Category: Sermons

Based on Hebrews 4:12-16. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Unfortunately, video is not available, but the audio (podcast) is linked below. I will be preaching three times on the book of Hebrews, so before I begin today, I’d like to give you a little background and perspective on it. It has elements of…

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 9:38-50. The YouTube link (click on the image) should take you directly to the sermon. Why do we make the choices we make? Seems like a simple enough question, right? Since the Enlightenment, we have thought of ourselves as rational creatures who mentally tally up…

Preached on September 12, 2021, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Podcast linked below. Archived recording of live stream available: Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Do you remember where you were? I sure do. At the time, I was working for Baldor and living…

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:47-58; Proverbs 9:1-6. Dan Brown wrote a series of books about Robert Langdon, a fictional Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology. In The Lost Symbol, Langdon tells his class, “Don’t tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god…

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Ephesians 1:3-14. For as long as humans have owned material goods, we have been concerned about passing them on to our children. We see the next generation as a continuation of the work we have done in the world and hope that what…

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 15:26-16:15, Acts 2:1-21. When I was in grad school, I took a course one semester titled, “A Differential Geometric Approach to Nonlinear Control.” The course started with a discussion of manifolds, diffeomorphisms, Lie brackets and Lie derivatives, and so forth. For about six weeks, I…

See also the post with the video. Based on John 12:20-33. Every year when I go elk hunting, I disconnect from all email and voicemail for about a week. Last fall when I checked my messages, I discovered that I had missed a message from Mark, an engineer at Ameren’s Technology Applications Center in Champaign…

I haven’t blogged much recently. Among other things, I have been busy with the course on preaching that I’m taking this semester. If you would like to provide anonymous feedback on the sermon, please visit: https://forms.gle/eEUkkFJmwzGCAGq98