The Old Adam Lives!

Don’t you dare listen to this, Roger!

Posted on April 7, 2011 by theoldadam

This is for REAL SINNERS…ONLY! We have estranged ourselves from God and this is the…

(find out for yourself …except you, Roger) > For Real Sinners, ONLY

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This evening’s Lenten sermon for April 6, 2011

Theme: Estrangement from each other

Estrangement from God

Romans 6

Baptism

Holy Communion

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Thanks flickr and weastman for the photo.

Filed under: Lent, Pastor Mark Anderson, Sermon | 1 Comment »

How can you have any assurance that you are a child of God?

Posted on April 6, 2011 by theoldadam

Baptism…that’s how.

Check out the great post concerning baptism and the assurance that God wants you to have in yours, over at David’s blog:

http://fivepintlutheran.blogspot.com/

Who does the baptising?

If we do it, then how can we trust in it?

If God does it, then can’t it be fully trusted?

Does anything really happen in baptism, anyway?

Do you feel like you are a Christian and strong in the faith one day…and then the next day or week, you have almost forgotten about Jesus and wonder just how much of a Christian you really are?

Baptism is a topic that often flies under the radar, so we like to bring it out in the open every once in awhile.

Thanks to David over at ‘Five Pint Lutheran’ for bringing it to the fore yet once again.

Here’s another good one on the assurance of your election:

click here> The-assurance-of-your-election

(This is a re-post from a while back).

Filed under: Assurance, Baptism | 1 Comment »

‘The Easter Paradigm’

Posted on April 5, 2011 by theoldadam

Professor James Nestingen, in commenting on the Lord’s Prayer, once wrote, “In teaching them to pray, Jesus did not teach His disciples to transcend themselves but to ask.” And asking, of course, is something we humans are not very good at. Why? Because asking is a form of dying, a recognition of our limitations, an admission of need and a direct threat to our most dearly beloved, self-reliance.

When Jesus spoke of the life of faith He said things like this; “If anyone would find their life in this world, they must lose it.” He spoke of denying self and taking up the cross. Dying must come before life can begin. When St. Paul wrote to the Romans he brought them back to baptism in order to make clear the dynamic of the Christian life; “Do you not know”, he wrote, “that all of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” The sinner, sickened by sin, is beyond remedy. The patient must die.

The Easter paradigm of the Christian life is not an invitation to transcend upward to ever higher heights of spirituality and success. This may be good humanism but it is lousy Christianity, what Martin Luther called the Theology of Glory. Jesus was not raised from the dead in order to prop up our projects, however we define them. He was raised, as the New Testament proclaims, “for our justification” (to establish sinners in a right relationship with God). It is for this reason that we can say with Paul, “It is no loner I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

Easter is not the occasion for a lot of empty religious barking about new life. Our lives and the world are not progressing they are coming to an end. The life we do live is a life of faith – not faith in what we have done or believed, but faith in Christ Jesus on whose cross my sinful self has met it’s end, and out of whose empty tomb reverberates the promise of eternity.

Grace to you,

Pastor Mark

Filed under: Pastor Mark Anderson, Pastor's Perspective | 3 Comments »

“All I know is that I was blind, and now I see.”

Posted on April 4, 2011 by theoldadam

Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent.

click here> Jesus heals the Blind Man

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Thanks to flickr and noondayphotos, for the photo.

Filed under: Pastor Mark Anderson, Sermon | Leave a comment »

Calvin and Zwingli discuss the Sacraments

Posted on April 1, 2011 by theoldadam

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

This one’s for you.

Posted on March 31, 2011 by theoldadam

Subject: Last night’s sermon

Format: mp3 audio

Length: 15 minutes, 58 seconds

Place of origin: USA, Corona del Mar, CA

Topic: The spirituality of spearfishing for Tiger sharks on the Zimbabwe Estuary …(right )

click here > ‘This one’s for you‘

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Seriously now. It’s about the elder son in the parable of the Prodigal Son, and how the story relates to us and how we ought view God, and more importantly…how God views us.

Thanks to flickr and SCUBAZOO for the photo

Filed under: Lent, Pastor Mark Anderson, Sermon | Leave a comment »

Scary, isn’t it?

Posted on March 30, 2011 by theoldadam

Freedom just scares the hell out of people. It might even scare the hell into them.

To be truly free in Christ, without any shackles of “literal bibles”, “3rd uses of the law” “Christian do-goodism projects”, or “Christian self-improvement projects”…just scares people to death.

Professor and theologian, James Nestingen always says, “The gospel is always in a fight. And that fight always revolves around freedom.”

“They really don’t care if someone’s doctrine doesn’t line up just right before they will share Christ’s Supper with them.”

Yes, we do care. And yes, we will share…even before we are SURE they understand everything exactly as we do. We care enough to baptize them first and to tell them exactly what they are receiving. Who’s Supper is it, anyway? Who is it that is capable of making someone into the kind of person that He wants them to be, anyway?

Well, it’s always about the freedom, isn’t it? And who’s freedom?

God’s freedom. God’s freedom to love and forgive real sinners. God’s freedom to take real people who just can’t quite cut it, and probably never will ‘cut it’ in this pride-soaked world, and say to them, “I love you. I baptized you. And you are mine. Begining of story.”

And then it’s about our freedom. The gift of freedom from our Lord, Christ Jesus, who has freed us by His death and resurrection. Who has freed us by declaring us forgiven and righteous, even though we know not what we do.

Just who is it that we are talking about here? Can this God really make something out of nothing? Or is he just itching for us to get it all lined up perfectly BEFORE He acts…for us?

Nope. Our God is free. Scary free to many. Wonderfully free to some.

The door is open. You have been freed.

“But the Bible says such and such about such and such!”

Heeere we go again…

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