Cutlerville East Christian Reformed Church

Can you point to a key event in your life, a seminal moment in which the direction of your life changed for good? Perhaps it was a career decision, meeting your future spouse, coming into relationship with Jesus Christ. We are going to look at the key moment in the life of Jacob, and it came in a wrestling match.  Scripture: Genesis 32 

In our previous passage, Jesus asked: “Do you have eyes but fail to see?” (Mark 8:18). After all Jesus had said and done (even repeating a feeding miracle!), the disciples are still blind to who Jesus really was: the bread of life. Obviously this was discouraging to Jesus, on his way to the cross, to know the blindness of his intimate friends. But blindness is not an insurmountable problem to Jesu...

As we look at prayer, one of the questions we might ask is: what is prayer? One way to look at it is as our response to God’s initiative in speaking to us. We see that happening early on in Scripture, with God’s covenant partner, Abraham. God addresses Abraham as a partner and he responds. Are we partners in prayer with God?  Scripture: Genesis 18:16-33

This not a sermon re-run. Back in January, we looked at the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 from Mark 6:30-44 Now we come upon a very similar miracle story in Mark 8:1-21, which causes some biblical critics to say that Mark is explaining the same event twice. But there are actually great differences between the two feedings, the most important of which is that earlier Jesus fed 5000 Jews, but now...

Jesus moves to the Decapolis in Gentile territory. According to Matthew's account, he healed many people there.  But Mark picks out just one: a man deaf and almost completely mute (or dumb). This was a terrible handicap because, unlike most others, he looks normal until spoken to . Then he has to go through the humiliation of being thought stupid (which soon became the connotation of "du...

As we go on the adventure of the Christian life with God, and especially when we talk about prayer, one of the things that greatly affects us and our prayers is God's attribute of omniscience, that God knows everything. Jesus says: "your Father knows what you need before you ask him."  If this is true, if God knows our needs, why pray? Scripture: Matthew 6:5-13

Mark 6-7 reports a number of “faith failures,” the failure of God’s people to acknowledge Jesus as Messiah and God’s Son. The neighbors resented him, the crowds saw him as only a prophet, Herod superstitiously thought he was the ghost of John the Baptist. Even the disciples misunderstood the full extent of his power, while the Pharisees could only think of their rules and traditions. After all the...

As a child, what was your favorite strategy for getting your way with your parents? Did you butter them up or smooth talk them? Did you cry until you got what you wanted? Did you keep asking, nagging, bugging? Jesus tells a parable about prayer (v.1) and pictures a persistent “nagger.” Is that the model for our prayers?  Scripture:  Luke 18:1-8 

 Traditions: we all have them. Perhaps they have to do with how our family celebrates Christmas or Easter, the first day of school or birthdays. Traditions are a way of passing down our family heritage and even our values to our children. In the Christian faith, there are also many traditions that can help us pass down God’s Word and Christian values. But there is always a danger to traditions. Wh...

 We’ve seen it time and again through the years. Whether Israelis and Palestinians in Israel, Republicans and Democrats in the USA, or Sunnis and Shiites in various middle eastern countries, there is a deep-seated division, hatred even, that is very hard to overcome (rather, it usually escalates). And almost 2000 years ago, in an environment no less of a powder keg than today’s Israel, came a man...

We are called to be ambassadors for Christ!

Often in Bible, we learn from the positive things people do; but sometimes we can learn from the negative. In this story, the disciples teach us how to make our problems worse than they are (a skill I’m sure everyone greatly desires!).  Scripture: Mark 6:45-56 

Why forgive? Does it ever seem unfair, unjust — like there has to be a limit? Most books on forgiveness are on how to forgive. Some get into why to forgive, but mostly from our perspective (it releases us from our pain, etc.). But there’s nothing as straightforward as Jesus’ story here.  Scripture:  Matthew 18:21-35

 Jesus tells a story about someone who prays a shocking prayer. But, as with many parables, we have domesticated it. Since we know it so well, we have lost the shock factor Jesus brings to it. One way to recapture that is to substitute “Billy Graham” for “Pharisee” and “Adolf Hitler” for “tax collector.” Then we begin to feel the shock of the Jewish listeners. 

Scripture:  Acts 2:22-36

Scripture:  Luke 14:25-33

Mark 16:1-8  Easter: Fear and Joy? Certainly Easter is one of the most joyful days of the Christian Church, but what does fear have to do with it? Isn’t it about Good News?! Yes! Today we feel great joy, and well we should! Jesus is risen, he’s alive, and there’s no better reason for celebration! But Mark tells us Easter also has something to do with fear, that, in fact, fear was the predominant e...

Matthew 28  If Jesus had remained in tomb, his call to comfort would have been shallow and baseless. If there was no Easter, the upper room would have merely been a death-bed scene with the dying man uttering his final, inspiring words: memorable, but hardly life-changing! And that is true for us as well: without Easter, our faith is baseless. Without Easter, Jesus becomes a tragic though inspirin...

Scripture: Good Friday  service

We have come to call the events described in Luke 19:28-44 (and parallels, such as Mark’s) Palm Sunday, and the event of the day “the triumphal entry.” But I think we’ve got the names wrong, both of them. Why Palm Sunday when palms were an inappropriate image for the day? And what is triumphant about an entry into Jerusalem that leaves Jesus weeping? So what is the appropriate image? What should t...

Robert Short, in his book about Ecclesiastes, A Time to Be Born, A Time to Die, writes: “The author of the book of Job was a consummate dramatist. The psalmist was a lyrical poet. The author of Jonah knew how to tell a fascinating short story…. Ecclesiastes was also no mean poet, but fundamentally he was an artist of another sort: He was a photographer.” A photographer works with the light availab...

 Palm Sunday is known as Jesus’ triumphal entry. But Mark tells us the story of another triumphal march later in the week, not a triumphal entry but a triumphal procession, and that’s the focus of our attention today. Paul actually speaks of a triumphal procession at one point: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragra...

Theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote an influential book a number of years ago entitled How Should We Live Then?  After examining all the "under the sun" philosophies and lifestyles and finding them meaningless, Solomon answers that question in chapters 11-12.  Here he finally constructs a positive way to live, based on a theology that he's pretty much kept under wraps throughout the...