Politicians on the campaign trail make a whole lot of promises. They assure voters that if they are elected (or reelected), things will be different—better—for those who vote for them. But those things don’t always happen the way they were promised. Perhaps there are political or logistical roadblocks to doing what they promised to do once in office. Maybe if you’re very cynical, you consider that they never intended to keep those campaign trail promises, and only said what they thought would get them votes.
"Worthy of the Kingdom… and Suffering?" (Sermon on 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10) | November 16, 2025
Anxiety can be a wicked resident in your mind. A book I’m reading right now gave a definition of anxiety and worry that rang pretty true to me: “Worry, at its core, is the repetitious experience of a mind attempting to generate a feeling of security about the future, failing, then trying again and again and again—as if the very effort of worrying might somehow help forestall disaster. The fuel behind worry, in other words, is the internal demand to know, in advance, that things will turn out fine” (Oliver Burkeman. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, p. 116). We want to know that things are going to be fine, and our brains can, sometimes, spin out of control trying to find that certainty.
"Confidence Is a Gift from God" (Sermon on 1 John 5:13-15) | October 19, 2025
What is worse—the car that won’t start or the car you’re not sure if it’ll start or not? I might argue that the one that will not start is the preferable one. You at least know what you’re getting there. You’re not going to make plans to use that car, only to have them dashed by seemingly random failures. You know that you have to do some work on it, or get it towed, or just let it sit till you have the time or money to fix it. You have confidence in that car—in this case, confidence that it will not work—rather than a total lack of certainty. At least with a totally busted car, you won’t get stranded on the side of the freeway miles from home.
"Gratitude Is Powerful" (Sermon on 2 Corinthians 9:10-15) | October 12, 2025
Happy Thanksgiving! That might be rushing it just a little bit (unless you’re in Canada, in which case the holiday is actually tomorrow!), but this morning, as you’ve noticed in our readings and hymns, we’ve been focused on gratitude and giving thanks. So while it might be early for our designated holiday at the end of November, it is a good reminder that we’re not really supposed to relegate gratitude to one day per year, but it should be a continual way of life.
"God Lifts You Up" (Sermon on Hebrews 13:1-6) | September 28, 2025
Have you ever had a coworker who seemed to make everyone around him better, or at least look better, at their job? Have you ever had a friend who always just elevated the group, came up with the best ideas for things to do or brought hightened levity or sincerity to any conversation? Do you have a family member who particularly skilled at navigating and bringing peace to inter-family strife and conflict? They can elevate the entire family dynamic.
"Be Shrewd with God's Gifts" (Sermon on Luke 16:1-13) | September 21, 2025
“Shrewd” is perhaps not a word we use often in everyday conversations, but it is a good word. To be shrewd is to be carefully discerning, able to measure a situation accurately and act appropriately, or at least in the best interest of your primary concerns. We might describe such a trait as being level-headed, able to read a room, discerning, and able to weigh the pros and cons of each individual action in a given situation.
"Found!" (Sermon on Luke 15:1-10) | September 14, 2025
What is your value? Where do you look to understand your value? In school growing up, there was a whole lot of talk for us about self-esteem. You have value! You are special! You are unique and that’s wonderful! Today’s messaging isn’t so different, though usually in the context of social-emotional learning that also tends to include empathy and care for others in a way I don’t remember being emphasized a lot when I was growing up, but I think it’s a change for the good.
"Show Selfless Love, Not Selfish Favortism" (Sermon on James 2:1-13) | August 31, 2025
This world is obsessed with getting ahead. Perhaps you’ve experienced a cut-throat environment at work where someone would throw you under the proverbial bus without a second thought if they figured it would get them the promotion. Maybe you’ve been tempted to or even have participated in that me-first culture at work, school, or even in your home.
"How Does Jesus Divide Us?" (Sermon on Luke 12:49-53) | August 17, 2025
There are seemingly endless ways to divide people. Even if we take our relatively small sample size gathered here this morning, there are plenty of division opportunities, even among us who would seem to have a lot in common. In some ways, you are self-divided today. Are you sitting closer to the front or the back? Are you sitting on the left or right side of the church? And then we can get more granular. We could divide our group by age, by gender, by music preferences, by net worth, by favorite food, by least favorite food, by ethnicity or family heritage—the list goes on and on and on.
"Do Not Be Afraid, Little Flock" (Sermon on Luke 12:22-34) | August 10, 2025
How are you doing? And I know this is clearly a rhetorical question because I’m asking it in the middle of a sermon, not exactly known for its question-and-answer format. But actually, it’s a question I want you to think about and internalize and I would cherish the opportunity to hear your honest answers when we’re done here today. How are you doing? And when I ask that I mean how are you really doing? Not the standard small-talk answers of “Good… good,” or, “You know, I’m fine,” or “Busy…” but what is the real answer?
"Let's Not Chase the Fog" (Sermon on Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, 12-14, 2:18-26) | August 3, 2025
This past week, I was reminded in several ways that we have entered into what is colloquially known around us as “Fogust.” Now, this might not be as true in the East Bay, but certainly in Belmont, we are getting into the time of year when the fog can be thick and prominent (which has sort of been true for this whole weirdly cold summer up here on the hill). But whether it is a reality for us where we live or something we run into as we travel around the Bay Area, we know what it’s like to be under blankets of thick fog from the marine layer. Seeing the sun here before noon is often a novelty during these foggy days.
"Let Us Pray for All" (Sermon on 1 Timothy 2:1-7) | July 27, 2025
It is often a good idea, when having a conversation with someone (especially where there’s some amount of confrontation involved), to avoid sweeping generalizations. Words like “all” or “always” or “every” or “never” can be hyperbolic and completely shut down another person’s ability to listen to what you’re saying. For example, if you’re talking to someone about how they often belittle your ideas and wishes, it is probably not helpful to say, “You never take me seriously,” because that’s probably not true. It might happen often, it might happen even a vast majority of the time, but saying that it’s the only thing that happens can distract from the point. The person you’re talking to may get defensive and be ready with counterexamples, and then you very quickly get away from what you wanted to talk about in the first place.
"Find a Neighbor to Love" (Sermon on Ruth 1:1-19a) | July 13, 2025
We like to find limits, or even loopholes, in the rules. “I know I set a budget for myself, but this sale is too good to pass up.” “Sure, the speed limit says 65, but I know they don’t enforce that until you’re more than 10 over, so it’s no problem if I drive 74.” “Mom only said to go to my room, so setting two feet inside the door and then turning around and coming back out shouldn’t be a problem.” Those “loopholes” won’t do much good for your bank account or your interactions with the police officer. And I don’t think I’ve ever met a parent who likes to discuss the technicalities of outlined discipline with their child.
"How Committed Are We?" (Sermon on 1 Kings 19:19-21) | June 29, 2025
Commitment, dedication, and drive—all of these are concepts that you might hear associated with lifestyle choices. How committed are you to eating right, exercising, and getting to or maintaining a healthy weight? How dedicated are you to growing your knowledge and understanding of core subjects necessary for work or home life, or even expanding into new areas? What is your drive to be the best or do your best in competitions or personal goals?
"Different Messengers Share the Same Message" (Sermon on 2 Timothy 1:3-10) | June 22, 2025
If you ever played the game of telephone, you know how a message can be distorted as it goes through different people. Perhaps your real life was impacted by such an event. News gets passed from one person to another, but that news can get warped because someone mishears, misspeaks, strips away context, or even warps the original meaning to serve their purposes. Thus, it may radically differ from what was initially spoken when it reaches you. This is a good reminder to not engage in or trust in gossip because those things are so easily distorted to the destruction of someone’s reputation!
"The Triune God Bless You" (Sermon on Numbers 6:22-27) | June 15, 2025
How can you be a blessing to other people? There are as many answers to that question as there are people here, multiplied by the people you interact with. For someone, you might lend a listening ear. For someone else, you might give advice. For someone else, you might bring encouragement. For someone else, you might bring some kind of physical support—giving money, providing food, etc. For someone else, your needs might enable their love to bless you, and in that way, you are also a blessing to them, allowing them an outlet for their thanksgiving to God, their Savior.
"Absolute Power for Our Eternal Good" (Sermon on Revelation 1:4-8) | November 24, 2024
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If you are watching a movie or reading a book and a character in the story has or acquires the ultimate power to rule, and they don’t start to use that selfishly, at least a little bit, your suspension of disbelief may flounder. We can’t believe anyone who had control of everything around them—all the wealth, all the political and social power—would be truly generous, selfless, and altruistic, using the power to help others rather than helping themselves. It doesn’t make sense because we know that’s not the way things work in this life.
"One for All Won for All" (Sermon on Hebrews 9:24-28) | November 17, 2024
It can be very difficult to look beyond right now to the future. If things are going well right now, it can be hard to think of a time when maybe they will be more difficult. If life is challenging and complicated right now, it can feel almost impossible to think of a time when things will be going better and easier.
"The Sanctified Heart Trusts God" (Sermon on Mark 12:38-44) | November 10, 2024
Does life ever feel chaotic? A family conflict might do that. An election might do that. A job loss, illness, struggles in school, or falling out with a friend might do that. We have so many things that we count on for stability in our homes, our government, employment and other vocations that any changes (or even threats of change) to those things can cause you to feel like you’re standing on quicksand. It feels uncertain.
"Where Do We Find the Lord?" (Sermon on Isaiah 55:6-11) | July 16, 2023
Sermon Text: Isaiah 55:6-11
Date: July 16, 2023
Event: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A [Proper 10]
Isaiah 55:6-11 (EHV)
Seek the Lord while he may be found!
Call on him while he is near!
7Let the wicked man abandon his way.
Let an evil man abandon his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord,
and he will show him mercy.
Let him turn to our God,
because he will abundantly pardon.
8Certainly my plans are not your plans,
and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord.
9Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways,
and my plans are higher than your plans.
10Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
and do not return there
unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout,
so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth
will not return to me empty.
Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please,
and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.
Where Do We Find the Lord?
Have you ever had that moment where you need to find something, and you remember seeing it… somewhere? Perhaps you saw it sitting somewhere and even thought, “Well, that’s a weird place for that thing to be. I would never find that there; I should move that to a more logical place,” but then you didn’t? And then, the next time you were looking for that item, you could remember that you saw it in a place that didn’t make any sense, but you can’t remember where that place was?
Maybe you’ve had that experience or maybe it’s just me. Regardless, I can assure you that it’s not a great feeling. Trying to hunt something down that you know is around but is in a place you’re unlikely to come up with is frustrating, even if it’s basically in plain sight. Why were my keys on the bookshelf anyway??
If you’re looking for something, you want to know where to find it. That may be why you always put your car keys in the same place at home each time you return. Maybe that’s why you invested in a little tracking device to put in your wallet or on something else valuable and important so that if you can’t find it, you can hunt it down relatively quickly. Maybe that’s why you store those important documents like birth certificates or Social Security cards in that fire-resistant safe; you know where they are, and they are protected.
But, as important as your keys or wallet or documents may be, there are things that are more important than those. Chief among them is your God. Your relationship with God—or maybe more importantly, his attitude toward you—is what is going to determine not just a day or week or year, but eternity. Will you be in hell as just punishment for your disobedience toward him or will you be in heaven with him in unending joy and peace? And how do you know?
This is comfort and knowledge that we cannot have on our own. We can’t look around us and determine how God thinks about us. We can’t do some deep soul-searching and decide what our status with God is. We can make things up, we can tell ourselves stories, but we will always know that that is all those are—creations of our own minds. So, if we want certainty, we need to go to the source. If we want to know God’s heart, he has to reveal that to us. How do we do that? Where do we go? Where do we find the Lord?
Through the prophet Isaiah, God calls on people to act: Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Isaiah’s ministry took place at a very fraught time in Israel’s history. After King Solomon, David’s son, died, the nation split into two pieces, roughly 10 tribes in the Northern Kingdom and two tribes in the Southern Kingdom. Isaiah was sent as a prophet to the Southern Kingdom.
In both kingdoms, the leaders’ and people’s faithfulness to the true God was very poor. They often worshiped false gods in the hope of blessings that the true God was not giving or simply because the false gods’ worship was more “fun” and less strict than the law God gave his people. It had gotten so bad that during Isaiah’s ministry, God used the nation of Assyria to come and exile the Northern Kingdom, whom we never hear from as a unified group again. Assyria harassed and conquered cities in the Southern Kingdom as well, but God saved them from the Assyrian army before they could conquer the capital of Jerusalem.
But all this temporal chastisement came because the people had wandered so far away from God. They weren’t listening to him, they weren’t looking for him, they didn’t care about him. God didn’t want them to be destroyed eternally so he uses earthly barbs to wake them up. But he couples that pain and discomfort with calls through his prophets to return to him. So, it is in this context that God sends Isaiah to plead with his people, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near! Let the wicked man abandon his way. Let an evil man abandon his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will show him mercy. Let him turn to our God, because he will abundantly pardon.”
Despite all the negative things that the people were enduring, there is so much gospel in these words. First of all, it is not too late—the people could still seek after God. He is near to them and ready to be found. For all that they had done wrong—for all their sins that brought down God’s eternal punishment—there was mercy and pardon available from God. He would forgive their sins. He loved them.
We may think it would have been wise for God to clearly set up shop on earth at this time. That is, that God should have just made himself visible to all the people. The messages he had to share should have come right from his mouth and he should have made it inescapable if he really wanted people to listen. That’s a whole lot of “shoulds” coming from people who don’t have God’s perspective and wisdom. And it seems that God anticipated this line of argument. God continues through Isaiah’s pen: Certainly my plans are not your plans, and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my plans are higher than your plans.
God rarely speaks directly to people. As you read through the Bible, it might appear that God was talking to everyone all the time during the time the events of the Bible were happening. The truth is, only a very tiny number of people have ever had a direct conversation with God—even considering those who spoke with Jesus during his earthly ministry. Instead, God has chosen to communicate through his Word, verbally recounted and written down throughout the ages. In what was probably a parable, Jesus recounts a rich man in hell begging Abraham to send the poor man, Lazarus, who had died, back to speak to his brothers. While this wouldn’t be God speaking directly, it would be a miracle that would hopefully cause those on Earth to stand up and take notice. Our natural sense is probably agrees with the rich man’s logic, but the words that Jesus put into Abraham’s mouth are alarming to us as we nod along with the damned man’s reasoning, “They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them…. If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:29, 31).
God has always worked through his Word primarily shared through human messengers rather than through direct contact. So, if we’re looking for the Lord, if we are seeking to return to him, we need to look for him where he has chosen to reveal himself. As such, we will not find him in nature, we will not find him through pure meditation and introspection, and if we’re waiting for God to have a nice chat with us over a cup of coffee, we will probably be waiting our whole lives without it ever happening.
Where do we find the Lord? You may not find him in nature alone, but in his Word, you will learn the details of how he created the universe we call home. You may not find him through an emptying-of-your-mind meditation, but meditation that centers on the promises and truths of God’s Word will be productive. And no, God may not sit down with you at the café for a warm drink, but if you bring a devotion book with you or perhaps enjoy a beverage while sitting in Bible Study with your fellow Christians, there is where God will be found.
Word of God is not just sounds voiced into the air or scratches of ink on a piece of paper. God attaches promises and power to his Word—as unassuming and unimpressive as it might be at first glance: Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return there unless they first water the earth, make it give birth, and cause it to sprout, so that it gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater, in the same way my word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty. Rather, it will accomplish whatever I please, and it will succeed in the purpose for which I sent it.
The Holy Spirit works through his Word to create faith in our hearts and to sustain it. When the Israelites were separated from God’s Word and promises, they were distancing themselves from the God who loved them so dearly. When you and I seek to fill our spiritual needs with things that do not include God’s Word, we do the same thing.
But, when we dig into his Word here at church, in our homes, even in our cars or as we go for a walk, as we read or listen to that truth, to those promises, there the Spirit builds us up; there faith is maintained and grows; there alone do we find return and remaining with our Savior God. Because there in that Word we hear God’s clear condemnation of our sins and his complete forgiveness in Jesus’ death in our place. We cannot learn about Jesus’ salvation apart from God’s Word. That’s where he’s chosen to reveal these eternally-important truths; that’s where we find the Lord.
So, my sisters and brothers, “Seek the Lord while he may be found! Call on him while he is near!” Where do we find him? Where he has chosen to reveal himself, in that Word that will not return to him empty. Value it. Cherish it. Use it, now and until that day when our Lord calls us home to himself in heaven! Till the soil of your hearts so that this Word, planted like seed, may grow and flourish into faith that trusts God’s forgiveness for eternity. Amen.
