By Grace Alone

Forgiveness for Everyone, for Everything, for Evermore

Ellens

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781630870812
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

These sermons make a strong exegetical and homiletical case, each based upon specific biblical texts, for the central biblical claim for God's radical, unconditional, and universal grace to humankind. They address a variety of themes and texts for Ordinary Time, with the intent of surprising the reader, preacher, or hearer with a fresh and attention-getting perspective on the gospel message. This volume is filled with sermons that deal in every case with profound biblical and theological issues, exegetically grounded in direct interpretation of Scripture texts, and woven together in such a way as to consistently bring to the surface the mainstream of the radical grace theology that is the Word of God throughout both the Hebrew Bible (OT) and the Christian Scriptures (NT). That grace theology mainstream runs from Genesis 3:15 to the last chapter of The Revelation of St. John.

Conclusion

I have spent my professional life preaching sermons and lecturing at universities. I kept one leg in each camp, so to speak. It seemed clear to me that doing so was a calling of the Lord. The work was consistently gratifying and heartening in its fruitfulness. When I look back upon the 60 years of such professional work it is clear to me that both were my divinely revealed vocation, God’s clear call to me at age seven. Moreover, keeping one foot in the university and one foot in the pulpit, pastorate, and clinic proved to be a posture in which the two sides of my work mutually enhanced each other. The university kept me up to date. The pastorate and clinic kept me honest to the realities of life down on the ground where, as Toynbee intimated, real life is lived and the significant history is written.

The sermons in this volume are the fruit of those sixty years. They tell my story and in doing so they relate, as clearly as I know how, what I think is God’s story in this human world. It is for the reader to decide whether these sermons are as useful, truth-telling, and life-changing as sermons are supposed to be. It is for the Divine Spirit now to empower this modest volume on its way into the minds and hearts of spiritually inquiring readers and preachers whose use of them can potentially multiply my ministry of the Word.

I send them forth with the invitation to anyone who wishes, that they m...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Sermon One: Grace When Least Expected
• Sermon Two: Love Has Good Manners
• Sermon Three: God and Beauty
• Sermon Four: He Who Has the Most Toys Wins
• Sermon Five: Mercy and Not Sacrifice: A Stewardship Sermon
• Sermon Six: A Usable Future
• Sermon Seven: As a Dying Man
• Sermon Eight: By the Skin of Our Teeth
• Sermon Nine: A Weeping God!
• Sermon Ten: The Cross as Christian Symbol
• Sermon Eleven: The Laughing Christ
• Sermon Twelve: When God Moves In
• Sermon Thirteen: The Purposes of Prayer
• Sermon Fourteen: Do You Fear God?
• Sermon Fifteen: Is Jesus Really God?
• Sermon Sixteen: For God’s Pleasure and Purpose
• Sermon Seventeen: Be Transformed
• Sermon Eighteen: Christians as Theologians
• Sermon Nineteen: God’s Mountain
• Sermon Twenty: God Rested
• Sermon Twenty One: A Snake in the Desert
• Sermon Twenty Two: The Minister’s Mandate, the Congregation’s Call
• Sermon Twenty Three: Christian Olympics
• Sermon Twenty Four: The Empty God
• Sermon Twenty Five: Spirituality Right Side Up
• Sermon Twenty Six: Spirituality Upside Down and Inside Out
• Sermon Twenty Seven: So What, Operationally
• Conclusion