Sermon Archive

Text: 1 Samuel 17:1-11; 19-23; 32-49 Every once in a while, the suggested weekly readings from scripture, stumble across one of the great old favorites. Those stories that many of us learned in Sunday School way back when, and have continued to be the staple of the tales that we tell children that bring home memories of our own childhood. David and Goliath, amongst all the others, stands tall amongst this dearly beloved collection. Regardless of how historical the events are in First Samuel, the story of the young boy and the Philistine Giant has taken on an epic, mythic quality. They are part of the cultural collective, even in our now mostly secular society. Most people can at least associate the metaphor “David and Goliath” as the classic underdog story… even if they don’t realize it comes from the Bible. A lot of the time today, we hear it used in business and economics, where a small business entrepreneur takes on the great mega corporation. As I have mentioned before with familia...

Text: 1 Samuel 15:34-35 – 16:13 The sign outside says “Facing Goliath.” While that may be somewhat true, Goliath doesn’t really show up until next week. We are much more familiar with the story of David and Goliath than we are about the lead-up to this well known confrontation. Yet Samuel’s anointing of David is a great story about unexpected grace… about how God sees us, and how we are often too hasty to jump to our own conclusions and keep our own ideas than we are to listen to what God is calling us to. As familiar as we might think the early stories of David might be, it’s worth it to go back and listen to them again… and maybe find something unexpected. At the opening of the story, we find Samuel grieving over the now-wounded relationship between himself and King Saul. He had warned the Elders of Israel years ago that having a king would have its price… and now those prophetic words had come home to roost. At God’s reluctant direction, Samuel had anointed Saul as King… yet as powe...

Text: Jonah (Chs. 1-2 read in worship) I have a confession to make. I decided to preach Jonah after hearing the choir’s anthem. Today’s the Sunday School picnic, and really a time to celebrate and have a bit of fun. The choir captured it beautifully, and the last thing we needed was a long dull treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity. So instead of using the usual Trinity Sunday readings, I changed one of them… to Jonah… There are some benefits of being part of a “free church” tradition, we can change things if we need to! The story of Jonah is the best-known short book in the entire Bible. While it’s not the shortest, one can easily miss it flipping through the pages of Hebrew Scripture. It is only four chapters long for a total of 48 verses, and 1,343 words. By that count it’s certainly shorter than most sermons! I’ll have to remember that… You can find it between page # and page # in your pew Bibles, but as you may have noticed this morning it can pass by pretty quickly. Yet the sto...