Sermons and Prophecy

The Names Date: December 04, 2011 Scripture: Isaiah 9:1-7 from the series Having A Right Christmas Introduction Do you know what an APTRONYM is? I don't remember covering this in ENGLISH class when I was in high school or even in college, but one of the benefits of weekly sermon preparation is that you are always learning new things, and here's what I learned this week about APTRONYMS! An APTRONYM is a compound word consisting of the adjective 'apt', meaning 'aptitude', and 'nym', the Greek word for 'name.' When you put those two meanings together, you have a term that designates a person whose name lines up with their aptitude. Let me put it this way: an APTRONYM occurs when what a person is NAMED describes what they DO. Here are some real life examples taken from Wikipedia: Tiger Woods, golfer (Wood is of course a type of golf club) William Wordsworth, poet  Mr. Talkative and Mr. Worldly Wiseman in John...

The Promise Date: NOVEMBER 27, 2011 Scripture: Luke 2:8-20 from the series Having A Right Christmas Introduction SOME TIME AGO I came across a story about a man who was a very qualified TV meteorologist in USA but for some reason he did a terrible job when it came to actually forecasting the weather. In fact, he became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his repeated faulty predictions. They followed up with a feature story that showed he had been wrong almost 300 times in a single year. Thanks to all this bad press, the poor meteorologist was fired. After living off his unemployment for a few months he moved to another part of the country and applied for a job as a weather forecaster at another TV station. The job application asked him to state the reason for leaving his previous position. Do you know how he answered that question? This is...

  FEAR NOT Date: November 20, 2011 Scripture: Luke 1:26-38 from the series Having A Right Christmas INTRODUCTION: LET US READ Luke 1:26-38 Luke 1:26-38 FROM New American Standard Bible (NASB)   26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin [ a ] engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the [ b ] descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was [ c ] Mary. 28 And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, [ d ] favored one! The Lord [ e ] is with you.” 29 But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne ...