A Noble Theme

Introduction Video: Hespeler, 23 April, 2017 © Scott McAndless John 14:1-7 , 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 , Psalm 16 O ver five hundred years ago, an English king by the name of James commissioned the translation of the greatest book ever written, the Bible, into English. The result was a translation that was so good, so poetic and so beautiful that, for hundreds of years, it was essentially the only English Bible that mattered. But five centuries is a very long time and in all of that time the text of the King James Version never changed but other things did and that may have caused a few issues.       For example, in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John – in the King James Version of the passage that we read this morning – Jesus makes this rather stunning promise to his disciples. “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to ...

Introduction Video: Hespeler, 9 April, 2017 © Scott McAndless – Palm Sunday Isaiah 51:9-11, Matthew 26:47-56, Colossians 1:13-22 A few weeks ago I watched a movie you may have heard of. It was called “The Magnificent Seven.” It was a remake of an original 1960 western (which was itself a remake of a classic Japanese film), so I am betting that most of you have seen this movie in some form or another at some point in your life. That’s why I feel as if I am not going to spoil the movie for anybody if I give you a quick recap of the plot.       The story went like this. A very bad man got a bunch of very bad people together and they hurt and shot and killed some innocent people in a town. A group from that town went to get some help and found seven people (who were all magnificent) and they came and killed the bad people in the town. Those who were left alive all lived happily ever after. ...

Hespeler, April 2, 2-17 © Scott McAndless Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 4:1-11. Jonah 2 O f all the prophets in the Bible, Jonah, I think is the one who just gets me. I mean, here is a guy who is just going on about his own business one day when he receives a message from God. “Wow, Lord, me? You think that I’m important enough to give a message to me?” But then, as Jonah listens or attends or does whatever you do when you receive a message from God, he begins to realize that this is not really a message that he likes or wants to receive: “Jonah, go an d preach my message to the people that you hate most in the world: the Ninevites.”       And then what does Jonah do? He behaves as if he was Donald Trump and the German Chancellor just asked him to shake hands. “What? Message? I didn’t receive any message. As a matter of fact,” Jonah goes on, “I think I just remembered that I gotta do something in...