encrusted words

Tag: sermon

  • Nineveh’s revival – Pentecost comes early #JonahWasWrong

    Sermon from today – once again I have followed Phillip Cary’s interpretation in a variety of ways. ______________________   “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Nineveh is a large city – a three-day walk to get across it. Jonah walks a full day into the city and…

  • Deborah – A Mother in Israel

    The Canaanites have more advanced weapons technology than do the Israelites. The Canaanites have iron chariots. Not chariots made completely of iron – but wooden chariots held together with iron strapping. And even if the book of Judges exaggerates the number of chariots King Jabin has, it has many more such iron chariots than the…

  • Finding God in our second chances #sermon #jonah

    There aren’t too many people who know exactly what Jonah experienced in the guts of that fish. And there aren’t too many people who can appreciate what it feels like to be spewed out of a fish onto the dry land. In a metaphorical sense, in a figurative sense, many of us can perhaps understand…

  • Praying from the belly of a fish. #sermon #exile

    How do you pray from the belly of a fish? At one level it’s a pretty basic biological question – and a basic biological problem. In the belly of a fish, there isn’t any air. In the belly of a fish, you’re wedged in tight, unable to breath. In the belly of a fish, you…

  • fear and faith appearance (Jonah Series 2/8)

    The boat is heaving on the waves – at one moment riding high on the crest of a wave – and the next moment plunging downward into a great trough. Water is coming across the bow and into the boat. Everyone on board is soaked and exhausted. Everyone is afraid. And then, all of a…

  • Jonah is on his way down – A Sermon (1/8) #God’sStrongLove

    My sermon from this morning – in which I in many ways follow the brilliant Brazos theological commentary on the book, by Phillip Cary. ______________________ He is sound asleep in the boat. He sleeps so peacefully and confidently that when the storm begins to rage, and the boat begins to rise and fall heavily, he…

  • who is thomas? it’s complicated #sermon #identity

    Thomas is at the centre of things this morning. His name is there in the text – plainly in black and white. But who is this Thomas? Who is this one whose name appears so starkly in the text? Perhaps he is not so clearly defined as we might like him to be. Even if…

  • down by the riverside: the water flows endlessly

    My sermon from today. In this I follow Tremper Longman’s interpretation of the ‘framing’ of the text by a second voice – his interpretation of the ‘conversation’ between Koheleth and this second voice. _____________________ Last week we began with the tree – and we are beginning there again this morning. We know that trees are…

  • down by the riverside: a tree is planted by the stream

    At the heart of Psalm 1 is a beautiful image – an image that I suspect will capture our imaginations this morning. In Psalm 1 we have this image of a tree that is planted by the water – in fact the Hebrew word means transplanted. We have an image here of a tree that…

  • down by the riverside – the river as a boundary

    In so many places around the earth, rivers are also boundaries. Rivers, of course, are natural geographic formations that are often difficult for people to cross or to get around. And so in the history of peoples and communities and nations, rivers have inevitably become boundaries that define those peoples and relations between them.  So…