[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for June 3 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

God in Three Persons
 
St. Augustine, one of the most astute thinkers the Christian Church has ever produced, was walking along the seashore one day while pondering the doctrine of the Trinity - Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. He seemed to hear a voice saying, "Pick up one of the large sea shells there by the shore." So he picked it up. Then the voice said, "Now pour the ocean into the shell." And he said, "Lord, I can't do that." And the voice answered, "Of course not. In the same way, how can your small, finite mind ever hold and understand the mystery of the eternal, infinite, triune God?" 

Many Christian churches will be celebrating today the doctrine of the Trinity. It is one of the most prized truths of the Christian faith. "God in three persons, blessed Trinity...."

 
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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When the Person Is Right
 
One rainy Sunday afternoon, a little boy was bored and his father was sleepy. The father decided to create an activity to keep the kid busy. So, he found in the morning newspaper a large map of the world. He took scissors and cut it into a good many irregular shapes like a jigsaw puzzle. Then he said to his son, "See if you can put this puzzle together. And don't disturb me until you're finished." He turned over on the couch, thinking this would occupy the boy for at least an hour. To his amazement, the boy was tapping his shoulder ten minutes later telling him that the job was done. The father saw that every piece of the map had been fitted together perfectly. "How did you do that?" he asked. "It was easy, Dad. There was a picture of a man on the other side. When I got him together right, the world was right." 

A person's world can never be right until the person is right, and that requires the miracle of new birth. Don't you dare stop asking God for the experience of new birth until you can shout from the housetops, "Through Jesus Christ, God has fundamentally changed my life!" 

 
Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons, www.eSermons.com
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Too Short to Be Saved
 
After his grandfather's death, Donald Hall, once the poet laureate of New Hampshire, went into his grandfather's attic and found many, many boxes, one of which was filled with short pieces of string. The box was marked in an old hand: STRING TOO SHORT TO BE SAVED. He was astonished. The box of string had caught him completely off-guard. And from his off-guardedness and unguardedness, he was able to write a beautiful poem.
 
The poem states the obvious: his grandfather had saved the string that was too short to be saved. If you have ever felt like you were a string too short to be saved, you can begin to come to know what it means to be accepted by God, in Jesus Christ.
 
God will save us all in a great attic. Nothing is ever lost to God. Nothing. Not a single dead child. Not a single person who dies in a traffic accident. Not a single person who drowns in the floods of a hurricane. Not a single woman who dies of breast cancer. Not a single homeless person. Not an estranged spouse. Not a wayward child. No one is lost to God.
 
We will each appear too short to be saved many, many times in our lives. And God will still save us.
 
Author Unknown 
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Who Is Good Enough to Be Saved?
 
A number of years ago, I read a newspaper account of a speech given by the president of a well-known university to a group of influential businessmen and civic leaders. The president told of a recent experience which he, his audience, and the newspaper reporter found humorous. The president was shopping during the Christmas season and happened to pass by a Salvation Army volunteer, standing by a "donation kettle" and ringing a bell. As he paused to make a donation, the woman volunteer asked this educator: "Sir, are you saved?" When he replied that he supposed he was, she was not satisfied, so she pursued the matter further: "I mean, have you ever given your full life to the Lord?" At this point, the president told his audience, he thought he should enlighten this persistent woman concerning his identity: "I am the president of such and such university, and as such, I am also president of its school of theology." The lady considered his response for a moment, and then replied, "It doesn't matter wherever you've been, or whatever you are, you can still be saved."
 
The most tragic part of this incident is that both the seminary president and his audience actually thought his story was amusing. One can imagine that if Nicodemus had been confronted by this Salvation Army volunteer, he would have thought - and said - just about the same thing as the university president. Nicodemus is the "cream of the Jewish crop." One dare not dream of having life any better than he has it. He is a Jew, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin (the highest legal, legislative and judicial body of the Jews), and a highly respected teacher of the Old Testament Scriptures. Can you imagine being Nicodemus and having Jesus tell you that all of this is not enough to get you into the kingdom of God? Yet this is precisely what Jesus tells Nicodemus. If a man like Nicodemus is not good enough for the kingdom of God, then who is? 
 
Robert Deffinbaugh, Jesus and Nicodemus
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Religious Man
 
First, we can say of Nicodemus he was a religious man. He clearly knew the Decalogue by heart and the Torah by memorization. In John's Gospel he is referred to not just as teacher but "the teacher", pointing to his religious pre-eminence. If anyone knew the truth about God and God's people, surely it would be this man. Yet, for all of his religiosity. Nicodemus was not a fulfilled man. There was an emptiness within him that religion had not filled. Master, I know all of the commandments, but there is something missing.
 
It is possible to be a religious person and still miss the thrust of God's Word. Many years ago all of America watched as Alex Haley's Roots came to the television screen. There was one character that to me was particularly memorable. Ed Asner played the role of the old captain on a slave ship. He was a religious man. Each night he would close his door and read his Bible. The first night on the return trip some of the crew sent him a young slave girl to his cabin. He is incredulous and sends her away. On the following night they sent her again, and now he no longer yells how dare you. On another night, as he reads his Bible he hears the cries of the suffering on deck so he closes his door so he can continue reading his Bible.
 
It is possible to be a religious person and be an unfulfilled person. A person without a cause. A person without a heart. "Master, I have kept all of the rules and forms and rituals of our faith, but something is missing. Tell me what else I must do to fill this void.
 
Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com
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When the Wind Blows
 
I remember growing up in the South, in cotton country, in the summer, before air conditioning became something almost every home had. Several of those summers I spent working on my uncle's cotton farm, down in the Mississippi delta, just outside of my birthplace, Cleveland, Mississippi. It was hot work, hard work, bringing in a cotton crop. It still is, but technology has made it a lot easier than it was back then.

When the crop had been tended for another day, the weeds chopped from between the cotton plants, in the evening everyone would gather on the front porch. We would rock and talk and laugh in a futile attempt to escape the ever-present heat and humidity. And sometimes, on a really good day, the leaves of the trees would begin to rustle. And the conversation would die down, and everyone would just sit back and enjoy the summer breeze, the gift of the breeze. We didn't know where it came from. We didn't know where it was going. But we knew it was there, because we could feel it.

You know what it's like to come in here on one of those Sundays when you didn't really want to be here, when your mind was somewhere else, and to be honest about it, maybe your heart was somewhere else, too. Then, during the worship service, in the hymns, or the prayers, or the communion service, or even in the sermon, something gets hold of you, some mysterious force that somehow lifts a burden from your shoulders, or helps you understand something that had been puzzling you. And your step is a little lighter when you leave than it was when you walked in. Now what was that? What brought that about? I don't know. Or maybe I do know, but I just don't understand.

Johnny Dean, The More I Understand, the Less I Know
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Life Is Unpredictable 
 
Life is unpredictable. Full of surprises. Often enjoyable. Usually endurable. Most all of them accidental. But here and there, providential. That's because God, too, is full of surprises. Ellsworth Kalas (one of the geniuses behind the Disciple Bible Study movement), writes: "I have lived in the world of religion since before I was born, and in this long period of observation (seventy years and counting), I have learned two things for sure. First, you can't box God in. And second, we are always trying to do so." 
 
William A. Ritter, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
 
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All It Would Take To Make Me Happy
 
Charles Shultz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a Christian message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to love one another.
Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another:
 
CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.
Lucy: Are you sure?
CB: Of course I'm sure!
Lucy: You mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing?
CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean!
Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy?
CB: And then I'll be happy!
Lucy: [Lucy turns and walks away saying] I can't do it!
 
What Lucy can not do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. God loves you and is telling you today, "He loves you!" "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."
 
Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com
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Where the Spirit Moves
 
I once read something called "Deal's First Law of Sailing." It goes something like this: "The amount of wind will vary inversely with the number and experience of the people you have on board the sailboat." And the second law is like unto it: "No matter how strong the breeze when you leave the dock, once you have reached the farthest point from the port from which you started, the wind will die." 
 
Those who have the hobby of sailing can attest to the validity of these "laws." In fact, the art of sailing is a good analogy for the receiving of God's grace...
 
The rest of this illustration and many additional illustrations and sermons for Trinity Sunday and the upcoming weeks can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.


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