Extemporaneous Preaching – Trying To Remember What I Said
Abridge Worship Provided By: Rev. Jacob Shaw (Please note that this is not a verbatim account of our Sunday morning worship, but rather a condensed version for those at home to study and enjoy, Blessing)
Opening Prayer: Source of Hope, bring us into the presence of Your Hope/ Inspire in us a strength of faith. Shower us with the waters of mercy and grace, that our hope may be renewed as we learn to trust Your promise and love. Amen
Scripture Readings: Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Genesis 9:8-17
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
1 Peter 3:18-22
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[b] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
Mark 1:9-15
The Baptism and Testing of Jesus
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
Jesus Announces the Good News
14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Reflection:
On the Sunday when I delivered this sermon, I delivered it in a extemporaneous way, which simply mean I did it without note or preparation. I do this occasionally throughout the year for a few reasons, (1) it is good to learn to rest in the Spirit as you preach. (2) It is nice to walk away from a script. (3) Sometimes a week goes by when there is not time to prepare the way you want, so it is good to not be encumbered by fear when the moment does arise. Since, this particular Sunday was the beginning of Lent, it felt wise to do an extemporaneous sermon in light of resting in God, and letting the Spirit lead as God so desires. This is also a long way of saying that what I am writing here for our website is no where close to a verbatim account. As I have no note or basis other than my memory and the scripture to build off of. With that said here we go….
1 Peter’s context is in a time when people were beginning to convert to Christianity, which was not only was the new faith-revelation on the block but also was call people to faith at a time when having a religious change of heart could, ultimately, destroy your life. People could lose livelihood, family, community, or even life over come to faith in Christ, and to something like a ritual of Baptism to proclaim and solidify that faith, would be a public mark on your head, in many ways. So as in 1 Peter we see an apologetic argument, encouraging people to withstand the rejection of the world.
Noah and Jesus are both a point of reference. Noah is a reference because Noah had a very unique and long standing time period of rejection because of his faith. We all know the Noah story but many of us don’t know that the Ark was something that took a very long time to build. Some scholar say the Ark took 120 years, give or take to build, and some scale it down to 55-75 years. Either way, you have Noah building this massive ocean liner, not near the beach, claiming to all those around him, that there was a reason for it. How many people would have look at Noah as if his faith was a point of insanity, or that this a side affect of his habit of drink. But Noah endured, he maintained in faith, be worked, he sweated, and through his faith, he was saved, as the world’s sin, and all that rejected God was washed away.
Christ becomes the Ark of the New Covenant, he becomes the life raft by which we live as we are submerged in the cleansing waters to wash away the sins which try to mock and shackle.
So in 1 Peter we are seeing a reminder to the nature of the faithful to endure, as Noah did, and of course as Christ did. And we can trust that God will deliver us through the this time of endurance and as a result we will be saved through and by the process of God healing the fallen world and people from the presence of sin.
And, in Lent, we as a Christian Kingdom, we practice fasting as way of resting into God’s promise to deliver. We rest in God in practice, so when time comes for us to rest in God as solution, then it is a normative motion for us. And for us to recognize that by the cross Jesus has saved us, as that ark saved Noah and his family, we can trust that not matter what we must endure, God’s love will care us through.
Homework: Turn to Genesis and reread the story of Noah, ask yourself, do you feel you could had endured mockery for 60+ years to build the Ark? And if you were Noah, what sort of prayerful and Lenten-like practices do you thing he practices to endure in faith?
Closing Prayer: God, you were before the beginning, and you are after the end. We know by your revelation of the Christ; Your son and expression of love for us, that you have and will remain with us. Help us rest into You, no matter what mockery, what trials, what temptations are at our door. Amen.
Meme of the Week:
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