St. John's Franklin Podcast

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Why We Like Super-Heroes” for the Third Sunday of Advent on December 10, 2011.  We long for the world to be put right, but only God can make the world right. As we wait for the second Advent, that time when the Lord will come in his glory and set everything to rights, we are to live by the Gospel.

Direct download: Why_We_Like_Super-Heros.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Waiting Is the Hardest Work of Hope” for the Second Sunday of Advent on December 3, 2011.  The salvation story is a God story, it is God doing for us what we can’t do for ourselves.  It is also God doing it His own way and He does not consult us in matters of timing.  Because God takes time to accomplish His work, learning to wait on the Lord is fundamental to our faith.

Direct download: Waiting_Is_the_Hardest_Work_of_Hope.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “What Time Is It?” for the First Sunday of Advent on November 26, 2011.  The bizarre events of "Black Friday" remind us that societies mark their priorities and organize their memories by their calendars.  Our calendars tell us how to use our time, they tells us what to do at various times in the year, but more than that, the calendars we subscribe to form us, they shape our desires and tell us how to act. 

The liturgy of the Christian year is not magic, and it can become rote to us if it is not made alive by God’s Spirit.  But it is the collected wisdom of the church over 2000 years. Through the waiting of Advent, the joy of Christmas, the illumination of Epiphany, the repentance of Lent, the celebration of new creation in Christ that is Easter, God can reshape our desires to want what He wants, to remake us into the image of Christ.

First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

Direct download: What_Time_Is_It.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Holding On To Hope” for The Feast of Christ the King on November 19, 2011.  Our belief that Jesus is already Lord and that He will appear again as judge of the world protects us from both idolatry and despair as we seek to serve Him in the world, and provides the strength and courage we need to be faithful in our present, everyday life.

This week's lectionary:

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95:1-7a

Ephesians 1:15-23

Matthew 25:31-46

Direct download: Holding_On_To_Hope.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Brad Perry preached a sermon entitled “Are You Ready?” based on Matthew 25:1-13 on November 12, 2011. Jesus' instructions in this parable remind us that we are to live our lives from a different point of view. Readiness for Jesus' Second Coming involve living our lives according to the values of His Kingdom now.

Direct download: Are_You_Ready.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Teach Us to Number Our Days” based on Psalm 90 on November 5, 2011. Our finitude, sinfulness and mortality threaten our sense of significance.  Will our lives end and amount to nothing?  We need God to come if we are to experience a different kind of human flourishing.

Direct download: Teach_Us_to_Number_Our_Days.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “So Great A Cloud Of Witnesses” based on Hebrews 11:32-12:3 for All Saints' Day on October 29, 2011. God has called each of us to run a race: that race involves being a sign of the Gospel in the places and relationships that God has put you. The testimony of the lives of believers tell us that it is worth it—their faithfulness is an example to us of the possibilities of the life of faith.  We look to them for encouragement…they help us cultivate endurance and perseverance.

Direct download: So_Great_A_Cloud_of_Witnesses.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Can We Be Friends With God?” based on Exodus 33:1-12 on October 22, 2011. In today's Old Testament passage, God’s friendship with Israel is in crisis. Chapters 32-34 give us the backdrop from which the Gospel of Jesus Christ makes sense, because they are the theological center of the book of Exodus.  The reason: they deal with the question,”How can a holy God dwell among and with a sinful people?

Direct download: Can_We_Be_Friends_With_God.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Why Its Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist” based on Exodus 32:1-14 and Philippians 4:1-9 on October 15, 2011. We live, not in a secular world, devoid of God, nor in a deistic world where God exists but is far off, but in a world where God is near abundantly alive and at work in His providential work of maintaining His creation, as well continual drawing us into His story of redemption.

Direct download: Why_Its_Tempting.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “God's Glory” based on Psalm 19 on October 8, 2011. We are changed—transformed—as we are captured by God’s glory, the beauty of God’s holiness.  The whole of Psalm 19 is undergirded by joy, the product of our heart’s encounter with God's glory. The psalm anticipates the Gospel of Jesus Christ—He is the ultimate mediator of God’s glory.

Direct download: Gods_Glory.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “God's Patience” based on Exodus 17:1-7 on October 1, 2011. It takes time for God to teach and shape the outlook of His people to trust in His abundance.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Direct download: Gods_Patience.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Sabbath: Our Need for Rhythms of Work and Rest” based on Exodus 16:13-30 on September 24, 2011. There is a lot of baggage around the word Sabbath—in Jesus day many had reduced Sabbath observance to a task—a work to be performed, but the rhythms of work and rest were established by God at Creation, and they are fundamental to human flourishing.  To practice a Sabbath is to honor the body’s need for rest, the spirit’s need for replenishment, and the soul’s need to delight itself in God and His creation for their own sake

Direct download: Sabbath.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Jonathan Warren preached a sermon entitled “The Red Sea and the Church's Baptism” based on Exodus 14:19-31 on September 17, 2011. In Ex. 14, God parts the Red Sea, allowing Israel to pass through but destroying the Egyptians. This story is generally, and correctly, read as a narrative about God's destruction of the oppressor. But it has a deeper meaning, given to us by the apostles - it is about the meaning of Jesus' baptism, and by implication, our baptism as well.

Direct download: The_Red_Sea_and_the_Churchs_Baptism.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The New Creation Has Begun” based on John 1:1-18 on September 10, 2011. On the 1st anniversary of St. John's, we celebrated the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist.  We want a robust understanding of Jesus' Incarnation and Resurrection to be at the heart of what we do as a church.

Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Direct download: The_New_Creation_Has_Begun.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Supper of the Lamb” based on Exodus 12:1-14 on September 3, 2011. Exodus give us the basic pattern of God’s saving activity for all ages.  What place does the Bible give to feasts or meals in the pattern of God’s saving activity?  Meals and feasts are central to God's saving activity, whether as sacramental reminders of who God is, such as the Passover and Psalm 23, Jesus' practice of table fellowship (Luke 15), Jesus' Easter meals with his followers (John 21) and ultimately in the reframing and transformation of Passover by Jesus in the institution of the Lord's Supper.

Direct download: The_Supper_of_the_Lamb.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Absence and Presence of God” based on Exodus 3:1-15 on August 27, 2011. Exodus give us the basic pattern of God’s saving activity for all ages.  Most of us experience long stretches of the seeming absence or silence of God.  Whether the experience of absence is measured in weeks, months or years, for most of us it doesn’t fit into what is “normal” in our understanding of the Christian life. What do we make of his patterns of absence and presence in our lives?

Direct download: The_Absence_and_Presence_of_God.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Thinking Rightly About Our Gifts” based on Romans 12:3-8 on August 20, 2011. Paul urges us to recognize that we each have a contribution to make, an assignment given to us, to contribute to the health of the community.  We each share in the responsibility for the health of Christ’s body.

Direct download: Thinking_Rightly_About_Our_Gifts.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Living in the New Creation” based on Romans 12:1-2 on August 13, 2011. Paul urges us to develop a pattern or style of life that reflects the mercies of God; he encourages us to allow the gospel to reshape and remake the whole of our lives. The power of the Gospel is reflected in our lives to the extent that it creates a new style of life in and through us. The list of books suggested for the spiritual discipline of study are found her: http://stjohnsfranklin.com/foundations/

Direct download: Living_in_the_New_Creation.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “God Meets Us In Our Humanity” based on 1 Kings 19 on August 6, 2011. After his great victory over the Ba'al priests, Elijah gives into his fear because he is at the end of himself—in state of deep spiritual, emotional, and physical fatigue. God heals his fatigue by tending to Elijah’s needs as a creature.

Direct download: God_Meets_Us_in_Our_Humanity.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Anchor of Our Hope” based on Romans 8:26-39 on July 30, 2011. Material hardship, the ongoing ache of living in a fallen world, and pressure and hostility from the world are the common lot of those who determine to follow Christ and embrace the Gospel. The Gospel is our anchor of hope through the storms of life.

Direct download: Anchor_of_Hope.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Both Anguish and Joy Are the Experience of the Christian In This Life” based on Romans 8:18-25 on July 23, 2011. When you stubbornly expect the world itself to be something different from what it is—whether lesser or greater—the result is rarely a happy one.  To follow Christ and participate in what He is doing in the world involves anguish as well as joy. 

 

 

 

Direct download: Anguish_and_Joy.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Highest Privilege” based on Romans 8:12-17 on July 16, 2011. Our adoption as sons and daughters of God is the highest privilege the Gospel offers. God made us to flourish—to receive life from outside of ourselves, creating vitality within us, and producing blessing beyond ourselves.  Our adoption by the Father as His sons and daughters in Christ through the Spirit is at the very heart of a Christian vision of human flourishing.

Direct download: The_Highest_Privilege.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “He Breaks the Power of Cancelled Sin” based on Romans 8:1-13 on July 9, 2011. The Gospel is a living power, for it is the action of God the Father in Jesus Christ His Son, through the Holy Spirit, to unite us with Himself, and by doing so He both cancels and pardons our sin and breaks its power in our lives.

Direct download: He_Breaks_the_Power_of_Cancelled_Sin.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Easy Yoke, the Restful Burden” based on Matthew 11:28-30 on July 2, 2011. Jesus offers us a yoke that is fitting to our humanity—to our creatureliness—and bids us to enter into a Christian vision of human flourishing. 

Direct download: The_Easy_Yoke_the_Restful_Burden.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Sometimes the Hardest Thing and the Right Thing Are the Same” based on Jeremiah 27-29 on June 25, 2011. 

It is absolutely essential that we accept the trials of our ordinary existence as the place where we are to find and experience the kingdom of God as actual reality.  It is in the challenges that life presents to us that God shows His goodness to us. 

Direct download: Sometime_the_Hardest_Thing_and_the_Right_Thing_Are_the_Same.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Great Dance” for Trinity Sunday on June 18, 2011. 

It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the catholic church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, he would no longer be a Christian either in fact or in name.

We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity there is no intrusion of any alien element or of anything from outside, nor is the Trinity a blend of creative and created being. It is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and undivided in its active power, for the Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the holy Trinity is preserved. Accordingly, in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Holy Spirit.

Excerpt from a letter from St. Athanasius to Serapion (360 AD)

Direct download: The_Great_Dance.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Coming of the Holy Spirit” based on Acts 2:1-21 on June 11, 2011. 

The distinctive function of the Spirit is to perfect the Creation---to bring to completion that for which each person and thing is created...The Spirit’s distinctive office and particular task is to realize the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation to God the Father.

Basil the Great, bishop of Caesaria 

Direct download: The_Coming_of_the_Holy_Spirit.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Importance of the Ascension” based on Acts 1:1-11 on June 4, 2011. To grasp the truth of the Ascension is to know and celebrate the reality that Jesus has gone ahead of us (John 14) into God’s space, God’s new world, and both ruling the rebellious present world as its rightful Creator and Lord, and also interceding for us at the Father’s right hand.

Direct download: The_Importance_of_the_Ascension.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “A City Full of Idols” based on Acts 17:16-34 on May 28, 2011. Augustine’s insight—"You have created us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."—is that we we are fundamentally creatures of desire, shaped by what we love.  In a fallen world and as fallen creatures, we often attach our desires to things that ultimately CANNOT deliver what we hope for.  For Augustine, that is the nature of idolatry—a disordered desire and trust in a created good.

Direct download: A_City_Full_of_Idols.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Burning Hearts and Broken Bread” based on Luke 24:13-35 on May 7, 2011. The two emphasis of this passage have shaped Christian worship for two thousand years.  Jesus is alive, and He is still making himself known through the Scriptures and the breaking of bread.

Direct download: Burning_Hearts_and_Broke_Bread.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 8:15pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Faith and Doubt” based on John 20:19-31 on April 30, 2011. A certain amount of doubt always exists with our faith.  Doubt is nothing to be ashamed of...but we do need to take our doubt seriously and face it openly, because God can use it to deepen and strengthen our faith.  Doubts of the intellect and doubts of the heart are two of the most common "families" of doubt.

Direct download: Faith_and_Doubt.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “I Have Seen the Lord” based on John 20:1-18 on April 24, 2011. Jesus' familiar voice speaks Mary's name and brings a transformation of her grief and the opening of a new world, the world of New Creation in Christ.

Direct download: I_Have_Seen_the_Lord.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Reflections on the Passion of Christ” based on Matthew 27:11-54 on April 16, 2011. Christ's Passion reveals the depth of our sin, the depth of God's love, and our ongoing need for the Gospel.

To grow in grace means to utilize more and more grace to live by, until everything we do is assisted by grace.  Then, whatever we do in word or in deed will all be done in the name of the Lord Jesus.  The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who see their need for much grace, who indeed are most in need of grace—those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being.  Grace to them is like breath.

Dallas Willard

Direct download: The_Passion_of_Christ.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Bobby Gross, National Director of InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries and author of Living the Christian Year, preached a sermon entitled “The Defeat of Death” based on John 11:1-45 on April 9, 2011. He discusses the Lenten season and the pre-figuring of the defeat of death in the raising of Lazarus.

Direct download: The_Defeat_of_Death.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Creatures in TIme and Space” based on Psalm 23 on April 2, 2011.  We are creatures in time and space, and our vulnerability and uncertainty arise out of our “creatureliness”—our dependent, finite and bodily existence. Our body and soul is tied to particular times, places, and people—our story.

Direct download: 04.02.11.Creatures_of_Time_and_Place.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Living Water” based on John 4:5-42 on March 26, 2011.

Direct download: Living_Water.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “God's Promise Through Abraham” based on Genesis 12:1-4 on March 19, 2011. God's freedom is demonstrated in His promise to redeem the world through Abraham. The freedom of God means that He is not bound by how the world defines what is possible.  The freedom of God redefines how we see the present, i.e., the present is always provisional and open to God changing or rearranging, or transforming our life.

Direct download: Gods_Promise_Through_Abraham.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Brian Goodwin preached a sermon entitled “Overcoming Darkness” based on Matthew 4:1-11 on March 12, 2011.

Direct download: The_Overcoming_of_Darkness.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Preparing for Lent” on March 5, 2011. Lent is about embracing a downward movement of the soul.  Lent is a shift in accent. We never lose sight of the Gospel, but in the journey of Lent, we acknowledge our human and spiritual weakness, and we turn away from our sins and temptations and toward God and His great mercy, embracing a lifestyle of repentance.

Direct download: Preparing_for_Lent.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Liturgy of Abundance” based on Matthew 6:24-34 on February 26, 2011. A preoccupation with earthly possessions can distort and darken human flourishing and spiritual health, but Jesus invites us to trust in God’s story of abundance—into the reality that the gifts needed for life are abundantly provided by our generous God.

 

Direct download: The_Liturgy_of_Abundance.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

This is part four of our Epiphany series on the vision of St. John's Anglican Church.  Christian community is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. As such, it is not a commodity that can be provided for us or acquired through technological means. Christian community is experienced as we commit to live life together with all of its ups and downs in a particular place.

 

Direct download: Church_As_Community.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

This is part three of our Epiphany series on the vision of St. John's Anglican Church.  The church has often promoted a false spiritual/secular split of our activity in the world, but God calls us into all of the spheres of life. Work was created and ordained by God but since the Fall we always get less out of it than we put into it.  We are called to redeem our work; to see the work itself as a kingdom activity.

Direct download: Work_As_A_Kingdom_Activity.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

This is part one of our Epiphany series on the vision of St. John's Anglican Church.  Worship is at the center of our vision.   Worship is God’s chosen way of continually breaking into our lives to establish a new understanding of ourselves and of the world.   

Direct download: Our_Vision.Worship.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “The Call to Follow Jesus” based on Matthew 4:12-23 on January 22, 2011. 

The call to discipleship is the particular form of the summons by which Jesus discloses and reveals Himself to a [person] in order to claim and sanctify him as His own, and as His witness to the world.  The details of this call may only be described particularly, a concretely filled out happening between Jesus and the particular person. 

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, V.4.2, p.534

Direct download: The_Call_to_Follow_Jesus.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Jesus Takes His Place With Us” based on Matthew 3:13-17 on the Baptism of the Lord, January 15, 2010. In His baptism, Jesus takes upon Himself our condition and predicament. He assumes and shares in the burden of life in the flesh, with all its temptation, heartache, disappointment, sin, and death.  Through His life, He redeems it.

Direct download: Jesus_Takes_His_Place_With_Us.mp3
Category:Sermons -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Kenny Benge preached a sermon entitled “Filled With Wonder” based on Matthew 2:1-12 on the Epiphany of the Lord, January 8, 2010. 

Direct download: Filled_With_Wonder.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT

Rod McLain preached a sermon entitled “The New Heavens and the New Earth” based on Revelation 21:1-6 on New Year's Day, January 1, 2011.

Direct download: The_New_Heavens_and_Earth.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:00pm CDT