Sermon and Worship Resources

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Job 6:1–7:21

Teach the Text

Daniel J. Estes

... men express honestly their feelings in the midst of deep pain. We must correct any distortions in our view of God that adversity has caused. Literature: Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Melville’s (1819–91) knowledge of Job appears to have been significant. In Moby Dick (1851), the protagonist is Captain Ahab, a man filled with rage against the great white whale, Moby Dick, because the whale has destroyed the captain’s ship and bitten off his leg. Though he has been warned about his jaundiced view of an ...

2. Yahweh Speaks as the Master Teacher

Job 38:1--41:34

Teach the Text

Daniel J. Estes

... novel, the great whale of the title is often referred to as Leviathan, an allusion to the powerful animal in Job 41. The following description shows some of that power: As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the three crews. . . . But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were plain as the ship’s three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious speed, almost in an ...

3. Grab Hold of Something That Holds!

Illustration

Bill Bouknight

In Herman Melville's classic novel, ‘Moby Dick,’ there is a poignant moment when the captain tightens a vice on his own hand. With a pain filled expression on his face he exclaims, ‘A man has to feel something that holds in this slippery world.’ We live in a changing, transient world. Nations like ancient Rome and ...

4. A Book Which Reads Us

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... for the history it contains and for its insights into ancient ways. Don't worry about whatever it is supposed to mean to religious faith ... Read it like any other book. The trouble is it is not like any other book. To read the Bible as literature is like reading Moby Dick as a whaling manual. The Bible is not just another noble chapter in our literary history. As no other book does, it tells us who we are and whose we are. It is not so much a book which we read, as a book which reads us. To read ...

5. Dare To Dream

Joel 2:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... a positive faith in the goodness of God. Such faith can work miracles. Many of us are fans of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. Zig is one of the most noted positive thinkers in our country. He says that he is the kind of optimist who would go after Moby Dick in a rowboat, and take a bottle of tartar sauce with him. If there are any people in the world who should be positive thinking, miracle-making, dream-inspired people, it is the followers of Jesus Christ. Not through our strength, but by the power of the ...

6. Jesus Came Preaching

Mark 1:14-15

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

... the way things are, it offers a doxology to God, and creates the church and sends it into the world. Whew! That is some responsibility to place on the shoulders of preaching! But they are able to bear it. And have done so. Herman Melville in his classic Moby Dick gave what is perhaps the highest estimate of preaching ever written.He said: “The pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world.... Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out,....and the ...

7. The Lord's Prayer: A Surplus of Meaning

Matthew 6:5-15

Sermon

Eric Ritz

... ." Unlike the Game Warden, almost everyone here today knows The Lord''s Prayer. It has been an important part of your religious training and faith journey. Our worship service is incomplete without its affirming presence each Sunday. In Herman Melville''s marvelous masterpiece, MOBY DICK, there is a moving moment when the Captain tightens a vice on his hand. With a pain-filled expression on his face he exclaims, "A man has to feel something that holds in this slippery world." That is exactly what The Lord ...

8. A Man on the Run

Jonah 1:1-4

Sermon

James Merritt

... days?" His little boy said, "Well, if you're going to bring God into it, that's different." Well, I do want to bring God into it! Let me tell you something. Not only do I believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish. If God told me to swallow Moby Dick, I would not argue, I would get out the tartar sauce! What happened was Jonah got a whale house for a jailhouse, spent three nights on a foam blubber mattress, and then was spit out on dry land. Now, quite frankly, I've called this fish a whale, but ...

9. When God Speaks You Better Listen

Jonah 1:1-17

Sermon

James Merritt

... not an ordinary fish. Verse 17 says, "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah." This was a God-prepared fish. May I just go a step further. I not only believe that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, but if God told me to swallow Moby Dick, I wouldn't argue, I would get out the tartar sauce! What happened was simply this: Jonah got a whale house for a jailhouse; spent three nights on a foam blubber mattress; and then was spit out on dry land. We don't know what kind of fish it ...

10. Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Hebrews 11:1-40

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... the most popular among students, and despised by teachers, was “Cliff Notes.” Anyone remember those? Instead of reading some enormous literary masterpiece, you could buy an oh-so-slender Cliff Notes version. So instead of actually reading such heavy-weight tomes as Moby Dick, Oliver Twist, War and Peace, or Lord of the Flies (naming that classic is making my confession), a quick perusal of a twenty-page Cliff Notes compression gave you the plot, characters, themes and influences. Now you could at least ...

11. Troubled Waters

Genesis 9:8-17

Sermon

Ken Lentz

... die. Early the first morning, the boat weighed anchor off an island with a lighthouse. The lighthouse crew sent a longboat for those who wanted to step on dry land. The pastor, Betty, and some others jumped in. The waves leaped from the pages of Moby Dick. The pastor considered a long life at the lighthouse. Betty was getting worse. She and the pastor returned to the ketch and convinced the captain to set sail for a clinic. Betty was encouraged to eat; she needed strength for the journey to the physician ...

12. With a Vengeance

Illustration

... mighty prizes. In 1819, more than a dozen ships were launched from Nantucket, all headed for distant Pacific hunting grounds. One, the three-masted Essex, was to suffer a calamity so dramatic that its fate inspired a classic American novel--Herman Melville's Moby Dick. For months the ship survived the hazards of rounding Cape Horn and taking its prey. But one day a mammoth sperm whale rammed the Essex head-on. Then the leviathan passed under the vessel, turned, and attacked again. The whale hit, as first ...

13. A Cry in the Dark

Luke 21:25-36

Sermon

Wayne Brouwer

... time — as a parent might restrain a helping hand so that a child can grow through the struggles of development — can finally bring all things into his larger plans for peace, joy, and harmony. There is a powerful scene in Herman Melville's great epic, Moby Dick, where Captain Ahab stands peg-legged on the deck of the Pequod during a violent storm (ch. 119). His obsession with the white whale has carried the craft and crew to exotic and frightening locales, and now it seems as if divine providence might ...

14. Rend Your Heart

Joel 2:12-17

Understanding Series

Elizabeth Achtemeier

... did not know the difference between the things of God and the things of a secular world. So too in our time the clergy and especially the pulpit, entrusted with the word of God, must make that distinction and point the way. As Hermann Melville wrote in Moby Dick, “The world’s a ship on its passage out . . . and the pulpit is its prow.” Where the preacher leads, the church will follow, toward either the holy or the common. In the name of the Lord, Joel therefore commands the priests to blow the trumpet ...

15. What Gets Into Us?

John 18:1--19:42

Sermon

King Duncan

... power, or recognition, or knowledge or a host of other things, but I have never known anyone who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. Even the best of us have a part of our life that is in rebellion. You may be familiar with Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick. It is the tale of Captain Ahab, who had a feud going with a great white whale. The captain had already lost his leg in an encounter with the great white whale and had become a brooding, unhappy, sullen, and terribly pessimistic man. Most of the ...

I'm such an optimist I'd go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.

Zig Ziglar

17. Feasting on Leviathan

Job 38:1--41:34

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... judgement. Whoa! What on earth could this mean? For this, let’s take a momentary journey back in time to see what some of our most famous authors’ imaginations have made of this “beast.” Some of you may be familiar with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, in which the author equates his great, white whale with Leviathan. The undefeatable whale however kills anyone who tries to defeat it. Likewise, in scripture, only God can defeat God’s own creation, and only God can raise up humanity from its bestial ...

18. Imagination

Luke 1:39-45, 46-55

Sermon

Will Willimon

... ought to be in the world. We cannot live without dozens of mental images of things not present to the senses. Daily, black marks on a page move me to deep emotion. Just words. Just images. But such images make the world. When I first read Moby Dick I got vaguely, but nevertheless really, seasick. Imagination is reality. So Walter Brueggemann says that scripture "funds the imagination." Think of Sunday that way. Church is where we gather to listen to the Bible, the "book of imagination" so that we might more ...

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