13 December 2006 11:29
Notes from this past Sunday's sermon.The sermon text was Galatians 4.1-7.
the first two are more or less quotes from the preacher, paraphrased somewhat because he was one of those preachers who tends to repeat himself a lot to make his point. he would say the same thing twice in a row to make himself clear.
"...so I said to my friend, 'You and me are humble men. Your wife is named Grace, my wife's name is Grace. And we both know that the Bible says God gives grace to the humble.'"
Rregarding Christian pietism... "Now each Christian driver is given a guardian angel. They can go at the speed of light! But angels are pious and will not break the speed limit. So when a Christian driver speed, him leave him angel faaaar behind. You follow the speed limit [though], you safe."He was a good speaker (despite the repetition), and had the rather somber congregation laughing quite a bit. Condensed, his point was: Christ is coming again—are you ready? His use of Gal 4 (redeemed through Christ, adopted as sons, and as sons therefore heirs) might not have been the most intuitive for his sermon, but he covered quite a bit of ground in the course of the half hour. He gave a history lesson regarding how the first coming of Christ was timed perfectly to allow the very rapid expansion of the Way throughout the 'known world' (Pax Romana, Roman roads, universal Greek language, etc). He left that for a while to talk about Galatians, then came back to Christ's coming.
I must confess I wasn't paying 100% attention the entire time, but eventually he started speaking of the second coming and the world's readiness for that based on the similarities to the first coming. In place of the Roman Empire you have America, the 'imperial bully' (this was a Jamaican preacher by the way). Rapid air travel instead of Roman roads, and of course English as a universal language in linguistic preparation for the coming of Christ.
Fortunately for my opinion of this particular speaker, he posed his ideas as 'interesting things to think about' (my words) instead of 'this is the box I'm cramming God into' (also my words). In that light he did an excellent job of casually saying "be ready it could happen any day" and may even have toned down the NT message a little bit, since the NT writers are constant in harping on the idea of 'be ye prepared for ye know not the hour'.
In all, it wasn’t a bad sermon for the advent season. I just wish they'd spent as much time considering the ergonomics of their pews as they obviously did in raising money for their sound system.
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