Sermon Recap for May 28 2023

 It's Tuesday, so we're going to hit two birds with one stone and have both the sermon recap and the sermon addendum post put together. One thing I am considering is that, since we only do one sermon per Sunday around here, doing that on a regular basis anyway.

Here is what you’ll find: there is an audio player with the sermon audios built-in to it, just click to find the one you want. You’ll also find the embedded YouTube videos of each sermon.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the audio feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougHibbardPodcast

Audible Link is coming soon! Search "Doug Hibbard" to see if it's there yet

Spotify is here: https://doughibbard.libsyn.com/spotify

The video is linked on my personal YouTube Page here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dheagle93

Sermons are stockpiled here: http://www.doughibbard.com/search/label/Sermons

Now, on to the "addendum" portion:

Genesis 4 picks up the story of the first family in Creation: Adam and Eve and the birth of their first child, Cain. His birth gets a verse. Abel, his younger brother, gets a verse. 

And that leaves a decently large number of gaps in the story. First, of course, we can see that years pass by that are summarized simply by the statement that "Abel took care of flocks, Cain cultivated the ground." How many years? We don't know. Most likely less than 130, because Genesis 5:3 tells us that Seth is born when Adam's at 130.

How did they learn these skills? Did they have other options? Does the typical depiction of raw cavemen developing agriculture fit here? Or did Adam and Eve leave the orchard with more knowledge and skill and it was easier to develop life?

I think we do them a disservice to make them low-intelligence, barely-human individuals. Keep in mind, childbirth is not an easy thing to deal with--even in modern day, women still die from complications of childbirth (and more in the US than almost any other 'developed' nation, which we should see as shameful because it is; no reason for a woman to be 10 times more likely to die from medical pregnancy complications in the US than in New Zealand), but Eve has both Cain and Abel and hardly anything is said about challenges from this. 

That's not an ignorant first couple, folks. We do them a disservice when we wholesale copy the evolutionary mindset onto the first chapters of Genesis and make Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants barely competent with life.

Onward we go: there is an interesting fill-in from the LXX (Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures) in Genesis 4:8, because the available Hebrew text does not have what Cain said. It just kind of hangs there...Cain said to Abel his brother... and then nothing. 

We will jump ahead to address a wrong-headed nonsense that shows up from time-to-time: there is just no justification to think the "Mark of Cain" (Genesis 4:15 references the Lord putting a special mark on Cain) has any connection to a racial or ethnic concept. This also comes up later, after the Flood, with Ham and Canaan. It is an abhorrent twisting of the Word of God to justify racial hatred. Don't do it. And it does NOT matter which of your theological heroes said, he was wrong.

Moving on: we wrap the chapter with Cain's descendants, including the infamous Lamech who threatens extra vengeance for something as simple as a wound. You also get the implication that many of those who started or popularized various skills are in Cain's descendants. This is another space where we are short on information: obviously, Cain has a wife. Who is she? From whence did she come? The logical answer is...his sister. We're not fond of that answer, but it is difficult to find a better one.

The chapter closes on a somewhat higher note, as Seth is born, seen by Eve as the replacement for Abel. Seth's line begins, and "at that time, men began to call on the name of the Lord."

That's a good step. Probably, one could craft a whole sermon on that idea but I didn't :)

Sermon Addendum for Genesis 2 and 3

 Picking back up on the "Sermon Addendum" idea, which is to share with you here some of the ideas and points that end up edited between sermon preparation and sermon delivery, let's look at a couple of ideas on Genesis 2 and Genesis 3.

First, Genesis 2 provides a slightly different view on the Creation narrative. It is neither corrective of the Genesis 1 account nor is it a "different Creation." Rather, it looks more relationally at the development of Creation. This is also evidenced by the use of "Lord God," which uses the Divine Name of God that is considered "personal" to the Israelites. 

Second, the NET translation uses "orchard" where many of us are used to the word "Garden." This fits well, as we're mainly focused on trees here and the connotation of "garden," especially in the English-speaking world, is more about neat rows of veggies and flowers. So you have trees. Lots of trees.

Worth noting as well is that "Work" is not bad in the Garden/Orchard. We need to remember that as we fuss about work--we don't like work because the Fall wrecked it.

There are also some things that we just do not know about Genesis 2 and 3:

We do not know how long Adam and Eve are in the Garden/Orchard. It's just not in the text. So be careful with the view that it was instant or that it took millennia. We just do not know.

We also do not know what life is like outside of the Garden. We expect it is still some form of peaceful and proper relation of all things, but there is no information.

Chapter 3 gives us a variety of questions about talking snakes and other things that stand out, but the big question remains: what is it to follow Jesus?

The other big question that arises: Where was the Garden/Orchard? We don't know. I personally think it did not survive the Flood and that we will not encounter it again.

Those are the short notes. Maybe I'll share more of the longer ones later!

Sermon Recap for May 14 and 21

 Well, here we are at the end of some of the most chaotic weeks we've had since moving to Crossett--and anyone who has moved knows that moving weeks are always chaotic. We got Olivia finished with her 4 years at Ouachita, Angela finished with her first year, Steven done with his junior year of high school...and that involved moving both girls home and then working out the storing and sorting of their stuff. Some goes back to OBU in the fall, some goes with Olivia wherever she ends up launching adult life.

All that to say: wow. Tired and blessed really do go together.

Anyway, here's the May 14 Sermon:

And the podcast player:

Now, as to May 21st? Well...there's a button push on the live stream app to mute the sound. You should NOT push this button. I, however, pushed the button. If you'd like to see the service but not hear it, head over to the church's Facebook page! 

Book: Three in One

 

And we're back to BOOKS! Look, one of my great pleasures with writing is that it drives me to read more. I think my mental push on my doctoral process sputtered when it stopped being focused on me reading and learning and shifted to...something else. I'd far rather read, interpret, explain things than do just about anything else in the academic world. Anyway...on to this week's book!

Three in One: Analogies for the Trinity by William David Spencer is from Kregel Academic Publishers. A softcover, it weighs in at 216 pages counting the appendices and excluding the indices. Black and white printing throughout, this is a text-priority book, not one filled with pictures or diagrams. 

Overall, the thrust in Three in One is to look at how Christians communicate the truth of the Trinity. While Spencer is not out to prove the Trinity, he does open the book with background on this theological point. After all, why examine analogies for the Trinity if there isn't one?

That particular detail addressed--and it is illustrative, if not comprehensive--Spencer moves on to define the intentions of this work. The goals here are to express if it is appropriate to use language to explain the Trinity and, if so, what to say. One can easily assume his point will be that language is appropriate, otherwise, it's a pamphlet, not a book.

The next steps taken are to examine various analogies and explanations of the Trinity. Spencer takes the time to explain them well, then goes forward to show the shortcomings in many analogies but also notes how they still help us see and understand God better. 

Overall, I find his conclusions helpful about the use of language to explain the realities of God. Further, his summaries of various well-known analogies for the Trinity are easy to grasp. 

The subtitle of "Analogies for the Trinity" may be a bit off, as it is really more of an examination of the use of analogy than it is suggested analogies. Still, that's minor quibbling. I found Spencer's work to be helpful in expressing the inexpressible truth. 

And, of course, he references this: 

Sermon Recap for May 7 2023

 Yesterday, we had our normal services at Mt. Olive Baptist and we also hosted the local school district's baccalaureate service. The Rev. Jamie Staley, DMin, of First Baptist, Crossett, preached that service. It was a good message that, because I wasn't thinking, didn't get videoed. So you'll have to take my word for it. He brought a great message on Joshua 4, reminding us to remember the past, live in the present, and hope in the future.

Now, our other sermon was just me. Fortunately, someone else is responsible to video those, so here we go:

And the audio-only:

Sermon Addendum for April 30

 This past Sunday's sermon was on Genesis 1:26-28. (See here) Since we only have a few weeks that we're spending in Genesis, I bypassed looking at each of the days separately after Day One. Let's look at each day here.

First, of course, is Day One: God creates light, separates it from darkness, and names both the day and the night. He sees the light as "good," something which pleases Him and is the result that He intended. Further, the idea that "God saw that the light was good" should be understood in the idea that "God saw to it that the light was good" or "saw it to completion." We should not think God wasn't sure how the Light was going to turn out.

Next, we see Day Two: The Expanse between the waters, the "waters above" and the "waters below." This, well, we are not entirely sure how to picture this work. Part of that is because we are not entirely sure where the "waters" came from--they are there in verse 2 for the Spirit of God to be hovering over. What we see here is the result of a separation, where the sky is made between water above us and water below us. There is also some question about how this informs the Flood in Genesis 6-9, so it may be that we cannot fully picture it because the world was fundamentally changed in the Deluge. God is bringing about an orderly Creation. You can't have the Sun until you have a sky for it to shine in, after all.

Then, Day Three brings us the establishment of dry land and the growth of plants. Here we would do well to again remember: God is above and beyond and outside of His creation. This was and is an important reminder when many would find deity in the trees and plants and never look up--God created all of these. Further, they were part of the work of the same God. 

Day Four establishes the Sun, Moon, and stars. These are given to mark days, years, and seasons--those great astronomical calendars of the ancient civilizations? Those were societies using the signs in the heavens exactly as God intended humanity to use those signs! Now, worshiping the signs rather than the Sign-maker is a problem called idolatry, and that's a place we still tend to go wrong.

We come to Day Five and get fish and birds, so all you outdoorsy folks are now two-thirds of the way to happy: there's ducks to hunt and fish to catch. The deer come on Day Six. We see God creating the large spaces for the living things to dwell in, then the living things that dwell in them.

The capstone is Day Six, where the animals and the humans are created. There is a separation in those two, and the creation of people was the focus of the sermon so we'll leave that aside.

Day Seven will feature in a future sermon, but it is important to note that there are not six days of creation. There are seven. We ought not pull the Lord ceasing from His creating away as if it is not part of the action.

Now, one can easily get out into the weeds with some of the varied understandings of this passage: are the days symbolic? 24-hour? How does the latter work with no Sun until Day Four? How does the former work with the phrasing of "evening and morning"? 

Both sides of that argument miss that the main point here is that God has worked in Creation in ways that were unique to the descriptions of how the world had come to be used by other nations at the time. The focus here is on the fact that God did it--and did it ALL. Nothing is beyond His scope or concern.

Sermon Recap for April 30 2023

 Here are the sermons for the past couple of weeks!

 

And a link to where the Ann and Doug morning videos are: