Difference between revisions of "Sermon for November 20th, 2016"

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Deuteronomy 26:1-11

1 When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5 you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7 we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.

A Commitment to Give

There were two men shipwrecked on a deserted island. As soon as they arrived at the island, one of them started screaming and wailing, "We're going to die! There's no food! No water! We're going to die!"

The second man, however, remained calm, finding a nice tree in the shade to prop himself up against, as he relaxed and closed his eyes. This drove the first man crazy. "Don't you understand?!? We're going to die!!" The second man replied, "No, you don't understand. I make $100,000 a week." The first man looked at him quite dumbfounded and said, "What difference does that make? Your money's no good here--we can't eat it or drink it, can we? We're going to DIE!"

The second man calmly replied, "You obviously don't get it. I make $100,000 a week, and every week I go to church, and I tithe--ten percent of that $100,000--to my church. I'm not worried, because I know my pastor WILL find me!"

Today is commitment Sunday. Some of you brought your pledge cards and placed them on the table before worship began, some may do that after the service is over. Some of you mailed in your pledge card to the office days ago, and some of you may be wondering, "What's a pledge card? What's a tithe? What's commitment Sunday?"

Let me answer those questions in reverse order.

A one dollar bill met a 20 dollar bill and said, "Hey, where've you been? I haven't seen you around here much." The twenty answered, "I've been hanging out at the casinos, went on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for awhile, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you?" The one dollar bill said, "You know, same old stuff, church, church, church."