Fries Memorial Moravian Church

Last week I told you that Jesus was a life long learner.  In Luke 2:11 we read that, as a boy he grew in wisdom and knowledge, and in favor with God and human kind. And in Hebrews 2:9,  we read that as an adult, by the grace of God, he tasted death for everyone.  If I may borrow a phrase from Whittier, Jesus had “…knowledge never learned of schools.”

Every believer ought to be a life-long learner.  John Calvin said that Christian maturity is based upon our maintaining a kind of perpetual adolescence. No matter how old we are, we have got to be ready to learn the lessons that God still wants to teach us, and ready to take-on the tasks that God still sets before. This is true for the youngest and oldest among us. We may retire from a life of labor, but as Christians we never retire. In Revelation 2:10 we read that it is those who are “faithful unto death” that receive “the crown of life.” 

This morning, I want to point out that the author of Psalm 71 was a life long leaner.  The psalmist reverses the logical flow of life, but he beautifully describes what it means to be a child of the covenant.  In verse 5 he writes, “O Lord, you are my hope and my trust from my youth.”  Remember the words, “hope” and “trust.” We will come back to them.  Then in verse 6 he writes, “Upon you I have leaned from my birth.” Continue reading →

This morning I am going to ask you to offer the spiritual gift you received from God
back to God and God’s church. I am going to root that challenge in Scripture, especially
in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, and Acts 18 which records Paul’s time in
that city.

Paul was used to traveling on foot, and he arrived in Corinth after a four day walk from
Athens. According to 1st Corinthians 2:23 he was not just tired out by his journey, but
weak and afraid. Though much of Paul’s suffering still lay in the future, he was already
used to being ignored, laughed at and and abused. In 1st. Corinthians 4:13 he said he
regarded himself as “the refuse of the world, the off scouring of all things.” In other
words, he felt like he was the stink on the bottom of someone else’s sandal. Yet, when Paul first arrived in Corinth he did what he always did. He screwed-up his courage to the sticking place, and he went to the synagogue and argued from the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel, who died for our sins, and then rose again to give us a future and a hope. Continue reading →