Ken Pierpont's Blog, page 166

Hell's Welcome Wagon

Message: Hell's Welcome Wagon

Series: Matthew's Gospel

Text: Matthew 7:15-20

Date: June 5, 2011 AM

Place: Evangel Baptist Church–Taylor, Michigan

Speaker: Pastor Ken Pierpont

A Flyover of the Psalms

Title: A Flyover of the Psalms

Series: A Flyover of the Bible

Text: The Psalms

Date: May 29, 2011 6:00 PM

Place: Evangel Baptist Church–Taylor, Michigan

Speaker: Pastor Ken Pierpont

Cha-Ching

Sermon: Cha-Ching

Series: The Gospel of Matthew

Text: Matthew 7:13-14

Date: May 29, 2011

Place: Evangel Baptist Church–Taylor, Michigan

Speaker: Ken Pierpont

Salvation is more than hitting the celestial jack-pot.

Christopher Yen's Story

Here is a link to Christopher's site. Check out his videos. His story give hope for homosexuals.

Here is a news release from Moody Bible Institute.

You Will Never Find the Bottom

Jess was born in a little house back in a remote "holler" in Kentucky. The nearest town was the county seat of Wolfe County–the little mountain town in Eastern Kentucky where my wife Lois was born. Jess married Lois' grandmother. They met at the Senior Citizens Center there in Campton. It's a small town with it's own humble charm where there are no strangers.

One summer afternoon Lois and I drove out to visit the old newly-weds. Lois cherished her grandmother, Carlie. They puttered around the kitchen talking and laughing.

Like all self-respecting Kentucky homes, their place had a porch that stretched across the front of the house. Jess and I went out and set down in rockers as evening came on and talked.

I've been taught to ask questions and listen when I'm with older people. When you do that older people usually start bringing treasures out of their memory and sharing them with you.

I little at a time he began to tell his stories. I asked him about his place. He was proud of it.

"I was born in this house and I'm going to die here," he said. "Would you like me to show you around?"

"I'd love that."

We walked. He showed me his smokehouse and his barns. He showed me his garden. Then he said; "Let me show you something else."

I followed Jess as he led me along the edge of the woods south of his house. About a hundred yards from the house he stepped into the cool woods onto a narrow path nearly hidden from sight. He led the way for a while then stepped aside and said, "Keep going. Let me follow."

The footpath took a turn and ended on a slab of gray rock. A steady stream of water ran over the rock and fell into an emrald-green pool about ten or twelve feet below.

I stood for a moment quiet with surprise. I listened to the music of falling water. "How deep is that pool?" I asked?

"That's what everyone askes," He said with a smile in his voice. "My brother and I were strong swimmers when we were young. On a hot summer day we would make hay, then we would come here and dive into this pool to cool off. We never found the bottom of that pool."

I spend my life struggling for language and pictures, for poetic cadences and metaphors to describe the scope and the size and the significance of the love of God revealed in the Bible.

In the book of Romans, Paul's prose soars when he begins to describe the size and scope of the love of God displayed in the death of His Son Jesus Christ.

Here is how Paul put it:

"If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? …For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

You just get the impression Paul is trying to say, "In all my life I've never found the bottom of the pool of the love of Christ."

If I could do it, I would take you to a place where you could stand on a slab of rock and listen the music of the water and stare long into the deep pool of God's love until your sin and guilt and shame are gone and you are changed you forever. Have you ever done that?

After just a few years together Jess died the place belonged to Carlie. She didn't want to live out there alone. She moved back to her humble little trailer-home up on the hill that overlooks Campton. She was very, very careful with her money and she could have sold the place. It would have made her more comfortable and secure in her old age, but she didn't want to take the place from Jess's family so she just signed it over to his children and moved back to town.

But we still have the story and I have told it many times. Every time I tell it I'm back on that slab of gray rock listening to the music of falling water and drinking in the beauty of God's bottomless love through Christ Our Lord.

Ken Pierpont

Granville Cottage

Riverview, Michigan

May 25, 2011

Our Home

Photo by "Weeza" (Wesley Josiah Pierpont)

Are You Like Him?

Text: Matthew 7:7-12

Series: Matthew's Gospel

Place: Evangel Baptist Church-Taylor, Michigan

Date: Sunday May 22, 2011 AM

Speaker: Pastor Ken Pierpont

I begin this message with a series of comments about the Second-Coming of Christ, because of all the talk about the failed prediction of Harold Camping that the Rapture was going to happen yesterday.

"My" Dogwood

It's cool and rainy this evening as I write. The kids started a fire to take the chill off the house. Out toward the Lower Huron River this evening, after church, I noticed that the Redbuds and the Dogwoods are in flower. Even though it is cool tonight, it is fully spring. My study at the church has a beautiful arched window. Just outside the window the men planted a Dogwood tree last summer. (Thank you Craig, Rick, Matt). This is the first May it is in flower. This week it should open up in large, white blossoms. It reminds me of the hills in central Ohio around my grandfather's farm.

Last night as I left the study I noticed something that I have never heard before–it was the song of the Wood Thrush in the woods across Blakely "Creek." If you don't recognize the song of the wood thrush you can listen to it here:

Something I Learned in College

The most important lessons you learn will be outside the formal leaning structure. My second fall in college I toured the west with a singing group. Our classroom for three months and hundreds of miles was a bus. We had no privacy. We had to be with the same people for hours at a time. In a setting like that irritations inevitably surface.

One young man in the group rubbed me the wrong way right from the beginning. His name was Jerry. Usually I find it easy to like people but Jerry and I clashed. I know he wasn't intentionally irritating but when I could I avoided him. When I couldn't avoid him there would be friction.

A few weeks into our tour we were scheduled to sing in Jerry's home church. When we arrived in the little town in Kansas where Jerry grew up, we received our housing assignments for the week. I was disappointed to discover that I would have to spend the weekend at Jerry's house.. His home was clean but modest. His parents were simple, kind people. His family was happy to have him home for a while

They were kind to me. After dinner we all sang around the piano and then before bed we enjoyed homemade ice cream and strawberry shortcake. Jerry had a bedroom in the upstairs. We stayed there. There were two single beds there. As we lay in our beds before we went to sleep that night I asked Jerry, "whose bed is this?" He said; "It belongs to my little brother." II didn't remember meeting his brother and asked; "Where is he tonight? Jerry said quietly, "My brother died a few years ago." Recovering from the shock of that revelation and the shame of not knowing more about Jerry, I asked; "How did he die?" Jerry said; "He drowned when he was ten."

I expressed my sympathy to him and then we fell silent. I looked around the room with new interest. On the wall on my side of the room hung a baseball pennant and other things a ten-year-old would use to decorate his room. There crafts from Bible school, a little trophy, and awards from a children's Bible club. It had been years and the room had not been changed. I lay awake for a while and tried to imagine the hurt of loosing your little brother. I thought of my little brothers Kevin and Nathan so many miles away. I thanked God for them and for their health. Soon we turned out the light and I drifted into sleep there in the bed last occupied by Jerry's ten-year-old brother.

After that weekend, though Jerry's personality did not change, I found him much easier to love. His personality was no longer a source of irritation to me. I listened more when he talked and enjoyed being around him more. Before long I could honestly say that Jerry had become my friend.

Lying in a little bed on an autumn night in the upstairs bedroom of a humble Kansas farmhouse I learned one of the most important lessons of my life. You should never make up your mind that you don't like someone before you have first made an effort to really know him. It's easier to put up with a person once you've made up your mind to like them.

(From Stonebridge Newsletter – Number 48)

Easter Sunday in America

I have to admit to some quaint ideas. I still feel an inner warmth and get a little misty-eyed when I see a picture of a family walking to church on a spring morning. In these warm fantasies the sun is always shining, birds sing, and the walk is lined with daffodils. The trees are in the tender bud of spring and church bells ring in the distance.

Dad is wearing a suit. Mom is in a beautiful Easter dress, her hair "just so". The boys have wiggled into dress shirts and clip-on ties like miniature men. They are wearing manly navy blazers. Their hair is slicked over and perfect except for the rebel cow lick standing defiantly up like bristles on a wire brush. Their sisters have frilly dresses with bows and lace and bonnets and even white gloves with matching purse and shoes. Everyone who can read is carrying a Bible.

After church the family will eat together, usually ham, and then there will be an Easter egg hunt. The little ones will run all over the back yard, as if they were searching for gold, hunting eggs they have no intention of eating. Mom will snap pictures. Dad will film the event. Grandma will laugh until she cries. Grandpa will hold the baby.

I know that for most of us the picture is not quite so perfect and you may see things differently. This is America so you have every right to your own opinion, but I think there will still be hope for our land as long as Moms are willing to do what has to be done to make Easter special. The enemies of our great country have no weapon that can defeat a people who are devoted to God. I know we are up against lunatic terrorists but my money is still on determined and devoted mothers.

I love it when I see people dress up special on Easter Sunday. Don't misunderstand, I am glad when anyone comes to church plain or fancy. I know there are whole sects of Christian people who have eschewed any finery. I respect them for that but I think the Lord is honored when I dress in my finest for an audience with Him, even if all it means is a little extra starch in my shirt and some fresh polish on my shoes.

I've seen people worship God enthusiastically in jeans, a T-shirt and a ball cap. I've seen dozens of guys in full Harley regalia weeping and singing and shouting Amen. (I have a pastor friend who has a Harley in his office). But my heart is always warmed to look out on Easter Sunday morning and watch a family walking across the parking lot, Bibles in hand in their "Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes.

It doesn't have to cost a lot. I have a closet full of dress shirts, dress slacks, sport coats that I purchased at used clothing stores for a few dollars each. I bought a perfect navy suit to speak to a group of a few thousand men at a used clothing store for twelve dollars. My favorite wool blazer was seven dollars. The dress slacks I have on now I bought for four dollars. I am wearing a new dress shirt that cost only three dollars.

I know this requires a great effort, especially on mom's part, but the effort it takes to get ready for church is itself an act of devotion. It is a part of our worship. All the work that it takes to get the family to church says something important to our children. It tells them that the things of God are important to us. It shows that we are devoted to worship. It creates a tradition that our children and our grandchildren will cherish after we are gone.

It would be a sad day in our land if the church bells were silent and the pews were empty on Easter Sunday. It would be a dark, sad land if the organ no longer played "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" and if families didn't worship together on Easter. It would be the greatest of tragedies if pastors didn't stand up on Easter Sunday morning all across our land and proclaim that Jesus is alive. If Easter became just another day, America would be weak at its foundation. But I'm confident that the mothers of America will never let that happen. If you don't believe me just get out into the stores on the weekend before Easter and watch them trying to outfit their children for church.

I hope the fathers of America never let that happen. Little boys need to see their dad moved to tears over a hymn. They need to see that his passion for God is greater than his enthusiasm about March Madness. Every little girl needs a daddy who loves God.

If all up and down this great land of ours from Florida to Alaska and from New Mexico to Maine the church bells continue to ring, terrorists will never defeat us. As long as moms stay up late sewing Easter dresses and dads teach their boys to shine their shoes and wash the family car for church, our nation will endure. Our greatest defense is the blessing of God.

If you are asking me my opinion, I say put on your best, whatever it is, gather your family together and come celebrate the Resurrection at church this Easter Sunday. Get here early and we'll try to save you a good seat. Oh, and bring the whole family.