Tag Archives: obedience

Sermons and Preaching

How Long?

Read Psalm 94:1-15 and Matthew 24:3-8 to start.

Sometimes when I’m preparing to preach a sermon, I know exactly the passage I want to speak from and the particular story I will start with. That’s great when it happens, and while it’s still plenty of work and a number of hours to prepare a sermon, it feels like things flow well and it’s fairly straightforward. It can be easy to look at these occasions and say that the Holy Spirit lead me to speak on this topic and in this way. And that may well be the case, at times the Holy Spirit certainly leads down clear and straight paths that go easily. But not always.

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Sermons and Preaching

No Turning Back

Proverbs 12: 15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.  

Normally I like to start with a longer scripture reading, and I do have some passages to share a bit later, but first, a story. Last Saturday I took some kids, one which was one was my own, to Cavendish for paintball. Because of the construction taking place on the way to Charlottetown, I thought it would be a good idea to avoid that area, and go via Mount Stewart. Google Maps told me that it was about the same distance, maybe 3 or 4 minutes longer, and avoiding construction delays and traffic seemed a great idea. So we went that way.

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Sermons and Preaching

What About Abel?

Read Genesis 4: 1-10 to start.

The story of Cain and Abel is a familiar account. I know I’ve mentioned Cain in many past sermons, on topics such as envy, anger, revenge and forgiveness, as well why do bad things happen to supposedly good people. I have used Cain repeatedly and thusly because he is a ready example of how things can go so tragically wrong in such a short time. It’s easy to reference him, and it’s generally applicable, because we see sinful behaviour all around us, all the time, and we see it as well when we look inside. Cain embodies our sinful nature with all the jealousy, rage, impulsiveness, and false self-righteousness that we know to be inside the very worst parts of ourselves.

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Sermons and Preaching

David or Saul?

Read 1 Samuel chapter 15 to start.

There are two well-known individuals that we are going to look at this morning. From what we read, you can probably guess the first one, which is of course King Saul. The second, and we’ll read his account a bit later, is David. We know David a lot better than we know Saul.

We often think of David in relation to someone else. David and Goliath is of course the obvious example. David and Jonathan, that’s another, and sadly, there’s David and Bathsheba, but we’ll get to that a bit later on.

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Sermons and Preaching

Substitutes, Poor and Otherwise

Read Exodus 32:1-8 to start.

I’d like to start this morning with a question. Actually, there are two questions, one leads to the other. The first one is who here still eats toast? Between those who are on low carb, keto, or gluten free diets, probably lots of people don’t eat toast much anymore. I don’t eat toast all that often, it’s not my breakfast go-to, but my wife and a couple of my kids opt for toast fairly often. If you eat toast, or for that matter if you eat popcorn, or corn on the cob, or baked potatoes, or steamed carrots, odds are pretty good that you use butter on at least some of those foods. Maybe all of those foods. Maybe you use a little butter, maybe you use a lot.

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