Sermon Synopses - 2009

Sermons at Trinity are usually ex tempore, that is done without notes...Please enjoy our "Sermon Synopses" or short summaries of sermons preached at Trinity

Link to Sermons Synopses for additional summaries available from this year.

Sermon for Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 1:3-14

1. Dresden:  Like our souls and the spiritual life:  Can see some of the original glory, but never far from the destruction.  Some places have been reconstructed and are beautiful, others are yet a work in progress.  There are many grey, square, ugly boxes of apartments that stretch on for blocks (Communist architecture).
2. Concern:  So often we think we have reconstructed, but live only in ugly square, gray boxes.  We have lost the vision of our original splendor; we have forgotten Christ’s ability to forgive and restore.
3. How to move to beauty and “life abundant?”  Do as tourists in Dresden do, go toward the beauty.
4. Ephesians:  Beauty is found in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ:
5. We are blessed
6. We are chosen
7. We are his children,
8. We have redemption and forgiveness
9. He lavishes the riches of his grace upon us
10. He has made known to us the mystery of his will
11. A gracious will that calls for all things to be gathered up into him.

• Invitation: 
•  Take quiet time to do inventory of self.  Where is the original splendor?  The beautiful reconstruction?  The rubble that is a work in progress?  Where have you settled for life in square, concrete boxes?
• Meditate on today’s passage – and the rest of Ephesians – to be reminded of the extraordinary people God has made us in Jesus Christ.  Here is beauty.  Go there!

Sermon for July 5, 2009
2 Corinthians 12:2-10

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

1. Story:  Kids building fort with branches; plugging up gaps and holes.  No holes!
2. When we try to build our lives, we like to do the same:  a firm structure with no holes.  But… Real life is full of holes:  health, relationships, unemployment, disappointments, failures.
3. Message of hope:  God is most easily able to enter into our lives in the places where there are holes.  “When I am weak, then I am strong.”
4. Invitation.

1. Consider the three most pressing “holes” in your life: disappointments, difficulties, anxieties, etc.
2. Imagine Jesus as present in those places, knocking, patiently waiting to enter in. Invite him in.

1. God does not forcibly enter: only stands and knocks.
2. Jesus may not necessarily “fix” the hole; Paul prayed three times that his “thorn” be removed from him, yet it was not.

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