Program Sermon Outline (roughly followed) I. Back up a. Scripture as revelation 1. How does God intervene in writing Scripture? 2. How does God intervene in the world? b. Review series 1. Literal a) Plain reading b) Modern rationalist, truth-seeking tendencies 2. Allegorical 3. Moral 4. Anagogical II. What is allegory? a. Lisa is a fox b. Bernie Madoff is …
How to Read the Bible: The Allegorical
If you spend enough time on Internet message boards, you will see a lot of bad analogies. In the course of a discussion (pronounced “argument”) someone will try to make a point by referencing something that is presumably a point of common interest and common understanding between the two dialog partners (pronounced “combatants”), say, football. One might compare a political …
How to Read the Bible: The Literal (Program and Sermon)
Program Sermon Outline I. Classical a. Descriptive b. Just the facts “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the …
How to Read the Bible: The Literal
When I was in 8th grade, I was placed in the advanced reading class, as I had been since the 2nd grade. Yes, this is a brag. But wait. It’s all downhill from here. One day we were learning vocabulary and the teacher asked for someone to give the definition of “literally.” Since my mom used that word literally all …
How to Read the Bible: Introduction (Program and Sermon)
Program Sermon Outline (loosely followed) I. Questions a. How do you view the Bible? b. How do you use Bible? c. Do know the Bible? d. Do you want to know the Bible? II. Classical understanding a. Literal b. Allegorical c. Moral d. Anagogical III. Post-modern twist IV. Why read it? Why does it matter? a. Cultural defense 1. Literary …
How to Read the Bible: Introduction
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, the Bible was at the center of most of what we did. We were Protestants, which meant that we believed in the power of the Bible alone to guide our lives. And, because we were Baptists, we might yell at you if you disagreed. Looking back, I often think we worshipped the Bible …
Return (Program and Sermon)
Program Sermon In 587 BCE, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. The temple was destroyed and most of the residents were taken into exile. In 538, the Persian ruler, Cyrus, defeated the Babylonians and encouraged people to return to their homes. While many Jews remained in diaspora, preferring to keep the lives they had built in exile, some …
Return (and a Letter from the Board)
Whenever we return to someplace we’ve been before, memories bubble up like a spring. My memories tend to be visual. When I think of Kidd Springs, I think of the light. Three walls are glass looking out over the pond. The light filters in through the trees and bounces off the water in the pond. Life wanders by outside and …
Packing (Program and Sermon)
Program Sermon Living on the Gulf Coast, you become deaf to the warnings. Threats constantly loom in the Gulf from June and November. When I first moved there, I obsessively checked weather sites, monitoring, projecting, guessing, hoping. Most of the time, storms go elsewhere; there’s a lot of coast to destroy. Even when they look like they might head your …
Packing
There was a period in my life, during college and dropping out of college and returning to college, that I moved fourteen times in seven years. After Lisa and I were married, we slowed that pace to moving only once every couple of years. Sometimes, the move was only across town and sometimes it was across the country. Either way, …