Sermon Illustrations for Christmas 2 (2014)
Illustration
Object:
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Redemption stimulates joy in the heart. During Jeremiah's time the people needed some joy in their lives. God, speaking through Jeremiah, says that when they come out of captivity he will lead them and their weeping will dry up. The scattered will have a shepherd and the weak will become strong, and they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord (Jeremiah 31:11-12).
Henry Beecher said that some people think that black is the color of heaven and that their faces should reflect midnight. He counters with the thought that the God who made the sun and the flowers never sent him to proclaim such a lie. He insisted that God's people will have true joy and will rejoice in the Lord. If we have been redeemed, there is much joy to pass along to the world!
Derl K.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
In 1848 Italy became a unified country. Previously Italy was composed of what were called Papal States; they had been under the control of the pope but were disbanded. This of course caused the Roman Catholic church to lose a significant amount of land and investments. In the reorganization of the Italian country, the pope was left with a tiny domain, a few square blocks around the papal palace in Rome known as the Vatican. Confined to this space, the Catholic hierarchy considered themselves prisoners.
Application: Jeremiah instructs that we are to be able to sing aloud when we are in the presence of the Lord. Under the present circumstances, the Vatican officials could still sing aloud, for though lacking the dominance of property, they did not lack for the dominance of God.
Ron L.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
The text is a proclamation of celebration by promising the return of the people of Israel from the captivity in Babylon. A new year is a chance for us to break with the oppressive patterns and behaviors in our past. Life is filled with a lot of dead ends, times when even good things turn bad. John Calvin once said it well: "For we know what our condition is in this world, for every hour, almost every moment, our joy is turned into sorrow and our laughter into tears" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. X/2, p. 84).
Life traps us. American novelist James Baldwin once wrote that "people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." And Tennessee Williams echoed similar feelings about how sad and meaningless modern American life is: "We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it."
And yet our lesson assures us of a fresh start, so that joy and rejoicing are on the horizon. Early church theologian Gregory Thaumaturgus saw the text as teaching that in the midst of despair and feeling trapped God will turn our afflictions into joy (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6, p. 62).
Love makes you happy, nineteenth-century French romantic writer George Sand once said. And so showered by God's love we can be happy with ourselves, no matter how much of a dead-end situation we may feel life is right now. Feeling loved changes your circumstances, makes you more content. American author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar had it right: "Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy with what you have." God's love makes us happy with the lives we have and helps us see that they may not be as much a bunch of dead ends that we sometimes think they are.
Mark E.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Some preachers seem to preach more hell and damnation in order to scare people back to the Lord. Imagine a company manager telling some employees how rigid and strict the boss is and how they will lose their jobs if they don't fulfill all his orders to them. How would that motivate them? The best motivation is love! We should obey the Lord because we love him. Those passages that tell us to "fear and love" our Lord have often puzzled confirmands. We need to explain that fear means we fear hurting his feelings. When I broke a plate, I was not afraid of being beaten or being thrown out of the house. My fear was manifest when I saw the tears in my mother's eyes for the loss of a precious possession. We fear hurting God because of all he has done for us!
How can we not praise God for all the wonderful things he has planned for us? He chose us to be his children and makes us blameless because of Christ's sacrifice for us. That was his purpose in sending Christ! Christ's coming had predestined us to be his children! We are saved because of what Jesus has done!
God knew we would sin! He loved us enough to forgive our sin, when we trust him and his gift of Jesus. He knew which would survive and overcome all evil. It took his precious blood to erase that sin in us and make us his children. It all comes down to what he has done for us. It is not a matter of what we may do for him.
Everything that God does is successful. We can count on him. We can't earn anything. All we can do is show love and faith in the one who loves us. It is both hard and easy to love and trust in Jesus. Something is fighting to take control and leave all control in our hands. We are proud!
It sounds like it comes down to this: Do we believe? If so, then we are marked with a seal, which is the promise of his Spirit! We are all predestined to salvation. Our only option to change that reality is to reject his adoption. God's only "mistake" was giving us free will.
When we were born or adopted, we became the children of our parents. Our only option to change that reality is to reject that parenthood when we grow up. The life preserver is in the water. We can either grab it and hang on or give up and drown.
Bob O.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
George Eastman invented the Kodak camera in the 1890s. It instantly became a popular item among families around the country. It also changed the nature of art. With the realism of a photograph, people now expected works of art to display that same kind of photographic realism. The camera, coupled with the wide access to museum exhibits, created a desire for art that had photographic accuracy, which was both representative and intelligible.
Application: Jesus is our photographic representation of God.
Ron L.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
University of Arizona psychologist Matthias Mehl conducted a 2009 survey indicating that the happiest people engage in twice as many substantive conversations as those less happy. French renaissance author Michel de Montaigne is right about the pleasures of conversation. He writes: "In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life."
Our lesson reminds us that God likes to talk, and his word is creative (for he made the world by speaking). You really get to know someone in conversation, especially with talkative friendly partners. Martin Luther claimed that God is someone you can really get to know from his word; it is who he is (Complete Sermons, Vol. 1/1, p. 179). Luther also talks about this God as very talkative, suggesting that the Trinity is itself an internal conversation. The Father is the speaker, the Son his word, and the Spirit the listener (Luther's Works, Vol. 24, pp. 364-365). When we hear God's word, engage it, and believe it, we become part of that conversation. Christian life is a lifelong conversation with God. What a nice way to think about life! This is a conversation that brings us to the very depths of his personality. And as John Calvin once noted, in his depths our divine conversation-partner is "an inexhaustible fountain of grace and truth" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 48). When you spend time in conversation with God, the topic keeps coming back again and again to love (that he has for us) and creativity (his work in making things new and better). The great Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards was right: Good conversations with God (interactions with his word) lead to intimacy with God (Works, Vol. 2, p. 148).
Mark E.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
According to Paul Harvey, a farmer heard an irregular thumping sound against his kitchen window during a storm. Sparrows kept hitting against the pane evidently attracted to the warmth inside. Harvey stated that the farmer was touched by the bird's struggle. He trudged to the barn in the snow and opened the doors and did what he could to help the birds come in from the cold. Every tactic he tried failed.
He withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows continue to struggle and freeze. It dawned on him if he could become a bird... one of them... just for a moment he wouldn't frighten them as he had done by going outside.
Harvey wrote, "He had grasped the whole principle of the incarnation. A man's becoming a bird is nothing compared to God's becoming a man." Oh, that the whole world could grasp the importance of it all! (Charles Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart, p. 294-293).
Derl K.
Redemption stimulates joy in the heart. During Jeremiah's time the people needed some joy in their lives. God, speaking through Jeremiah, says that when they come out of captivity he will lead them and their weeping will dry up. The scattered will have a shepherd and the weak will become strong, and they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord (Jeremiah 31:11-12).
Henry Beecher said that some people think that black is the color of heaven and that their faces should reflect midnight. He counters with the thought that the God who made the sun and the flowers never sent him to proclaim such a lie. He insisted that God's people will have true joy and will rejoice in the Lord. If we have been redeemed, there is much joy to pass along to the world!
Derl K.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
In 1848 Italy became a unified country. Previously Italy was composed of what were called Papal States; they had been under the control of the pope but were disbanded. This of course caused the Roman Catholic church to lose a significant amount of land and investments. In the reorganization of the Italian country, the pope was left with a tiny domain, a few square blocks around the papal palace in Rome known as the Vatican. Confined to this space, the Catholic hierarchy considered themselves prisoners.
Application: Jeremiah instructs that we are to be able to sing aloud when we are in the presence of the Lord. Under the present circumstances, the Vatican officials could still sing aloud, for though lacking the dominance of property, they did not lack for the dominance of God.
Ron L.
Jeremiah 31:7-14
The text is a proclamation of celebration by promising the return of the people of Israel from the captivity in Babylon. A new year is a chance for us to break with the oppressive patterns and behaviors in our past. Life is filled with a lot of dead ends, times when even good things turn bad. John Calvin once said it well: "For we know what our condition is in this world, for every hour, almost every moment, our joy is turned into sorrow and our laughter into tears" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. X/2, p. 84).
Life traps us. American novelist James Baldwin once wrote that "people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." And Tennessee Williams echoed similar feelings about how sad and meaningless modern American life is: "We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it."
And yet our lesson assures us of a fresh start, so that joy and rejoicing are on the horizon. Early church theologian Gregory Thaumaturgus saw the text as teaching that in the midst of despair and feeling trapped God will turn our afflictions into joy (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6, p. 62).
Love makes you happy, nineteenth-century French romantic writer George Sand once said. And so showered by God's love we can be happy with ourselves, no matter how much of a dead-end situation we may feel life is right now. Feeling loved changes your circumstances, makes you more content. American author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar had it right: "Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy with what you have." God's love makes us happy with the lives we have and helps us see that they may not be as much a bunch of dead ends that we sometimes think they are.
Mark E.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Some preachers seem to preach more hell and damnation in order to scare people back to the Lord. Imagine a company manager telling some employees how rigid and strict the boss is and how they will lose their jobs if they don't fulfill all his orders to them. How would that motivate them? The best motivation is love! We should obey the Lord because we love him. Those passages that tell us to "fear and love" our Lord have often puzzled confirmands. We need to explain that fear means we fear hurting his feelings. When I broke a plate, I was not afraid of being beaten or being thrown out of the house. My fear was manifest when I saw the tears in my mother's eyes for the loss of a precious possession. We fear hurting God because of all he has done for us!
How can we not praise God for all the wonderful things he has planned for us? He chose us to be his children and makes us blameless because of Christ's sacrifice for us. That was his purpose in sending Christ! Christ's coming had predestined us to be his children! We are saved because of what Jesus has done!
God knew we would sin! He loved us enough to forgive our sin, when we trust him and his gift of Jesus. He knew which would survive and overcome all evil. It took his precious blood to erase that sin in us and make us his children. It all comes down to what he has done for us. It is not a matter of what we may do for him.
Everything that God does is successful. We can count on him. We can't earn anything. All we can do is show love and faith in the one who loves us. It is both hard and easy to love and trust in Jesus. Something is fighting to take control and leave all control in our hands. We are proud!
It sounds like it comes down to this: Do we believe? If so, then we are marked with a seal, which is the promise of his Spirit! We are all predestined to salvation. Our only option to change that reality is to reject his adoption. God's only "mistake" was giving us free will.
When we were born or adopted, we became the children of our parents. Our only option to change that reality is to reject that parenthood when we grow up. The life preserver is in the water. We can either grab it and hang on or give up and drown.
Bob O.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
George Eastman invented the Kodak camera in the 1890s. It instantly became a popular item among families around the country. It also changed the nature of art. With the realism of a photograph, people now expected works of art to display that same kind of photographic realism. The camera, coupled with the wide access to museum exhibits, created a desire for art that had photographic accuracy, which was both representative and intelligible.
Application: Jesus is our photographic representation of God.
Ron L.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
University of Arizona psychologist Matthias Mehl conducted a 2009 survey indicating that the happiest people engage in twice as many substantive conversations as those less happy. French renaissance author Michel de Montaigne is right about the pleasures of conversation. He writes: "In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life."
Our lesson reminds us that God likes to talk, and his word is creative (for he made the world by speaking). You really get to know someone in conversation, especially with talkative friendly partners. Martin Luther claimed that God is someone you can really get to know from his word; it is who he is (Complete Sermons, Vol. 1/1, p. 179). Luther also talks about this God as very talkative, suggesting that the Trinity is itself an internal conversation. The Father is the speaker, the Son his word, and the Spirit the listener (Luther's Works, Vol. 24, pp. 364-365). When we hear God's word, engage it, and believe it, we become part of that conversation. Christian life is a lifelong conversation with God. What a nice way to think about life! This is a conversation that brings us to the very depths of his personality. And as John Calvin once noted, in his depths our divine conversation-partner is "an inexhaustible fountain of grace and truth" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XVII/2, p. 48). When you spend time in conversation with God, the topic keeps coming back again and again to love (that he has for us) and creativity (his work in making things new and better). The great Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards was right: Good conversations with God (interactions with his word) lead to intimacy with God (Works, Vol. 2, p. 148).
Mark E.
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
According to Paul Harvey, a farmer heard an irregular thumping sound against his kitchen window during a storm. Sparrows kept hitting against the pane evidently attracted to the warmth inside. Harvey stated that the farmer was touched by the bird's struggle. He trudged to the barn in the snow and opened the doors and did what he could to help the birds come in from the cold. Every tactic he tried failed.
He withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows continue to struggle and freeze. It dawned on him if he could become a bird... one of them... just for a moment he wouldn't frighten them as he had done by going outside.
Harvey wrote, "He had grasped the whole principle of the incarnation. A man's becoming a bird is nothing compared to God's becoming a man." Oh, that the whole world could grasp the importance of it all! (Charles Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart, p. 294-293).
Derl K.
