Revelation Series: Message 1
A Simple Explanation of the Book of Revelation
The Meaning of Dreams
Jesus promised His followers that when he ascended the Holy Spirit would come and indwell each of us. He said the Holy Spirit would bring things to our memory. This is recorded in John 14:26. Sometimes that happens in our sleep, in dreams. I’m always especially sensitive to my dreams. In Scripture God often used dreams to communicate with people. Sometimes it’s clear to me that God is communicating a warning to me in my sleep. Other times I have dreams that comfort or encourage me. I have often had whole messages–sermons come to me in a dream. Other times I can make absolutely no sense whatever of my dreams.
Last night I dreamed that I was back at Moody. We were singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” like we often did at Moody. I had an overwhelming sense of the goodness of God and his faithful provision. I just lifted my voice with the other students and I sang with all my heart. “All….. I…… have…. needed, Thy hand has provided…. Great…. is…. Thy…. faithfulness, Lord unto me….”
When I was a student years ago at Moody and I sang that beautiful song, I had no idea how true it would be for me. Provision was a major area of concern for me when I was a student and it has been a major area of concern for me all through my life, but I can sing now with greater joy and conviction than I did then, “All I have needed Thy hand has provided. Great is Thy faithfulness Lord, unto me.”
New Sermon Series! Revelation!
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The Beauty of God’s Justice (Sermon)
Series: Knowing God by Heart
Sermon Title: The Beauty of God’s Justice
Text: Romans 3
Place: Evangel Baptist Church-Taylor, Michigan
Date: August 23, 2015 AM
Speaker: Pastor Ken Pierpont
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VanCleve School-October 1979
I have in my mind and moment in time. I am a school custodian. It is my first year of marriage, specifically, my second month of marriage. We married in early September 1979. It must be an autumn evening in October now. I am the evening custodian at VanCleve Elementary School in Troy, Ohio. Soon I will move on to a handful of other jobs before I finally land in my life-long calling as a pastor.
But tonight I am taking a break in a second-floor classroom. I’m sitting in a rocking chair by a huge open casement window looking out over the street. The building is silent. I am alone. It is the golden hour just before sunset and sun lights the upper branches of a huge ancient maple tree opposite the school. Two-thirds of the leaves cling to the branches still. A third of them are on the ground around the tree in a bright circle of yellow and orange on the green grass. Children are playing in the yard among the fallen leaves. A hint of cool air comes in from the east-facing window. The air is fresh.
The tableau stays sweetly in my memory year after year for no apparent reason beyond the mellow beauty of the hour. I cherish that quiet moment in the window for a few minutes and then I move on to finish my work. I don’t remember a single drive to work or drive home. I don’t remember much of anything else. I don’t remember ever picking up my pay though I know I did, every other week, but I do remember those few quiet moments in that window looking out on an autumn evening.
About 11 p.m. I would get in my car and go home to my young wife out on Ohio 718 west of town. We had a tidy apartment–the upstairs of an old farm house, nicely remodeled with new carpet and fresh paint. She would have something for me to eat, a glass chilled in the freezer for my Pepsi, and a snack. She would have been alone for hours and eager to have someone to talk to.
Maybe you will forget everything you do tomorrow, or maybe a little scene will stick in your mind for decades. You just don’t know, do you? May God bless you with pleasant memories.
Two Things That Bug Me
Two Things That Bug Me. One More Than The Other.
It bugs me a little bit if people seem to be distracted by their phone all the time and it interferes with their real-life conversations and their face-to-face communication with people. Some people are just lacking in phone etiquette. If you are in a restaurant or in line at the bank and the waitress or teller is working hard to make a living and you make them wait for you to finish your phone call that is just inconsiderate. If you are distracted or inattentive to real, live people who are physically present, it is just rude and shows a lack of respect.
If you are visiting your grandmother and you are on your phone the whole time checking Facebook, try to remember what my grandmother often told me when I used to visit her in their little home on Auten Road in South Bend; “Kenny, I won’t always be here.” She was right. When I drive by that little house strangers live where my Grandma and Grandpa Shipley lived for over fifty years. They are not there any more. If they were alive today I would visit them and I would leave my phone in the car. There, I said it. Use the phone, but be polite and look around a little. Life is happening all around you.
Now for The Thing That Bugs Me More:
People who are crabby about social media and electronic communication devices because they don’t know how to use them or because they don’t want to know how to use them… Oh, my. These folk make me wanna’ screech! They are so opinionated and they are just sure they are right and there can be no other opinion… “Whats-this-world-coming-to!”
They don’t seem to mind watching television. They could not imagine life without a phone. They are all nostalgic about radio. If they understand a technology they are not all moralistic about it. But if they don’t understand it or if they don’t want to understand it, then it suddenly becomes a moral issue and we get to hear a big “America-is-going-strait-to-hell (which it is, but for other reasons altogether)-and-kids-don’t-know-how-to-have-a-conversation-and-they-don’t-know-how-to-write-anymore-and-our-generation-was-so-far-superior… I kinda wanna’ say, If you really were the super-generation who raised all these losers who can’t talk and can’t spell anyway?
I hope you are wrong about them being so completely irresponsible, because they are the ones who are going to take care of us when we get older. They are the ones who are going to defend our country. They are the ones who are going to pastor our churches. They are going to teach our children and heal our hurts and feed the nation… Oh, and keep in mind, they are most likely going to do it using modern technologies, just like we did.
I don’t see people down by the river beating their clothes with a rock very often. I don’t see privies out behind the houses of these people who are so quick to condemn the use of modern technology–they seem to like modern electrification and plumbing…. I bet most of them don’t cut their own wood, either.
I don’t wanna’ be too crabby about crabby people, but please spare me your moralistic speech about how worthless young people are these days. I love them and I think they have a bright future.
Gotta’ go–my granddaughter wants to Facetime me.
Ken Pierpont-Parson, Storyteller
Granville Cottage
Riverview, Michigan
August 18, 2015
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