What one thing could you do that would make the biggest difference in your life and in the world? Some say praying and reading the Bible every day would make the biggest difference. Some say working for world peace would make the biggest difference. Some say doing a kind deed every day would make the biggest difference. All of these things are important, but I am increasingly convinced that the one thing each of us could do that would make the biggest difference to us and to the world is to rebuild a ...
There is an American insurance company whose advertisements seek to convince consumers that they are in good hands when insured by them. All companies, including insurance companies, are in business to make a profit, not to do the consumer a favor. They may receive a benefit as a result of your doing business, but if the company is not profitable, it ceases to exist. Capitalism is at the heart of the American society. The cost of protecting houses and contents, automobiles and boats as well as life itself ...
Baptismal rituals are very different today than they were in the early church. There is a fourth-century rubric that instructs the bishop to enter the baptistery and give this command in a loud voice: “Take off your clothes.” Whereupon our ancestors were immersed in the water of the font, with the men and women separated. Did you ever imagine that those words “Take off your clothes” were part of Christian worship? Everyone knows the Hans Christian Andersen story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” A couple of ...
Big Idea: In the face of death, wealth cannot buy God off, but he can and does redeem (spare) our lives from the power of death at his own will. Understanding the Text Psalm 49 has typically been classified as a wisdom psalm and dated anywhere from the tenth to the second century BC (see the sidebar “Wisdom Psalms” in the unit on Ps. 37). Kraus prefers the category of didactic poem because this psalm, like Psalms 73 and 139, aims to reflect on a problem.1In the same frame of thought, Craigie imagines that ...
[While King Duncan is enjoying a well deserved retirement we are going back to his earliest sermons and renewing them. The newly modernized sermon is shown first and below, for reference sake, is the old sermon. We will continue this updating throughout the year bringing fresh takes on King's best sermons.] Original Title: "A Colt Is Not a Horse” New Title: Palm “Slash” Passion Sunday The well-known Christian Writer Philip Yancey grew up in a fundamentalist church which didn't observe the major events of ...
The more complex our world becomes, the more simplicity it needs. This quest for simplicity has become the holy grail of science, whether in the form of physicist Stephen Hawking's TOE and his lifetime pursuit of a Theory of Everything (TOE), or theoretical physicist Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" (the title of his 2002 book). Wolfram, a Ph.D. at 20 from Caltech, proposes that instead of looking for more and more complex theories to creation, we should be looking for simpler ones (primitives, he ...
A Sunday School teacher was telling the class the story of David and Goliath. He really got into it and told it with lots of gestures and movements and sound effects. He finished by telling how little David killed the giant Goliath with a rock from his sling. At the end of the story he asked the class what lesson they had learned. One of the little boys popped up and said: "Duck!" Goliath should have ducked. The story of David and Goliath is probably the best known story from the Old Testament. Kids love ...
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.... -- Romans 8:28 I'm glad I'm a man. As my son was being born 22 years ago, two thoughts came to mind. First, "What a miracle!" Second, "Thank You, Jesus, for making me a man because I could never do that!" It's like Joan Rivers said, "If a man wants to know what it's like to give birth, all he has to do is take his upper lip and pull it over his head." I'm also aware of sexism in society and church. But as a beneficiary of sexism ...
Isaiah 50:1-11, Luke 22:14--23:56, Philippians 2:1-11
Sermon Aid
John R. Brokhoff
COMMENTARY Old Testament: Isaiah 50:4-9a Yahweh's servant faces suffering confident of his help. This pericope constitutes the third of the four Servant Songs in Isaiah. Yahweh's servant hears his voice and is therefore fortified with determination to suffer mental agony in terms of ridicule, false accusations, humiliation, and shame. He suffers confidently because he believes Yahweh will vindicate, help, and pronounce him innocent. Epistle: Philippians 2:5-11 Jesus' humiliation and God's exaltation of him ...
Richard Sears was a young man when his father died, and so he had to go to work to support the family. He took a job on the railroad and worked his way up to station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota. To earn extra money he sold coal and lumber. One day a box full of watches was delivered to his station by mistake. The local jeweler decided he didn't want the watches. But instead of sending the watches back to the company, Richard Sears decided to buy the watches himself and proceeded to sell them. In a ...
Comment: Up to this time, I had tried to handle the story sermons myself. With the encouragement shown for my dramatic efforts of the earlier weeks that summer, I decided to try to involve the congregation in a more direct way. That year, a large hotel in a major U. S. city had collapsed, killing scores and injuring hundreds. I saw the story in a periodical which, unfortunately, I did not keep. The first interview in the script, the woman's experience, comes from that. With a few bits remembered from that ...
Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it. (Mark 10:15) If I had preached on this text just six years ago, I would have extolled the virtues and sung the praises of children. Jesus said that we must be like children to receive the kingdom of God and I would have preached a sermon on how wonderful kids are. I would have waxed eloquent on how Jesus blessed the children and how children bless our lives every day with their innate goodness, charm and ...
Have you ever noticed how sometimes life just isn’t fair? It’s one of the hard realities we learn early on. No one has to wait for adolescence or old age to find it out. You can learn it in nursery school. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Little brothers and sisters seem to get such special privileges. The things my little brother and sister got away with! There were times when I really felt like the prodigal son story was some kind of Jungian archetype for familial systems down through the centuries. Well ...
Obscenity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. With words to that effect more than two decades ago the Supreme Court of the United States of America left the decisions regarding pornography in the hands of local communities. During the intervening years states and cities have struggled with the issue, desiring to uphold the basic rights of freedom of speech and expression, and at the same time attempting to establish and maintain what is decent and acceptable to the majority. The latest entry to ...
This subject causes one to focus on two significant theological expressions having a direct bearing on the quality of human life: salvation and grace. The apostle Paul adds a third expression that he calls faith; “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith -- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast… (Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV).” So then, Paul contends that salvation is realized when grace is activated and faith comes alive. All three are ...
In this day of overwhelming defeatism, we look longingly for the absolute victory. Paul declares it in today's Scripture: "Nay, (even) in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." Do you believe that? If you do, you are more steady in the midst of the collapse all around you. A great pessimism has to be conquered by a great faith. Edith Lovejoy Pierce uncovers a challenging insight: Even though we escape now We shall not escape Turning a key in a lock, Dropping a well-placed ...
Most of you know that great country comedian from McComb, Mississippi, named Jerry Clower. He is a former fertilizer salesman and a devoted Baptist layman. Jerry tells about a lady he knew down in Amite County. She lived near a construction site where workers were putting a tar roof on a building. This lady had sixteen children--or "young'uns," as Jerry called them. One day she lost one of her children. She hunted around and found that he had fallen into a fifty-gallon drum of black roofing tar at the ...
In our text for this last Sunday in the Easter season, we are at that awkward time for the new church, the time between ascension and Pentecost. Jesus is gone, but his spirit has not yet come. In this time of waiting, we are told that the first thing the church did was to fill a leadership vacancy created by faithless Judas, a leader who betrayed the movement. Yes, the very first act of the church had to do with getting organized. So the observation has been made that at first and perhaps even second ...
One of the most effective sermons I have ever preached was shared ten years ago when I was just beginning to preach. I didn’t expect it to be good because I was tired when I wrote it and tired when I preached it. In fact, I was afraid I was failing the people that day because I thought the sermon wasn’t much good at all. In the sermon I shared with the folks why I was so tired, all the things that had happened to me that week. A child had died in City Hospital. The parents had no friends, no family, no one ...
[While King Duncan is enjoying a well deserved retirement we are going back to his earliest sermons and renewing them. The newly modernized sermon is shown first and below, for reference sake, is the old sermon. We will continue this updating throughout the year bringing fresh takes on King's best sermons.] Original Title: “Jesus, Where Are You?” New Title: Teacher, Doctor, Savior, God? A pastor was showing a painting of Jesus to a group of children. He explained, "Now, young people, you understand this ...
Chuck Swindoll told a rather gross, but humorous story in one of his books. It takes place right after his graduation from high school. He was working in a machine shop in Houston, Texas. One of the men he worked near in the shop was named Tex. He was an unforgettable character. Tex spent most of his adult life operating a turret lathe in that shop. He was a typical machinist. He wore a little gray and white striped cap "always greasy" and overalls that needed an oil change. And, of course, he chewed ...
Mackie Shilstone is 5'8" and weighs only 137 pounds, but he trains some of the largest professional athletes in the countryfor example, pro basketball player Ralph Sampson, St. Louis shortstop Ozzie Smith, Will Clark of the Giants, Billy Hobbley of the Harlem Globetrotters. Mackie is not content just to train athletes physically. He wants to help change their lifestyles and ways of thinking as well. "I tell my athletes that they do have control over what their attitude will be about life. Their positive ...
In one of his books author James Moore takes us back to the old West when the major means of transportation was the stagecoach. We’ve seen persons riding in stagecoaches in western movies. What we might not know is that the stagecoach had three different kinds of tickets--first class, second class, and third class. If you had a first-class ticket that meant you could remain seated during the entire trip no matter what happened. If the stagecoach got stuck in the mud, or had trouble making it up a steep ...
Robert Fulghum tells about meeting a young American traveler in the airport in Hong Kong. She was tensely occupying a chair next to his. Her backpack bore the scars and dirt of some hard traveling. It bulged with mysterious souvenirs of seeing the world. When the tears began to drip from her chin, he imagined some lost love or the sorrow of giving up adventure for college classes. But then she began to sob ” a veritable flood of tears. She was not quite ready to go home, she said. She had run out of money ...
Have you ever gotten the wrong gift for Christmas? A woman was talking to her nephew just after Christmas. In a very apologetic way she says, "I'm sorry you don't like my Christmas gift, but I asked if you preferred a small check or a large check." With his head hung in disappointment, the nephew replies, "I know, but I didn't think you were talking about ties." I hope none of us will receive the wrong gift this Christmas. IN SOME WAYS, GOD'S GIFT TO US AT CHRISTMAS SEEMS ALL WRONG. Think, for a minute, ...