Home » Old Testament »
Joel 2:23-32
Proper 25C
This is the “happy” section of Joel but it probably needs to be seen in context. More on that at the end of this sermon commentary. For now we can see a connection to last week’s Old Testament Common Lectionary text from Jeremiah 31, which pointed to the promise of God’s giving his people a…
Psalm 84:1-7
Proper 25C
In the Calvin Seminary Chapel above and behind the pulpit area is a large clear-glass window with a cross in the center. A few years ago during a May Term preaching class in the chapel, we all noticed that a large Horned Owl had made a nest in the uppermost window pane near the top…
Psalm 121
Proper 24C
When I was a little kid, I remember Psalm 121 being read in church or sometimes at our dinner table. Back then various versions of the Bible translated that first line, “I lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help.” The sentence is in the indicative mood. Read this way, it is…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Proper 24C
I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the Lectionary saved this passage from the…
Advent 1A: Steady and Ready
There are basically two kinds of shoppers. There are those who shop with the goal of a particular purchase in mind, and those for whom the shopping itself is the goal. For the first group shopping goes something like this: You notice that the elastic on your underpants is getting fairly loose, so you head…
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Proper 23C
It’s not often that a true prophet of God ends up having prophetic egg on his face, but just that had recently happened to Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 28 a prophetic wannabe named Hananiah delivered what he declared was a true revelation from God. Hananiah made wonderfully sunny promises about Israel’s being released from captivity very,…
Psalm 111
Proper 23C
In a recent sermon commentary on another psalm, I observed that although the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom literature of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes are distinct in terms of biblical literary genre, there is a lot of crossover between the Books of Psalms and Proverbs. Psalm 111 is another example of this with its…
Lamentations 1:1-6
Proper 22C
Cheery this lection is not. The New Testament sermon starter based on Luke 17 for this week is a bit of a challenging passage and so some preachers might be tempted to swap out this week’s Old Testament reading for the Gospel one but if so, then turning to this downbeat passage might make one…
Psalm 37:1-9
Proper 22C
The Book of Psalms—and sometimes individual poems within it—can be pretty good at the proverbial “talking out of both sides of one’s mouth at the same time.” Taken individually, some psalms paint a very pretty picture of how the righteous always prosper and how the wicked always fail miserably. Then again, other psalms admit that…
Psalm 146
Proper 21C
In contemporary music there are few crescendos quite as dramatic and raucous as the one that concludes the Beatles song “A Day in the Life.” A somewhat wild cacophony of strings, brass, and percussion all come together to end this remarkable song with a bang followed by a very long sustain on a piano that…
Content related to Old Testament