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:

Sermon Addendum for April 16 2023 Genesis 1

 I'm going to bring back a blog feature that I was doing, oh, a decade ago...If you don't know it, most preachers and teachers of the Bible usually generate far more information than fits in the short time allotted to their presentation. For example, if I put in everything I found in a passage--background, connections to other parts of Scripture, inspiration thoughts--I would likely preach for more than an hour or two. 

Which, while I know most church folks will act like this is okay, it is not okay. The mind can only absorb what the other end can endure, and pews are far more comfortable if you lay out on them and nap than if you're sitting on them. Plus, there's long enough between breakfast and lunch.

Which means: let's put it here. This will still not be everything additional, but just a few thoughts that sit in the background.

First of all, this is creation narrative. And I've written about Genesis 1 more than once here on the blog, just look for the Genesis tag. It's important because it is the background on which the rest of the Scripture unfolds. Even Revelation: there is no part of the story of God working that does not unfold inside the world created in Genesis 1. 

That ought to spur us to care about what we see here.

Second is the idea that this is creation narrative given in a specific context. That context is what we tend to call the Ancient Near East (ANE) in the middle of the second millennium BC. The points of emphasis will answer questions that would be asked in that time frame. The information will be accessible to people in that era--the finer details that we can see with an electron microscope or the Hubble Telescope will not be addressed. 

So there is more present in the story about the work of God Almighty in contrast with the creation stories of other nations--especially Egypt!--than we might look for in our modern era. It's a bigger deal that God overcame chaos in creation, because in some ANE stories, chaos is part of the creating act. Not so in the Bible: Chaos is overcome in the; Wisdom (see Proverbs) is involved.

Third, we have to admit there are parts of our scientific understanding of reading God's general revelation (the remains of that which He has created) that are not mentioned nor easily subsumed into the account of creation in Genesis 1. This rolls back into the second point: context of the original audience.

What do we do with that?

Depends on how trustworthy you think the Almighty God of the universe is. There's trusting Him to say what He meant to say in the text, and there's thinking we should correct Him. I'd recommend the former.

Finally, note that this passage can be seen as somewhat poetic. It doesn't quite rhyme, but it's more of a narrative with some features of poetry. That affects how we should understand it to a certain extent, but does not mean we dismiss what is plainly stated.

And that's the Sermon Addendum for April 16 2023 :)

Sermon Recap: April 16 2023

 Well, it's been a while since I put the sermons on the blog. They do still live on in the podcast repeaters and the YouTube channel. However, since I'm starting a series in Genesis, I thought I would restart the blog postings.

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 (I know it's available on Amazon Music!)

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

You'll noticed on the video that we moved the pulpit off the platform and put it where the first pew used to be...there was just too much physical distance between me and the congregation. The Worship Team still plays from up on the platform because I have not gotten around to redoing all the wiring (and probably won't!) but I needed to be less "on-high and distant" while preaching.

Next week's goal: USABLE SHARED OUTLINES!