Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: "I am the first and the last; besides me there is no god. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it, let him declare and set it forth before me. Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be. Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any." In the good times of life, it is easy to believe ...
"God sent me," "God made me" - strange words for most people to say! We say instead, "The devil made me do it!" It is almost remarkable then, that in a few short verses in the text, Joseph says four times: "God sent me," "God made me." Joseph feels that all of his life is under the guiding hand of God. Since God is his master, Joseph feels that no matter what happens - of good or bad - sadness or joy - God is in it and nothing can touch him but that God will ultimately work it out for the best. Things did ...
Some years before he died, Dr. William C. Menninger, the co-founder of the world-famous Menninger Clinic of Topeka, Kansas, wrote about "Emotional Maturity" and this essay became the last chapter in a collection of his writings, Living in a Troubled World. In the last paragraph of the chapter, he said, "Certainly the world could never before have had more grief and unhappiness and human turmoil than currently exists. We - you and I - must assume some responsibility for reducing this turmoil ... We dare not ...
Have you been watching the impeachment hearings? I spent much of Thursday afternoon and evening glued to the tube. Not because the testimony and questioning were so scintillating or riveting, but because this was historic. This process is only occurring for the third time in our nation's history, and as a history buff, I wanted to watch. As we all know (and better than any of us is happy with), for the past four years, the Office of Independent Counsel has been investigating the President - first it was ...
Have you ever noticed, have you ever really contemplated our infinite capacity to complicate things? It’s like we have a built-in aversion to the simple. We take the simplest situation and we make it a complicated affair. We build molehills into mountains. Before we examine a question, we wrap it in confusion. Really though, when you get the heart of it, the great experiences of life, even the great insights, have a way of turning out to be very simple. At the heart of it, Christmas is a very simple thing ...
Last words are important. Let that truth sink in. Last words are important. East Side Baptist Church is a little country church down in Perry County, Mississippi. It is the church in which I was converted under the preaching of Brother Wiley Grissom, a fifth-grade educated pastor who preached the Gospel with power. The church is about 200 yards up the hill from our old home place. Behind it is a cemetery where I’ll be buried someday. Mom and Dad—whom in my adult life I affectionately called, “Mutt” and “Co ...
The college faculty gathered for their weekly meeting. A professor of archeology brought with him a lamp recently unearthed in the Middle East. It was reported to contain a genie, who, when the lamp was rubbed would appear and grant one wish. A professor of philosophy was particularly intrigued. He grabbed the lamp and rubbed it vigorously. Suddenly a genie appeared and made him an offer. He could choose one of three rewards: wealth, wisdom, or beauty. Without hesitating, the philosophy professor selected ...
The enigma of human relationships and how that relates to the living God is all about us. It always has been and likely will be. This is precisely what Saint Paul lifts up before us. We would like for all of this to be greatly simplified but it never is and so we continue to seek to live the Christian life as best we know how. The history of the church is saturated with just what the apostle puts before us. In a way we are caught between two worlds and we have no choice. We live as well we can and hope for ...
I had just been elected the President of the Southern Baptist Convention about two months before and already I was having trouble sleeping. I was waking up many times at 3:30am and 4:00am in the morning. Why? I might have up to ninety-plus emails to respond to, a mountain of correspondence that I had to answer and you never knew when the media was going to come calling. I had agreed to travel all over the world to visit the fourteen different regions where we had missionaries. I had to prepare two messages ...
There was a minister in a certain church who would call the children down to the front of the church every Sunday and tell them a story. One time he brought a telephone to illustrate the idea of prayer. He said, "Now kids, you know how you talk to people on the telephone and you don't see them on the end of the other line, but you know they are there?" The children nodded their head yes. He said, "Well talking to God is like talking on the telephone. He's on the other end of the line even though you can't ...
I used to wish I were tall. All the other children were bigger. They were stronger ... faster. I was a shrimp ... and it used to bother me. I used to lie in my bed at night wishing that I was the biggest kid in town. Then nobody would push me around. None of the other children could beat me up. None of them could ever call Zacchaeus names (at least not if they wanted to keep their teeth in). None of them would ever give me any trouble again. Yeah, I wanted to be tall, but.... As time went along, of course ...
Sometimes a song gets so deep inside your head that it can never be uprooted. Maybe it is the melody or the mood evoked by its musical qualities. Maybe it is the themes and ideas that find expression in its lyrics. If it happens to be both the music and the lyrics perfectly matched to each other, then the effect is particularly strong. Such songs have the ability to become a recurring soundtrack to our lives. One such song for me is Kerry Livgren’s “Dust In The Wind.” Since I first heard this song more ...
50:1 The superscription that begins the final oracle against the nations identifies the object of this long section as Babylon. It introduces not only the last grouping of oracles but also what are by far the longest in the oracles against the nations. The prophet pulls out all the stops to articulate the destruction that was coming Babylon’s way. Jeremiah understood that the Babylonians were being used by God as an instrument of his judgment against Judah and the other nations, but this fact did not ...
Big Idea: God’s people are called to rejoice over his judgment of the evil city and his vindication of the saints. Understanding the Text We now enter the final stage of Babylon’s destruction (17:1–19:5). The laments of Babylon’s codependents in 18:9–19 are contrasted with the rejoicing of the righteous in 18:20–19:5. God’s people are urged to celebrate God’s judgment of the “great city” (18:20). This command is followed by the announcement of Babylon’s certain destruction (18:21), which focuses upon what ...
The scripture today is one of honest inquiry but turns quickly to a realization that what the disciples have known, or thought they knew, is no longer applicable. When it comes to encountering a blind person they turn to what they have been taught. If a bad illness or disability befell a person like the one that befell the blind man, it must be because he or his parents had done something wrong. Today, we understand that if a person is born blind it would be because of any number of prenatal conditions ...
Thirty years ago I was serving on the staff of a large church as the minister of Christian Education and Youth Ministry. The Education Commission and the Youth Council were made up, mostly of parents who worked with me on the programs for youth and children — Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, those kinds of things. One year, for Vacation Bible School, we decided to set up a large tent — a really large one under which you could seat 100 or more people — on the parking lot and use it for our opening ...
At a family gathering, a grandmother was coaxed into doing something she had never done before. After much friendly badgering, she climbed slowly up on an exercise bike. She took her time getting in just the right position. She waited a few moments. Then, nervously, she said, "All right, you can turn it on now." If only work in the church could be handled like that. If we could magically flip a switch, and then watch as the work is done for us. But work in the church requires a delicate blend of divine ...
Our gospel reading today contains one of the most familiar passages in the Bible. Most of us probably know it in words of one of the older translations, but most of us do know it. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28, KJV). For centuries this passage has been used for comforting the grieving, encouraging the struggling, and giving hope when all else seems to have failed. We read it; we underline it; we memorize it. We trust these words when nothing ...
A Monologue For Easter Part One I had always lived in the village of Nazareth. I am Mary. (bows slightly) It was a common place. Certainly, there has never been anything special about Nazareth but it was my home and I loved it. My parents lived there and also my fiancé, Joseph, who was a reputable carpenter. He was a righteous man and came from the lineage of the family of King David. I knew he was a good man and one that would be a fine husband. Our families had arranged the marriage and soon I would be ...
The parable of Jesus that Luke shares with us today does not rate highly in the polls. If, indeed, we did a survey among Christians with regard to parables, not only favorite ones, but parables in general, it is likely that this story would be missing from the list entirely. With slight variations, it appears in Matthew and in Luke, in Matthew as the Parable of the Talents and in Luke as the Parable of the Pounds, but while each writer has his own unique elaborations, in substance both of them are writing ...
The motto of the Apollo II flight was "We came in peace for all mankind." This phrase was upon the plaque deposited on the surface of the moon. The flight had landed on what is known as the "Sea of Tranquility." Armstrong and Aldrin found a tranquil and peaceful scene on the moon because there had never been any humans there prior to them. No one before them had had a chance to disturb the moon. As I was preparing this message I asked my teenage daughter what the word "peace" meant to her. She replied ...
THEOLOGICAL CLUE Although the church year eschatological framework remains in place on this Sunday, it would continue to be almost imperceptible without the influence of the readings for the day. In particular, it is the Gospel for the Day, the parable of the "householder," who goes out to the market place again and again to hire day-laborers to work in his vineyard, that casts the eschatological note of the gospel, as well as the church year, in sharp focus over against the unmerited grace of God, who ...
"Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs," scoffed Samuel Johnson. "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."1 Had the celebrated man of letters known Phoebe, he would never have made that unfortunate statement; he also would have escaped the wrath of thousands of effective, dedicated preachers. Who is Phoebe? Only a single sentence in the New Testament reveals any information. Her appearance on life’s stage is all too brief, but appear she does - a woman ...
In the beginning, God created his world and his people. Mankind fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. God worked out a plan of salvation. To institute that plan, he selected a man and determined that through that one man, he would build a nation - a nation to accomplish his redemptive purpose. That man was Abraham. Through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God was building a chosen people. During Joseph’s lifetime, God preserved his people in a desperate time of famine by taking them down into the ...
Francis X. Bushman, the first of the old-time movie idols, started as a sculptor's model. He won "the most handsome man" contest sponsored by Ladies' World magazine. He was working in 1915 for the Essanay studio in Chicago for $250 a week. His agent David Freedman, however, knew that in the gold-rush atmosphere that prevailed among the competing film studios in those early days of movie making, the sky was the limit for talent with a proven following. How to prove it was the problem, and Freedman conceived ...