Difference between revisions of "Sermon for March 10th, 2019"

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==Two Preachers and a Trucker:  Introductions==
 
==Two Preachers and a Trucker:  Introductions==
  
NEAL: The idea for this sermon series comes from an old favorite party question:  If you could invite two people (living or dead) to dinner, or coffee, or drinks, etc. but mostly for conversation, who would you invite, and why?
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NEAL: The idea for this sermon series comes from an old favorite party question:  If you could invite two people (living or dead) out to dinner, or coffee, or drinks, etc. but mostly for conversation, who would you invite, and why?
  
 
For those of you who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I would choose my favorite theologian, John Calvin, and my favorite character from the Bible, Job.  But I wasn't content just to answer the question.  I really wanted to know what that conversation would be like!   
 
For those of you who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I would choose my favorite theologian, John Calvin, and my favorite character from the Bible, Job.  But I wasn't content just to answer the question.  I really wanted to know what that conversation would be like!   

Revision as of 15:05, 7 March 2019

Job 1:1-3

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.

Two Preachers and a Trucker: Introductions

NEAL: The idea for this sermon series comes from an old favorite party question: If you could invite two people (living or dead) out to dinner, or coffee, or drinks, etc. but mostly for conversation, who would you invite, and why?

For those of you who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I would choose my favorite theologian, John Calvin, and my favorite character from the Bible, Job. But I wasn't content just to answer the question. I really wanted to know what that conversation would be like!

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for you, I also realized it wouldn't be too hard to answer that question. We have Job's words, Job's feelings, Job's thoughts and reflections, right there in the Book of Job -- all 42 chapters worth of them. That's a lot of words. And we also have Calvin's words about Job, preserved in the 159 sermons that he preached on the book of Job. Yes, 159. For those of you who think I spend too much time on this one book, in my seven years as your pastor, I've only preached 26 sermons (and counting) on the book of Job. Still, that's enough words altogether between the three of us, to reconstruct what I hope will be an interesting conversation.

CALVIN: That is all well and good, Monsieur...Locke. This book, the Book of Job, is indeed an excellent example to show us all how we are in the hand of God, and that it belongs to Him alone to order our lives and to dispose of them according to His good pleasure. But before we proceed, I should like to ask one question: What exactly, if you would be so kind to explain, is a "trucker?"

NEAL: Ah, yes, a trucker. Two preachers (that's of course me and our friend Calvin here) and a Trucker. That's Job. Why am I calling Job a trucker? Maybe I should let Job answer that question.

JOB: Hi. I'm Job. These days, everyone calls me Joe Bob. In the old language (Hebrew), Jobab means Papa Job. That's because I've got a lotta kids, grand-kids, great-grand-kids, great-great-grand-kids, you get the idea. I'm the owner and CEO of CTS: Camel Transportation Services, LLC. We're a trucking company. We transport freight in big rigs all around the world. Before trucks, we used stagecoaches. And before that, back in the old country, in the earliest days in the East, we used camels.

Sometimes people read my story--you know, the five hundred donkeys, thousand cows, seven thousand sheep, whole lotta servants, an all that, and they think I was some kind of farmer. Wrong! There's only one reason a man livin' in the desert in the old country would have had 3,000 camels. I've always been in the transportation business. And I've always been the best at it. Well...except for those dark days when I lost everything. But I reckon that's what we're here to talk about. Ain't that right, preachers?


  • Was Job a real person?