Ephesians 2:17-21
May 21, 2006
Clayton Presbyterian Church
You have heard the saying, "It is not what you know, but who you know that counts." This is most often heard when it comes to getting a job. You may have the best qualifications, the right degree, the right experience, the right demeanor, only to find that someone else gets the job because their uncle works for the company. Who you know, or are related to, trumps other qualifications. This is true not only when you get a job but also in the spiritual life as well. It is not what you know or have done, but who you know that matters.
1 John 4:1-3
May 28, 2006
Preached by Monte Johnston
Fact or Fiction?
Have you seen the new design of all of the paper money printed by the US Treasury? The new designs and all of the security features. The government is trying to stay ahead of counterfeiters. There is the red and blue threads in the paper. There is all the fine detail. There is the way that the portraits seem separate from the background. They have added watermarks and other features. And yet there will always be people who try to copy the bills, because there is a huge motivation. This is always true for counterfeiting. It is easier to copy someone else’s work than it is to do your own. We don’t just see this with counterfeiters, or during tests in 10th grade math classes. It is also true with religions. From the earliest days there have been counterfeiters of Christianity. There was the original and authentic form and then there were cheap knockoffs. The question was: How do you tell the truth from a lie? That is the topic of our sermon text today. And we will find it just as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
June 4, 2006
Christ lived 2000 years ago. That is a long time. It is not wonder that we feel distant and separated from him. It is no surprise that we have doubts about how well we really know him, and whether or not what we know has been distorted. We talked last week about all of the wild claims in the Da Vinci Code. What if they are true? You just might be wondering. And at times we all have questions and even doubts.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
June 11, 2006—Trinity Sunday
Doctrine
I want to take on a potentially boring subject this morning. I want to talk about doctrine. Just the word alone causes some people to start feeling drowsy. However, it can actually cause a strong reaction in other people. These people only see doctrine as something that causes arguments and feuds, and so they avoid it altogether.
Chan Gailey, football coach for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, told how he learned a lesson in humility.
Gailey was then head coach of Alabama's Troy State, and they were playing for a National Championship. The week before the big game, he was headed to the practice field when a secretary called him back to take a phone call.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
July 2, 2006
Never the Same River Twice
An ancient Greek philosopher made an interesting statement about life, when he said that you never step into the same river twice. What he was saying was that just as the water that you step in at one moment is not the same a moment later, so life is always changing. And we can’t keep it the same and we can’t get it back.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
July 9, 2006
"Earlier in this century, someone claimed that we work at our play and play at our work. Today the confusion has deepened: we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship." So wrote Leland Ryken, author and Wheaton College professor [Critique (1997, No. 7), p. 9].
Clayton Presbyterian Church
August 6, 2006
Last week we baptized two children. In doing so, we talked about how in a baptism we are taking a stand for what we believe and what we hold to be true.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
August 13, 2006
A great preacher named E. Stanley Jones told a story of a missionary serving in the jungle. He got lost with nothing around him but bush and a few cleared places. He finally found a small village and asked one of the natives if he could lead him out of the jungle. The native said that he could.
Light from Barmen: The Word
2 Corinthians 4:5-7
Monte Johnston
Clayton Presbyterian Church
September 3, 2006
Giving It Away
Imagine that I gave you $10000 to give away, with the only catch being that you can’t give it to anyone that you know. Would it be easy or hard? Imagine yourself going up to a complete stranger and offering to write them a check for $5000. What kind of a look would you get? They would probably look at you like your crazy. They would surely be wondering what you were trying to get over on them. “What’s the catch?” they might ask. My guess is that it would be frustrating and a lot harder than you would first think. Keep this scenario in your mind as I want to come back to it in a minute.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
September 10, 2006
Rain
[The sermon was preceded by a video entitled, “Rain,” by pastor Rob Bell from a series called Nooma. The series will be the subject of our small groups. One of the points that Bell made in the video was that we are have “rain” in our lives, that is suffering, hardship, struggles, etc.]
Monte Johnston
Clayton Presbyterian Church
September 17, 2006
After I graduated from seminary, I was interviewing with churches and trying to discern where God was calling us to be. We had interviewed a couple of different places before being invited down to the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, NC. Once there, it just felt right and we were confident that this was where God wanted us to be. While we were there, Kari asked the question, “Do you ever get hurricanes here?” since Washington is on the Pamlico Sound. “No,” they answered, “we haven’t had a hurricane in about 40 years.”
Clayton Presbyterian Church
September 24, 2006
Last week I told you of our move to North Carolina just in time for Hurricane Fran. From that point we were always very cognizant of any tropical storm threatening the east coast. It was a couple years later, in 1999, when we were watching what became Hurricane Dennis. It was a very erratic storm in both its speed and path. At one point it was a Category 2 hurricane. We breathed a sigh of relief as it paralleled the coast of North Carolina and then turned out to sea. There, it stalled. And it did a funny thing; it turned back toward the coast. Only at this point, it has lost its strength and was back to a tropical storm. It moved up the Pamlico river at night. Kari and I were in our new house which was just a few blocks off the river. The power went out about 10pm. We stayed up for a while longer and decided to walk down and take a look at the river before we went to bed.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 8, 2006
Have you ever been in a situation that was so severe that you thought your life was in danger? Maybe it was a situation, where as you look back at it you think that you can’t figure out how you didn’t die? How did you feel? That is the situation that the disciples find themselves in the Bible story today. They are in the middle of a storm and God met them there.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 15, 2006
We are mesmerized by wealth, whether it be “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “MTV Cribs,” or your local parade of homes. We have this insatiable curiosity to see how those richer than us live. Of course, it doesn’t end there. Every week there seems to be a new magazine devoted to following the lives of the celebrities. It seems like just about every kind of magazine follows the lives of celebrities. What effect does this have on us? How does it make us feel when we don’t have that kind of life? We are not alone in this habit. If you don’t believe me, listen to Psalm 73.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 22, 2006
You are rich. I don’t know if you think of yourself as rich, but you are. If you don’t believe me you can go to a website called, globalrichlist.com. When you input your annual income, the website tells you how rich you are in comparison to the rest of the world’s population. Unless you make less than $34,000 per year, you are in the top five percent of the richest people in the world. If you make more than $50,000 per year, you are in the top 1% of the world’s wealthiest people. That means that 99% of the world’s population would look up to you. That’s 6.6 billion people by the way. Any way that you slice it, we are all rich. We all have incomes that vast majority of the earth’s population could only wish for.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 29, 2006
Busy Man Accomplishes Nothing
Rafael Antonio Lozano is a man with a mission, albeit a strange one. The 33-year-old computer programmer from Plano, Texas, is on a quest to visit every company-owned Starbucks on the planet.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
November 12, 2006
Foreign Hospitality
In college I went on a mission trip to Russia. There were so many new things that I saw that made an impression on me. There was the fear and mistrust the people felt after Communist rule. There were churches that were 1000 years old and still standing! There was both beautiful and depressing architecture. But more than anything else, the thing that left a lasting impression upon me was their hospitality. We were hosted in many people’s apartments and served meals. It didn’t matter how well-off the families were, the meals were always a banquet. And while it took me a while to figure it out, I learned a valuable lesson—when in Russia, do not clean your plate. I was doing it because I thought that it was polite. For them, it was the responsibility of the host to make sure that their guests always had food. So, I would clean my plate, they would pile more on. You can tell that it became this vicious circle as I was getting fuller and fuller. I must have gained 10 pounds that summer. They knew about hospitality.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
November 19, 2006
Better Late Than Never
I need to begin this morning with something of an apology. I am beginning this sermon series late. It is already the second week in November and so I am sure that many of you are asking, “Why hasn’t Monte begun his Christmas sermons series yet? Doesn’t he know that there are only 35 days until Christmas left?!” I am not sure why I am so late since the stores have set out their Christmas merchandise a month ago and the Food Lion near our house already has Christmas trees available. (Although I can’t help but wonder how in 35 days they can be anything short of a huge fire hazard.) Well, I am remedying the situation today. I am beginning the sermon series that will take us up through Christmas. It is better late than never I hope.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
November 26, 2006
From Bad to Worse
We are in the second week of our sermon series, where we are looking at the promises of God. As we said last week, throughout the history of God’s people, whenever they were stuck, in the dark, having really screwed up and being without hope, God would give them a promise. What I hope becomes clear to all of us as we continue week after week up until Christmas, is that making promises is central to who God is. He is a promise-making God. If we want to understand God, then we need to be familiar with his promises. He makes the promises and he always keeps them. We need to know God’s promises, first because it is the way that we know God better, and second, because God gives us his promises to lead us to him. This is what we are looking at today.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
December 3, 2006
A couple had two little boys, ages 8 and 10, who were mischievous. They were always getting into trouble, and their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons were probably involved.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
December 10, 2006
Forgetting the Birthday Boy
The party on June 3, 2006, was for Michael Emmanuel, Jr. It was his sixth birthday, and friends and family were celebrating at the local Chuck E. Cheese in Boca Raton, Florida.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
December 17, 2006
Pop singer Madonna has never shied away from controversy, and her 2006 Confessions world tour continued that trend. As part of the show, the 48-year-old entertainer staged a mock-crucifixion—singing "Live to Tell" while wearing a crown of thorns and strapped to a mirrored cross.
Sermon delivered at the Christmas Eve Service.
Clayton Presbyterian Church
January 7, 2007
Traveling in Style
It was estimated that 65 million people were going to travel over the holidays, with 53 of those doing so on the road. We joined those ranks when we decided to travel to Charlotte on Christmas day. We knew all the information we needed for the trip. According to Google maps it is 186 miles and should take about 3 hours. Aside from the added adventure with kids, it is such an easy trip. There are countless places to stop for gas and you could have your choice of whatever meal you would like. If we had hit a huge ice storm, we could have gotten a room in a hotel and waited for the DOT to clear the roads.
The State of the Union
I took the idea for the sermon today from a TV event this week. No, it is not the season premiere of “American Idol,” which I did watch. Instead, I was thinking of the State of the Union Address by the President, which will happen tomorrow. Each year the president addresses the country with an analysis of how the country is doing, what challenges it faces, and what needs to be done about it. I would like to do something similar this morning. As our church is both pretty new and constantly growing, we are changing a lot. Therefore, it would be a good idea to pause and get our bearings in this great sea of change.
A metaphor for life
The new season of American Idol has begun and I have to admit that I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. There are all of these reasons to knock it. Like all reality shows, it boasts that it is unscripted, which may be the case, but it is incredibly choreographed. Another thing that the show is rightly criticized for is that it does at time take advantage of people. There have showed a couple of people on there, trying to sing, who clearly had different disabilities, and the producers went for ratings at their expense. I am sure that there are other things that we could, and should, fault the show for. Yet, I keep watching.
My People
Not being a native Southerner there are a number of southern phrases that I have had to learn since living in the South. For instance, when we first moved down, Kari and I moved into a newly refurbished apartment. There was a sign over the thermostat which read, "Don't cut on the A/C." Having never done any kind of cutting with an air conditioner, we didn't know if that meant turning it on or off.
Words to Live By
I want to tell you a story this morning. You're not too old for a story, are you? It begins at the very beginning.
If I asked you to picture heaven, what would come to mind?
I was checking out at my local Foodlion and while I was waiting, I noticed that every magazine had pictures of beautiful women on them -- every one!
p>We talk a lot about freedom of speech these days. We all want to live in freedom and without constrait. We don't live rules and laws. But we know that we need them.
A General Michel Aoun has said, “Any existence deprived of freedom is a kind of death.” We have been talking about freedom as the theme of Paul's letter to the churches in the central region of
"For freedom Christ has set us free." This is how chapter 5 begins in Paul's letter to the Christians in Galatian.
We are beginning a new sermon series this morning and it is one of your choosing. I asked if you had topics that you wanted to hear sermons on, and you responded.
Are you saved or are you presbyterian?
We are in week two of our sermon series, where I am responding to sermons that you would like to hear. Today's sermon was easily the most requested.
This is week 3 of our series based on requests. And I have to say that you have requested some doosies. Last week we tackled the problem of pain in contrast to the goodness of God.
It finally came to end on Saturday, June 14, 2003, in Pikefield, Kentucky, when sixty descendants of the original clans gathered to sign a document declaring an official end to more than a century
Imagine if God appeared to you and said that he would give you anything you asked for. What would you say? A new house, a new job, perfect children, a bottomless bank account?
Last week, we met King Solomon. He was just a young man when he became king. As he ascended to the throne, God came to him in a dream and told him that he would give him anything that he wished.
How many people does it take to change a light bulb? Different religious groups have different needs.Charismatic: Only 1 Hands are already in the air.Roman Catholic: None Candles only.
When was the last time that you listened to music? A month ago? Six months ago?
What is your labor worth? If you have a job, how much do you get paid an hour? Is it enough? Is it too much? Are you getting paid how much you are worth?
Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a saint? I want to introduce you to a saint, whom you have undoubtedly heard of. Then, you can decide whether you have the makings of a saint.
"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."
"Call me Ishmael."
"Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked."
In his book Mayflower, historian Nathaniel Philbrick recounts the struggle of the Pilgrims during the shaping of early America.
Our Scripture this morning is perhaps one of the best known, most memorized passages in all of Scripture. It has probably be used in more funerals than any other text.
The Scripture text that we are looking at today comes from a chapter that we use alot.
Thousands of letters sent each year to God end up in a sorting office in Jerusalem.
Teenagers live more wired-lives than the rest of us.
John Rosemond, a funny nationally syndicated columnist—and also a family psychologist—likes to take unusual informal polls of parents.
America is swimming in a sea of Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil!
I was prepared to begin a new sermon series this morning that I am very excited about. It will be a study of the Book of Acts, which is the story of the early church.
I recently came across a story that was action-packed. It had conspiracy and intrigue and ambush.
Have you ever been given an assignment to do that was unachievable because you didn't have the resources?
I have bad news for you this morning: church is the problem. That's right. According to a new survey by LifeWay Research, that's what most non-church going folks think about church.
I am sure that most, if not all of you caught the Superbowl last Sunday. What an amazing game!
There is a West African proverb that goes, "The man who tries to walk two roads will split his pants." The sermon today is very much about a choice between two roads.
Forget what you know about the church. Make your mind blank. Imagine that you have never heard about Christians. I know that I am asking for the impossible. We have too much history.
This is intimidating. For me to stand before you is intimidating. If you think about it, this whole situation is a bit unusual. Think about it.
As we work our way through the Acts of the Apostles, this is the sermon on Acts 14.
How the church solved its problem and what we learn about mission