[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for August 9th

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Subject: Sermon Resources for August 9th




Sermon Resources for Proper 14:

 

    John 6:35, 41-51  -  Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, or Lord?
    Ephesians 4:25-5:2  -  Tinctures of Truth in the Tincture of Time

                                       by Leonard Sweet

 
John 6, the sermon titled “Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, or Lord"

Before
  we read the text for this morning I am going to ask you to do 
something a little different. I want you to listen to the reading not 
with a heart of faith but with a skeptical mind. If it helps, imagine 
that you do not know that Jesus is anything else but a teacher. You are 
a first century person who has just been introduced to him. [Read John 
6:35, 41-51]

Pretty incredible isn't it? For someone to make such claims. What if, 
later today, you were introduced to someone and that someone said, "Hi, 
I am the bread that has came down from heaven." You would look at your 
friend who just introduced you to this person and you would say, "I'm 
sorry, what did he just 
 say?" Anyone who seriously made such claims 
would easily be labeled a kook, a nut, certifiable.

 

C.S. Lewis, in his book "Mere Christianity," makes the following 
statement about Jesus: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of 
things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either 
be a lunatic--on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg--or 
he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this 
was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You 
can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him 
Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about 

 his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

 

Throughout the book Lewis argues for the truthfulness and importance of 
the Christian faith. But before we go any further, let me recommend 
this: If you have a friend who has doubts about the Christian faith, go 
get this book "Mere Christianity" and give it to them. If they are 
honest in their doubts it will overcome many of them. In the book you 
will find the following idea put forth: Jesus was either a liar, 
lunatic, legend, or Lord.

 

This scene from Jesus' life (John 6:41-52) demonstrates these four 
possibilities. Jesus is either...

 

1. A Liar

2. A Lunatic 0D

3. A Legend

4. Or Lord

 

The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by 
joining www.eSermons.com.
_________________________________

 

Second Sermon by Len Sweet

Ephesians 4, the sermon entitled “Tinctures of Truth in the Tincture of 
Time"

 

Our lectionary reading from Ephesians this morning offers a healing 
ointment to a church that is sick and in need of salve, a word from 
which we drive our word “salvation.”

 

This morning I have before me some salves I grew up with: a bottle of 
iodine, a bottle of merthiolate, a bottle of mercurochrome. [It will 
not be easy to f
 ind these except by asking some of your older members 
if they still have any samples in their medicine chests.]

 

Here are their replacements today: bacitracin, neosporin. [These will 
be easy to find.]

 

We don’t have either mercurochrome or merthiolate because both these 
compounds contained mercury, one mercury and bromine (Mercurochrome) 
and the other mercury and sodium (merthiolate). The FDA has decided 
that things with mercury in them were not good for you, which sounds 
about right to me. But why you can have mercury in your mouth through 
tooth fillings, or mercury in your home through fluorescent bulbs, and 
not in anti-bacterial medicines and antiseptics is 20a mystery to me.

 

But let’s see this morning how many of you remember being tortured by 
your parents with the germ-killing sting of a tincture of iodine or a 
tincture of merthiolate. Raise your hand. . . . My parents never used 
mercurochrome because it didn’t sting, and thus it couldn’t possibly be 
working to wipe out bacteria.

 

Those of you who put your hands up know that these killer fluids came 
in tiny brown bottles with a long glass dropper inside. [If you don’t 
have the real thing, you will need to make sure they can picture it.] 
The glass dropper would hover over whatever wound was being treated, a 
scraped knee, a
  sliced toe, a de-slivered finger-tip, while the howling 
child (that’s you) waited for that first bright red drop of medicine to 
hit home…

 

Outside of the chemistry lab, though, a “tincture” has come to be 
recognized as a generic term for a kind of healing, restorative tonic. 
Originally many of the healing “tinctures” were herbal infusions — 
gentle healers, less concentrated, and less medicinally recognized, as 
the twentieth century wore on.

 

The key to an herbal “tincture” was not unlike making a good cup of 
tea. It required “steeping time” — letting the restorative agents just 
“sit 20and soak” until the greatest part of their essence had seeped out 
into the surrounding liquid. Eventually, savvy parents began 
subtracting the herbs and opting for a simpler, purer form of healing — 
a “tincture of time.” In layman’s terms, “let time heal the wound.”

 

In today’s Ephesians text the Body of Christ is being gently dosed (not 
hosed) with some healing tinctures — infusions of character, attitude, 
practice, and patience that will work together and synergize to create 
a stronger, healthier “body.” All the qualities, the “virtues” today’s 
text advocates, require the “tincture of time”=E
 2€¦

 

The rest of Leonard Sweet's sermon can be obtained by joining 
www.eSermons.com.

 

Click here:Â  http://www.esermons.com/signup or call 1-800-777-7731 to 
join.

 

________________________________

 

Stewardship Campaign: A complete approach to stewardship.  Please click 
here for more information

 

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_________________________________

 

Clothed in Human Flesh

 

Next to the Bible, my favorite book is Harper Lee's award-winning 
novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." I love both the book and the movie. The 
main character, the one who tells the story, is 
 a little girl named 
Jean Louise Finch, who goes by the name of Scout. Her father, Atticus 
Finch, is the town's lawyer and a man of deep principles and integrity. 
I always wanted to grow up and be like Atticus Finch.

 

One day, Scout came home from school and told her father about some 
problems she was having with the teacher and several other students. In 
an effort to help her get along better with others, Atticus gave her 
this advice:

 

"First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along 
a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a 
person until you consider things from his point of view... until you 
 
climb into his skin and walk around in it."

 

That's exactly what Jesus did. Clothed in human flesh, Jesus felt pain 
as we feel pain. He suffered as we suffer. He even experienced death. 
Jesus climbed into our skin and walked around in it.

 

Billy D. Strayhorn, Beyond Skin Deep

________________________

 

Our Christian Landmarks

 

During World War II allied armies marched into Germany on their way to 
Berlin. Retreating German soldiers switched road signs and destroyed 
landmarks in an effort to confuse their enemy. And, to an extent, it 
worked, for many a G.I. followed a false marker only to end up in the 
wrong place. Th
 at just goes to show the need for landmarks, the 
importance of reliable signposts by which to steer.

 

Here locally, landmarks like the courthouse, the river, the college, or 
the bridge are important in helping us find our bearings. Why, if some 
villain came in one night and removed our signposts, the next day would 
become a bewildering jumble of uncertainties, and we'd all be lost. 

 

The text is about landmarks. It refers to the Jewish custom of setting 
boundary stones to mark out property. Just as we do today, so our 
Hebrew forefathers did then. Wells, fords, buildings, and stone 
sentinels were their guides. Hence the strict law: "Remove not the 
ancie
 nt landmark which your fathers have set."Â 

 

We live in a day of rapid change, and this law is being grossly 
ignored. Our history is being bulldozed to clear the way for 
development. Some professors are twisting the guideposts in the minds 
and hearts of our students. Traditions are forgotten, manners ignored. 
The result is a kind of chaos -- social confusion and rootless 
individualism. We live in a society that's lost its bearings and is 
adrift on a sea of change. 

 

The Lord's Table is a landmark. For nearly 2,000 years Christians have 
been gathering to eat this meal. And, for all, it can be the means of 
getting one's bearings.

 
=0
 A
Stephen M. Crotts, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing

 

____________________________

 

A Reminder of Our True Home

 

The influence that food can have on us appears in a Chinese story 
originally told by Linda Fang. She presented this story at the 
Smithsonian Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., March 19, 1988.
 
At the foot of a great mountain in China lived a father and his three 
sons.  They were a simple and loving family. The father noticed that 
travelers came from afar eager to climb the dangerous mountain.  But 
not one of them ever returned! The three sons heard stories about the 
mountain, how it=2
 0was made all of gold and silver at the top.  Despite 
their father's warnings, they could not resist venturing up the 
mountain.
 
Along the way, under a tree, sat a beggar, but the sons did not speak 
to him or give him anything.  They ignored him. One by one, the sons 
disappeared up the mountain, the first to a house of rich food, the 
second to a house of fine wine, the third to a house of gambling.  Each 
became a slave to his desire and forgot his home.  Meanwhile, their 
father became heartsick.  He missed them terribly.  "Danger aside," he 
said, "I must find my sons."
 
Once he scaled the mountain, the father found that indeed the rocks 
 
were gold, the streams silver.  But he hardly noticed.  He only wanted 
to reach his sons, to help them remember the life of love they once 
knew.  On the way down, having failed to find them, the father noticed 
the beggar under the tree and asked for his advice.
 
"The mountain will give your sons back," said the beggar, "only if you 
bring something from home to cause them to remember the love of their 
family."
 
The father raced home, brought back a bowl full of rice, and gave the 
beggar some as a thank-you for his wisdom.  He then found his sons, one 
at a time, and carefully placed a grain of rice on the tongue of each 
of them.  At=2
 0that moment, the sons recognized their foolhardiness.  
Their real life was now apparent to them.  They returned home with 
their father, and as one loving family lived happily ever after.
 
Today we gather in this church to receive a reminder of home, a taste 
of food that will help us remember who we are.  I mean the bread of 
life, our Father's gift to us.  This is the food of God's kingdom, and 
reminds us that this kingdom is our true home.
 
Charles Hoffacker, Food from Home
________________________________________

 

Missing the Point

 

The German theologian Helmut Thielicke told of a hungry man passing a 
store with a sign in th
 e window, "We Sell Bread." He entered the store, 
put some money on the counter, and said, "I would like to buy some 
bread." The women behind the counter replied, "We don’t sell bread." 
"The sign in the window says that you do," the hungry man said. The 
woman explained, "We make signs here like the one in the window that 
says ‘We Sell Bread.’" But, as Thielicke concludes, a hungry man can’t 
eat signs.

 Life sometimes fools us too. Bread isn’t always found where it seems 
to be. Today’s Gospel lesson picks up where we left off last week in 
John 6. Like the crowds looking for something else or that man looking 
in the wrong store, we 20often miss the point when God offers us enduring 
life in Jesus.

 

Michael J. Heggen, The Bread of Life

_____________________________

 

Spirit and Life

 

Years ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick, then at the height of his influence 
as minister of the Riverside Church, New York City, was making a tour 
of Palestine and other countries of the Near and Middle East. He was 
invited to give an address at the American University of Beirut, 
Lebanon, where the student body comprised citizens of many countries 
and representatives from sixteen different religions. What could one 
say that would be relevant or of interest to so mixed and varied a 
group? This
  is how Fosdick began: "I do not ask anyone here to change 
his religion; but I do ask all of you to face up to this question: What 
is your religion doing to your character?"
 
This was a call to consider one of the great issues of human belief: 
religion and life, Christianity and character, word and spirit. Emerson 
once said, "What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear a word you 
say." Jesus' discourse in this whole sixth chapter of the Gospel of 
John had two foci - spirit and life. "The words that I have spoken to 
you are spirit and life." By this he meant that those who appropriated 
his spirit, i.e., fed upon him as the bread of life, would find, 
thereby,=2
 0a fulfillment and satisfaction no other means could give.

Donald Macleod, Know the Way, Keep the Truth, Win the Life, CSS 
Publishing Company
_______________________

 

A More Wholesome Grain

 

Turkey Red Wheat. The hard wheat from which a high quality flour is 
made has an interesting history. Mennonites lived in the Ukraine, a 
part of nineteenth century Russia. Because of their opposition to war 
arising from their Christian faith, they decided to emigrate when 
Russia introduced military conscription. As families packed to leave, 
they selected the best of their Turkey red seed grain and filled a 
trunk to take with them.

 

When the Mennonite refuge
 es migrated to the prairie provinces of Canada 
and the plains states of the United States, they brought the seed with 
them and found the prairie land receptive. From these trunks of wheat 
have come the hard flour that is preferred for many purposes over the 
soft wheat which was the only kind available earlier. This wheat made 
the prairies a breadbasket that has shipped wheat and flour all over 
the world.

 

William E. Keeney, Preaching the Parables, CSS Publishing Company

 

_________________

 

Human Knowledge

 

Listen to this statistic: Knowledge is exploding at such a rate--more 
than 2000 pages a minute--that even Einstein couldn't k
 eep up. In fact, 
if you read 24 hours a day, from age 21 to 70, and retained all you 
read, you would be one and a half million years behind when you 
finished (Campus Life)

 

An amazing statistic. Now tell me when do you suppose this information 
was compiled? It will alarm you that these statistics do not take into 
account the Internet. They do not even take into account the personal 
computer…

 

The conclusion to this illustration and many additional illustrations 
and sermons for Proper 14 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.

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