Sermon Resources from psalm 40

Context Our text for this week is the initial greeting of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. This is the first of four weeks for which the epistle reading comes from the beginning of 1 Corin...

jobs concluding, stages finishing, grieving over, grudges over, blaming over, excuses over. O God, grant me your sense of timing. In this season of ...

One of the main linguists that worked on Rosetta Stone , a computerized language-learning tool, moved to Vietnam in 1962… of his own free will! He and a ministry partner went to translate the Bibl...

This story is probably apocryphal, but conveys a truth nonetheless. During the early 19th century, following the Napoleonic Wars, a French soldier was captured and imprisoned. He was thrown into a...

In India, there are street ear cleaners. Standing in line at the theater, you might be approached by such a peddler promising to give your ears a good cleaning.

In stark contrast to ourselves, when Jesus needed to know who he was, he listened to his Father’s voice, trusted that voice and claimed its truth for his own life.

It would seem that hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing. Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction between hearing and doing is the result of h...

One summer, the composer Edvard Grieg stayed at a small Norwegian hotel. A restless child also resided there, constantly annoying the guests by attempting to play the piano, producing nothing but disc...

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgivenes...

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary And his understanding no one can fathom. He gives st...

I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave my feet a firm place to stand. ...

May the Lord of love keep us all in peace, transform our conflict into the beauty of his grace, and give us joyful hearts to do his will. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Our lectionary text can be fairly easily broken into two major sections, with verses 29-34 concerned with John the Baptist testifying to Jesus’ ministry and...

Timothy Cipriani’s idea was simple. He would lower himself into the pizza restaurant from the ventilation duct, rob the cash register, and climb back out. The plan backfired. Either he had been eating...

During his celebrated career as a composer, George Frideric Handel wrote forty-two operas, twenty-nine oratorios, and 120 cantatas. Of Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven said, “To him I bow the knee.” Hande...

Advent is patience. It's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

A Louisiana farmer’s favorite mule fell into a well. After studying the situation, the farmer came to the conclusion that he couldn’t pull the mule out, so he might as well bury him. It would be the h...

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...

Some people find themselves stuck in a rut. Without challenge or new opportunities, they begin to sound like Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoons: “Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll p...

[The Kingdom of Heaven is] where what God wants done is done.