Sermon Illustrations for Proper 10 | Ordinary Time 15 (2014)
Illustration
Object:
Genesis 25:19-34
In April 4, 1991 the Coptic Orthodox Church in Mayiet Bara, a Muslim country, received a permit to repair the church's toilet. This permit became the symbol of a long-standing complaint that even the simple repair of a lavatory in a Christian house of worship cannot proceed without the written consent of the Islamic Minister of Interior.
Application: The enmity between Esau and Jacob continues even to this day.
Ron L.
Genesis 25:19-34
God wants us to prosper. So say the prosperity gospel preachers (Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now). In selling his birthright Esau sought prosperity. John Calvin claimed that such an action on his part demonstrates that the elder twin was "addicted to gluttony..." (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. I/2, p. 45). John Wesley says about this what Esau did: "But being of a spiritual nature, his undervaluing it [his birthright] was the greatest profaneness imaginable. It is egregious folly to part with our interest in God and Christ and heaven for the riches, honors, and pleasures of this world" (Commentary on the Bible, p. 46).
The lesson makes clear that all this striving for earthly prosperity is contrary to the word of God. This is why Esau, who sought such prosperity, lost the privilege of what he deserved according to the ways of the world, the birthright. This account demonstrates how it is God's style to work in ways that confound the world. Martin Luther loved to speak of God in this way -- in terms of his hiddenness. God does just the opposite of what the world expects, contradicts the ways of the world (by which standard Esau as the oldest brother should have been ancestor of the Jews and of Jesus). Explaining why this is good for us, the Reformer wrote: "Reason follows only the things that are visible. But in this instance it must be killed, in order that the word and faith may have room" (Luther's Works, Vol. 4, p. 360).
In the same spirit famed modern Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself... by this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely in the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God and the world -- watching with Christ in Gethsemane.
(A Testament to Freedom, p. 535)
Appreciating God's hidden ways, recognizing how God works against the ways of the world, helps us depend more on God alone.
Mark E.
Romans 8:1-11
We have only two choices in life: be an egotistical sinner thinking only of ourselves -- even if we try to obey the word of the law literally, or be guided by God's Spirit which sets us free from our sinful selves. We find ourselves vacillating back and forth between the two. One day we want to be in charge. We are too proud to get something for what seems like nothing. We don't want to be guided by an outside force like the Spirit. We may want to be independent. But that kind of "freedom" leads to death.
All through the Old Testament people were taught to live by the law. Now and then a prophet like Micah adds an item that says: "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God." Yes the Lord does have some rules he would like us to follow, but do it for the right reason.
When a wife or husband or children do exactly what their mate or parent wants them to do "legally." No matter how exactly they try to obey every word they have been given, it still means nothing if it hasn't been done in love -- because they love their partner or parent. It can mean nothing if not done in the right spirit.
God knows that if we are left to ourselves, our sinful nature will drive us. It can sound so righteous (self-righteous) and like a true American it can make us content with our own goals. Almost everyone would agree with that feeling. It takes a humble person to turn himself completely over to our Lord's Spirit and be ruled by that Spirit.
Our goal must be first to please God! His Spirit must be working in us if we belong to Christ. We have to remember that the alternative is death -- eternal death.
It is not easy to reject sin. Sin has us in its power all our lives. We go back and forth between law and gospel. We need to be constantly calling on the Spirit of God in us to reject anything but Christ's Spirit. Our pastor and fellow members can help also.
Bob O.
Romans 8:1-11
The Holy Spirit gives us life and peace according to Paul in this text. The Spirit reveals truth, actively involved in the salvation of humankind, and convicts people of sin, helping them to live as victorious Christians. Samuel Chadwick relates that for the church the Holy Spirit "is the source and supply of wisdom and power. The church is the Body of Christ, indwelt and controlled by the Spirit. He directs, energizes, and controls."
As Tim Downs noted, watches, cars, and Christians can all look bright and shiny. But he observed that watches don't tick, cars don't go, and Christians don't make a difference without insides, and for the Christian... that is the Holy Spirit.
Who has control of your life?
Derl K.
Romans 8:1-11
"If God is all powerful, can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?"
It's a classic stumper, a question designed to show the triumph of reason over faith. This question and a host of others like it aim to expose those who put their trust in God as naïve, irrational, and childish. What questions like this really do, however, is show how impossible it is for our reason to even imagine something that has no limits. Faith is indeed naïve and irrational and childish. It is also to only way we have of seeing God.
Scott B.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
The real point of this parable is that soil is passive, not what kind of soil it is. Plants and crops grow from soil, but dirt does nothing but receive the sun, rain, and animal enrichments. Jesus says that with reference to the Work of God we are nothing but soil.
This is not the American way. We think of ourselves as self-reliant. A 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that 62% of the public (as compared to less than 50% in most Western European nations) believe that success in life is determined by factors we can control. Another American (famed Colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards) took Jesus' side on this matter. He wrote:
There is an absolute and universal dependence of the redeemed on God. The nature and contrivance of our redemption is such, that the redeemed are in every thing directly, immediately, and entirely dependent on God. They are dependent on him for all and are dependent on him every way.
(Works, Vol. 2, p. 3)
As Martin Luther once put it regarding our blessings: "So we receive our blessings not from them [human beings or by our actions], but from God through them. Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings" (The Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p. 389).
Mark. E.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Earnest Presswood was born in 1908 and grew up on the prairies of Canada. This message of the resurrection and the empty tomb first took hold of Earnest in a Sunday school class when he was eleven years old. Some years later, Earnest attended a revival and as the preacher who was a traveling evangelist from England, proclaimed this message about Jesus, Earnest committed himself to serve the Lord and soon after, he moved to New York and enrolled in a training center for missionaries. In 1930, at the age of 22, he boarded a ship for the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Soon after he arrived, Earnest began traveling the island and sharing this same message of the evangelist who called him into missionary work. The word spread across the island about a young white man whose message could turn evil men into good men, drunken men into sober ones and violent men into men of God. The islanders even gave Earnest a new name: they called him "Tuan Change," because his message changed lives. Young Ernie crisscrossed the island of Borneo (which is the third-largest island in the world) and he took his message from village to village. His feet became ulcerated from leech bites, but his passion could not be quenched because his path was illuminated by the light of the message he delivered. Describing one of his tours, Earnest wrote, "What a time I have had. Physically, it has been hard, but the results have been glorious. Around 600 were reached with the message."
Application: We are to share the message of the resurrection, trusting in our faith that the message will fall on fertile ground.
Ron L.
In April 4, 1991 the Coptic Orthodox Church in Mayiet Bara, a Muslim country, received a permit to repair the church's toilet. This permit became the symbol of a long-standing complaint that even the simple repair of a lavatory in a Christian house of worship cannot proceed without the written consent of the Islamic Minister of Interior.
Application: The enmity between Esau and Jacob continues even to this day.
Ron L.
Genesis 25:19-34
God wants us to prosper. So say the prosperity gospel preachers (Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now). In selling his birthright Esau sought prosperity. John Calvin claimed that such an action on his part demonstrates that the elder twin was "addicted to gluttony..." (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. I/2, p. 45). John Wesley says about this what Esau did: "But being of a spiritual nature, his undervaluing it [his birthright] was the greatest profaneness imaginable. It is egregious folly to part with our interest in God and Christ and heaven for the riches, honors, and pleasures of this world" (Commentary on the Bible, p. 46).
The lesson makes clear that all this striving for earthly prosperity is contrary to the word of God. This is why Esau, who sought such prosperity, lost the privilege of what he deserved according to the ways of the world, the birthright. This account demonstrates how it is God's style to work in ways that confound the world. Martin Luther loved to speak of God in this way -- in terms of his hiddenness. God does just the opposite of what the world expects, contradicts the ways of the world (by which standard Esau as the oldest brother should have been ancestor of the Jews and of Jesus). Explaining why this is good for us, the Reformer wrote: "Reason follows only the things that are visible. But in this instance it must be killed, in order that the word and faith may have room" (Luther's Works, Vol. 4, p. 360).
In the same spirit famed modern Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:
One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself... by this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely in the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God and the world -- watching with Christ in Gethsemane.
(A Testament to Freedom, p. 535)
Appreciating God's hidden ways, recognizing how God works against the ways of the world, helps us depend more on God alone.
Mark E.
Romans 8:1-11
We have only two choices in life: be an egotistical sinner thinking only of ourselves -- even if we try to obey the word of the law literally, or be guided by God's Spirit which sets us free from our sinful selves. We find ourselves vacillating back and forth between the two. One day we want to be in charge. We are too proud to get something for what seems like nothing. We don't want to be guided by an outside force like the Spirit. We may want to be independent. But that kind of "freedom" leads to death.
All through the Old Testament people were taught to live by the law. Now and then a prophet like Micah adds an item that says: "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God." Yes the Lord does have some rules he would like us to follow, but do it for the right reason.
When a wife or husband or children do exactly what their mate or parent wants them to do "legally." No matter how exactly they try to obey every word they have been given, it still means nothing if it hasn't been done in love -- because they love their partner or parent. It can mean nothing if not done in the right spirit.
God knows that if we are left to ourselves, our sinful nature will drive us. It can sound so righteous (self-righteous) and like a true American it can make us content with our own goals. Almost everyone would agree with that feeling. It takes a humble person to turn himself completely over to our Lord's Spirit and be ruled by that Spirit.
Our goal must be first to please God! His Spirit must be working in us if we belong to Christ. We have to remember that the alternative is death -- eternal death.
It is not easy to reject sin. Sin has us in its power all our lives. We go back and forth between law and gospel. We need to be constantly calling on the Spirit of God in us to reject anything but Christ's Spirit. Our pastor and fellow members can help also.
Bob O.
Romans 8:1-11
The Holy Spirit gives us life and peace according to Paul in this text. The Spirit reveals truth, actively involved in the salvation of humankind, and convicts people of sin, helping them to live as victorious Christians. Samuel Chadwick relates that for the church the Holy Spirit "is the source and supply of wisdom and power. The church is the Body of Christ, indwelt and controlled by the Spirit. He directs, energizes, and controls."
As Tim Downs noted, watches, cars, and Christians can all look bright and shiny. But he observed that watches don't tick, cars don't go, and Christians don't make a difference without insides, and for the Christian... that is the Holy Spirit.
Who has control of your life?
Derl K.
Romans 8:1-11
"If God is all powerful, can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?"
It's a classic stumper, a question designed to show the triumph of reason over faith. This question and a host of others like it aim to expose those who put their trust in God as naïve, irrational, and childish. What questions like this really do, however, is show how impossible it is for our reason to even imagine something that has no limits. Faith is indeed naïve and irrational and childish. It is also to only way we have of seeing God.
Scott B.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
The real point of this parable is that soil is passive, not what kind of soil it is. Plants and crops grow from soil, but dirt does nothing but receive the sun, rain, and animal enrichments. Jesus says that with reference to the Work of God we are nothing but soil.
This is not the American way. We think of ourselves as self-reliant. A 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that 62% of the public (as compared to less than 50% in most Western European nations) believe that success in life is determined by factors we can control. Another American (famed Colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards) took Jesus' side on this matter. He wrote:
There is an absolute and universal dependence of the redeemed on God. The nature and contrivance of our redemption is such, that the redeemed are in every thing directly, immediately, and entirely dependent on God. They are dependent on him for all and are dependent on him every way.
(Works, Vol. 2, p. 3)
As Martin Luther once put it regarding our blessings: "So we receive our blessings not from them [human beings or by our actions], but from God through them. Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings" (The Book of Concord [2000 ed.], p. 389).
Mark. E.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Earnest Presswood was born in 1908 and grew up on the prairies of Canada. This message of the resurrection and the empty tomb first took hold of Earnest in a Sunday school class when he was eleven years old. Some years later, Earnest attended a revival and as the preacher who was a traveling evangelist from England, proclaimed this message about Jesus, Earnest committed himself to serve the Lord and soon after, he moved to New York and enrolled in a training center for missionaries. In 1930, at the age of 22, he boarded a ship for the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Soon after he arrived, Earnest began traveling the island and sharing this same message of the evangelist who called him into missionary work. The word spread across the island about a young white man whose message could turn evil men into good men, drunken men into sober ones and violent men into men of God. The islanders even gave Earnest a new name: they called him "Tuan Change," because his message changed lives. Young Ernie crisscrossed the island of Borneo (which is the third-largest island in the world) and he took his message from village to village. His feet became ulcerated from leech bites, but his passion could not be quenched because his path was illuminated by the light of the message he delivered. Describing one of his tours, Earnest wrote, "What a time I have had. Physically, it has been hard, but the results have been glorious. Around 600 were reached with the message."
Application: We are to share the message of the resurrection, trusting in our faith that the message will fall on fertile ground.
Ron L.
