Sermon Scraps and Starters
Preaching material you can steal — exegetical spadework, series openers, illustrations, and half-built sermons. Take what’s useful, leave the rest, no attribution needed.
Series Opener · Revelation 1:1
One Way to Open a Series on Revelation
The deepest comfort God gives his people is not an answer to their circumstances but a sight of his delight in his Son. Revelation is the Father’s celebration of the Son, mailed to seven suffering churches as their consolation…
Read the whole thing →Preaching Outline · Revelation 2–3
The Church Is Not a Safe Place
A thematic survey of Revelation 1–3. The church is not a safe place, because it is the place where the living Christ actually is — supernatural, struggling, seen, and sifted. And that is the best news it has. Not safe. Good.
Read the whole thing →Short Piece · Suffering & Care
The Wound Is Not the Warrant
There is a sentence we have all learned to say to people who are hurting, and we say it because it feels like love: you’ve been through enough, so no one expects anything of you now. But to excuse the sin of a suffering person is to rob them…
Read the whole thing →Short Piece · The Cross
The Court of Four Verdicts
On the cross, Jesus was tried and convicted in four separate courts on the same afternoon — religion, state, God, and nature. Four concurrent death sentences. And then God overturned all four by Sunday morning…
Read the whole thing →Short Piece · Wisdom & Blessing
We Overcorrected
In our entirely justified horror at the prosperity gospel, a lot of us flinched too far the other way — until we started to flinch at something the Bible says plainly and constantly: that righteousness generally leads to blessing…
Read the whole thing →Short Piece · Character
The Virtues That Boil Off First
Under pressure, you do not lose your virtues evenly. Some are far more volatile than others — and the cruel joke is that the worst things in you have the highest boiling point, while the tenderest virtues go first…
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