Sermon Resources on Faith In Action

scripture guide

Scripture Guide, Job 38:1-11

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1-11, Genesis 1:, Matthew 8:23-27, Luke 8:22-25, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, Genesis 1:21

Note: This was originally part of a guide for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Year B) , which includes Job 38:1-11 and Mark 4:35-11 . I have adapted the discussion of each of these t...

lectionary

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Guide B)

Author

William Rowley

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 4:35-41, Job 38:1-11, Psalm 107:, Jonah 1:, Genesis 1:, Matthew 8:23-27, Luke 8:22-25, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, Genesis 1:21

A Sopping Wet Week in the Lectionary Today’s readings are thoroughly wet. In Job, God is master of the sea, Psalm 107 concerns mariners in the storm, Paul is a little drier, but still gets shipwrecke...

liturgy

A Call to Prayer

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 104:24-25, Matthew 6:25-34, Job 38:41, James 1:5, Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1-4, Job 12:7-10

O Great Spirit, whose breath gives life to the world, and whose voice is heard in the soft breeze; We need your strength and wisdom. Cause us to walk in beauty. Give us the eyes ever to behold the red...

Quote

Author

James Houston

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 5:8-10, Revelation 1:17-18 , Psalm 104:1-2, Job 38:4-7, Exodus 19:16-19 , Isaiah 6:1-5

Awe encourages us to think of God as a transcendent presence: someone outside and beyond our own small concerns and our own vulnerable lives. Awe opens us up to the possibility of living always on the...

blog

The Ministry of Presence: Pastoral Care Lessons from the Book of Job

Author

William Rowley

Scripture

Job 38:, Matthew 10:29-31, Matthew 6:25-34

People who are suffering often turn to their pastors, hoping to understand their experiences and seeking help with the feeling that God has abandoned them. Sometimes their faith is firm, but their sou...

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A Week of Wonder Listening to the Lord

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

Scripture

1 Samuel 3:1-10, Exodus 33:11-23 , Job 38:1-7, John 10:27, Acts 10:9-16 , Psalm 42:7-8

One of my favorite mentors for listening prayer is Frank Laubach, the great missionary statesman and “apostle of literacy to the silent billion.” His books are simply littered with his experiences of ...

liturgy

A Prayer and Poem for Earth Day

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 1:16-17, John 1:3, Psalm 19:1-2, Psalm 8:3-4, Isaiah 40:28, Revelation 4:11, Job 38:4-7

Glorious One Maker of galaxies Maker of mountains Maker of me Thank you for your grace Thank you for reaching out For speaking through the majesty of your creation For speaking into the smallness of ...

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Seeing the Great Water

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 40:12, 1 Kings 8:27, Job 38:8-11, John 21:25, Romans 11:33, Psalm 93:3-4

An old American Indian [Native American] legend tells of an Indian [Native American] who came down from the mountains and saw the ocean for the first time. Awed by the scene, he requested a quart jar....

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A Criticism for Higher Criticism in Biblical Studies

Author

Craig Evans

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:8-9, Job 38:1-4, Proverbs 3:5-7, Colossians 2:8, John 20:27-29, Psalm 19:1-2

The New Testament scholar Craig Evans makes a compelling observation about how the academy can sometimes hinder the church through overly skeptical scholarship: Some scholars seem to think that th...

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Losing Sight of our Spiritual Longing in the Modern World

Author

Annie Dillard

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:11-12, Job 38:1-7, Isaiah 6:1-5 , Romans 1:20, Luke 19:39-40 , Psalm 19:1-4

In our modern materialistic world, it is easy to lose sight of that sense of longing. In her wonderful collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard speaks about that growing void...

liturgy

Prayer of Adoration We praise you, Lord

Author

Richard Herman

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:11-24, 1 John 1:9, Luke 22:54-62, Romans 3:23, Luke 19:1-10, Psalm 139:1-4, Job 38:1-4

Prayer of Adoration We praise you, Lord for you are all-wise and all-powerful, faithful, loving and gracious, holy, just, merciful, constant and pure, omnipresent, intimate and immortal. You are big...

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God’s Menagerie of Beautiful Creatures

Author

John Eldredge

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 96:11-12, Revelation 21:1, Romans 8:21, Isaiah 65:17, Psalm 148:7-10, Job 38:7, Genesis 1:31

We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. A...

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The Two Surveys

Author

John Mark Comer

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 50:21, Job 38:1-4, Romans 11:33-34, Exodus 34:6-7, Isaiah 55:8-9

My friend Scot McKnight is a New Testament professor in Chicago. For years, he taught a class on Jesus, and he would start every semester with two surveys. The first was a set of questions about the s...

liturgy

O God, whose reason rules the world,

Author

Boethius

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 8:22-31, 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, Exodus 19:16-20, Matthew 17:1-8, Job 38:41

O God, whose reason rules the world, who formed the starry heights above, timeless, time’s chain far forth you hurled, unmoved, gave all things power to move. Prevailed on by no outside cause to fashi...

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The Eternal Question: “Why?”

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:42 , Exodus 3:1–14 , Ecclesiastes 3:1–14, Romans 11:33–36, John 14:5–6 , Psalm 139:1–6

If you’ve been around a kid who’s just learned to ask “why?”, it can be a bit much. You’ll be asked, “why is grass green?” “Why do birds fly?” “Why do I get hungry?” and much, much, more. Pa...

illustration

Creation at Play

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, Exodus 31:1-5, Job 38:4-7, John 1:1-3 , Colossians 1:16-17, Psalm 8:3-4

Creation as it felt to God — since then every artist has felt an echo, a sympathetic vibration: a craftsman who squints at his finished product and reckons, “Very good”; a performer who cannot suppres...

illustration

The Fire of Fairy Tales

Author

G. K. Chesterton

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, Romans 1:20, Psalm 118:24, Job 38:4, Lamentations 3:23

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this…. We all like astonishing tales because they to...

Quote

Author

Thomas Merton

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1-7, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Genesis 32:22-32, Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 16:13-17, Psalm 8:3-4

It is as if in creating us God asked a question, and in awakening us to contemplation He answered the question, so that the contemplative is at the same time, question and answer.

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The Perfect Storm

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1–11, Jonah 1:4–17 , Exodus 14:21–31 , Mark 4:35–41, Acts 27:13–44 , John 20:24–29

It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...

Quote

Author

G. K. Chesterton

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1-4 , Ecclesiastes 3:11, Proverbs 8:30, Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 104:31

If angels can fly because they take themselves lightly, does God take Himself lightly?

Quote

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1, Job 38:4-7, Psalm 24:1-2

Among the hills a meteorite Lies huge; and moss has overgrown And wind and rain with touches light Made soft, the contours of the stone. Thus easily can Earth digest A cinder of sidereal fire, And ...

Quote

Author

Anne Rice

Keywords

Scripture

Job 38:1-7, Isaiah 29:13-16 , Proverbs 14:12, Luke 1:1-4 , 2 Peter 1:16-21, Psalm 19:1-4

Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions…. Conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all…. The whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem a...

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The Planet and the Body

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1–3 , Job 38:4–7, Isaiah 45:18 , Colossians 1:16–17, Hebrews 3:4, Psalm 19:1–2

Scientist John Haldane once proposed to the English priest Ronald Knox that, given the vast number of planets in the universe, the emergence of life by sheer chance was inevitable. Knox responded with...

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The Magician’s Nephew: No Deals to be Made with the Lion

Author

Steven Garber

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 22:1-14 , Job 38:1-7 , Exodus 3:7-12, Psalm 34:17-18, John 11:32-35 , 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Most of life is autobiographical for all of us—and so it was for [C. S.] Lewis. Growing out of his years of sorrow, especially the ones of watching his mother become sick and die, The Magician’s Neph...

illustration

On Creation by Frederick Beuchner

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Creation

Scripture

Job 38:7, Genesis 1:, Lamentations 3:22-23, Psalm 104:30, Isaiah 43:19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Psalm 19:1-2

To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem...

Quote

Author

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Keywords

Scripture

James 4:13-15, John 9:41, Romans 11:33, Isaiah 55:8-9, Ecclesiastes 11:5, Job 38:2-4

“I know” seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, “I thought I knew.”

Quote

Author

Wendell Berry

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 2:16-17 , Exodus 20:8-10 , Job 38:4-11 , Psalm 90:12, Matthew 6:27, 2 Corinthians 12:9

We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity of limits.

illustration

The Divine Chorale

Author

Mike Cosper

Keywords

Creation

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-3, Job 38:4,7, Psalm 104:24, Colossians 1:16, Revelation 4:11

In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenl...

illustration

Aslan Comes and Goes

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 147:5, Jeremiah 10:12, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 104:24, Job 38:4-7

“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll o...

Quote

Author

Will and Ariel Durant

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 22:20-21 , Ecclesiastes 7:23-24, Job 38:1-4 , 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, Psalm 119:98-100

Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional ...

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