Year: 2024
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Saint Matthew Today for January 17th, 2024
Categories: Print Copy
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2402 – Who Is My Neighbor?
Categories: Video
Watch the full service on our YouTube channel by clicking here.
Luke 10:25-29 New International Version
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
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Mary’s Corner
Categories: News10,000 words wasn’t enough folks. I still have 2 questions to answer and submit. I am grateful for this opportunity and painfully aware of the “this is a test” purpose of the exercise. I will share some of my writing with you after this is over and I can look at it again.
I will be out of town the next two Sundays. Until I see you again, be safe and careful. Wash you hands, avoid large crowds and stay home if you are ill. My love to all, Mary
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Friday’s Word
Categories: Friday WordJesus Got It Right
Is theology more like philosophy or math?
There are many different philosophical positions.
But two times two is always four.
So, theology must be like philosophy. Look at the 20,000 denominations of Christianity.
There seems to be no stable truth. No clear single picture of what God is like.
I beg to differ.
God is knowable through experience.
Every experience of God gives us information about God. And that information is always consistent from one experience to another.
Talk to 100 people who have encountered God in an NDE or other form of religious experience.
The God they meet will always be the same:
Entirely loving.
Endlessly forgiving.
Every experience of God gives us information about God.
And that information is consistent and reliable.
Like two plus two.
Theology is a study of available information.
It is not guesswork.
It can be accurate.
And here’s the big news:
Experience gives us the same information about God that we get from Jesus.
Jesus got God right!
Plato didn’t.
Aristotle didn’t.
Not one of the great thinkers of antiquity got God right. But Jesus did. This is the most powerful argument for the claim we make that Jesus is Lord.
Luke 6:27-36 is the best description ever written of the God we know exists.
And how do we know this God exists? We meet God through experience.
Two plus two is always four. And God is always and at all times—love.
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Max’s Corner
Categories: NewsIt Was a Good Year
I hesitate to say that. It may have been a hard year for some of our people. But 2023 was a good year in our church.
We reached many with the Gospel.
Our people have been wonderfully faithful.
We may as well face something as we move forward. The church is no longer just the folks in the pews on Sundays. We have many people who cannot come but who are faithful in watching online and faithful in giving. And there are even readers of Friday’s Word who think of St. Matthew as their church, or one of their churches. They may attend another church regularly and still watch us every week.
It’s a new day.
But one thing we want to do in the new year is to get more people into our pews on Sundays. We want them in on the fellowship—if this is possible.
I like to see you when I am preaching.
But I do thank God for all of you who can now be with us in spirit—or in Spirit—if not in person.
This larger church, beyond our walls, is important to us now.
A Bit More
I’m preaching at Lakewood Village (now, Christian Care Community) Sunday afternoon. If some of the residents there wanted to come to St. Matthew on Sundays—would there be a way?
Mary will be gone for two Sundays.
She will preach for us when she returns.
Expect a time of joyful worship this Sunday.
Don’t worry if it’s cold.
The heating is working.
God bless—MB
Tracy Maxwell is back home and improving after surgery.
Doug Montgomery’s mom passed away—aged 97. Our love to Doug and Cindy and all of Doug’s family.
We remember Larry Norris and those who loved him.