A HYMN OF DELIVERANCE

Sermonic Pericope:
Exodus 15:1-21 (ESV)
¹  Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
²  The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
³  The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name.
⁴  “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.
⁵  The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
⁶  Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power, your right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy.
⁷  In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries; you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.
⁸  At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.
⁹  The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’
¹⁰  You blew with your wind; the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
¹¹  “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
¹²  You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them.
¹³  “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
¹⁴  The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.
¹⁵  Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
¹⁶  Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O LORD, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased.
¹⁷  You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
¹⁸  The LORD will reign forever and ever.”
¹⁹  For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the LORD brought back the waters of the sea upon them, but the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea.
²⁰  Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.
²¹  And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

Sermonic Sub-Title: Sing Triumphantly (This national song glorified the Lord who the Hebrews gave full credit for their triumphant victory over Pharaoh and his Egyptian Army.) 

Sermonic Facts: This is arguably the oldest song in scripture. (Hebrews national song)

Sermonic Idea: The Israelites were completely helpless to defend themselves, their only hope was the miraculous working power of their covenantal keeping God. (This song is theologically sound and lyrically rich.)

Sermonic Tension: You have a formidable enemy. (Satan)

Sermonic Point: The Lord has the power to deliver you. (Israel were slaves in Egypt for four hundred years.)

Sermonic Structure: (There are three moves within this sermonic presentation)

I. THIS SONG CAUSED THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL TO LOOK UP IN REVERENCE (verses 1-6)
A. The Lord is Moses Strength
B. The Lord is Moses Song
C. The Lord has become Moses Salvation

II. THIS SONG CAUSED THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL TO LOOK BACK AT THEIR REDEMPTION (verses 7-16)
A. The Lord Redeemed Israel from the hands of the Egyptians
B. The Lord Redeemed Everyone
C. The Lord in Redeeming Israel totally annihilated their Enemy

III. THIS SONG CAUSED THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL TO LOOK FORWARD AND REJOICE (verses 17-21)
A. Israel held on to the Lord's Promise
B. Israel had the Lord's Protection
C. Israel knew that they were the Lord's Possession

Sermonic Cross Reference:
Revelation 15:1-4 (ESV)
¹  Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished.
²  And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.
³  And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!
⁴  Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Sermonic Doctrine: This song reveals Salvation, Monotheism and the Omnipotence of the Lord.
From the Latin omnipotent, "all powerful." God's attribute of infinite power.

Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

A.     Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace. Repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Savior.

B.     Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings the believer unto a relationship of peace and favor with God.

C.     Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life.

D.     Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.

Genesis 3.15; Exodus 3.14-17; 6.2-8; Matthew 1.21; 4.17; 16.21-26; 27.22; 28.6; Luke 1.68-69; 2.28-32; John 1.11-14, 29; 3.3-21, 36; 5.24; 10.9, 28-29; 15.1-16; 17.17; Acts 2.21; 4.12; 15.11; 16.30-31; 17.30-31; 20.32; Romans 1.16-18; 2.4; 3.23-25; 4.3ff.; 5.8-10; 6.1-23; 8.1-18, 29-39; 10.9-10, 13; 13.11-14; I Corinthians 1.18,30; 6.19-20; 15.10; II Corinthians 5.17-20; Galatians 2.20; 3.13; 5.22-25; 6.15; Ephesians 1.7; 2.8-22; 4.11-16; Philippians 2.12-13; Colossians 1.9-22; 3.1ff.; I Thessalonians 5.23-24; II Timothy 1.12; Titus 2.11-14; Hebrews 2.1-3; 5.8-9; 9.24-28; 11.1; 12.18, 14; James 2.14-26; I Peter 1.2-23; I John 1.6; 2.11; Revelation 3.20; 21.1; 22.5

MONOTHEISM ~ From the Greek mono, “one” and theos, “God.” The belief that there is one God and only one God. In the OT God strove to teach Israel that He alone was God; the NT clearly revealed that God was a Trinity, three in one. Acts 17.22-31; I Corinthians 8.4-6

ATTRIBUTES OF GOD ~ The characteristics of God that make Him God. They are not something were merely attribute to Him, but qualities inseparable from His Very Being. In every way that God exists, He exists without limit, that is, in perfection. God is eternal, without beginning or end (self-existent); all-powerful (Omnipotence); all-knowing (Omniscience); all-loving; long-suffering; present everywhere at all times (Omnipresence); unlimited in creative power (Omnificence). God is limited only by His own nature or character. He cannot do anything that would contradict His Very Nature or Being; this does not mean, however, that God is limited or imperfect, but only that God is God and cannot be other than himself.

THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

Snippet from Sunday

Sermonic Pericope: 1 KINGS 3.1-28 (ESV)

1 Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the LORD and the wall around Jerusalem.

2 The people were sacrificing at the high places, however, because no house had yet been built for the name of the LORD. 3 Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. 4 And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.

5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, "Ask what I shall give you." 6 And Solomon said, "You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you. And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day.

7 And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. 8 And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. 9 Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?"

10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11 And God said to him, "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12 behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you. 13 I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days. 14 And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days." 15 And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.

16 Then two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. 17 The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. 18 Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. 19 And this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on him. 20 And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. 21 When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had borne.” 22 But the other woman said, “No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours.” The first said, “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.” Thus they spoke before the king. 23 Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one. ’” 24 And the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought before the king. 25 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”
26 Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.” 27 Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.” 28 And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.

Sermonic Theme: The abundance of GOD. (Omnipotent)

The quality of being all-powerful, normally understood as the power to perform any action that is logically possible and consistent with God’s essential nature. Omnipotence is one of the traditional attributes of God. Many attempts to analyze this property have been made, centering on the “paradox of the stone”—a vivid illustration of the logical difficulties raised by omnipotence. The paradox of the stone begins with the question “Can God create a stone that he cannot move?” If so, there is something God cannot do (move the stone). But if God cannot create such a stone, then there also appears to be something God cannot do. The source of the paradox is the question as to whether it is possible for an omnipotent being to limit itself.

God Is Omniscient and Omnipotent

To say that God is omniscient and omnipotent means that there can be no real barriers to God's knowing or acting. Apart from Himself, God has created everything there is to be known and sustains it in being. So is it conceivable that there is something He could not know or not have power over?
It is impossible to think of something as thwarting God's will, unless God Himself allows the thwarting—as in the human free choice to sin. But that is a circumstance that requires omnipotence, and therefore is not an argument against it.

Sermonic Subject: The paternal nature of GOD. (Omniscience)

The quality of being all-knowing. This is one of the traditional attributes of God. Omniscience is usually analyzed as knowing the truth value of every proposition. Controversy has centered around the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with human free will, though many defend the claim that there is no inconsistency. However, some argue that God’s omniscience does not extend to all future actions, either because the propositions about such actions are as yet neither true nor false or else because it is logically impossible to know their truth.

Sermonic Doctrine: Providence (GOD will provide)

The loving care and governance that God exercises over the created universe. The traditional picture of providence is one in which God, as an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being, has exhaustive knowledge of the past, present and future, and exercises his power so as to ensure that every event that occurs is part of his perfect plan. Some have recently questioned such a view of providence by arguing that it does not do justice to human freedom. According to a revised view, God knows all the possibilities and knows what responses he must make to ensure that his goals are achieved. The issues raised by providence are closely linked to the problems raised by predestination and the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free will.

Sermonic Tension: People will test the wisdom of GOD. (Justice)

Sermonic Question: How may I receive more from GOD?

Sermonic Sentence: You will never exhaust GODS resources. (The liberality of GOD)

Sermonic Refrain: There's more where that came from.

Sermonic Cross Reference: 2 Samuel 7.14-17 ESV 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, 15 but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16 And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. ’” 17 In accordance with all these words, and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.

2 Samuel 12:24-25 ESV Solomon's Birth 24 Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went in to her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him 25 and sent a message by Nathan the prophet. So he called his name Jedidiah, because of the Lord.

1 Kings 2.1-4 ESV 1 When David's time to die drew near, he commanded Solomon his son, saying, 2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, 3 and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, 4 that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. ’

1 Kings 2.10-12 ESV The Death of David 10 Then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David. 11 And the time that David reigned over Israel was forty years. He reigned seven years in Hebron and thirty- three years in Jerusalem. 12 So Solomon sat on the throne of David his father, and his kingdom was firmly established.

2 Chronicles 9:1-9 ESV The Queen of Sheba 1 Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to Jerusalem to test him with hard questions, having a very great retinue and camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. 2 And Solomon answered all her questions. There was nothing hidden from Solomon that he could not explain to her. 3 And when the queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, 4 the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, and their clothing, his cupbearers, and their clothing, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. 5 And she said to the king, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, 6 but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, half the greatness of your wisdom was not told me; you surpass the report that I heard. 7 Happy are your wives! Happy are these your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 8 Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on his throne as king for the Lord your God! Because your God loved Israel and would establish them forever, he has made you king over them, that you may execute justice and righteousness.” 9 Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices, and precious stones. There were no spices such as those that the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

Nehemiah 13:26 ESV Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin.

Psalm 27.10 ESV 10 For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me in.

Psalm 37.25 ESV 25 I have been young, and now am old,
yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken
or his children begging for bread.

Psalms 111:10 ESV The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all those who practice it have a good understanding.
His praise endures forever!

Daniel 2:20-23 ESV
Daniel answered and said:
 “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
 to whom belong wisdom and might.
21 He changes times and seasons;
 he removes kings and sets up kings;
 he gives wisdom to the wise
 and knowledge to those who have understanding;
22 he reveals deep and hidden things;
 he knows what is in the darkness,
 and the light dwells with him.
23 To you, O God of my fathers,
 I give thanks and praise,
for you have given me wisdom and might,
and have now made known to me what we asked of you,
for you have made known to us the king's matter.”

Ephesians 3.20-21 ESV 20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Philippians 4.19-20 ESV 19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.

James 1.5-8 ESV 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double- minded man, unstable in all his ways.

James 1:16-18 ESV Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

James 3:17 ESV But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

1 Corinthians 1:30-31 ESV And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 3:18 ESV Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

Matthew 7:24-27 ESV Build Your House on the Rock 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

John 10:10 ESV The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Sermonic Structure: (there are three major moves within this pericope)


I.     IN ORDER FOR YOU TO RECEIVE MORE FROM GOD YOU
        NEED A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LORD (Vrs 1-5)

1 Kings 3:3
Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places.

II.    IN ORDER FOR YOU TO RECEIVE MORE FROM GOD YOU      
         NEED TO KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS (Vrs 6-15)

1 Kings 3:7
And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in.

III.   IN ORDER FOR YOU TO RECEIVE MORE FROM GOD YOU
        NEED TO USE HIS WISDOM FOR LIFE (Vrs 16-28)

1 Kings 3:28
And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.

Trayvon Martin

THE SON OF A PROSTITUTE

Sermonic Pericope: ESV Judges 11:1; 29-40 Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.

29 Then the Spirit of the LORD was upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD and said, "If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." 32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the LORD gave them into his hand. 33 And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel. 34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow." 36 And she said to him, "My father, you have opened your mouth to the LORD; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the LORD has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites." 37 So she said to her father, "Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions." 38 So he said, "Go." Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. 39 And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel 40 that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.


Sermonic Title: "The Son of a Prostitute"

Sermonic Sub-title: I made a vow

Sermonic Doctrine: Salvation (Divine Deliverance)

The general meaning of the several Hebrew and Greek words translated into English as "salvation" is "safety" and "deliverance." In the OT salvation refers to deliverance, both physically (Psalm 37.40; 59.2; 106.4) and spiritually (Psalm 51.12; 79.9). OT prophesies focus on the complete salvation of GOD'S people by the coming Messiah (Job 19.25-27); the NT teaches that these prophecies are fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Jesus brought salvation through forgiveness of sins (Matthew 1.21) and the gift of eternal life. (Hebrews 5.9; Acts 4.12; Hebrews 2.10)

Sermonic Tension: The doctrine of Grace. This is where joy and pain kiss each other. (Temporary over and against Permanent deliverance)

Sermonic Question: Why did HE do it? (I know why Jephthah did it...etc. He wanted to win however, why did the LORD allow it/ accept it?...etc.)

Sermonic Refrain: Victory comes with a price. (I owe the LORD)

Sermonic Prohibition: Stop breaking your vows. (I open my mouth unto the LORD)

Sermonic Sentence: The LORD takes what we say seriously. (Matthew 12.36)

Sermonic Point: Keep your promises.

Sermonic Help: The Star of this Pericope/Novella is the LORD. The co-star is Jephthah and the best supporting role goes to Jephthah's daughter.


Sermonic Structure: (There are four moves within this Pericope/Novella)


I. JEPHTHAH IS A MIGHTY MAN OF VALOR (v.1)
   (A.) His mother is a prostitute
   (B.) He has the Holy Spirits presence
   (C.) He has political power
   (D.) His faith is lifted as a NT picture

II. JEPHTHAH MAKES A VOW (v.29-31)
    (A.) Notice he enters into negotiations personally
    (B.) Notice he enters into negotiations horizontally
    (C.) Notice he enters into negotiation vertically

III. JEPHTHAH IS MADE VICTORIOUS (v.32-33)
      (A.) Consider the source of his victory
      (B.) Consider the size of his victory
      (C.) Consider the significance of his victory
      
IV. JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER IS A VIRGIN (v.34-40)
      (A.) She's visible
      (B.) She's vocal
      (C.) She's Virtuous
      (D.) She's Valuable

This Is Your Moment: Close

A preaching 'genius' faces his toughest convert

Blue Ridge, Georgia (CNN) -- Fred Craddock was a young preacher trying to find his voice when he received a call from his mother one day.

"You need to go see your father," she said. "He may not live longer."

Craddock found his father in a VA hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Fred Craddock Sr. had whittled down to 73 pounds. Radiation treatments had burned him to pieces. He couldn't eat or speak.

When he saw his son, he picked up a Kleenex box and scribbled on it a line from Shakespeare's "Hamlet": "In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain to tell my story."

"What is your story, Daddy?"

His father's eyes welled with tears. He wrote:

"I was wrong."

'A preacher like no other'

Craddock never became a televangelist, built a megachurch or preached to an adoring crowd in a packed stadium. He is a diminutive, bespectacled man whose voice is so soft that he once compared it to "wind whistling through a splinter on the post."

Yet he is a pulpit giant, a man who, one preaching scholar says, tilted the preaching world "on its axis" after creating a revolutionary method that led to him being selected as one of the 12 best preachers in the English-speaking world.

"He is a preacher like no other" is how the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, who also made the top 12 list, describes him.

Craddock preached his last official sermon in October. He is 83 and struggling with Parkinson's disease. When he greets a visitor, he moves gingerly to his seat. He is 5-foot-5 with a plump belly and an impish smile.

He lives in Blue Ridge, Georgia, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains that looks like a rustic postcard, with its small white-steeple churches and autumn forests bristling with burgundy and gold.

Friends worry about Craddock's health, but he seems to treat his illness as an annoyance.

"I should have something by 83," he says with a quick smile when the conversation turns to Parkinson's.

His arms shake when he talks at length, but everything else is there: his phenomenal recall of names, details, places.

Though he has gathered all manner of awards during 50 years of preaching, he never received praise for his calling from the one man he wanted to hear it from most: his father.

"I struggled with his silence," Craddock says. "I wanted him to say he was proud of me."

A father like no other

Fred Craddock Sr. had plenty to say about other subjects. He stood 5-foot-7, weighed 150 pounds and even in his 50s could do one-arm chin-ups. He liked to dance, race his horse at county fairs.

Most of all, he loved to tell stories.

His son and namesake, Fred Jr., was one of his most devoted fans. Father and son developed a storytelling ritual. At the end of the day, the elder Craddock would return to his home in the small town of Humboldt, Tennessee, roll a Bull Durham cigarette by the fireplace and say to no one in particular, "Boy, I never hope to see what I saw today."

Craddock, his three brothers and his sister flocked around their father.

"What'd you see today?"

"Oh, you kids still up? No, you go to bed. You don't want to have nightmares."

His children protested. Back and forth they'd go before Craddock Sr. finally said, "Well, sit down, but don't blame me if you have nightmares."

Craddock Sr. thrilled his children with adventure stories about Chief Loud Thunder, Civil War battles and, on occasion, stories from the Bible. The elder Craddock taught his son some of his first lessons in theology.

Each student in Craddock's first-grade class was required to answer morning roll call with a Bible verse. Craddock didn't know any, until his father taught him one. One morning, he stood up "like a bantam rooster" and repeated his father's scripture:

"Samson took the jawbone of an ass and killed 10,000 Filipinos."

The teacher sent Craddock home with a stern note to his parents for his use of profanity. Ethel Craddock chided her husband, but he chuckled, saying, "I bet the class enjoyed it."

The elder Craddock developed a following. Storytellers were admired in rural Tennessee during the first half of the 20th century. Television was nonexistent. Books were expensive. People spent their day around pot-bellied stoves, whittling wood and spitting tobacco while swapping stories.

When Craddock Sr. stopped on a corner to roll a cigarette, crowds gathered, because they knew a tall tale was coming. They rarely guessed how it would end. Craddock Sr. would uncork a story, lead his audience up to the edge, then suddenly announce that he had to go to work and walk away.

Says his son: "I'm convinced now that he didn't know where his stories were going when he started."

'Another name, another pledge'

Stories, however, don't feed hungry children.

Craddock's father had enough education to devour Shakespeare in his spare time. But he discovered, after inheriting 10 acres, that he couldn't farm. He wasn't good with his hands, either. Doors, fixtures and steps hung off-kilter in his house.

The elder Craddock had a bigger problem. He was an alcoholic.

When the Great Depression tore into rural Tennessee, Craddock Sr. drank to cushion the pain. His drinking, though, only magnified his self-loathing. His mood darkened. He yelled at his family, but Craddock says he never saw his father hit his mom. When visitors came by, though, everyone was embarrassed.

Sometimes, Craddock saw his father break down in tears.

"He wanted to do better by his family. He didn't know how."

At times, Craddock Sr. would sober up. He vowed never to drink again. He found an odd job. Once, he even arranged for a dentist to pull a gold crown from one of his molars so he could buy Christmas toys for his children.

"Sometimes, when something nice happened," Craddock says, "he would just go into the kitchen, take my mom away from the stove, and they would dance around the house."

His father's pluck, though, couldn't prevent the family's slide into poverty. They lost the farm and moved into a shack with a dirt floor and no electricity. A spigot in the yard was the only running water.

Craddock's family even struggled to clothe him. He still remembers walking to grade school on a cold day, hiding his donated sweater under a bridge and walking to school shivering in his shirtsleeves. He didn't want to risk any classmate recognizing that he was wearing a sweater that had once belonged to them.

"There's something worse than being poor," Craddock said. "It's being ashamed."

Ethel Craddock held the family together. By day, she worked in a factory, sticking labels on Buster Brown shoes. At night, she gathered her children around the fireplace to play word games: "If you can say it, you can spell it: omnivorous."

And faith held Ethel Craddock together. She took her children to church, sang hymns at home to the accompaniment of her harmonica and welcomed down-on-their luck strangers who needed a hot meal or a place to stay.

At first, Craddock's father shared the pews with his family. He was even named after a preacher. But he stopped attending as his drinking grew worse.

"He felt guilty," Craddock says. "He'd say, 'Every time I go to church, they preach against the drunks like they can't go to heaven.' "

Craddock Sr.'s hostility toward the church deepened when they decided to come to him. The church dispatched preachers to his home, hoping to draw him back to the pews. He belittled them so much that Craddock's mother worried a fight would erupt.

"I know what the church wants," he'd say. "Another name; another pledge. Right?"

Craddock, though, found acceptance in the church. It was the only place where he didn't feel different -- any less or any more than anybody else. Pastors told him he would be a good preacher one day; church ladies doted on him with new shoes and a picture book filled with stories about Jesus.

"We loved our dad, but we loved the church," Craddock says.

Home was a place filled with fantastic stories. But Ethel Craddock kept one story from him. It centered on the horrible night when she decided her son had been set apart by God.

Saved by a miracle?

A winter night in 1928, Humboldt, Tennessee.

Ethel Craddock is sprawled in a barn on a bale of hay, crying and praying to God. Her 8-month-old son, Fred, is dying.

He has diphtheria, a highly infectious disease that forms blockages over the lungs, gradually suffocating a child.

The boy can barely draw breath. His father has run a mile to summon a doctor. But the doctor can't do much, and Craddock's breathing has grown more labored.

His mother couldn't watch him suffer any more. She has fled to the barn, where she prays:

"Dear God, if you will let him live, I will pray every day that he will serve you as a minister."

She falls asleep on the hay. When she awakens at daybreak, she runs to the house, where the doctor says her son is going to be fine. He leaves without asking for payment.

Ethel Craddock didn't reveal this story to her son until he came to her after turning 17 to tell her that he was thinking about becoming a minister.

She began to cry after hearing the news, quickly regained her composure and told Craddock the story.

He was bewildered. Why hadn't she told him before?

She didn't want him to feel pushed into becoming a minister, she said. She believed that a deed couldn't be good if the motive was wrong.

When Craddock told his father of his decision to join the ministry, he listened intently before finally saying it was a big decision. Then he simply said: "Good, son."

Craddock was deflated. No tears. No sober, fatherly advice. The only reaction his father would give to his calling in the days ahead would be to crack jokes. "Don't be like John the Baptist and lose your head."

"He might have been embarrassed that I became a preacher," Craddock says. "It was kind of the opposite of him. Maybe that created some discomfort.

"I wanted more."

His father seemed to rub away some of the luster from his calling again when Craddock went off to college.

Wanting to make sure his call to the ministry was genuine, Craddock sought out a counselor. Over several sessions, the young student ended up talking about his childhood. The counselor's verdict was devastating:

"I think I'm clear why you're in the ministry: to redeem your father."

The counselor didn't elaborate, and Craddock was too stunned to ask questions. He thought about what his mother had taught him -- and knew what he had to do.

"I thought I was disqualified," he says. "My mother had always told me nothing can be right if the reason is wrong."

He quit the ministry and started picking up odd jobs.

It crushed me," he says of the conversation with the counselor. "I didn't have a Plan B in my life. I was kicking the can down the road every night, trying to figure it out."

The answer came while reading one of his favorite books in the Bible.

The book of Philippians, written by the Apostle Paul, is regarded by some as one of the most uplifting in the New Testament. Yet the backdrop for Paul's composition is grim. He is imprisoned, and the church is splintering into factions. Paul thinks he's about to be executed; his enemies are spreading division and preaching Christ out of selfish motives.

But Paul says that none of that matters. Whether he lives or dies, or whether his enemies preach Christ out of selfish gain, what ultimately matters is that Christ is proclaimed.

Something shifted inside of Craddock. What did it matter if he preached Christ to save his father or save souls? Christ is preached.

"They're preaching for the wrong reason, yet Paul said thanks God for that," he says.

The message was clear; living it would prove more difficult:

"I had to get to a point where I disagreed with my mother. That was tough."

Craddock returned to school and started preaching at rural churches. He had ignored his father and defied his mother's teaching to pursue the ministry.

Now he was about to revolutionize preaching.

Changing the rules of preaching

Craddock had three books in his childhood home: his mother's King James Bible, his father's complete works of Shakespeare and "The Life and Times of Billy Sunday."

Sunday was a Major League Baseball player who became one of America's most famous preachers during the early 20th century by transforming preaching into an athletic event.

He'd smash chairs, throw parts of his clothing into the audience and run across the preaching platform as if he were sliding into home plate while proclaiming, "Safe at home -- by the blood of Jesus!"

Sunday was the type of pastor Craddock grew up admiring. They strode the pulpit like human firecrackers: booming voices, explosive movements, big men who radiated power.

Craddock had a problem. He couldn't bring the thunder. He was short, and his voice was weak. His high school counselor tried to talk him out of becoming a preacher because of his size. And his first church sermon landed with a thud. While preaching about three wise men visiting baby Jesus, an elderly man stood up in the back and blurted: "How do you know there were three?"

A flustered Craddock had no reply. But he eventually found a way to be heard and owed part of that breakthrough to his father.

When he started preaching in rural Tennessee during the 1950s, Craddock employed the traditional "deductive" preaching style. The sermon is structured like a term paper: thesis, three supporting points, restatement of thesis.

"Something in me said that's not the way to do it," he says.

Maybe it was the stories he heard growing up, but Craddock gradually stumbled onto his preaching style.

While serving as a young pastor at a church in Columbia, Tennessee, he noticed that people responded more to his informal talks outside church service than to his sermons.

He started experimenting. What if you didn't structure the sermon like a legal argument but more like an extended conversation? The listener -- not the preacher -- would be challenged to give the sermon its meaning.

Craddock never took to preachers who tried to bulldoze people into converting. He had seen plenty of preachers try to goad his father back to church. And his mother, by withholding the story of his near-death experience, had taught him that people's faith decisions must be genuine, not coerced.

So Craddock became a preacher who didn't preach. He once said that a "yes" is no good unless a "no" is possible.

"No one wants to listen to pulpit bullies, behaving as though they had walked all round God and taken pictures," he wrote in the introduction to his book "Craddock on the Craft of Preaching."

Over the years, people have tried to describe Craddock's style. Some use the term "inductive," a word he resists because it sounds like a legal term. One of his prize students, the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, offers one of the best descriptions of Craddock's preaching style.

In an introduction to "The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock," Taylor wrote:

"He assumes from the start that we are capable of attending to the text, handling some scholarship, dealing with open-ended stories, and drawing our own conclusions. He does not tell us what he is going to tell us, and then tell us what he told us. He sits down before we are ready. He lets us chew our own food."

Craddock's sermons, though, don't go down like broccoli. They are playful, inventive, filled with hyperbole. They sound like probing short stories or front-porch yarns.

In one sermon, Craddock recounts a conversation with an overweight sparrow that doesn't know it can fly. In another, he imagines bored teenagers who "sat out on the hoods of their camels" listening to a shaggy John the Baptist preach in the desert, and in another he pretends to emcee a debate at a dreary church committee meeting between early Christian leaders arguing over whether Gentiles should be included in the church.

Craddock didn't have to break chairs to get people's attention. His stories did the job. His reputation spread. He began writing influential preaching textbooks. When he became a preaching professor at Emory University in Atlanta, he spawned a new generation of preachers who took his style out into the pews. People started describing him as a pulpit genius.

In 1996, Craddock received one of his most celebrated honors. Baylor University in Texas polled 341 seminary professors and editors of religious periodicals and asked them to name the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. Newsweek magazine published the top 12.

Craddock was selected for the list. So were two pastors he heavily influenced: Taylor and the Rev. Thomas Long.

Long says Craddock tilted the homiletic world "on its axis" with his 1971 book on preaching, "As One without Authority." He calls it one of the most pivotal books on preaching to appear in the past century.

"There's a homespun nostalgic quality to his sermons," says Long, who now teaches at Emory. "He rarely preaches about the engineer with the complex ethical decision. It's more about the pot of beans served at the back door."

Taylor still remembers the first time she heard Craddock speak at Yale Divinity School in 1978. She was working as a secretary at a local church on the weekends, but listening to Craddock stirred her desire to preach.

"He simply spoke of the gospel so compellingly that I wanted know more -- about the way of life he was describing, about why his words struck me with such force and about how I could learn to use language that way, too."

Some preachers transform their eloquence into business ventures. They build megachurches, TV empires. Some even get entourages. Craddock wasn't driven to build a personal brand. He has no e-mail address, doesn't drive and refused to turn on a personal computer his son and daughter bought him several years ago.

"If Fred Craddock ever tweets, I'll know the world has come to an end," Taylor says.

Craddock used some of his renown to reach out to the region that nurtured him. He gave preaching workshops to itinerant pastors in the Appalachian Mountains and established the Craddock Center, a nonprofit group that offers free meals and storytelling to needy kids in three Southern states.

He built a family as he built a career. He married his high school sweetheart, Nettie, and they raised their two children, John and Laura, as he taught at various seminaries and accepted preaching invitations across the country.

"Sometimes we felt like we were in competition with the church and God," says Laura, his daughter, who named her son after her father.

His son, John, never felt pressured to become a minister. He is the CEO of America's First Choice Warranty company in Atlanta. His father, he says, is the most remarkable person he has ever known.

"I don't care if it's a guy on the street asking for a dollar or the president of the United States, he makes you feel as if you're the most important person in the world when he's talking to you.

"I won the lottery as far as great fathers go."

Telling his father's story

Craddock yearned to hear such praise from his father.

Yet his father never even came to hear him preach. Craddock says he sometimes overheard his father accept praise for his son's decision to enter the ministry, but he can't recall ever hearing his father admit to anyone that he was proud of his son's choice.

"He never said it. I looked for little signals. I finally decided that I was reading into things that were not there."

His father may not have acknowledged him, but Craddock affirmed his father. In the dedication in his book "As One without Authority," he wrote:

"To my mother, and in memory of my father: She taught me the Word. He taught me the words."

One Sunday, he did get a sign that maybe his father would have enjoyed hearing him preach. At his childhood church in Humboldt, Tennessee, a man approached after hearing him preach. The man was about his father's age.

"You sound like your daddy," he said.

The comment stirred strong emotions in Craddock. He had to compose himself before he shook the man's hand and thanked him. He says it was the grandest compliment he's ever had about a sermon.

"He was a good storyteller and a good man," Craddock says of his father. "For him to relate me to my father ... I spent a lot of time working through my relationship with my father."

Perhaps he still is.

When asked in one interview whether he became a minister to save his father, he says, "I'll never know."

Yet in his memoirs, "Reflections on My Call to Preach," he wrote:

"I was confident that my being a Christian minister would have a life-changing effect on my father. With a son, his own namesake, going into the ministry, would not Daddy toss the bottle forever and return to the pew beside my mother? Surely. But I was naïve, knowing nothing about the power of addiction."

Craddock's last visit with his father revealed to him the results of addiction. His father never stopped drinking or smoking and was hospitalized with throat cancer. He was 63.

That's when Craddock received the phone call from his mom: You need to go see your father.

When he entered his father's hospital room, he noticed that it was filled with flowers and a stack of get-well cards 20 inches deep besides his bed. Every card and every blossom came from Craddock's childhood church in Humboldt, the church his father scorned.

His father confessed that he was wrong about the church and the people in the pews. They didn't just want a name and a pledge. They wanted him.

His father's admission didn't provide relief. It deepened his grief.

"It was so late. It was at the end. With his personality and his education -- he was generous to a fault; give you the shirt off of his back. He could have been such a good person, helping people, talking to people, playing with children -- he could do all these things."

Would it have been better if his father had said he was also wrong about his son and his decision to become a minister?

Would it have been better if he had finally said, "I'm proud of you, son"?

Craddock doesn't dwell on those questions.

"In my tendency to choose between yes and no, I choose yes. I really think he would be proud of me because he loved a storyteller. He would have taken credit for it, though. He would have said, 'I taught you real good, son.' ''

What Craddock remembers of their last moments together is not just his father's confession but something his father did.

After he asked his son to "tell my story," Craddock reached out and clutched his gaunt hand.

"I just held his hand. ... He couldn't move. I couldn't move."

Craddock squeezed his father's hand, and both men cried.