Sermon Illustrations for Reformation Day (2019)
Illustration
Psalm 46
This psalm was the basis for Martin Luther’s famed hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” and so its phrases may provide some helpful illustrations. For Luther in this hymn and in other writings, the psalm was all about the Lord being our strength (Luther’s Works, Vol.11, p.364). Famed Puritan Jonathan Edwards helps us understand why God is our strength. In one sermon he claimed:
As He is God, He is so great, that He is infinitely above all comprehension... Our understandings are infinitely less than those of babes, in comparison with the Wisdom of God. (Works, Vol.2, p.108)
The psalm is all about God’s greatness, how he uses what is bad in the world to make good, how he occupies all that exists. Waters in the sea are said to be a threat to people, the psalm states (vv.2-3). Famed modern theologian Karl Barth provides a thoughtful insight on this point. He claims that water has a part in all the force of the human world hostile to us; it gives life to all that opposes God. But God subdues the water, even puts it to good use in the river that is said to make the City of God glad (v.5; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol.III/1, pp.148-149).
Then the psalm refers to this great and strong God being in the midst of us (v.5), presumably as he is found in the waters which he rules. Martin Luther elaborates on this point in a way most compatible with modern String Theory. He wrote:
He [God] is supernatural, inscrutable being Who exists at the same time in every little seed whole and entire and yet also in all above and outside created things. (Luther’s Works, Vol.37, p.228)
In order for String Theory to work it must posit the existence of extra, invisible dimensions in addition to height, width, depth, and time. Luther’s comments suggest that God resides in these invisible dimensions. He truly is in the midst of everything! Point to some mundane object in the church or that parishioners use daily, and remind them God is present in them, holding the components of these objects together.
Augustine, the real forerunner of the Reformation, helps us tie these insights to the heart of the Reformation — the recognition that we need have no fear, for we are saved by grace and that all good is God’s Work. He instructs us Christians “in tranquility of heart, to acknowledge God the Author of all their gifts.” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol.1/8, p.160). This psalm is indeed about a God “who breaks the cruel oppressor’s road and wins salvation glorious.”
Mark E.
* * *
Psalm 46
How good it is to claim God as our refuge, to know God as our help in trouble. This psalm exemplifies hope for a future unlike the present. This future is without war and pain. “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” Oh, how we long for this peace, for this hope! The power in this psalm is that God still has a role in our lives and in the world. We may not see it. We may not feel it. But, we are called to know it as surely as we know god’s love for us. No matter what life brings, no matter what the challenges are, God is here, present, with us. May we know it with every breath we take.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Psalm 46
It sounds like if we have the Lord nothing can bother us. The list of earthly disasters is frightening. There are plenty of those we see or read about every day. Some are warned of impending earthquakes, avalanches, floods, fires, or anything you can think of that we are warned of even in our own state or city.
One of the reasons we did not move to Florida is because of the hurricanes that hit so often. We lived in California, but not in the area that had earthquakes. Some places are always having violence, and you never know when they are coming and which country. But even if we try to live in a place with few disasters there are a problems wherever you go. Yes, it seems like our country is always in a war somewhere on earth.
We can thank God if we have fewer problems of a serious nature where we live, but we should be ready to help those who are not so lucky. We are God’s agent to help those in trouble.
Some are facing family problems with marriage breakups or children getting into trouble in school or losing a job for a while, as those who suffer the government shut downs.
Whatever our problem is, we have a church to support us.
Bob O.
* * *
Romans 3:19-28
Lauren Daigle’s song “Rescue” has a powerful message. In the song, Daigle is speaking from God’s perspective and says:
I hear the whisper underneath your breath
I hear you whisper you have nothing left
I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you
What an amazing picture of God speaking to the person who is on the edge of giving up and saying, “You’re not on your own. You’re not forgotten. You’re not abandoned.”
Because we have all sinned, we need rescue. That’s what this text is all about. Jesus Christ is our rescuer. By his sacrifice, we’ve been set free, delivered or justified. To be hopelessly lost in the chains of sin is humanity’s plight. Somerset Maugham once said, “If I wrote down every thought I have ever thought and every deed I have ever done, men would call me a monster of depravity.” God, though, could not stand for us to be lost. He sent his son to rescue, redeem and restore. Verse 25 notes of Christ Jesus, “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement.” Is there any better news than that?
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 3:19-28
In this passage, foundational for the formation of the Reformation, Paul speaks of God “passing over sins that happened before, during the time of God’s patient tolerance...(Romans 3:25b-26a CEB).”
Sounds like the grace of God was active even before the sacrifice of Jesus took away our sins. God finds a way. We ought to respond and receive God’s mercy.
Frank R.
* * *
John 8:31-36
Sin entraps us. Once we are engaged in sin, we seem to get pulled further and further into sinning. It’s a slippery slope. I’ll just tell this one lie, we tell ourselves. But that one leads to one more and one more and one more until we are mired in untruths. I think it was Mark Twain who said, “If you don’t have a good memory, tell the truth.” It’s pretty good advice. Jesus reminds us that sin enslaves us, entraps us. We are not free when we are in sin. Jesus came to assure we would be forgiven, be able to live in grace. Is that the choice we make?
Bonnie B.
* * *
John 8:31-36
The text is about our slavery to sin and freedom in Christ. About our slavery to sin Martin Luther writes:
The world is like a drunken peasant.If you lift him into the saddle on one side, he will fall off on the other side. One can’t help him no matter how one tries. (Luther’s Works, Vol.54, p.111)
The freedom Christ has provided is powerfully described by a 20th-century Lutheran Rudolf Bultmann:
Faith includes free and complete openness to the future... [It is] freedom from the past, because it is faith in the forgiveness of sins; it is freedom from the enslaving chains of the past. It is freedom ourselves as the old selves, and for ourselves as the new selves. (Jesus Christ and Mythology, pp.77-78)
Famed Christian martyr put to death by Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer elaborated on the social implications of this Reformation word of freedom:
The person who loves, because he is freed through the truth of God is the most revolutionary person on earth. He is the one who upsets all values; he is explosive in human society. Such a one is the most dangerous person. For he has recognized that people are untruthful in the extreme, and he is ready at any time, and just for the sake of love, to permit the truth to fall on them. (A Testament of Hope, p.217)
Mark E.
* * *
John 8:31-36
We need to hold to Jesus’ teaching if we want to be his disciple. We need to learn Jesus teaching if we want to know the truth. It seems that our main job as a church is to study Jesus’ teachings.
I would rather be a disciple than an American citizen. There could be nothing greater.
We only find truth in Jesus.
Bob O.
This psalm was the basis for Martin Luther’s famed hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” and so its phrases may provide some helpful illustrations. For Luther in this hymn and in other writings, the psalm was all about the Lord being our strength (Luther’s Works, Vol.11, p.364). Famed Puritan Jonathan Edwards helps us understand why God is our strength. In one sermon he claimed:
As He is God, He is so great, that He is infinitely above all comprehension... Our understandings are infinitely less than those of babes, in comparison with the Wisdom of God. (Works, Vol.2, p.108)
The psalm is all about God’s greatness, how he uses what is bad in the world to make good, how he occupies all that exists. Waters in the sea are said to be a threat to people, the psalm states (vv.2-3). Famed modern theologian Karl Barth provides a thoughtful insight on this point. He claims that water has a part in all the force of the human world hostile to us; it gives life to all that opposes God. But God subdues the water, even puts it to good use in the river that is said to make the City of God glad (v.5; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol.III/1, pp.148-149).
Then the psalm refers to this great and strong God being in the midst of us (v.5), presumably as he is found in the waters which he rules. Martin Luther elaborates on this point in a way most compatible with modern String Theory. He wrote:
He [God] is supernatural, inscrutable being Who exists at the same time in every little seed whole and entire and yet also in all above and outside created things. (Luther’s Works, Vol.37, p.228)
In order for String Theory to work it must posit the existence of extra, invisible dimensions in addition to height, width, depth, and time. Luther’s comments suggest that God resides in these invisible dimensions. He truly is in the midst of everything! Point to some mundane object in the church or that parishioners use daily, and remind them God is present in them, holding the components of these objects together.
Augustine, the real forerunner of the Reformation, helps us tie these insights to the heart of the Reformation — the recognition that we need have no fear, for we are saved by grace and that all good is God’s Work. He instructs us Christians “in tranquility of heart, to acknowledge God the Author of all their gifts.” (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol.1/8, p.160). This psalm is indeed about a God “who breaks the cruel oppressor’s road and wins salvation glorious.”
Mark E.
* * *
Psalm 46
How good it is to claim God as our refuge, to know God as our help in trouble. This psalm exemplifies hope for a future unlike the present. This future is without war and pain. “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” Oh, how we long for this peace, for this hope! The power in this psalm is that God still has a role in our lives and in the world. We may not see it. We may not feel it. But, we are called to know it as surely as we know god’s love for us. No matter what life brings, no matter what the challenges are, God is here, present, with us. May we know it with every breath we take.
Bonnie B.
* * *
Psalm 46
It sounds like if we have the Lord nothing can bother us. The list of earthly disasters is frightening. There are plenty of those we see or read about every day. Some are warned of impending earthquakes, avalanches, floods, fires, or anything you can think of that we are warned of even in our own state or city.
One of the reasons we did not move to Florida is because of the hurricanes that hit so often. We lived in California, but not in the area that had earthquakes. Some places are always having violence, and you never know when they are coming and which country. But even if we try to live in a place with few disasters there are a problems wherever you go. Yes, it seems like our country is always in a war somewhere on earth.
We can thank God if we have fewer problems of a serious nature where we live, but we should be ready to help those who are not so lucky. We are God’s agent to help those in trouble.
Some are facing family problems with marriage breakups or children getting into trouble in school or losing a job for a while, as those who suffer the government shut downs.
Whatever our problem is, we have a church to support us.
Bob O.
* * *
Romans 3:19-28
Lauren Daigle’s song “Rescue” has a powerful message. In the song, Daigle is speaking from God’s perspective and says:
I hear the whisper underneath your breath
I hear you whisper you have nothing left
I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you
What an amazing picture of God speaking to the person who is on the edge of giving up and saying, “You’re not on your own. You’re not forgotten. You’re not abandoned.”
Because we have all sinned, we need rescue. That’s what this text is all about. Jesus Christ is our rescuer. By his sacrifice, we’ve been set free, delivered or justified. To be hopelessly lost in the chains of sin is humanity’s plight. Somerset Maugham once said, “If I wrote down every thought I have ever thought and every deed I have ever done, men would call me a monster of depravity.” God, though, could not stand for us to be lost. He sent his son to rescue, redeem and restore. Verse 25 notes of Christ Jesus, “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement.” Is there any better news than that?
Bill T.
* * *
Romans 3:19-28
In this passage, foundational for the formation of the Reformation, Paul speaks of God “passing over sins that happened before, during the time of God’s patient tolerance...(Romans 3:25b-26a CEB).”
Sounds like the grace of God was active even before the sacrifice of Jesus took away our sins. God finds a way. We ought to respond and receive God’s mercy.
Frank R.
* * *
John 8:31-36
Sin entraps us. Once we are engaged in sin, we seem to get pulled further and further into sinning. It’s a slippery slope. I’ll just tell this one lie, we tell ourselves. But that one leads to one more and one more and one more until we are mired in untruths. I think it was Mark Twain who said, “If you don’t have a good memory, tell the truth.” It’s pretty good advice. Jesus reminds us that sin enslaves us, entraps us. We are not free when we are in sin. Jesus came to assure we would be forgiven, be able to live in grace. Is that the choice we make?
Bonnie B.
* * *
John 8:31-36
The text is about our slavery to sin and freedom in Christ. About our slavery to sin Martin Luther writes:
The world is like a drunken peasant.If you lift him into the saddle on one side, he will fall off on the other side. One can’t help him no matter how one tries. (Luther’s Works, Vol.54, p.111)
The freedom Christ has provided is powerfully described by a 20th-century Lutheran Rudolf Bultmann:
Faith includes free and complete openness to the future... [It is] freedom from the past, because it is faith in the forgiveness of sins; it is freedom from the enslaving chains of the past. It is freedom ourselves as the old selves, and for ourselves as the new selves. (Jesus Christ and Mythology, pp.77-78)
Famed Christian martyr put to death by Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer elaborated on the social implications of this Reformation word of freedom:
The person who loves, because he is freed through the truth of God is the most revolutionary person on earth. He is the one who upsets all values; he is explosive in human society. Such a one is the most dangerous person. For he has recognized that people are untruthful in the extreme, and he is ready at any time, and just for the sake of love, to permit the truth to fall on them. (A Testament of Hope, p.217)
Mark E.
* * *
John 8:31-36
We need to hold to Jesus’ teaching if we want to be his disciple. We need to learn Jesus teaching if we want to know the truth. It seems that our main job as a church is to study Jesus’ teachings.
I would rather be a disciple than an American citizen. There could be nothing greater.
We only find truth in Jesus.
Bob O.
