Worship Booklet
Sermon
"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, …”
"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, …”
The kingdom of God. Seed scattered on the ground. A mustard seed.
I will get to them in a moment, but before I do, I want to call attention to our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. This is the story of David … the shepherd boy … being anointed by Samuel to replace Saul as king. Throughout the summer, and into the fall, we will hear the running saga of David. This is the story of the least of Jesse’s sons toppling Goliath with a single stone. It is the account of a very dear friendship with King Saul’s son Jonathon at a time that Saul was trying to kill David. It is the lurid tale of King David seducing Bathsheba … the wife of Uriah the Hittite. And it ends with the intrigue of the battle between his sons as David grows old and weary. This narrative in the Second Book of Samuel is in some sense a biography of David. Yet in another sense, as author J. S. Park puts it, it is a story of “how God works through ordinary outcasts and extraordinary sinners.”