Does Your Brain Go To Sleep During the Sermon?

If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes our attention wains during the sermon on Sunday mornings, but we must guard against this.  Why?  Whether we realize it or not, the pastor is trying to help us “connect the dots.”  It is important for us to develop a deeper sense of the connection of the story of salvation from Genesis to Revelation.  So, I want to give a shout out to Fr. Jonathan Smith at Redeemer Anglican in Winter Park because he helped me “connect the dots” a couple of weeks ago.  Fr. Jonathan was preaching from Mark 3 where Jesus encounters the hardness of the Pharisees’ hearts.  The context was a legal one:  is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? i.e., was it lawful for Jesus to heal on the Sabbath?  You know the story, so I won’t spoil it for you when I say that the Pharisees opposed the healing on the Sabbath.  Fr. Jonathan brought up the Exodus story and Pharaoh’s hardness of heart.  The scenarios parallel one another for both Pharaoh and the Pharisees begin with the letter “P”, LOL.  No, they both experienced the miraculous hand of God and they both rejected it.  The dots get connected when one realizes that while Pharaoh was enslaving the bodies of the Israelites, the Pharisees were enslaving the Israelites spiritually.  Jesus came to set all the prisoners free…just sayin’