Future Sermons

As many of you know I have almost completed my latest installment of sermons in the Luke series: chapters seven and eight. Beginning September 9th I am excited to launch a series of messages based upon the fresh purpose statement that was composed by the Strategic Ministry Planning Team. The series will follow the pattern of “7 Pillars” or core essentials of Metro East. The series will be titled “The Gospel-Centered Church.”

In November, before returning to the series on Genesis (begun December ’06), my plan is to preach some messages from the Psalms. Our last series in the Psalms was called “A Walk with Christ Through the Psalms.” This next group of messages will be an examination of prayer in the Psalms and will be called “Protest and Praise.” In preparation I have been reading John Goldingay’s two volume commentary on the Psalms. It is part of the new Baker Commentary on the Old Testament series. It is outstanding. Here is a sample from a section that Goldingay writes about “the Psalms as theology”:

“Theologically, the Psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. There is a greater concentration of statements about God here than anywhere else. That reflects the fact that theology is the key both to worship and to pastoral care, and that worship and pastoral care generate theological insight.

“Doxology and theology are closely related. Doxology requires theology; glorifying God involves making many a statement about God. Conversely, theology finds one of its natural forms in doxology…The natural way to make statements that do justice to God’s nature is to make them in the form of praise. Dispassionate analytical statements about God deconstruct.

“Statements about God are also of key importance to pastoral care. First, the doxological statements to which I have just referred, the statements that are most at home in praise psalms, need to be statements that shape Israel’s worldview. Among other things, they may then issue in and support our living the right kind of life. Second, these are then the statements that Israel needs to keep in mind when trouble comes, when the temptation is to lose sight of or deliberately abandon the convictions about God that one affirmed when the going was not tough.”