When All Is Lost (audio)

Preliminary preaching notes for the Feb. 7 sermon "When All Is Lost" were already posted Saturday evening.

Here you can find links to the audio and, below that, the key Bible texts.  When we admit we are lost, then God can do great and wondrous things with us, lifting us and giving us new life, new purpose, and new love.

• Click HERE to listen to the 8:30 a.m. sermon.
  
  
• Click HERE for the 11:00 -- it includes the song "Here I Am, Lord" following the message.  It also includes a 30 second GAP about 1/3 of the way through... that's where the tape was flipped over... sorry about that. 

Before each I read the Gospel from Luke 5:1-11 where Jesus calls Peter, James and John to follow him so they can "catch people." In that story there's a point where Peter sees God's power at work and falls to the ground, saying "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

A similar sentiment is heard in the "second reading" for the day from First Corinthians 15:1-11--a passage of witness to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead where Paul calls himself "unfit" to be one of Jesus chosen apostles.

But the key text for the sermon is from Isaiah 6:

¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. ² Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. ³ And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." ⁴ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

⁵ And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷ The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." ⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"

⁹ And he said, "Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.' ¹⁰ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed."

¹¹ Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; ¹² until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. ¹³ Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled." The holy seed is its stump.

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