RoboPreacher

turn reluctance on its ear A sermon on Habakkuk's oral vision : Habakkuk had seen too much.   Ironically , though, we don’t know much about this prophet ourselves! Habakkuk is light on autobiographical details. For everything Habakkuk had to see, we DON’T have a very clear picture of Habakkuk himself.   I mean this in the scholarly regard, too. We just don’t have a lot of information on Habakkuk. But my hunch is, like the rest of us , you don’t know much about Habakkuk, either.   Habakkuk is one of the twelve minor prophets. Meaning his oracle is tucked away at the end of the Old Testament. And the unlikelihood of turning upon his words is compounded by the fact that Habakkuk is short , just three chapters.   However , that means, in our reading today, you just got the broad strokes of the whole book of Habakkuk! What’s more, you’ve also already heard a good portion of it all already! So you now know nearly as much as the best experts on this book!   Who knows, perhaps yo

i focus on my breathing in the universal sound A sermon on Isaiah's vision & sermon to Hezekiah : This is the sound of Christmas. *Ring jingle bells.* At least, according to the airwaves . ISAIAH, though , says the coming of Christmas sounds more like this . *Strike ball-peen hammer against anvil.* The vision Isaiah’s given is a striking one. It sounds more like an instrument of war being hammered into an implement for farming , *Strike ball-peen hammer against anvil.* than jingle bells. And that’s a good thing, too. Because only a sound that piercing could ring out over what Isaiah had to live through.   In today’s Scripture, Assyrian , the enemy , is at Jerusalem's gate . And the enemy wants to make their presence felt , too.   You may have noticed that detail about how Assyria’s emissary, the Rabshakeh , spoke in the language of Judah . Well, that’s significant. It’s significant because when the armies of Assyria rolled on Jerusalem’s gate, Hezekiah, the king of

are met in thee tonight A sermon on Micah's sermon on God's modest theophanies : The lectionary, like the rest of the world , like the weather , has seemingly turned toward Christmas . Today’s prophecy from Micah tells of that great ruler God will raise up from the ‘ little town of Bethlehem.’ And with those words, that old Christmas hymn begins to ring in our ears. Doesn’t it? Now I’ll talk about Bethlehem in a moment. But first, I want to discuss what Bethlehem means . Capital-M means. And to do that, I need to tell you that you’ve been to Bethlehem. Yes, you .   However , I have to add you probably didn’t realize you were in that little town at the time. And what’s more , you most certainly didn't want to stay there for very long, either. Honestly, that old Christmas hymn really does get it right , ‘O little town of Bethlehem.’ O LITTLE town. But NOT little as in quaint . No, little as in insignificant . Bethlehem wasn’t like that little AFFLUENT town of Winterse