The book of Ruth begins in brokenness. The time of the Judges had seen people go from obedient and devoted followers of God to fickle and nameless wanderers who came to Him temporarily in their times of greatest distress. The first chapter records how one family even leaves God’s “Promised Land” to seek life elsewhere. The book of Ruth is short but deep. We see suffering, but we see restoration. The hope of the Gospel is very much alive even centuries before the arrival of the Messiah. This outsider and foreigner teaches us what it’s like to be an insider with God. In the midst of broken times, we are reminded that God knows us by name. When we are tempted to look back at how things used to be, we learn that there is nothing better behind us than the God before us. For all of us whose paradise has ever been broken, let’s make Ruth’s God of restoration our God too! Where He goes, we go.
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Expect Great Things. Attempt Great Things.
Sermons can have a powerful individual effect. It is under the hearing of these sermons that people are saved, instructed, and grow in their faith. People will leave the church building saying, “It’s like he was preaching to just me” or “ I needed to hear that today.” However, some sermons go beyond personal effect. Some have the power to move a denomination and, in turn, leave a lasting change in the world.
This is precisely what happened to the Particular Baptist denomination of England when Andrew Fuller and William Carey delivered two powerful sermons to their local association in the early 1790s. God used these two sermons, and these two men, to change the course of history and usher in what we now call the modern-missions movement.
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Painting of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux by Vicente Berdusán Osorio.
5 Great Sermons from Church History - #3 Bernard of Clairvaux on Song of Solomon
This is the third installment of a five-part series called, "5 Great Sermons from Church History." See the first here and the second here. This is not meant to indicate that these are the greatest or the best sermons, or even the five most important in the history of the church. However, these sermons were selected based on historical significance, content, accessibility (both good translations and comprehensibility), and each as exemplary of the particular era in which it occurred.
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Rest for the Weary, Working Soul: Finding the Answer to Humanity’s Greatest Quest in one of Zwingli’s Favorite Passages
For Zwingli, the Christian can have assurance that Jesus offers rest for weary souls because of “the clarity and certainty of the Word of God.” Without this sure foundation, the faithful are subject to a life of uncertainty and toil, constantly re-plowing the ground that God has already prepared in their own lives.
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5 Great Sermons from Church History - #2 John Chrysostom's Easter Sermon
This is the second installment of a five-part series called, "5 Great Sermons from Church History." See the first here. This is not meant to indicate that these are the greatest or the best sermons, or even the five most important in the history of the church. However, these sermons were selected based on historical significance, content, accessibility (both good translations and comprehensibility), and each as exemplary of the particular era in which it occurred. Given the scope, the five sermons stretch over the entirety of church history. Extreme redaction is unavoidable with such a project. Each of the entries will take a similar approach, namely: Brief background on speaker and sermon, redacted block quote to capture the heart of sermon, and brief commentary on the whole sermon.
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5 Great Sermons from Church History - #1 Gregory the Theologian on the Grandeur of God
This is the first installment of a five-part series called, "5 Great Sermons from Church History." This is not meant to indicate that these are the greatest or the best sermons, or even the five most important in the history of the church. However, these sermons were selected based on historical significance, content, accessibility (both good translations and comprehensibility), and each as exemplary of the particular era in which it occurred. Given the scope, the five sermons stretch over the entirety of church history. Extreme redaction is unavoidable with such a project. Each of the entries will take a similar approach, namely: Brief background on speaker and sermon, redacted block quote to capture the heart of sermon, and brief commentary on the whole sermon.
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