BBC Sermons

As Pastor Paul Burgess follows God's calling to serve at Winter Park Baptist Church in Wilmington, he leaves his friends in Benson with a final sermon, modeling his farewell after the one shared between two of the Bible's greatest friends, David and Jonathan.

Hear special guest preacher Dr. C. Lynn Brinkley as she challenges us to consider the hidden figures at work in the Body of Christ and stand up for those in our world who, due to their “hidden” nature, might not yet have a voice.

Micah 6:8 is a famous verse in Christian faith, and on the surface it seems so simple—do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.  But it’s obvious that all of us don’t live that way.  The reason is not that we have a hard time understanding the concepts God requires; we’re fine with those nouns.  Our problem is most likely the verbs of Micah 6:8—DO, LOVE, and WALK.

John 1:14 represents the turning point in the story of God’s relationship with humanity—the Incarnation.  It’s where reconciliation begins.  But what does it mean that “the Word became flesh and made his home among us,” and if we claim that this “Word made flesh” dwells in us, then how must our lives look different?

Sometimes the Bible seems like a bunch of movies we’ve seen over and over.  We’ve read the stories, and although we love them, we know them already!  Yet time and again we come back.  Why?  Perhaps there’s an answer or two in the familiar story of Jesus’ encounter with a thirsty Samaritan woman who—like us in our constant returns to Scripture—keeps coming back to the well for a drink.

God’s got an interesting name—“I Am.”  It feels incomplete, doesn’t it?  Yet when we try to complete it, we find that our words fall short and that no neat, book-ended title fully captures the God who spoke to Moses and is revealed in Jesus Christ.  So maybe it’s best that God’s name remain open-ended.

Could it be that our understanding of peace is all wrong?  So often we think of peace as a base layer upon which our chaotic life gets added, so that we have to remove the stressful “stuff” from our days before we can get back to a peaceful center.  But what if peace is more aggressive?  What if peace doesn’t lay stagnant beneath our lives, but instead breaks into our lives and is available to us even in the midst of stress?  That’s the way it worked for Jesus, whose desire before death was to bequeath his peace to us.

Truth is a dangerous thing.  Truth threatens the way that we live, it threatens our comfort, it threatens what we want to believe.  Therefore, we have two basic choices for how we respond to truth—we can accept it and change ourselves, or ignore it and try to change everything else.  One path is difficult but filled with grace, the other is easy but wholly inauthentic.  The Pharisees, when confronted with an uncomfortable truth in Jesus, chose the easy route; perhaps their example can encourage us to choose the other.

What makes a miracle?  Is it something that occurs only once, like the resurrection?  Or, could miracles happen more frequently—could they be hidden within the life that surrounds us every single day?  It’s an exciting thought, because the power of one resurrection changed the course of history.  What in the world would happen if we fully embraced the daily miracles we’ve made “normal”?

Most of us function as if there were an 11th commandment, through which God instructed, “Thou shalt not laugh in church!”  For some reason, many feel odd cracking a smile between 11:00 a.m. and noon on a Sunday.  But would God have it that way?  Perhaps a conversation between Paul and guest caller Rev. Dr. Fudd E. Duddy can help us gain some clarity…

“What does God want with me?”  It’s a question all well-meaning Christians ask.  We want to please God and do God’s will, but how do we know what the divine burning in our chest means?  Luckily, we can turn to the example of two gentlemen on the road to Emmaus who, through their shared case of holy heartburn, can give us a guide for how to deal with our own.

“Sharing is caring”—we heard it all the time when we were younger.  But how important is sharing for us as adults?  Well, if we want to look anything like our Christian ancestors, then it’s vitally important.  Listen to Tyler Wood, our Minister to Children and Youth, as he reflects this Children's Sunday on why sharing is essential for those who care about Jesus.

Despite what the greeting card industry would have us believe, love is anything but perfect.  Unfortunately, our culture doesn’t always recognize that, as we often pursue the ideal of perfection and end up sorely disappointed when we fail to find it.  But should we really expect anything else in a broken world?  Perhaps, then, our call as children of God is to love those whom God has given us—our mothers, our spouses, our families, our friends—for who they are, discovering what makes them perfect for us, while we all journey together into the wholeness that can be ours through Christ.

Resolutions don’t always pan out.  Sometimes that’s because we’re too ambitious, sometimes we’re just not motivated, but sometimes there might be a deeper reason.  Perhaps our resolutions work best when they’re made in accordance with the “season of life” we’re experiencing.

It’s easy to get off point.  That’s especially so in a culture like ours that is, compared to other places in the world, quite friendly to Christianity.  It happened with the Israelites, too.  However, when we’ve missed the point, it’s important for someone to bring us back on.  In powerful fashion, the prophet Isaiah did it for the Israelites, and he can do it for us, too.

Growth is a part of life.  Growth should also be a part of faith.  However, it doesn’t always happen.  Paul challenges the Corinthians with the idea that they are immature and hadn’t moved past the “baby food” stage of faith.  Is it possible that we can get stuck there, too?

Christianity should be a pretty optimistic faith.  However, we look at the many negative “truths” out there in our world and often allow ourselves to get dragged down.  The Apostle Paul didn’t allow that to happen.  He believed in a greater “Truth behind the ‘truth,’” and if we can tap into that same vision, our way of viewing this broken world could change in a revolutionary way.

Like many things in the Kingdom of God, receiving honor works in a somewhat backwards way. To be honored, one must give honor away.  This might seem counter-intuitive to many in our world, but true servants, like the one we ordained this Sunday as a deacon, know that the most honorable people always put themselves last.

Gratitude is all about perspective.  Too much of our culture subscribes to a view of scarcity, believing that we don’t have enough of anything.  But what would happen if we shifted our focus to the other side of things and instead lived from a place where we’re more mindful of all that we have?

Hope is a difficult thing.  If anyone knows that, it’s the kid who spent an entire December pining for an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle.  Every time he threw his wish out into the world, someone shot it down, much like the Israelite’s hope for a messiah was crushed after each exile, each crummy king, each year lived in subjugation.  Yet hope is also stubborn, and through the baby we expect this Advent, we can know that the heart which hopes never does so in vain. Listening Note: This sermon, especially the first half, relies heavily on visual elements.  Listeners might receive a fuller experience of the message by viewing the video of the sermon at bensonbaptist.org/sermons/ or bensonbaptist.org/videos/.