“We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents” 1 Corinthians 10:9
As long as these bad examples are just about the failure of a three thousand year old culture half a world away they don’t really impact us. Paul minces no words here. “We must not put Christ to the test.” This isn’t about them–it’s about us. It’s about what we do to Jesus when we refuse to look to him.
Have you ever had one of those Sundays where you couldn’t seem to catch a break? That was our Sunday!
It began with the weather. A big snowstorm was predicted and an hour before worship it was coming down pretty hard. Thankfully by the time worship started the snow had stopped, but it did keep several people away.
With the threat of bad weather, I had prepared a short devotional message on 1 Corinthians 10 “just in case.” However, enough people came that I didn’t feel it was necessary to substitute the message. Still, it was a little taxing to have two messages running around in my head.
Speaking of my head, I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before. That contributed to some personal difficulty that morning.
I do my best to make my messages visual experiences. I use Keynote with a lot of great pictures. I had some wonderful ones picked out for this sermon.
Unfortunately the internet went down right as I began, so the visual aids didn’t work. That caused some confusion between me and my video guy. I know in the long run missing a few slides doesn’t seem like much, but I put a lot of work into those slides. My men especially look forward to them.
There were also a few missed cues between the music team and the audio/visual guys. Again, no big deal, but all those little deals got the best of me.
The sermon went well, though. I had some good response. It’s been a while since I’ve really made an evangelistic plea in a message. While no one came forward, the message went out. They heard it.
I finished writing this sermon on Wednesday, which is a good day for me to wrap up the bulk of the sermon work. I remember when I hit that final “save” on the file. I was exhausted. This one took a lot out of me to write and preach. I really loved it, though. Even if it impacted no one else, it definitely impacted me!
