Psalm 99: 1-9 (links validated on 9/5/23)
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God Is King, Holy and Answers Prayers
Shortly after Dallas Theological Seminary was founded in 1924, it almost came to the point of bankruptcy. All the creditors were going to foreclose at noon on a particular day. That morning they met in the president’s office with Dr. Chafer for prayer that God would provide. In that prayer meeting was a man by the name of Harry Ironside. When it was his turn to pray, he prayed in his characteristic manner: “Lord, we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are Thine. Please sell some of them and send us the money.” While they were praying, a tall Texan with boots on and an open collar stepped up to the business office and said, “I just sold two carloads of cattle in Ft. Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal but it fell through, and I feel compelled to give the money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check!” A secretary took the check and, knowing how critical things were financially, went to the door of the prayer meeting and timidly tapped. When she finally got a response, Dr. Chafer took the check out of her hand. It was exactly the amount of the debt! When he looked at the name, he recognized the cattleman in Ft. Worth, and turning to Dr. Ironside said, “Harry, God sold the cattle!”...
Resources from 2019 to 2022
Sermon Starters (Transfiguration)(C)(2022)
When we praise God for specific blessings in all the small and particular ways God works, then, as Walter Brueggemann has said, we bear witness to another world. We burst the narrow horizons and the shrunken boundary lines within which most people live to declare our belief in a larger world in which God is the King. “The act of praise opens a world for viewing but also for participation,” Brueggemann has written. In our act of praising God for his specific wonders we not only sing to God, we sing against the false gods of this world–the gods of self-sufficiency, of homemade salvation, of narrow human achievement in a world where everything is the result of luck or hard work but never the result of God’s work. But in our praise of God, we declare our faith not just in his transcendent power but in his down-to-earth love for us. C.S. Lewis once wrote that for now we can only tune up our instruments in preparation for the heavenly symphony of praise. But if you’ve ever been to an orchestra concert, then you know that there is something lovely and exciting about even the warm-up time. When you hear that cacophony of sounds, you know you’re getting close. And then, every once in a while in the midst of the jumbled sounds of percussion, woodwinds, strings, and brass, every once in a while someone plays a few measures of the Mozart piece that is coming up. And when you catch those few strains of the real music, your heart skips a beat in anticipation. In this sinful world we can but tune our instruments, but tune them we must. And as we do so, we shout “Hallelujah” to everyone around us, inviting them to join us in our chorus of praise to the Savior, to the God of small things, to the Lord of our everyday lives.Transfiguration (C)(2019)
C.S. Lewis once wrote that for now we can only tune up our instruments in preparation for the heavenly symphony of praise. But if you’ve ever been to an orchestra concert, then you know that there is something lovely and exciting about even the warm-up time. When you hear that cacophony of sounds, you know you’re getting close. And then, every once in a while in the midst of the jumbled sounds of percussion, woodwinds, strings, and brass, every once in a while someone plays a few measures of the Mozart piece that is coming up. And when you catch those few strains of the real music, your heart skips a beat in anticipation. In this sinful world we can but tune our instruments, but tune them we must. And as we do so, we shout “Hallelujah” to everyone around us, inviting them to join us in our chorus of praise to the Savior, to the God of small things, to the Lord of our everyday lives.
Resources from 2016 to 2018
Resources from the Archives
A Matter of Authority
I recently read The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Perhaps you've seen the movie. It's set in Jackson, Mississippi and focuses on the role of domestic servants who serve wealthy families in the Old South. It's based on a unique plot: A daughter of a plantation family in the 50s wants to be a writer. She grew up being cared for by an older black woman named Constantine, who served as the family's maid for many years. In many ways, Constantine was her surrogate mother. So, she gets the idea of interviewing maids like Constantine and telling their stories of what it's like to raise white children – all the way from changing diapers … to potty training … to learning to read and write … to developing table manners … to going off to college and getting married … only to see them become young adults employing maids of their own. Potentially, the same child you raised could grow up to be your boss. She puts the interviews together in a book, and it becomes the talk of the town. But it turns out to be more than an exposé – it turns out to be a wakeup call and part of the larger catalyst for putting an end to segregation in the Old South, with its separate-but-equal inequities...