Sunday, October 19, 2008

Sermon Series Titled "Lost"

The three-week sermon series is titled Lost, but it has nothing to do with a jet from a fictitious air line that crashed somewhere between Australia and Los Angeles, as depicted on the very strange television series on Fox. No, this series has to do with how the typical American family is lost financially. Last year, my wife and I went through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, and found ourselves financially. Our church will begin using some Dave Ramsey resources congregation-wide beginning in January. I'm not sure how that will work out. At any rate, the sermon series title (Lost) really does describe the financial situation of too many families.

One thing the congregation was asked to do this week, was to read through the book of Proverbs to identify verses that had to do with money, wealth, riches, poverty, etc. Since I teach a Bible School class in Spanish, I decided to do this exercise in Spanish, using the Nueva Biblia de los Hispanos, which is kind of a revision of the Spanish language equivalent of the New American Standard Bible, in Latin American Spanish.

I read through Proverbs in my Logos Bible Software version, and highlighted verses that dealt with the subject. I might have missed some, and some of the verses highlighted may not have as much to do with the subject as others, but I can go back through the text, and see the verses I selected because they are highlighted.

This blog uses RefTagger, so I can list the verses in this blog entry, and the content of each reference will pop-up on the screen when the mouse hovers over the reference. I probably won't keep the highlighting in the text of my Spanish Bible forever, but by listing the references here, I can record them for future use, and use the pop-up of the text to re-read the selected verses. I can also demonstrate how useful RefTagger is. So here goes:

Prov 1:13-14,19,33
Prov 2:4
Prov 3:9-10,14-16,18,25,27-28
Prov 4:7
Prov 5:10-14
Prov 6:1-6,26,30-31,35
Prov 7:23
Prov 8:10-11,18-19,21
Prov 10:2-4,6,20,22
Prov 11:1,4,15,18,25,28,31
Prov 12:11-12
Prov 13:2-4,7-8,11,18,21-23,25
Prov 14:4,6,11,20-21,23-24
Prov 15:6,16-17,27
Prov 16:8,16,19
Prov 17:1,5,8
Prov 18:23
Prov 19:1,4,6-7,14-15,17,22
Prov 20:10,13,15-17,23
Prov 21:20,25-27
Prov 22:1-2,4,7,9,16,26-27
Prov 23:4-5,20-21
Prov 25:21
Prov 27:23-27
Prov 28:3,6,8,11,13,19-20,22,27
Prov 30:8-9
Prov 31:11,16,18

My colleague, Mark Moore, emphasizes the political nature of what Christ came to do. Maybe he is correct. With the international financial markets in free-fall over the last several weeks, the description of Lost seems to fit the world's financial situation. The two principal candidates for president of the United States have widely different views on how to fix the problem. Frankly, I have serious reservations about both of them. I'm glad that I can trust God regardless of the outcome. My hope is built on nothing less . . .

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