Another, fairly brief point I can bring up from the Naboth story in 1 Kings 21 has to do with Ahab’s statements about Naboth’s reason for denying Ahab his vineyard. Naboth’s reason for not selling or trading his vineyard is found in verse 3, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” Ahab repeats this once, muttering to himself in verse 4, “I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.” And once more he restates it as he explains to Jezebel why he did not get his vineyard in verse 6, where he claims that Naboth said, “I will not give you my vineyard.” If we compare the responses side by side we can see the changes: Continue reading “The Devil’s in the details”
Vineyard or Vegetable Garden
The story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21, is full of challenging little bits. Since I couldn’t get to them all in this past week’s sermon, I wanted to do a few posts on some of those elements.
Naboth had a vineyard. Ahab wanted to purchase it and make it into a vegetable garden. Little details like this are the things that make the Old Testament so fun for me. Israel is compared in scripture to a vineyard (Psalm 80, Isaiah 5), and since vineyards take a while to become established, the vineyard tended to be symbolic of a place being established and having had some peace for a time. The vineyard is a sign of God’s abundance. The only other time the word for “vegetable garden” is used in the Old Testament is in Deuteronomy 11:10. It states, “For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.” Continue reading “Vineyard or Vegetable Garden”
Thoughts behind a sermon
I thought I’d do a post that deals with some of the issues that are behind preaching. In other words, what sort of things do I consider when writing and shaping a sermon? This particular message is a good opportunity to do that because of some kind of unique aspects to it.
First, as I engage the text I am asking questions about what it is saying, how is it shaping me, and what is the purpose of the text. My goal most of the time is to “do” the text in the sermon. This way the sermon is experiential. If it is a story, then the message is shaped by that quality. If it is a letter that lays out some doctrine, then we do that. It’s not always perfect, but by focusing in this way I am challenged to go where the scripture takes me, not where I want to take the scripture.
With this section of Ephesians there are a few things going on. First off, we must recognize that this is just a part of a letter. That means we are picking up somewhere in the middle of a conversation or an argument (by that I don’t mean disagreement, but rather a rhetorical message). Chapter 2 in Ephesians plays an important part in the letter (or sermon depending on what you think the original genre of the book is). In the first 3 chapters, I believe, Paul is providing the foundation and motivation for the application of Christian living found in the rest of the book. In Chapter 2 he specifically focuses on God taking these gentile believers from the outside to inside the family of God; from death to life. It is full of “used to be’s.” The purpose of this is to bring to mind the fact that God has provided salvation and has indeed done wonderful things for the Ephesians, therefore they ought to live their lives accordingly. In the bigger picture of the book then, this is the causal part of the argument and the effect of a certain way of life comes a bit later. Continue reading “Thoughts behind a sermon”
New short sermon series
The lectionary readings for the next three weeks include Gospel readings that cover all of Matthew 25, so we are going to go through Matthew 25. The continuity should be good. The problem is that the first two readings are challenging passages to preach from. Also, they deal with the return of Christ, which is something that is either misunderstood or not covered that much.
So, I’ve decided to come at the readings with the uplifting question, “Are you ready?” Because who doesn’t like thinking about the end of the world? Continue reading “New short sermon series”