PastorBlastor

The greeting! - Galatians 1:1-5 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 29, 2016 Depending upon the reason for the message we may use the salutation of "Dear", "Sir or Madam", "To Whom It May Concern", "Folks", or the name of the person or persons we are addressing. Sadly, many greetings have gone out of vogue do to instant messaging or texting and email. And it is important to note that many young people do not understand the importance of a formal or business style of greeting when putting together correspondence for a job or college application. This is because our world has become way too lax in how it addresses others or the politeness, articulation, and education of what these kinds of greetings infer. Galatians, though one of Paul’s shorter letters is highly respected as one of his greatest and most influential. Since both Romans and Galatians teach the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide), it has been seen as a shorter version of Ro...

The judgment of God! - Joel 3:1-3, 6-8, 9-13, 14-17, 20-21 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 22, 2016 None of us likes to be judged by anyone, and especially by God. In fact there is a societal heresy that thinks that God should never judge anyone. I oversee a blog that I have edited for over a decade now. It deals with my own comments on society, politics, theology, and I upload my sermons to it as well. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had folks argue that I could not counter their arguments because as a believer I could not judge them lest I be judged! This is utter hogwash. Jesus' command to not judge others dealt with a hypocritical judgment without first taking care of one's own problem in the same sin arena. We can in fact "judge" others by their words, actions, and deeds. And certainly God will indeed judge all people everywhere when he returns. Joel had been up until now trying to get his people to repent and return to God. Now he focuses on all nat...

Return to the Lord! - Joel 2 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 15, 2016 Coming home is often never easy, especially after you have left and wanted to make it on your own and then you have to return and make amends. A good example of this is the story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus related to his followers as found in Luke's Gospel. Yet each of us could probably recount tales from our own lives at how we ran away when we were young or left home as young adults only to return and have to make some kind of amends or correction with those we returned to. The Prophet Joel related to the Israelites that they had to return to the Lord whom they had forsaken. Whenever the Israelite people faced trials or threats the priests were to call the people out in order to gather them for whatever purpose was needed. Sometimes it was for battle, sometimes for a public announcement, and sometimes it was for spiritual purposes. Here, I believe it was for the later. The Israelites needed to return to the L...

Weep over your sin! - Joel 1 By Pastor Lee Hemen May 8, 2016 My mother was a small bundle of fire that one did not cross. She is the one who made us march out into the yard and cut a switch off the lilac bush for our own whoopin'. If you do not know what a "whoopin'" is then you do not understand punishment. Her philosophy that is sadly lacking in our day and age was the punishment should fit the crime. We were never sent to our room, given a time out, or restricted from watching TV. Our punishments were dealt with immediately and a spanking consisted of only a couple of swats. In fact, we were expected to take our punishment and not "carry on" about it. Mom would remind us to stop our crying or she would "give us something to cry about". She knew we had to weep over the wrong we had committed or we would not quit doing it. Being remorseful was part of what was expected. One had to weep over their sin. We live in a day and age where far too m...