A series of images for a sermon on John 2:1-11

Title image for the sermon, “Live Free or Die” based on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Ever notice that pride is always sin in the Bible? And the biggest one at that? There’s no exceptions. Pride is self-centered aggrandisement, the opposite of shame, and just as harmful, because it determines a person’s value based on their accomplishments instead of the seal of their Creator and Redeemer. Honor and respect, which are more honest, are encouraged, but not pride.

Parents, are you proud of your kids, because they make you look good? I’m guilty of that. But how much better to be impressed and thankful, which removes you from the equation? (And how much moreso with team or national pride?)

Are you proud of your accomplishments? What happens when you fail or find someone who’s so much better at it than you? Find your value instead in the Name given to you in your Baptism. That can never be taken from you and doesn’t depend on you to retain.

We also hear about pride in sexual identity. Gay or straight, both place a person’s worthiness on something beyond their control. I understand how someone could cling to pride as a reaction to the shame they’ve experienced, but that’s overcorrecting. Rather, if a person’s value is given to them by Christ, they’re SO MUCH more valuable, and given that it’s Christians who often try to shame the people in question (Srsly, what’s up with that? Oh yeah — pride.), they can’t argue with your God-given value.

And straight pride? Like you can take credit for that? St. Paul had something to say about that kind of pride. He compared it with used menstrual rags. Yeah, that’s the banner you want to wave around….

The only appropriate pride & boasting is in our weakness and what Christ has done for us and through us, not because we deserve it, but because we don’t.

What if we focused on communicating and demonstrating grace instead of pride? What if we saw Christ in our neighbors and responded with honor and respect accordingly?

Following our translation comparison to find an easy to read translation for student use, and settling on the HCSB, we chose The Big Picture Interactive Bible for Kids, but then the next question came: if we’re going to use this for students, what about in the rest of our publications, services, etc.? While the text had passed the suitability test for student use, specifically in its treatment of Christology, since it was developed primarily by the Southern Baptist Convention, we needed to know whether any of the Sacramental passages had been translated specifically to reflect Baptist theology. So back to the comparison lab!

For this purpose, I used the passages cited as explanations of Holy Baptism, the Office of the Keys, and the Sacrament of the Altar in Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation – 1991 Edition. Note that I didn’t use every passage cited in these sections, as several, while used in these explanations, only indirectly address the doctrines of the Sacraments, thus for the sake of time and assumptions of uniformity, weren’t considered.

The same criteria were used as in the previous study with the same caveats, and I only compared the ESV and HCSB since we’d already ruled out other translations, the ESV used here as a baseline.

Results

In this selection, while only 3 passages in the HCSB had a non-preferable translation, none of them were unusable in a congregational setting. To the contrary, many of the HCSB passages clarified the intent or doctrine.

Notes

• The uniformity in structure between ESV and HCSB is striking. Many of the passages were identical, and where they deviated, the HCSB was usually clearer and better communicated the intent of the text to modern readers than the ESV.
• In many places, especially 1 Corinthians 11, the HCSB more clearly articulates the Lutheran reading of the text than the ESV. This may be why the WELS is considering adopting the HCSB for use in their publications.
• Given the WELS recommendations to the HCSB that resulted in the transition to the CSB in 2017, I expect that the translation will improve in its new CSB incarnation.
• This comparison was made with the HCSB, not the CSB. I have no plans to redo the study with the CSB to check for changes. I’ve reviewed the WELS recommendations for the passages I questioned, and I see no significant difference, so I’m confident in functionally identical results.

Data

Most of the data from the complete study can be found below. Feedback welcome through comments here or on the spreadsheet.

Here’s an image I created for a sermon on Romans 6:1-11 to show that other things get outdated, but our Baptism is new every day.

Title: Buried Alive

Description: We’ve been given eternal life, but we still live in the world of the temporary. How can we experience the eternal now?

Inspired by a sermon I recently heard, here’s a simple illustration depicting God’s name placed on our hearts through Holy Baptism, that He claims us as His own like Andy claimed his toys in Toy Story by writing his name on their feet.

Title art for sermon for 5/29/16

Text: 1 Kings 8:22-24,27-29,41-43

Description: “Bringing the World to the House of God” Where is the house of God, and how can we bring people to it?

The idea is that the house of God is now the human heart through Holy Baptism, and we bring others into God’s house by bringing them into our hearts and showing them the love of Christ, letting our light so shine before men….

(And of course, because the Word of God is in our hearts, when they’re in, they’ll hear it, because it’s everywhere in there.)

This week’s sermon title is, “What is the Baptized life?” based on Romans 6:1-11. Here’s some graphics I created for it.