The people here don’t worship God. While there a women starts to follow Jesus around. And she’s a wreck. She is crying, weeping as she follows Jesus. She begs to him “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”Now understand, this is really impressive! In Jesus’ travels up to this point, very few people have understood that Jesus is the Lord, the God of Israel. Yet this foreign women, this outsider, sees there truth. Although she’s not from the right family or even the right country, she sees that Jesus truly is worth following. You’d think that Jesus would be astounded. That he would answer he immediately with “Yes be healed!”. That would make sense right? Shouldn’t he want this women he understands the truth to follow him? That’s usually what he does.Yet, Jesus doesn’t say anything not a single word to her. I can’t stress enough how weird and out of character this is for Jesus. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a great answer as to why. As I’ve prayed about it and thought about it over the past week my best guess is that Jesus knew what was about to come, how his disciples were about to fail him. His disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.”The disciples begged him to send this crying, wailing, distressed, broken mother away from them. Why was that? Well you have to understand the attitudes at the time. Back then Self-respecting rabbis did not talk to women. About two hundred years before the time of Jesus a scholar of Israel called Ben Sirach composed a book of wisdom sayings. In the book he wrote this “a Man’s spite is preferable to a women’s kindness; women give rise to shame and reproach.”. That’s the context for Jesus’ time. The general attitude towards women. So when Jesus was silent, the disciples just assumed that he was acting in a way which was appropriate. He’s ignoring the women. So they beg him to help her, if only she would stop bothering them. Let me be really clear that’s not Jesus’ way of doing things. He didn’t agree with the popular opinion of his time. He saw women as valuable and worthy of