One of my five favorite sermons is from I Samuel Some of the places I preached it in the past invite me back from time to time to preach it again. Others just steal it and I live with that fact. I just hope they do a bettter job with it.
I actually put it up at length over at rickddavis.com, but that site is now gone forever. One day before long I may put it back up on this site for preachers to use when things just do not click one week, but you are still expected to preach and it is Saturday night, and what are you supposed to do? Steal my stuff, if you wish. I just have not ever been able to plagiarize another preacher. If it isn’t my stuff, I probably just will not use it. You do what your conscience allows.
So, I have about ten sermons I really like to preach. Two of them are from I Samuel. I am looking for another one.
Why?
I want to get something new, again and again. I need to receive a word from God that resonates with me. I still get excited when a message leaps off the page. I still get excited when congregants show a happy response to what they hear.
Much of the public speaking I hear in church these days (old codger speaking) seems to be mostly self help kind of stuff flavored with some pop-psychology. Thwew are worse things than being a poor preacher. I have a hard time living with accepting being a bad preacher. You can study, read, do your language work, pray, listen to others; something ought to come to you.
The Book of Books (the Bible) is filled with vivid literature. The prose soars, rather than flop along. There is humor, there is drama, there is music, there are sections at least R-Rated. The poignancy lifts the reader, the tension pulls us up like a thermal breeze takes a paraglides off a cliff three thousand feet above a lush, green valley.
I noticed this reading through I Samuel again. In various places the text has this fellow or that fellow wanting a sign from God. On the occasions when a character actually asks for a sign from God, there is often a choice for them between doing something easy or difficult in order to know what God approves. The character who chooses the more difficult act more often receives a word from God. The explanation appears to be this; God answers exertion, or, at least, one’s willingness to show effort.
For instance, in I Samuel 14, Jonathan leads his army of one against the perpetual enemy of Israel, the Philistines. To reach their camp, Jonathan and is armor bearer must climb down a cliff, cross a valley, wade a creek, hike a trail and reach another cliff. Jonathan suggests they call out to the Philistines. If the Philistines threaten to come down against them, they will withdraw. If the Philistines order Jonathan too climb the cliff before the fight, then Jonathan will know God has delivered the Philistines garrison into his hands.
Jonathan does. The Philistines do. Jonathan and his friend climb the cliff and wear out the enemy so thoroughly the rest of the Philistine army runs for its life.
Exertion, effort, the expenditure of energy; to risk all is to climb into the hand of God and see the enemy routed.
Jesus would walk fifteen minute miles all day on a spiny ridge in the land of promise. He rose before the rest of the band in the morning in order to pray, He climbed mountains, prayed all night and got a word from the Father.
Hit a lick, dear friend. Jonathan did. Jesus does.