Before You Judge
Stories
Contents
"Before You Judge" by David O. Bales
"Christ, Paul, And The Law" by David O. Bales
Before You Judge
by David O. Bales
Matthew 18:15-20
The seven members of the presbytery’s judicial commission were ministers and elders, all over 50, chosen for their stability of life and faith and their ability to be fair. They were experienced enough not to be awed by anyone. However, when Daniel Newton stepped into the room too much space here
nd sprawled onto a chair before them, they were stunned. For two generations, Daniel Newton had been famous for his defense tactics in the courtroom. Rudy had heard that Newton was a Presbyterian, yet assumed he’d been dead for a decade.
With a gasp, the old man hoisted his frayed briefcase onto the table. Like a defense attorney impressing a jury, he gave a small cough before looking up at the presbytery members.
“I am Daniel Newton,” he said and asked the seven to introduce themselves and state whether they were pastors or elders. He said, “You have agreed to serve on this judicial commission. When you convene, you will be judge and jury of a colleague charged with a transgression. Rudy swiveled slightly in his chair. He knew that’s what he’d been chosen for, yet until this moment the process had been a distant idea. Now his stomach started to tighten.
“I was an attorney,” Daniel Newton said. “Spent my life in the courtroom, defying my mother who wished me to be a pastor.” He chuckled and shook his head, “And, I probably should have.” There followed a long silence as he stared at his lap. He looked up with a jerk as though remembering where he was and what he was there for.
“My task this morning is to make sure you understand the difference between a secular court of law and a church proceeding. Yes, you have to know The Rules of Discipline backwards and forwards. Don’t want any technical glitches. All because we treat everyone involved in a manner beyond what secular justice defines as fair. After the complaint was filed our presbytery has followed proper steps with the accused and the alleged victim. Not exactly the same as Jesus laid out in Matthew 18, but for these purposes, close enough. The rights of the accused have been protected. The victim has been counse led and guarded everyway you could imagine.
“None of this guarantees what the world calls justice or what we in the church hope for: reconciliation. Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world. What is most important for you to know is that your presbytery does not deal lightly with such a process. You probably did not even know that. These things do not come up often and, when they do, all transpires in secrecy.”
He lowered his tone, “lo ages and ages ago when I was a lad, one seldom heard of a trial in the Presbyterian church because presbyteries whisked off an offending pastor to another state with a good reference.” He slapped the table hard, “May God forgive all those involved.”
With the slap vibrating the table Rudy’s stomach struck with obvious discomfort.
“I am here today to train you. Ha,” he said and started to cough. “As I see it, I am here to warn you”—he took a few seconds to stifle more coughing—“to make you think about how you declare someone guilty or not guilty. Preparing to enter this process is comparable to training to climb Everest. You are not allowed the privilege of simply snapping off decisions—right or wrong, guilty or not guilty. You are held to the standard Christ taught also in Matthew’s Gospel: ‘first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.’ Any discussion about what that means?” No one spoke. He said, “Good. I hoped not. In your personal preparation for this commission, I want you to rattle through your life’s memories and gather up the ways and the whys you decide a person’s behavior is right or wrong.”
Everyone’s expression was serious. No one had known what to expect. Rudy realized that his gulp was audible to others. “Okay, then,” Daniel Newton said. “You do not speak to anyone about this process, and after you come in with a decision, the decision alone is public. Your deliberations are not. To the best of your ability your aim, your challenge, your calling is to bring reconciliation and health within the body of Christ.
“Your studying the The Rules of Discipline is the insignificant labor of your preparation. Next Saturday—a week before the actual trial—you will meet to elect a moderator and a clerk and discuss procedures. But your major assignment between now and the trial is to look into yourself, examine that log in your eye. Apply sanctified introspection—as we all must do.” He looked to the ceiling and held his stare for longer than was comfortable to Rudy.
He spoke looking above everyone, “You will be God’s instrument in deciding the fate of another in Christ’s body.” He lowered his gaze to their eyes, “So, exercise well that sliver of the human spirit that makes decisions. How did you learn about responsibility, wrong-doing, guilt? Do your internal work about how you evaluate behavior and morality and how you judge others. Toil with your soul, and ….”—reaching into his brief case, he pulled out seven blue spiral-bound notebooks; leaning forward he dealt them like cards across the table, speaking with an authority that meant they didn’t have a choice—“write about yourself and to yourself. Clarify your thinking by writing. Get your head and your heart together before God on paper. Because what your commission decides and how you decide it can mean a person’s last chance on this earth to be redeemed by our Lord.”
His words hung in the room like the summary to a jury. After three procedural questions, Daniel Newton rose with a groan and departed without saying “goodbye.” Once he’d closed the door behind him the seven looked to one another in shock. One said, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Another said, “What has the presbytery gotten us into?”
Rudy drove home with Daniel Newton’s words echoing in his mind and his stomach longing for an antacid pill. At the first stop sign he reached his hand and placed it on the spiral notebook resting on the passenger’s seat.
Every day for two weeks he studied The Rules of Discipline. He didn’t, however, start to write in his notebook until the Friday evening before the ecclesiastical court was to convene. That night he told his wife, “You go ahead to bed. I’ll wait up for Allison to get home from the party.” She came in at twelve fifteen and gave him a hug. He sat silently for another 45 minutes with his pen held above an intimidatingly blank white page. Finally he wrote:
“I have waited; but, the right geysers of memories have not bubbled up. The wrong meteorites of memories have flashed by. It feels that memories are crouching in the bushes beside the trail ready to ambush me.
“I am woefully out of practice thinking carefully about myself. In worship, we chant our general confession. But, as I try to swim upstream to find the source of my ideas of right and wrong, unfortunately it starts with Dad. I remember him yelling, ‘Go out and rip a switch from the quince bush.’ If I didn’t get one stiff enough, he’d send me back for a thicker one. But he was no different before or after he switched me. He was born angry. A man of many hates. The closest to happy I ever saw him is when he had a legitimate grievance, a cause he could tuck his rage under and push. He yelled at the TV news. In parking lots he screamed at people who drove against the arrows. As a child my idea of wrong was, therefore, what he didn’t like. In a motel room he pointed out the gaps in the wallpaper, the sloppy painting, the poor trim joints. Took me a long time to realize that my own fretfulness at my kids’ spilling their milk is because his anger exploded whenever one of us kids spilled our milk.
“I gave my heart to Jesus at 15, but I took too much of Dad’s approach to right and wrong into the faith with me. As I started my new Christian life, I thought automatically in black and white terms. Even if I didn’t say it out loud, I judged people harshly. I never doubted that I knew the difference between what was right and wrong in whatever circumstance. I lost friends because of it. My best buddy accused me of having a stainless-steel morality. What is saddest is that I realize I’m not totally out of that mode. Still do it. Less, but I still do it. I have only occasionally faced this in the last half of my life, but right now it feels like a moral disability crippling me.
“Lord Jesus, I am not able to perform this job on the commission. When I look at myself, I see hypocrisy and twisted values, so far from your kind of life, so short of a witness for you, so unable to judge others mercifully. I beg you ….”
He woke with his head on the notebook, a spot of saliva pooled on the page smearing the ink. He rushed to shower, shave and race to the presbytery office for the trial. He was seventh to arrive and surprised at the smiles on everyone’s face. “We’ve been waiting for you,” the moderator said. “The accused has renounced the jurisdiction. He’s left the denomination. That ends our proceedings.”
With a quick motion they voted to adjourn, with the recommendation that the presbytery dissolve the commission. Rudy walked away still tired from little sleep. In the parking lot he grabbed his pickup’s door handle and closed his eyes. First, he prayed for Jesus to help him be more aware of how he judged others. Second, he prayed for mercy. He painfully realized again how much that he needed both.
Preaching point: The extreme seriousness of judging others.
* * *
Christ, Paul, And The Law
by David O. Bales
Romans 13:8-14
Buck Simms, known in the congregation for “jumping on a fresh cause and riding it to death,” entered Pastor Megan’s office. He appeared more serious than usual: he brought Ernest and Fran Johansen behind him, although they didn’t appear as eager to face Pastor Megan as did Buck. As Megan watched Buck step through the door, she was tempted to say, “What’s it this time?” But she held her peace.
Without a greeting, Buck said, “I know, we know,” nodding to his two collaborators, “that you don’t go to the conservative pastors’ association,” signaling that he’d arrived on his next campaign against what he called “the liberal church.” Maybe he knew and maybe he didn’t know: In their town the conservative pastors’ association didn’t acknowledge women as pastors.
Megan’s husband agreed that Buck was born deficient of tact. He said, “I think his problem isn’t so much social as genetic.” That didn’t explain everything, but Megan was pleased that someone agreed that Buck wasn’t socially normal. With her husband’s help and prayer, she’d devised a method for Buck’s surprise, head-on confrontations. She said, “Mmm.”
“So,” Buck said, “I’ll tell you the association’s new effort in ministry and our congregation can jump right on it too.” He didn’t mention how he came by this information. He held out a sheet of paper and rattled it as though it explained everything. Megan didn’t take it. She recalled how he’d tried to rally church members against her suggestions for ministry. She said only, “Mmm,” nodding toward him while she silently prayed for God to keep her open to Buck and his idea.
Buck said, “They’re having all the congregations in town post a large plaque of the Ten Commandments on their church.”
“Well,” Megan said, drawing out the word and trying to gain time to gather her thoughts. She said, “that would be for the council to decide.”
“We know,” Buck said, speaking as though this were the most urgent ministry in town. “But if you’re for it, council’s pretty sure to go along.”
Megan wasn’t positive about the idea; yet, face to face with Buck who’d bothered her so much before, it was hard to separate her past anger, and even fear, of Buck and to think just about the proposition of tacking the Ten Commandments on their building. She’d seen other communities where a group of churches slung banners across their buildings with the large words “JESUS.” She was perturbed by such, just as by the signs that a congregation was a “BIBLE CHURCH,” as though congregations who didn’t follow their theories of biblical inspiration or their traditions (theories and traditions she was fairly sure they weren’t conscious of) weren’t centered on Jesus or the biblical message. She quashed those thoughts; but she didn’t answer the question that was obviously behind Buck’s statement: was she for the idea or not?
Buck went on, “My brother-in-law in Georgia said some churches in his town did it.”
Fran stepped from behind Buck with a smile and said, “And I’ve seen it on a synagogue.”
Ernest said, “We’re in a lost and lawless time. Seems this kind of statement from the Bible is what people need to see. They know churches disagree, that’s why the saying goes around about God looking down from heaven and saying, ‘How about you folk stop arguing over doctrine and get around to obeying my commandments?’”
Even though she expected that this would be a subject much discussed in the future, she needed to say something about it now. “Our modern times certainly need a renewed sense of right and wrong; and people need statements like the commandments, ‘Do this. Don’t do that.’ Yet I think emphasis on the commandments is going back to the bottom and working up. That’s okay in some of what the Bible teaches, but when it comes to the commandments, Christ holds us to a top down view.”
Buck gave his piece of paper a flutter and held toward her. Megan could tell he hadn’t listened or cared about her statement. She said, “A lot of non-religious people won’t even know the Ten Commandments come from the Bible, but we have to ask: Does the New Testament pound on the Ten Commandments? We need to listen to Christ and also to Paul. In the New Testament, Paul’s the one who wrote most systematically about the law. Did he scribble the Ten Commandments on a flag and wave it around? He summed up the commandments: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’”
“But people need to know the law if they’re going to fulfill it,” Ernest said.
Megan nodded thoughtfully and after a moment said, “Both Christ and Paul agree that the law is God’s gift, but also, that it’s not the most important. I’ll have to think about this, but if we’re following Christ, why don’t we put his words on our church: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ After all, are we going to advertise Christ or Moses?”
Buck gazed at her with an exasperated expression.
“All considered,” Megan said as she stared back at Buck, “and you can think about this, I find loving my neighbor much harder than obeying the Ten Commandments. How about you?”
Preaching point: The place of the Ten Commandments in the Christian faith.
*****************************************
StoryShare, September 6, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Before You Judge" by David O. Bales
"Christ, Paul, And The Law" by David O. Bales
Before You Judge
by David O. Bales
Matthew 18:15-20
The seven members of the presbytery’s judicial commission were ministers and elders, all over 50, chosen for their stability of life and faith and their ability to be fair. They were experienced enough not to be awed by anyone. However, when Daniel Newton stepped into the room too much space here
nd sprawled onto a chair before them, they were stunned. For two generations, Daniel Newton had been famous for his defense tactics in the courtroom. Rudy had heard that Newton was a Presbyterian, yet assumed he’d been dead for a decade.
With a gasp, the old man hoisted his frayed briefcase onto the table. Like a defense attorney impressing a jury, he gave a small cough before looking up at the presbytery members.
“I am Daniel Newton,” he said and asked the seven to introduce themselves and state whether they were pastors or elders. He said, “You have agreed to serve on this judicial commission. When you convene, you will be judge and jury of a colleague charged with a transgression. Rudy swiveled slightly in his chair. He knew that’s what he’d been chosen for, yet until this moment the process had been a distant idea. Now his stomach started to tighten.
“I was an attorney,” Daniel Newton said. “Spent my life in the courtroom, defying my mother who wished me to be a pastor.” He chuckled and shook his head, “And, I probably should have.” There followed a long silence as he stared at his lap. He looked up with a jerk as though remembering where he was and what he was there for.
“My task this morning is to make sure you understand the difference between a secular court of law and a church proceeding. Yes, you have to know The Rules of Discipline backwards and forwards. Don’t want any technical glitches. All because we treat everyone involved in a manner beyond what secular justice defines as fair. After the complaint was filed our presbytery has followed proper steps with the accused and the alleged victim. Not exactly the same as Jesus laid out in Matthew 18, but for these purposes, close enough. The rights of the accused have been protected. The victim has been counse led and guarded everyway you could imagine.
“None of this guarantees what the world calls justice or what we in the church hope for: reconciliation. Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world. What is most important for you to know is that your presbytery does not deal lightly with such a process. You probably did not even know that. These things do not come up often and, when they do, all transpires in secrecy.”
He lowered his tone, “lo ages and ages ago when I was a lad, one seldom heard of a trial in the Presbyterian church because presbyteries whisked off an offending pastor to another state with a good reference.” He slapped the table hard, “May God forgive all those involved.”
With the slap vibrating the table Rudy’s stomach struck with obvious discomfort.
“I am here today to train you. Ha,” he said and started to cough. “As I see it, I am here to warn you”—he took a few seconds to stifle more coughing—“to make you think about how you declare someone guilty or not guilty. Preparing to enter this process is comparable to training to climb Everest. You are not allowed the privilege of simply snapping off decisions—right or wrong, guilty or not guilty. You are held to the standard Christ taught also in Matthew’s Gospel: ‘first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.’ Any discussion about what that means?” No one spoke. He said, “Good. I hoped not. In your personal preparation for this commission, I want you to rattle through your life’s memories and gather up the ways and the whys you decide a person’s behavior is right or wrong.”
Everyone’s expression was serious. No one had known what to expect. Rudy realized that his gulp was audible to others. “Okay, then,” Daniel Newton said. “You do not speak to anyone about this process, and after you come in with a decision, the decision alone is public. Your deliberations are not. To the best of your ability your aim, your challenge, your calling is to bring reconciliation and health within the body of Christ.
“Your studying the The Rules of Discipline is the insignificant labor of your preparation. Next Saturday—a week before the actual trial—you will meet to elect a moderator and a clerk and discuss procedures. But your major assignment between now and the trial is to look into yourself, examine that log in your eye. Apply sanctified introspection—as we all must do.” He looked to the ceiling and held his stare for longer than was comfortable to Rudy.
He spoke looking above everyone, “You will be God’s instrument in deciding the fate of another in Christ’s body.” He lowered his gaze to their eyes, “So, exercise well that sliver of the human spirit that makes decisions. How did you learn about responsibility, wrong-doing, guilt? Do your internal work about how you evaluate behavior and morality and how you judge others. Toil with your soul, and ….”—reaching into his brief case, he pulled out seven blue spiral-bound notebooks; leaning forward he dealt them like cards across the table, speaking with an authority that meant they didn’t have a choice—“write about yourself and to yourself. Clarify your thinking by writing. Get your head and your heart together before God on paper. Because what your commission decides and how you decide it can mean a person’s last chance on this earth to be redeemed by our Lord.”
His words hung in the room like the summary to a jury. After three procedural questions, Daniel Newton rose with a groan and departed without saying “goodbye.” Once he’d closed the door behind him the seven looked to one another in shock. One said, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” Another said, “What has the presbytery gotten us into?”
Rudy drove home with Daniel Newton’s words echoing in his mind and his stomach longing for an antacid pill. At the first stop sign he reached his hand and placed it on the spiral notebook resting on the passenger’s seat.
Every day for two weeks he studied The Rules of Discipline. He didn’t, however, start to write in his notebook until the Friday evening before the ecclesiastical court was to convene. That night he told his wife, “You go ahead to bed. I’ll wait up for Allison to get home from the party.” She came in at twelve fifteen and gave him a hug. He sat silently for another 45 minutes with his pen held above an intimidatingly blank white page. Finally he wrote:
“I have waited; but, the right geysers of memories have not bubbled up. The wrong meteorites of memories have flashed by. It feels that memories are crouching in the bushes beside the trail ready to ambush me.
“I am woefully out of practice thinking carefully about myself. In worship, we chant our general confession. But, as I try to swim upstream to find the source of my ideas of right and wrong, unfortunately it starts with Dad. I remember him yelling, ‘Go out and rip a switch from the quince bush.’ If I didn’t get one stiff enough, he’d send me back for a thicker one. But he was no different before or after he switched me. He was born angry. A man of many hates. The closest to happy I ever saw him is when he had a legitimate grievance, a cause he could tuck his rage under and push. He yelled at the TV news. In parking lots he screamed at people who drove against the arrows. As a child my idea of wrong was, therefore, what he didn’t like. In a motel room he pointed out the gaps in the wallpaper, the sloppy painting, the poor trim joints. Took me a long time to realize that my own fretfulness at my kids’ spilling their milk is because his anger exploded whenever one of us kids spilled our milk.
“I gave my heart to Jesus at 15, but I took too much of Dad’s approach to right and wrong into the faith with me. As I started my new Christian life, I thought automatically in black and white terms. Even if I didn’t say it out loud, I judged people harshly. I never doubted that I knew the difference between what was right and wrong in whatever circumstance. I lost friends because of it. My best buddy accused me of having a stainless-steel morality. What is saddest is that I realize I’m not totally out of that mode. Still do it. Less, but I still do it. I have only occasionally faced this in the last half of my life, but right now it feels like a moral disability crippling me.
“Lord Jesus, I am not able to perform this job on the commission. When I look at myself, I see hypocrisy and twisted values, so far from your kind of life, so short of a witness for you, so unable to judge others mercifully. I beg you ….”
He woke with his head on the notebook, a spot of saliva pooled on the page smearing the ink. He rushed to shower, shave and race to the presbytery office for the trial. He was seventh to arrive and surprised at the smiles on everyone’s face. “We’ve been waiting for you,” the moderator said. “The accused has renounced the jurisdiction. He’s left the denomination. That ends our proceedings.”
With a quick motion they voted to adjourn, with the recommendation that the presbytery dissolve the commission. Rudy walked away still tired from little sleep. In the parking lot he grabbed his pickup’s door handle and closed his eyes. First, he prayed for Jesus to help him be more aware of how he judged others. Second, he prayed for mercy. He painfully realized again how much that he needed both.
Preaching point: The extreme seriousness of judging others.
* * *
Christ, Paul, And The Law
by David O. Bales
Romans 13:8-14
Buck Simms, known in the congregation for “jumping on a fresh cause and riding it to death,” entered Pastor Megan’s office. He appeared more serious than usual: he brought Ernest and Fran Johansen behind him, although they didn’t appear as eager to face Pastor Megan as did Buck. As Megan watched Buck step through the door, she was tempted to say, “What’s it this time?” But she held her peace.
Without a greeting, Buck said, “I know, we know,” nodding to his two collaborators, “that you don’t go to the conservative pastors’ association,” signaling that he’d arrived on his next campaign against what he called “the liberal church.” Maybe he knew and maybe he didn’t know: In their town the conservative pastors’ association didn’t acknowledge women as pastors.
Megan’s husband agreed that Buck was born deficient of tact. He said, “I think his problem isn’t so much social as genetic.” That didn’t explain everything, but Megan was pleased that someone agreed that Buck wasn’t socially normal. With her husband’s help and prayer, she’d devised a method for Buck’s surprise, head-on confrontations. She said, “Mmm.”
“So,” Buck said, “I’ll tell you the association’s new effort in ministry and our congregation can jump right on it too.” He didn’t mention how he came by this information. He held out a sheet of paper and rattled it as though it explained everything. Megan didn’t take it. She recalled how he’d tried to rally church members against her suggestions for ministry. She said only, “Mmm,” nodding toward him while she silently prayed for God to keep her open to Buck and his idea.
Buck said, “They’re having all the congregations in town post a large plaque of the Ten Commandments on their church.”
“Well,” Megan said, drawing out the word and trying to gain time to gather her thoughts. She said, “that would be for the council to decide.”
“We know,” Buck said, speaking as though this were the most urgent ministry in town. “But if you’re for it, council’s pretty sure to go along.”
Megan wasn’t positive about the idea; yet, face to face with Buck who’d bothered her so much before, it was hard to separate her past anger, and even fear, of Buck and to think just about the proposition of tacking the Ten Commandments on their building. She’d seen other communities where a group of churches slung banners across their buildings with the large words “JESUS.” She was perturbed by such, just as by the signs that a congregation was a “BIBLE CHURCH,” as though congregations who didn’t follow their theories of biblical inspiration or their traditions (theories and traditions she was fairly sure they weren’t conscious of) weren’t centered on Jesus or the biblical message. She quashed those thoughts; but she didn’t answer the question that was obviously behind Buck’s statement: was she for the idea or not?
Buck went on, “My brother-in-law in Georgia said some churches in his town did it.”
Fran stepped from behind Buck with a smile and said, “And I’ve seen it on a synagogue.”
Ernest said, “We’re in a lost and lawless time. Seems this kind of statement from the Bible is what people need to see. They know churches disagree, that’s why the saying goes around about God looking down from heaven and saying, ‘How about you folk stop arguing over doctrine and get around to obeying my commandments?’”
Even though she expected that this would be a subject much discussed in the future, she needed to say something about it now. “Our modern times certainly need a renewed sense of right and wrong; and people need statements like the commandments, ‘Do this. Don’t do that.’ Yet I think emphasis on the commandments is going back to the bottom and working up. That’s okay in some of what the Bible teaches, but when it comes to the commandments, Christ holds us to a top down view.”
Buck gave his piece of paper a flutter and held toward her. Megan could tell he hadn’t listened or cared about her statement. She said, “A lot of non-religious people won’t even know the Ten Commandments come from the Bible, but we have to ask: Does the New Testament pound on the Ten Commandments? We need to listen to Christ and also to Paul. In the New Testament, Paul’s the one who wrote most systematically about the law. Did he scribble the Ten Commandments on a flag and wave it around? He summed up the commandments: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’”
“But people need to know the law if they’re going to fulfill it,” Ernest said.
Megan nodded thoughtfully and after a moment said, “Both Christ and Paul agree that the law is God’s gift, but also, that it’s not the most important. I’ll have to think about this, but if we’re following Christ, why don’t we put his words on our church: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ After all, are we going to advertise Christ or Moses?”
Buck gazed at her with an exasperated expression.
“All considered,” Megan said as she stared back at Buck, “and you can think about this, I find loving my neighbor much harder than obeying the Ten Commandments. How about you?”
Preaching point: The place of the Ten Commandments in the Christian faith.
*****************************************
StoryShare, September 6, 2020 issue.
Copyright 2020 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
