Rev. Brent L. White

I preached the following sermon one week after the tragic events in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed at least 58 people. How do we make sense of this kind of evil and suffering light of our Christian faith? Jesus shows us how.

This sermon is the second of two on Sola Scriptura, the classic Protestant (and ancient church) doctrine that the Bible is the ultimate authority guiding Christian faith and practice. I contrast this doctrine with ideas put forward by Adam Hamilton in his recent book Making Sense of the Bible. From my perspective, Hamilton is dangerously off-base.As with my previous sermon, I hope to inspire confidence that the Bible is, as Wesley said, "infallibly true"—every word of it—and that we can built our lives on it.

As we look forward to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation on October 31, this sermon is about the classic Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura, "scripture alone"—which means that the Bible is the ultimate authority guiding our Christian faith and practice. Of course, in our culture today, the Bible's authority is under constant attack. It's even under attack in the church, including the United Methodist Church!With that mind, I pray that these next two sermons on Sola Scriptura will give you confidence in God's Word. We can trust it! Every word of it! We can build our lives on it!

In today’s scripture, Jesus wants to feed approximately 15,000 people (5,000 men plus women and children). So he asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He’s asking him, John says, in order to “test him.” What was the test? To see whether his disciples believed that in Christ, they had enough. Do we present-day disciples believe that?I preached this sermon on the Sunday in which our church, Hampton United Methodist, packaged over 10,000 meals for hungry people around the world.

My previous sermon was about the classic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. But that sermon didn't mention the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: What about good works? Don't they play a necessary role? In fact, doesn't the apostle James warn that "a person is justified by works and not faith alone" (v. 24)? Is James contradicting Paul? This sermon answers these questions.

Five hundred years ago this October 31, Martin Luther inadvertently launched the Protestant Reformation when he nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg. One of his core convictions, derived from scripture, is that we are justified by faith alone. We Methodists share his conviction that we can do nothing to earn or merit God’s saving grace. It is only on the basis of what Christ has done through his life, death, and resurrection that we’re saved. Why does this doctrine remain relevant today? Why do we still need to hear this message? That’s what this sermon is about.

The following sermon is the last in my sermon series on 1 Peter. It’s mostly about our adversary, the devil, who, Peter tells us, “prowls around (J)like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” I begin my making the case for the reality of Satan and demons before talking about a couple of ways—through seemingly “small” sins (!) of pride and anxiety—that he gets a foothold in our lives.

This sermon is about Second Coming of Jesus Christ. I chose to preach this doctrine because of Peter's words in 1 Peter 4:7a: "The end of all things is at hand." Does this mean that Peter expected that the Second Coming would happen at any moment? Probably not. He knew, based on the teaching of Jesus, that there were signs in history that must occur before that happened. I explore these signs and talk about the most important thing we Christians should do while we wait.

This sermon is unusual for me because it’s about one verse, 1 Peter 4:6, which includes strange words about the gospel being “preached to those who are dead.” What does that mean? One thing it doesn’t mean, as I argue in this sermon, is that people get a second chance to hear and respond to the gospel even after they die. No, the time to receive God’s gift of salvation is now.

Today’s sermon deals mostly with what many scholars consider the most difficult verse in the New Testament, 1 Peter 3:19, which says that sometime after his death, Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” This verse has been used as a proof-text for a part of the Apostles’ Creed that we United Methodists no longer say: “[Christ] descended into hell.” But is that what it means? This sermon will help us figure it out.

The first question-and-answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that the chief end of man is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” The apostle Peter would surely agree. As he puts it in today’s scripture, we are to “live for the will of God.” Yet don’t we often push God to the periphery of our lives? I pray that this sermon inspires us to put God back at the center.

Like so much of 1 Peter, today's scripture is about unjust suffering. As I point out in this sermon, we American Christians likely won't face much suffering for our faith, yet our fear of suffering often prevents us from witnessing boldly to our faith. The difficult truth, as Peter makes clear, is that God sometimes wants us to suffer and to do so being "mindful of God." What does that mean and how can being "mindful of God" help us to suffer well? This sermon answers this question.

The Christians to whom the apostle Peter was writing were willing to risk everything for the sake of their faith in Christ. Why? Because they understood how high the stakes were: People they knew and loved were living and dying apart from a saving relationship with God through Christ. What about us? Do we live as if we understand those stakes?

Our scripture today, Luke 15:25-32, tells the story of the older son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As this sermon makes clear, we Christians—who are justified by faith alone through grace alone—can easily slip into the "religious" mindset all over again: we believe that we have to earn our place in God's family.

For Father's Day, I began a two-part series on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, otherwise known as the Parable of the Loving Father. This sermon focuses on the more popular part of the parable: the story of the younger son, from Luke 15:11-24. Even six or seven years ago, I thought the younger son's story was for new converts to the faith—that it didn't "apply" to those of us who have been Christians for a while. Of course, now I see how foolish that is. In this sermon, I challenge us to think about ways in which we're a lot like the younger son.

This sermon, preached on Pentecost Sunday, emphasizes the person and power of the Holy Spirit in the church. Peter tells us that we are a holy priesthood that offers "spiritual sacrifices." I explore the nature of these sacrifices, especially as they relate to witnessing—or as Peter puts it, "proclaiming the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

"Lifestyle evangelism" is often maligned among evangelical Christians, yet Peter makes clear that it is a powerful and necessary component for effective witnessing. How do we do it? Mostly by being in love with Jesus. Are we? Our scripture for this sermon is 1 Peter 2:11-17.

"Long for the pure spiritual milk," Peter writes—by which he means the "milk of the word," as the King James puts it. In other words, as God's children, we should long for the gospel, for God's Word, and for God's kingdom. As I discuss in this sermon, we can't fake "longing for" something. Either we do or we don't. And if we don't, then that's a symptom of a spiritual problem. See, when Peter tells us to "put away" these various sins in verse 1, my temptation is to preach a "try harder"-type sermon: "Try harder to be a better Christian. Work harder on the 'spiritual disciplines.' Pray more. Study the Bible more." But as I make clear in this sermon, our problem isn't that we're not trying hard enough; our problem is that we're not believing the gospel wholeheartedly enough. We need to learn to apply the gospel to the problems in our lives. This sermon talks about how to do that.

In today’s scripture, the apostle Peter quotes from Isaiah 40: “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass…” We Christians are often distracted by things in our lives that don’t last. Yet Peter is calling us to build our lives on a foundation that which lasts for eternity: the gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s Word. How do we do this? That’s what this sermon is about.

The following is mostly a sermon about one word, “Therefore.” It appears at the beginning of verse 13. It means that everything that Peter commands us to do—and there are four commands in this passage—is in response to what God has already done for us. I conclude by reflecting on Peter’s emphasis on the mind: living a Christian life must involve thinking rather than just feeling. The main way that we “prepare our minds for action” is by devoting ourselves to God’s Word, the Bible.