Exactly two weeks from today, the Jews will celebrate one of their most important holidays of the year – Yom Kippur, or as we know it in scripture, the Day of Atonement. It is a day when Jews repent of all the sins they have committed over the past year, and they turn to God…
Shaped BY the cross into the shape OF the cross
Sermons by Alan Smith
This morning, my sermon comes from the book of Obadiah, so if you’d like to follow along in your Bibles, please turn to the table of contents so that you can find it. Because, let’s be honest, Obadiah is one of the more obscure books of the Bible. And it’s only 21 verses long,…
In August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC. In that speech, he made this powerful statement: “We are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” You may be surprised to learn that…
I don’t need to tell you that the year 2020 has been a year of disasters. Even if we set aside the COVID pandemic and all the civil unrest, there were the 23 tornadoes at the beginning of this year that killed 75 people and did over $12 billion in damage. There was the earthquake…
I heard about a preacher who had all of his teeth pulled and new dentures were made for him. The next Sunday, he got in the pulpit and only preached for 10 minutes. The second Sunday, he preached for 20 minutes. But, on the third Sunday, he preached for an hour and a half. When…
This morning, in our study through the Bible, we come to the book of Daniel, and I’m sure there are at least a few of you who are extremely happy to hear that, because after looking at Jeremiah, Lamentations and Ezekiel, you’re just relieved that we’re finally in a book that you are somewhat familiar…
I recently heard a preacher say that one of the older members of his congregation told him that before his arrival, she had never heard a single sermon on any of the Old Testament prophets. And she had been a member of that church for over 40 years! Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising, though. …
I heard a story recently about President Calvin Coolidge. As the story goes, he returned home one Sunday afternoon after attending morning worship services. His wife was unable to attend, so she asked her husband what the preacher’s lesson was about that morning. He said, “Sin.” His wife asked for more details and Coolidge said,…
Memorials are important. Some of you may have visited the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, or the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, or the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. These memorials are moving because they capture moments of traumatic loss in ways that help us to process them while honoring…
This morning, in our study through the Bible, we come to the book of Jeremiah. I told Scott last Sunday that I wasn’t sure yet what my specific topic would be, but that it would probably be pretty sad, because there’s not much joy in the book of Jeremiah. He’s not called the “weeping prophet”…