Cambria Pulpit

In his 1865 children’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol presents a striking scene which contains an important lesson for us today. In the scene, Alice continues her travels through Wonderland. However, she comes to a fork in the road. As she contemplates which direction she should take, she is flummoxed. Looking at each road from different sides presents different possibilitie...

A Christmas Sermon

It has been a challenging week for our community. Several of your kids and grandkids have had school canceled for several days due to the threats made against their schools. Some kids are now scared to go, parents are worried, and we see society continue to degrade in front of our eyes. So how should we as Christians respond to the situation?   As we have looked at the first chapters of Romans, we...

Over the past two looks at the Book of Romans, we have noted that religion can’t save us. Paul addressed the Jews specifically informing them that their status as Jews could not save them. This raises an important question for the Jews and for us. The Jews would ask, “what advantage then is there to being a Jew?” We would ask, “What help then is religion?” Paul anticipates this question and enters...

Perhaps you have attended church from nine months before you were born. You memorized the verses in AWANA, you went to youth group. Somewhere along the lines, you prayed a prayer. Maybe you were even baptized. Now you come to church on Sundays and serve the church in some way. You assume that because you are doing all these things, you are good with God. But as we examine the Word, we discover tha...

It is very easy for religious churchgoers to look at the world around us and decry what we see. Perhaps last week as we walked through the wrath of God against a culture, you found yourself agreeing with the judgments made. Our culture fell prey to their own sins resulting in a sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, and now societal chaos. We bemoan all that is going on around us. We rant again...

It seems as though society has reached a tipping point into evil. Any thought to argue against the LGBTQ agenda cannot be tolerated. Last week Former President Barack Obama stated with shock that he could not believe people were still arguing about it because that ship has sailed. The political sphere is as divisive as it has ever been. Young people are seen as completely out of place if they main...

What is the gospel? How would you answer that question?   As we walk through this book, we will continually be confronted with the Gospel! We will be forced to clearly define the Gospel. We will be challenged to live the gospel in our everyday life. And we will be encouraged to share the gospel. So I invite you to join me on this journey by turning to Romans 1.    As we begin, we begin with the ma...

Today we begin a new adventure together as we walk through the book of Romans. This is a fantastic book of the Bible. Many have called this Paul’s Mangum Opus (great work). It is considered this because of its amazing depth of theology while maintaining an incredible practicality. In this book, Paul presents one of the clearest presentations of the gospel. And then presents what this means for eve...

Today we reach the end of another journey. For the past several months we have worked through Paul’s final letter: 2 Timothy. We chose to work through this letter because it presents for us the measurement of a faithful ministry. As Paul faced the end of his time on earth and looked back over his ministry, he sought to convey to Timothy and to us the most important things the church and pastor mus...

Many feel worn down. The challenges life brings cause us to become weary and faint. Sometimes, these struggles cause us to question our calling to follow God and even our faith in God. As God’s children, we expect that life should be a little easier. We expect that the struggles should be less. However, it is not long into our Christian lives when we discover that this is not the case. Life is har...

A few weeks ago, we spent time looking at the reality that all Scripture is inspired by God. Because that is true, all Scripture is therefore profitable. Yet, as we read through the Bible, we quickly come across texts that don’t seem to be very profitable. We come to the fourth fifth chapter of Genesis, or the first nine chapters of Chronicles, or the first chapter of Matthew. All of which contain...

A reality of life that we all must face is the reality of death. Death will come for us all. We don’t like to think about death. We spend much of our lives ignoring death. But death is coming. One reality I have observed is that as a person comes closer to death, they begin to evaluate the life they lived a little differently. We can see this in the final statements of several people.  As Napoleon...

Churches across America are doing a lot of different things today. Some have inspiring dramas. Some have amazing concerts complete with the lights and fog. Some even have circus flying trapeze artists flying across the stage. But many, like this one, take a massive amount of time every Sunday to have a guy get up and talk about a passage in the Bible. Why would a church do that? Isn’t that kind of...

You don’t’ have to be around here very long to figure out that we make a big deal out of the Bible. Even today as you sat in the pew: you sang some songs that came from the Bible, you listen to the Bible read twice already, and you heard prayers with the Bible in them. Perhaps you have wondered why do Christians make such a big deal out of the Bible? Maybe even as a Christian you have wondered, wh...

The Apostle Paul understood what living in a wicked world was like. As he writes 2 Timothy, he is in prison, condemned to death, solely for being a Christian. Paganism reigned around him. The government was absolutely corrupt and ruled by a man who was insane. While he was about to die, Timothy was not. So in chapter 3, Paul gives Timothy instruction about living in a wicked world. We discovered i...

Missionary Ryan Pennington (a translation consultant with Bibles International) presents the needs of Bible translation around the world and the way the Word works in lives. 

Last week we began the second half of 2 Timothy. Chapter 3 details for us the things we need to be aware of and to do in order to live in a wicked world. We noted that, as believers, experiencing this wicked world can be frustrating, discouraging, and even scary. We see society around us degrade, and we worry about the kind of world our children will inherit. We watch the news, and we wonder how m...

All one needs to do is watch the news, look at the magazine rack in the store, or spend any time on social media to be reminded that we live in a wicked world. As believers, experiencing this can be frustrating, discouraging, and even scary. We see society around us degrade, and we worry about the kind of world our children will inherit. We watch the news, and we wonder how much worse it can get....

A couple of years ago, I purchased a couple of washcloths to use in my office so that I could clean off dishes after eating lunch. Being cheap, I purchased them from the Dollar Tree. The first time I had the opportunity to use them, I discovered a problem: Thy didn’t retain water. The water simply ran over them and they didn’t really get wet. I thought, What use is a washcloth that doesn’t get wet...

What should you expect from your pastor? What is a pastor’s role? What is to be a pastor’s focus? What should you expect and demand from me? There are a variety of opinions on this matter in the church today. Some view the pastorate like a chief administrator. His priority is to ensure that the various ministries of the church are organized. Some view the pastorate like a visitation guru. His prio...

Today, as we celebrate the founding of this country, we do so, understanding that it is a country in trouble. Secularism has pervaded the culture and modern American Christianity has proved ineffective. With the advent of modern media, we have access to more preachers than ever before, but there are few powerful preachers. Churches abound across the country, but few are truly changing the culture...