The Great Con | Wisdom is from the World - James 3:13-18 - Daniel Barth by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Resources: 1.  https://www.billboard.com/lists/drake-kendrick-lamar-beef-timeline/ 2. "...it is James' conviction that teaching is a dangerous occupation for any man. His instrument is speech and his agent the tongue." -William Barclay, DSB on James 3. "Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it." - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 4. "We really don’t have to know what the devil sounds like to recognize his voice, we just have to listen to how we talk to and about our neighbors." -Jackie Hill Perry

The Great Con | Spirituality Is Individual - James 2:14-26 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Resources: 1. “Hostility isn’t integral to the definition of discrimination; you can treat people differently without being hostile to anyone. But it is important to understand how discrimination can occur both without hostility and without any intent to discriminate.” -Tony Greenwald, "Favoritism–Not Hostility–Causes Most Discrimination" 2. “This is God’s chosen lot. He had one opportunity only of living our life, and He chose to be born of parents too poor to present more than two doves at his presentation in the temple.” -F.B. Meyer 3. Stories on NY Church: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/02/carl-lentz-and-the-trouble-at-hillsong; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/carl-lentz-hillsong-pastor.html; https://pagesix.com/2020/12/28/hillsong-church-operated-like-a-nightclub 4. “How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God…Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. But brothers, have you found our king? There he is, honoring and kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep is the true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.” -George Macdonald, "Christ In Creation"

The Great Con | Anger = Righteousness - James 1:19-20 - Tom Parker by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Resources: 1. “Wisdom is that quality of heart and mind which is needed for the right conduct of life.” -Fenton Hort 2. “Cynicism creates a numbness toward life. Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaging, loving, and hoping. To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being "in the know," cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit.” -Paul E. Miller, "A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World"

Sermon Resources: 1. “The majority of politicians are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.” -Harold Pinter, "Art, Truth, and Politics" 2. “So the Scribes and Pharisees set James on the pinnacle of the Temple and called to him: "O thou, James the Just, to whom we all ought to listen, since the people are going astray after Jesus the crucified, tell us what is the door of this Jesus?" And with a loud voice he answered: "Why do you ask me concerning the Son of Man? He is the Savior. He sitteth himself in heaven on the right hand of the great Power, and shall come on the clouds of heaven." And when many were convinced and gave glory for the witness of James, and said, "Hosanna to the Son of David," then again the same Scribes and Pharisees said to one another, "We were wrong to permit such a testimony to Jesus; but let us go up and cast James down, that through fear they may not believe him." Accordingly they went up and cast James down. And they said to one another, "Let us stone James the Just," and they began to stone him, since he was not killed by the fall, but he turned and knelt down saying, "I beseech thee, Lord God Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And a certain one of them, one of the fullers, taking the club with which he pounds clothes, brought it down on the head of the Just; and so he suffered martyrdom. And they buried him there on the spot, near the Temple. A true witness has he become both to Jews and Greeks that Jesus is Christ.” -Hegesippus, "Church History: Book II" 3. "Truth forever on the cross, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that cross sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." -James Russell Lowell, "The Present Crisis" 4. “All kinds of experiences will come to us. There will be the test of the sorrows and the disappointments which seek to take our faith away. There will be the test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices, the unpopularity which the Christian way must so often involve. But they are not meant to make us fall; they are meant to make us soar. They are not meant to defeat us; they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant to make us weaker; they are meant to make us stronger. Therefore we should not bemoan them; we should rejoice in them. The Christian is like the athlete. The heavier the course of training he undergoes, the more he is glad, because he knows that it is fitting him all the better for victorious effort. As Browning said, we must "welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough," for every hard thing is another step on the upward way.” -William Barclay, "DSB: James"

God Let Loose | Intercessor - ROMANS 8:14-27 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Sermon Resources: 1. “The first thing about America that strikes observation is an innumerable multitude of men incessantly endeavoring to obtain the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is a stranger to the fate of the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he touches them, but he does not feel them.” -Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America" 2. “We have been led to believe that the self is sacred. Just as in an earlier time it was thought never fitting to deny God, now it seems never right to deny oneself.” -Robert Bellah, "Habits of the Heart" 3. “We’ve forgotten we belong to one another.” -Mother Teresa 4. "A Hidden Life," film directed by Terrance Malick 5. “The most important thing in your life is not what you do. It is who you become.” -Dallas Willard 6. “We often seek to find ourselves somehow in the work of making others happy. Therefore we throw ourselves into the work. As a result we get out of the work all that we put into it: our own confusion, disintegration, and unhappiness. It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.” -Thomas Merton, "No Man Is An Island"

Sermon Resources: 1. Death By Vending Machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_vending_machine#:~:text=Death%20by%20vending%20machine%20%2D%20Wikipedia,machines%20from%201978%20to%201995. 2. “We have generally come to expect immediate returns on our investments of time and resources. If we have a need, we have only to find the right place, product, or procedure and our needs will be met. It is not surprising that we tend to become impatient with any process of development that requires of us more than a limited involvement of our time and energies…Often our spiritual quest becomes a search for the right technique, the proper method, the perfect program that can immediately deliver the desired results of spiritual maturity and wholeness. If we can only find the right trick, the right book or the right guru, go to the right retreat, instantly we will be transformed into a new person at a new level of spirituality and wholeness.” -M. Robert Mulholland, "Invitation To A Journey" 3. “The truth about significant soul transformation is this: change is possible, but it is harder than we want and it takes longer than we expect.” -James Cofield and Richard Plass, "The Relational Soul: Moving From False Self to Deep Connection" 4. “Our spiritual journey is not our setting out (by gathering information and applying it correctly) to find God (as an object “out there” to be grasped and controlled by us). It is a journey of learning to yield ourselves to God and discovering where God will take us.” -M. Robert Mulholland, "Invitation To A Journey"