Sermons by Jonathan Romig (Page 19)
The Problem of Idolatry | Exodus 32
Jack works for a local telecommunications company. He tells his friends he loves his job, his company, and his boss. But if you were to follow Jack for a week, you would notice something is off. On average, he arrives 15 minutes late to work and leaves 15 minutes early. Sometimes he takes office supplies home, like when he needs a pen or highlighter. When he sits at his desk, he has one screen on his work, and one screen…
Jesus Bears Your Name | Exodus 28-30
Something I’ve learned from living near Boston is that we love people from here. We take immense pride in claiming our native Bostonians. If you think this is a recent phenomenon, it’s not. Boston Magazine calls “John and Abigail Adams “Boston’s original power couple.” Closer by, the locals in Concord remind everyone Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of them. The Kennedys, John and Ted, they’re Beacon Hill royalty. Robert Frost grew up in Lawrence. Conan O’Brien, a tall red-headed comedian…
God’s Law Part II: How does the Law apply to us? | Exodus 21-24
I like to play games. Tomorrow night I’m having some friends over to play board games. One of my favorites is called Balderdash. It’s a game where one person looks up an unknown, strange, word in the dictionary, writes down the correct definition, and everyone else makes up a definition for the word as well. Then everyone tries to guess the correct definition. We actually own an official version of balderdash, which includes five different categories, one of which is…
God’s Law Part I: The Ten Commandments | Exodus 20:1-21
The Ten Commandments… chances are, you have heard of the Ten Commandments. Maybe you watched the old 1956 movie, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as Ramses. I watched all 3 hours and 40 minutes of that movie as a child and I’m sure I felt both boredom and accomplishment, boredom because it is a slow movie, but accomplishment because I survived. Today, the Ten Commandments are a cultural icon of sorts. We don’t just…
Dirty People Meet a Holy God | Exodus 19
If you’ve ever been in a relationship, chances are you and your significant other at one point had to DTR—define the relationship. That’s the moment when you’ve been seeing each other for a while, maybe you’re friends and things seem to being getting serious, so you label it. Aka. “We’re a couple.” DTRs can go really well if you each like each other, or they can go really poorly if one person feels differently. In the case of Monica and…
A Successful Beginning | Exodus 17:8-18:27
Lord willing, Cornerstone is heading towards autonomy this year. Currently, we’re a ministry of Immanuel Church in Chelmsford, our parent church. They’re a wonderful church but their goal for us is to one day become autonomous. That means we’ll be our own non-profit. We’ll have our own Elders and Deacons, By-Laws and budget, and most importantly, we’ll be the ones responsible for our ministries. As we think on this, we realize that’s a lot of responsibility. We don’t want to…
A Sanctified People | Exodus 15:22-17:7
Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that begins with the opening line “Once upon a time”? Usually they’re fairy tales, or Disney movies. These stories often end with a very similar line, “and they all lived happily ever after.” The Hungarian equivalent is “They lived happily until they died.” I prefer the Bulgarian equivalent, “…and for three days they ate, drank, and had fun.” If you’re like me, you’re happy the main heroes of the story…
Can You Remember? | Exodus 12-13
Do you have a good memory? If someone tells you something really important, and says, “you have to remember this” do you? Or do you have to write down? There’s a saying, “The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.” If you’re the kind of person who has to write stuff down, and then is also prone to misplacing small slips of paper, then there’s nothing I can do for you. I want to test our memories today. I…
What It’s Like To Meet God | Exodus 7-11
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to meet your childhood hero or someone famous you’ve have always kind of liked? Imagine for a moment what it would be like to shake the hand of Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin, to the hold the hand of the first men to walk on the moon. Or what would it be like to hug Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr., those who faced racism and social injustice head on…
A Matter of the Heart | Exodus 4:21-6:13
If you think my sermon title sounds like the title of a romance novel you might buy at the grocery store, you’re right. When I took my first creative writing course, I learned that many romance novels actually follow a pretty generic formula and that those who master the romance novel, can make a lot of money. Danielle Steel, the author of Matters of the Heart has sold over 590 million copies of her novels. I have a confession to…
New Year. Fresh Belief. | Exodus 4:1-17
Have any of you made a New Year’s resolution for 2017? I don’t normally, but there are a lot of people who do. According to Time Magazine, the Top 10 Commonly Broken New Year’s Resolutions are: Lose weight and get fit Quit smoking Learn something new Eat healthier and diet Get out of debt and save money Spend more time with family Travel to new places Be less stressed Volunteer Drink less Jacob from the UK tweeted on January 1st,…
Christmas Rescue in Exodus | Exodus 2:1-10
Have you ever had something stolen? When I was a kid, I always went to bed on Christmas Eve wondering if robbers would steal all of my Christmas gifts during the night. They never did, but whenever I heard a story on the news that something like that had happened, I was convinced our house was next. I just heard a story out of St. George Utah about three teenagers who tried to steal a a laser light show out…