Have any of you ever had to wear a uniform?  Maybe it was a team uniform.  Maybe as part of your vocation you wore, or wear, a uniform, maybe a soldier’s uniform, or medical scrubs, or a shirt with a company logo.  Did you know there is a lot of psychology that lies behind the wearing of uniforms?  Uniforms are to make a person simultaneously different and the same.  Here’s what that means.  Whenever you see a uniformed person by themselves, you immediately see them as different.  Have you ever been in a grocery store and you see someone there in a military uniform?  They stand out; they are different.  However, a uniformed person standing with other uniformed people is “the same.”

In preparation for today’s sermon, I “googled” this question: “Who is Jesus?” In .44 seconds Google had 1,770,000,000 answers to that question. To add perspective, “Who is Abraham Lincoln?” got 103,000,000. For further perspective, “Who is Taylor Swift?” got 722,000,000, which was 7x that of Abraham Lincoln! And just for a little further perspective, a search of “Who is Bob Degnan?” got 2,040,000 results.

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,
Recently I was reading about a man who had spent the larger part of his life searching. He was searching for meaning. He was searching for contentment. He was searching for peace. He had read the “sacred writings” of many religions. And then he began to read the Bible. And this was his comment about the Bible. “I finally found a book that understands me!” That’s an interesting comment. He didn’t say that he understands the Bible, but that the Bible understands him.

Last week when Sue and I were traveling, we listened to a book about the Vanderbilts of New York.  Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired a massive fortune in the shipping and railroad industries in New York in the 1800’s.  When he died in 1877, he left a fortune of $100 million dollars.  That would be about $2 billion in today’s money.  His son doubled the fortune to $200 million dollars. 

Today’s worship and Bible study is led by Pastor Jerry Ewings. He served at Lord of Love from 2006 – 2017.
Pastor Ewings is preaching on Isaiah 55:6-11.