[Propertalk] Fw: Sermon Resources for March 7

[Joe Parrish]

Sermons for Lent 3:

     Luke 13:1-9 - "God Doesn't Ask a Fig Tree to Produce Bananas"
     Isaiah 55:1-9  - "Live and Learn" by Leonard Sweet

Luke 13, the sermon titled "God Doesn't Ask a Fig Tree
to Produce Bananas"

A man borrowed a book from an acquaintance. As he read through it, he was
intrigued to find parts of the book underlined with the letters YBH
written in the margin. When he returned the book to the owner, he asked
what the YBH meant. The owner replied that the underlined paragraphs were
sections of the book that he basically agreed with. They gave him hints on
how to improve himself and pointed out truths that he wished to
incorporate into his life. However, the letters YBH stood for "Yes, but
how?"

Those three letters could writ on the margins of ours souls: "I ought to
know how to take better care of myself, but how?" "I know I ought to spend
more time in scripture reading and prayer, but how?" "I know I ought to be
more sensitive to others, more loving of my spouse, more understanding of
the weaknesses of others, but how?" These are all good qualities and we
know that, but how can we acquire them? As Christian people we know the
kind of life we ought to live, and most of us have the best of intentions
to do so, but how? We are afraid because we know where the road paved with
only good intentions leads!

This morning we hear Jesus' parable of the fig tree, telling us to repent
and bear good fruit. We know what the Christian life requires of us and
yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we also know how far short we fall.
So the question that confronts us this morning is: "Yes, but how?"

It's a dilemma that has confronted God's people throughout the ages. Even
Saint Paul found himself trapped. In Romans 7 Paul writes: It seems to be
a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what
is wrong. I love to do God's will so far as my new (redeemed Christian)
nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my
lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me
a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind, I want to be God's
willing servant, but instead I find myself enslaved to sin. So you see how
it is; my new life (the redeemed life in Christ) tells me to do right, but
the old nature that is still inside me (my sinful human self) loves to
sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I'm in! Who will free me from this
slavery to sin? Thank God! It has already been done by Jesus Christ our
Lord. He has set me free!

"Repent," Jesus says. "Acknowledge your sinfulness." That's the first step
in beginning to live the Christian life. None of us is without fault. And
yet how difficult it is for us to admit that. We know better than to
openly admit our wrongs. If we want to get ahead in this world and be
accepted by others, it's generally better to conceal our shortcomings and
put on a good front for others.

Who goes into a job interview and declares, "I have to tell you. I have a
habit of missing work, of criticizing my supervisors and others, and I
enjoy listening to office gossip?" Who goes on a date and confesses to the
other person, "Listen. I have to tell you I tend to be difficult to live
with and I can be a real bore at times"?

However imperfect we may be, we've learned from life around us that it's
better not to parade our imperfections out in public. As the little girl
said to her classmate who had to sit in the corner, "To err is human, but
to admit it is just plain stupid!"

How ironic it is then, that Jesus would tell us to repent. Instead of
offering a word of support and understanding for our all-too-human
tendency to cover up our wrongdoings, Jesus tells us to disclose the evil
within us, to admit that we have failed. The apostle John tells us the
same thing very clearly when he writes, "If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

Whoever we are, whatever we do, we all share one thing in common and that
is that we are sinful. Saint Augustine once wrote, "Whatever we are, we
are not what we ought to be." Mark Twain, with his characteristic sense of
humor, tells us how he understands that when he wrote, "Man was made at
the end of the week, when God was....

The rest of this sermon following the outline above can be obtained by
joining www.eSermons.com.
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Isaiah 55, the sermon titled "Live and Learn"

When Moses appeared before Pharaoh, demanding that the Egyptian god-king
"let my people go," he threw down his staff in Pharaoh's face and it was
miraculously transformed into a roiling, writhing serpent. Pretty
impressive, right?

Well, some of the servants and royal attendants surely gasped in
amazement. But one group of onlookers was completely bored. Who were they?
The royal magicians. They snickered and summarily dismissed such a basic
parlor trick.

Trained magicians - whether in the court of Ramses or onstage at some Las
Vegas venue - are the last people to actually "believe" in magic, in
miracles, or in any kind of paranormal mystery. Magicians know too much.
They know "magic" is tricks and techniques, smoke and mirrors.

As each new plague swept over the land, it was explained away by Pharaoh's
all-knowing magician-advisors. After all, they knew everything there was
to know about magic. Unfortunately for all of Egypt's first-borns, they
knew nothing about God.

In the first "Men In Black" movie, Will Smith ("J") at first refuses to
believe Tommy Lee Jones ("K") that the earth is playing host to thousands
of creatures from other planets. K dismisses J's "knowledge":

Fifteen hundred years ago everyone KNEW the world was the center of the
universe, five hundred years ago everyone KNEW the earth was flat, and
fifteen minutes ago you KNEW we were alone on this planet. Imagine what
you'll KNOW tomorrow!

What do you really know?

If you've ever been involved in teaching, whether it is teaching history
to a room full of bored eighth graders, or teaching dog obedience to a
bunch of frisky pups and their masters, or teaching a Lenten Bible study,
you quickly come to one conclusion: the more you endeavor to become
learned, the more you define yourself a learner.

The more we "know," the more embarrassingly obvious it becomes how much we
have to learn..

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

Our Chaotic Life

This notice appeared in the window of a coat store in Nottingham, England:
"We have been established for over 100 years and have been pleasing and
displeasing customers ever since. We have made money and lost money,
suffered the effects of coal nationalization, coat rationing, government
control and bad payers. We have been cussed and discussed, messed about,
lied to, held up, robbed and swindled. The only reason we stay in business
is to see what happens next."

Unknown

__________________

Becoming What We Are

Somerset Maugham said it best in his autobiography, Summing Up, "I knew
that I had no lyrical quality, a small vocabulary, little gift of
metaphor. The original and striking simile never occurred to me. Poetic
flights...were beyond my powers. On the other hand, I had an acute power
of observation, and it seemed to me that I could see a great many things
that other people missed. I could put down in clear terms what I saw...I
knew that I should never write as well as I could wish, but I thought,
with pains, that I could arrive at writing as well as my natural defects
allowed." Somerset Maugham discovered the secret of genius.

The point is that life does not ask us to become what we are not. The fig
tree was only required to produce figs. No more. You and I are asked only
to accomplish what our natural gifts allow, but we are asked to accomplish
just that.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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Turning a Life Around Begins with the Christ Event

The autobiography of G. Stanley Jones is titled A Song of Ascent, and is
considered to be one of the spiritual classics. Jones was a great man: a
missionary to India, a friend to Gandhi, a tireless world traveler, and a
great writer and speaker.

Now, what is amazing to me is that this book was actually his third
attempt at an autobiography. And he was 83 at the time. He had actually
written two previous books but had been unwilling to publish them. The
first, he said, was too filled with the little events of his life --
things he judged not worth telling. In the second attempt, he tried to
take the events of his life and to use them to philosophize about life in
general. But even this, he decided, was not the right focus. The third
time, he determined, he was going to begin with Jesus, and that's what he
did. You see, what he discovered after two bad attempts was that he had
been working backwards; he had been working from events to the Christ
Event. And now, in his third attempt, he found he had it wrong. As he
would say in his introduction to that third book: "Christ has been, and
is, to me the Event.

There is a story that Stanley tells about an African, who, after he was
baptized, changed his name, calling himself 'After.' What he was saying
was everything happened 'after' he met Christ. Stanley said that that was
description of his own life. Everything that happened to me happened to me
after I met Christ.

In his first two attempts, said Jones, he had been too events-centered and
not enough Event-centered. In the third and successful book he
concentrated on the Event and worked back to the events, understanding his
own life in the light of Christ.

Glenn E. Ludwig, Walking To - Walking With, CSS Publishing. Adapted.

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Using Up the Ground

Soil was at a premium in Israel. It was not unusual for a vineyard owner
to give a little bit of his soil up for a fruit tree but the tree took up
the best soil, the deepest soil, and required the most water. A fig tree
doesn't grow fruit until three years after planting. The owner in this
story, had given the tree "due season" to bear fruit and yet the tree bore
no fruit. It took up valuable space and resources. The owner questioned
why the tree was allowed to "even use up ground."

God had given the Israelites the choicest ground. Their land possessed
everything necessary to make themselves a great nation, indeed, a light to
all nations. They were strategically positioned to send the fruit of God
north and south, east and west; but instead, in-fighting continued to make
them a worthless fruit tree.

Everyone one of us and all of our churches will have to answer (from God's
perspective) this same question; "Why does it even use up the ground?"

Jerry Goebel, Why Does HE Even Use up the Ground?
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Becoming Christian

Garrison Keillor warns us, "You can become a Christian by going to church
just as about easily as you can become an automobile by sleeping in a
garage." What we're speaking of is the danger of presumed spiritual
security. Our parable says that we're not called just to be here. It is a
clear warning against a fruitless existence in the light of God's grace
given to us.

Wiley Stephens, Missing Is Not Final
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Not Nearly as Big a Man

It seems that the University of Tennessee coach bought a bolt of cloth
thinking he would have a suit made out of it. He took the material to his
tailor in Knoxville where the tailor measured him, examined the bolt of
cloth, did some computations on a piece of paper, and said, "I'm sorry,
coach, there just isn't enough material in this bolt to make a suit for
you." The coach was disappointed, but he threw the bolt of cloth in the
trunk of his car, wondering what he was going to do with it.

A couple of weeks later he was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama -- the home of the
Crimson Tide -- arch enemies of the Vols. He was on his way to the coast
for a vacation. Driving down the main street in Tuscaloosa, he noticed a
tailor shop, which reminded him that he had that bolt of cloth in the
trunk. He stopped, thinking he would give it a try. He told the tailor he
had bought this bolt of cloth and wondered if he could do anything with
it. The tailor measured him, measured the bolt of cloth, did some
computations. Finally he said, "Coach, I can make you a suit out of this
bolt. What's more, I can make you an extra pair of pants. And if you
really want it, I can give you a vest out of this, too." The coach was
dumbfounded. "I don't understand," he said. "My tailor in Knoxville told
me he couldn't even make one suit out of this bolt of cloth." The tailor
said, "Coach, here in Tuscaloosa, you are not nearly as big a man as you
are in Knoxville."

I tell the story to make the point that things are not always what they
seem. Our Scripture lesson -- the parable of the fig tree -- is clearly a
parable of judgment. But at the very heart of it is a marvelous word of
grace.

Maxie Dunnam, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Never Give Up!
In the middle of WWII on October 29, 1941 Winston Churchill delivered a
short address at the Harrow School. England had been through some of its
darkest days. But Churchill was equal to the task. He said to the
students:
"You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes
imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without
imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see
many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will
happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to
carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we
have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School -
surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in,
never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small,
large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good
sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming
might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries
it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this
tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history
of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
[Churchill continues:] Very different is the mood today. Britain, other
nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our
country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving
in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands,
though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position
where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to
conquer."
The church at times forgets that this is also God's message. God has
promised never to give up on us. Old Testament and New Testaments
together, are a record of how God never, never, never, gave up.
- Adam and Eve disobeyed the very First Rule. But God never gave up.
- Abraham wandered, and Sarah laughed. But God never gave up.
- Moses hid and shook with fear. But God never gave up.
- Saul went insane. But God never gave up.
- David plotted against Uriah. But God never gave up.
- Ahaz sold out to Assyria. But God never gave up.
- Israel fell into pieces. But God never gave up.
- The Jewish people became exiles. But God never gave up.
- John the Baptist was beheaded. But God never gave up.
- Peter denied he even knew him. But God never gave up.
- The disciples all ran away. But God never gave up.

God never, never, never gave up and he has not given up today!

Brett  Blair, www.eSermons.com. The full speech can be viewed at:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=423

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He Has One More Move

A story is told of former world chess champion Bobby Fischer when he was a
young boy. His mother took him to a museum, and he happened upon a
painting that caught his eye. It depicted a bedraggled, exhausted older
man slumped over a chessboard. Few of his pieces were left on the board,
and he was conceding the game. On the other side of the board was his
fresh and snappy opponent, Satan. The painting was entitled Checkmate.
Already a chess prodigy, young Bobby Fischer stood looking at the painting
for a long time. His mother soon tired of it and moved around the
remainder of the gallery, finally returning to find Bobby still entranced
by that painting. "Come now, Bobby, we have to go." Bobby Fischer did not
stop staring, thinking.

The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations
and sermons for the Lent 3 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.