Advancing Word Podcast

Do you feel like your life is moving in the wrong direction or things aren’t quiet working out as you imagined they would?  The holidays have only exacerbated your disappointment.  What can you do?  You can do like Ruth did in the first chapter of the book of the Bible that bears her name.  You can “face north when life is going south”.  This sermon tells you how.  

According to Titus, Chapter Two, verses 11 – 14, the birth of Jesus is “grace appearing”.  The Apostle Paul is writing to Titus who is ministering in Crete, an island city located 100 miles south of Greece.  He uses the Greek word from which we get our English word “epiphany”, to describe the birth of Jesus on the first Christmas morning.  This is one of several passages in the New Testament that validate the Advent message outside the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  Dr. Stubblefield shares what happened on the day grace appeared.  

Christians are God’s witnesses to a broken world.  We share the message of salvation in our homes, schools, communities, on our jobs and even in our churches.  The Epistle of First Peter, verse fifteen captures the essence of this responsibility.  The Advent Season provides a unique opportunity for those who are ready to share the truth about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with others.  This sermon provides a description of “a ready witness.”   

First Chronicles Chapter 24, verse nineteen is a short yet profound passage that erupts with a significant salute and timeless tribute to the ministry of the prophets.  Prophets were “essential workers”, devoted servants who, through the ministry of the Word of God, challenged God’s people to faith and faithfulness as they struggled to recover their national dignity and destiny after seventy years of exile.  They were, like pastors today, God’s “first responders”.  This sermon tells us why.  

British Prime Minister and prominent leader during World War II, Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give.”  He could have very well been gleaning truth from a passage that King Solomon wrote centuries earlier that is recorded in Proverbs Chapter Eleven, verse twenty-five.  That verse and this sermon addresses the question, “What do we gain when we give?”  

This sermon focuses on prayer in the life of the early church.  It is a compelling reminder that what happens in a prayer meeting has world-changing implications.  According to Acts Chapter Four, verse thirty-one, while praying, the church experienced a connection that cannot be disrupted, a community that cannot be discounted, a capacity that cannot be depleted and a confidence that cannot be discouraged.  

In Joshua, Chapter 3, before the Israelites encountered the towering fortress of Jericho, they had to face the turbulent flooding of the Jordan River.  Miraculously crossing the river at that time of the year not only validated Joshua’s role as their new leader but revealed that God had an upstream provision for their downstream problem.  This promise, provision and possibility is available for believers today!  

Faced with the blatant contradictions around him, the timeless problem and paradox of the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous, the author of the Seventy Third Psalm cries out to God.   Muddled and mired in doubt and skepticism, he plods and slogs along until he experiences a breakthrough during worship in the sanctuary.  This sermon is a compelling reminder that in our nation and in the life of the church, it is “sanctuary time”!  

This sermon reminds us that the ministry of Jesus was both prophetic and proleptic.  The dictionary defines “proleptic” as “the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished.”  In Mark 6:1, Jesus’s own ministry foretells and frames what should be the agenda and activity of every local church that is connected to His person, purpose, passion and power. 

In Joshua Chapter Fourteen, verses six through fifteen, Caleb, at the age of eighty-five years old, expresses his willingness and desire to go to battle as the Israelites solidified their gains in the new land of promise.  He was by all accounts, “a faithful man” because he was devoted, delivered and daring. Even in the seasoned sunset of his life, he was still looking for another opportunity to serve the Lord.