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Each sermon in this archive offers two versions, one is Tom’s sermon start to finish which you see when you click on each sermon below. But there is also a version that Tom took into the pulpit with him, which shows his creativity in creating the manuscript with clues in the layout that cue how he would preach the sermon live. To see that manuscript, click the download sermon button. Please take a look at both.
Old Testament Stories
A Faith With Wings
“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Do you know this old Biblical question? Does it ring a bell?
11 min read
A Peek at the Promise
In some ways it must have been a devastating disappointment. After all he’d been through, and now so close, not even to be allowed to go in.
13 min read
Hands Off
Every now and then you need a call back to the basics, back to fundamentals, back to the old bottom line, We spend a lot of time on the derivatives of life, the inferences, the “therefores”, and as a consequence sometimes forget the “whereases”. We do it in our individual lives; we do it in the Church. It does us good now and then, to go back to what it all rests on.
13 min read
From Disdain To Delight: A Theology of Hallelujah
The key word here, I think is DELIGHT. It almost jumps out at you from the page as you read along. “His delight is in the law of the Lord...” DELIGHT is the word the Psalmist chooses....
12 min read
When God Draws Near
There may just be an Advent theme here, lurking around, if we can break it loose, and polish it up. I grant it’s not the usual emphasis we think of when we think of an Advent theme--- it’s not the traditional emphasis---STILL, it’s part of the picture, and maybe, in a way, the foundation for all the rest.
13 min read
Along the Lenten Road: From Death to Life
This is not an Easter Sermon---not yet, not quite---though from the title you might almost suspect it. We’re still in the Old Testament, still on the far side of Calvary, still moving along the Lenten road. The great breakthrough, the Easter miracle that turned everything, everything in history on its ear is still before us.
11 min read
Along the Lenten Road: Thirsting for God
Gripe, gripe, gripe! That’s all you hear out of people in Exodus as they wander through the Wilderness. Talk about non-stop belly-aching. Frankly, I don’t know how Moses took it.
12 min read
Along the Lenten Road: The Road Begins
Where does the road to Calvary begin? Does it begin with the Via Dolorosa, the tearstained way of Roman Catholic liturgy, the traditional route from Judgment Hall to Golgotha, over which Jesus limped painfully, dragging His Cross of execution?
14 min read
And The Walls Came Tumblin’ Down
We’re at the end of the line now, down to the last ragtag end of a sorry, unraveled history of almost complete degradation. How sad! It started so heroically, with such potential, way back there, and now look where we are. By the time this story ends, there’s nothing left but CHAOS AND CROSSED WIRES. The highways for miles around littered with the debris of dissolution.
12 min read
A Father’s Day Tale
It’s Father’s Day, so I’d like to tell you a story. It’s a Bible story, but that doesn’t surprise you, I’m sure. Shall I start with the moral, or end with the moral? Let’s leave the moral for a while, if you don’t mind. The story, just as story, just by itself, is a good place to begin.
12 min read
The Grammar of Identity
The theme for today is IDENTITY...and Jeremiah’s contribution to helping us find it. Do you know who you are.... who you really are? That’s what we’re talking about this morning. It was just a little squib in the paper.
14 min read
The Winning Way of a Winsome Witness
If the absolute truth were known, if the inner recesses of the viscera could be laid out for inspection...a horrible image, by the way.... I would have to confess to you in all candor that preaching on Mother’s Day, for me, has always been difficult.
12 min read
The Preacher Who Succeeded....And Failed
Just forget the part about the whale......we’ll come back to that later. It wasn’t a whale, anyway, it was a big fish, and that whole incident in the unfolding panorama is largely irrelevant. This is a story that deals with THEOLOGY, not ichthyology.
12 min read
Bringing Your Brother
“You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.” The brother being referred to here of course, is little Benjamin, but with just a little imagination it could be any brother....or sister. In fact, without MUCH more imagination, it could be EVERY brother and sister. The issue eventually is ONENESS in the human community, the indissoluble bond that binds us, how closely tied together we all are.
14 min read
The Psalms: Our Poetic Heritage
Like short wave radios and highways, sermons need to be 2-way things. That’s always the case. You can no more have preaching without hearers, then you can have medicine without patients, or law without clients, or pitchers without catchers.
13 min read
On Being Yourself
“Are you really my son Esau?” Who are you anyway? What is your true identity? What a story! Skullduggery, scheming, sham, subterfuge...soap opera stuff...good old-fashioned underhanded deceit.... It’s all here in a vivid and tightly drawn story from early Genesis.
13 min read
The Power of a Reckless Commitment
I’ve always been fascinated by hearing Charles Laughton read the Bible. Some of you are too young, of course, to remember Charles Laughton....the eminent English actor...“Mutiny on the Bounty”, that sort of thing.... “Come here, Mr. Christian...”
14 min read
Stopping by Elim
It’s just a simple verse in a long narrative. You could read right through it, and hardly notice it at all.
13 min read
When Answers Don’t Come
What a strange little story, this parable from Luke. It really is a strange story.... vivid, graphic, but somehow disconcerting. Only Luke tells it, and there’s something about it almost bizarre..... The characters who populate the parable are not idealistic, they don’t follow a neat pattern, THEY’RE DIFFERENT.
12 min read
When Religion Becomes Disruptive
I really wish I didn’t have to preach this sermon this morning. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t feel a sense of compulsion about it. There are some things I feel I need to say to you while there is time about casino gambling and the lottery before the election on November 4.
11 min read
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