Milford Presbyterian Church Sermons

Sermon from Sunday, September 20, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 2). Isaiah 55:6-13 & Colossians 3:1-11. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God is mysterious and God’s ways in the world are often inscrutable. But this does not mean that Christians forsake the pursuit of understanding God. On the contrary, it means that seeking a clearer understanding of our faith is a lifelong pursuit which does not yield easy or complete answers, but which is profoundly fulfilling nonetheless.

Sermon from Sunday, September 13, 2020. Holy Habits (Part 1). Deuteronomy 6:1-9 & Romans 8:22-27. Prayer is one of the most essential spiritual disciplines and one of the most widely practiced, but that doesn’t make it simple or straightforward. In fact, some of the thorniest questions of Christian life and theology are related to the act and function of prayer. Prayer means different things to different people, and that is the way God intends it to be.

Sermon from Sunday, September 6, 2020. Upside Down (Part 6). Isaiah 11:1-9 & Revelation 21:1-5a. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God's plan for creation from the very beginning is not the evacuation of the faithful from a world destined to decay. God's plan is a new heaven and a new earth: all things remade and renewed - the world itself turned upside-down.

Sermon from Sunday, August 30, 2020. Upside Down (Part 5). Amos 5:18-24 & Matthew 20:1-16. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The word "justice" echoes around our nation today on the lips of protestors and police officers, activists and agitators, preachers and politicians. But there is precious little agreement on what this loaded word actually means. Meanwhile, the Bible has its own take on justice: a notion of justice which both resembles and radically upends contemporary American understandings of the word.

Sermon from Sunday, August 23, 2020. Upside Down (Part 4). 1 Corinthians 1:17-25. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The cross makes no sense - it is almost that simple. It’s a source of scandal to good religious folks and utter nonsense to the outside world. But it is the decisive location and the central symbol of God’s action in human history, and it looks for all the world like foolishness.

Sermon from Sunday, August 16, 2020. Upside Down (Part 3). Matthew 5:13-16 & Galatians 3:23-28. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus upends the ways we relate to one another in radical and disconcerting ways. We understand ourselves and others by drawing boundaries - boundaries that we use to define ourselves just as much as we use them to define others. Jesus eliminates the boundaries and instead proposes a boundary-less community that is united by a common purpose: to be salt and light.

Sermon from Sunday, August 9, 2020. Upside Down (Part 2). 2 Corinthians 12:6-10 & Matthew 5:38-42. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. Jesus was not just contesting the political powers of his day, he was contesting our very notions of power itself. In his teaching and in his life, he reveals the ways that God has set about unmasking our misguided notions of what is strength and what is weakness.

Sermon from Sunday, August 2, 2020. Upside Down (Part 1). Mark 10:35-45. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. James and John approach Jesus with an audacious request: to be given a special status when Jesus is glorified. But since they misunderstand the nature of Jesus' glorification, they are sadly mistaken about what sort of status he is able to offer them. Jesus reorients our hopes and ambitions around a completely different idea of glory.

Sermon from Sunday, July 26, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 6). Numbers 9:1-14. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God instructs Israel to keep the Passover while they are journeying through the wilderness, and this may just be the most important action that God's people perform during their season of wandering. When we find ourselves disoriented or in the midst of hardship, we - like the Israelites - are anchored by our memory of God's great deeds and our hope of what God will yet do.

Sermon from Sunday, July 19, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 5). Exodus 17:1-7. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The people of God grow thirsty in the wilderness, causing them to wonder if God is even with them at all there in that barren place. God hears their grumbling and their cries for help, and God provides. From the most lifeless object - a rock - the life-giving force of God flows forth and sustains God's people in their time of need.

Sermon from Sunday, July 12, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 4). Numbers 14:1-10, 19-23. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God delivered Israel from captivity. God provided them with food and water in the wilderness. God covenanted to be faithful to them. Yet when the people of God reach the borders of Canaan - the land of God's promise - they balk. They struggle to trust that the God who has brought them this far can carry them any further. The wilderness can be an obstacle to faith or it can be the crucible in which deep, lasting faith takes shape.

Sermon from Sunday, July 5, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 3). Exodus 16:2-21. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The Israelites become anxious that there will not be enough to eat, not believing God capable of providing for them in the wilderness. As it turns out, receiving from God is about more than opening up our hands to the abundant gifts of God; it is also about letting go of our worry and trusting that what God provides for today is enough for today.

Sermon from Sunday, June 28, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 2). Exodus 17:8-13. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. The Israelites do battle in the wilderness against the Amalekites, and their fortunes rise or fall with the arms of Moses, which hold the staff of God aloft. It is ultimately by God's own power that Israel prevails, but their victory would be impossible without the help and support that Moses receives from his fellow Israelites.

Sermon from Sunday, June 21, 2020. Grace in the Wilderness (Part 1). Exodus 19:1-14. Pastor Bryant Anderson preaching. God did amazing things for Israel in Egypt, but it was not until they were in the wilderness that they were granted a direct encounter with the living God. In the midst of the uncertainty and fear of our own wilderness experience, we prepare ourselves to encounter God.