Category: Sermons
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Knocking in the Night
A sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin Text: John 3:1-17 I’m not much of a night person, but I wish that I were. Night time is enchanting. While the day-dwellers go to sleep, another world awakes, both people and animals. While we often think that it is only malice that…
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Up from the grave
Sermon originally delivered on April 5, 2015 at Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI. Text: Matthew 28:1-10 So often we find ways to sanitize death. Often times, death happens in a hospital or some other facility. The family may or may not be there and may or may not witness the death itself.…
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The unfair mercy of God
Sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI. Text: Matthew 20:1-16 “It’s not fair!” I would protest. I am the oldest of three boys, and as is typical for siblings, and perhaps especially older children, I was hyper-aware to perceived unfairness. It is almost this primal preservation instinct, that we have to…
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Bring Me Your Nothing
Sermon originally delivered to Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI. Text: Matthew 14:13-21 Jesus caught word that John the Baptist had been executed, complete with his head presented on a platter. We may assume that Jesus was grieved as the gospel writer records that Jesus went off to be by himself. Much of…
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Leaning into the Wilderness
A Sermon originally delivered to Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI Text: Matthew 4:1-17 Immediately after Jesus’ baptism, the claim from the heavens that Jesus is God’s son, Jesus is led to the wilderness to be tempted. While we may see these as different events, they are all tied together in one long narrative…
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Finding Our Way
A sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI. Esther 4:1-17 By now the Kingdom of Judah has been conquered and all the people of any social standing whatsoever have been taken to Babylon in a couple of deportations. The Exile was a pivotal point in the history of the people of…
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Fear or Hope?
Sermon originally delivered at Calvary Community Church, New Berlin, WI. Text: Isaiah 36:1-37:7 The Kingdom of Israel has fallen to the Assyrian war machine. The focus now turns more singularly to the kingdom of Judah. Now this is not a match of equals, Assyria is the superpower in the region and Israel and Judah are…
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The Ordinary Ones
Sermon originally preached at Calvary Community Church. Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14 Few things are more delightful to me in this passage, than the fact that this whole event happened, this story was recorded, this whole thing began with the words of a little foreign slave girl. This little slave girl, someone with no social…
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After God’s Own Heart
A sermon delivered to Calvary Community Church in New Berlin, WI 2 Samuel 12:1-9 We fast-forwarded quite a bit through the story of scripture. We moved through the book of Judges, which describes the early life of the Israelites in the land. Rather than a unified nation, at first they were a loose confederation of…
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From Beyond the River
Joshua 24:1-28 God comes to Abram with no apparent reason, makes a promise that God will bring forth from Abram a great nation which will be blessed so that they can be a blessing to all the world. So without any recorded hesitation, Abram goes, as God told him, to the land which God will…
Matthew van Maastricht 