Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Thursday, August 1, 2019
YOU CAN DO BETTER (audio)
From Romans 7:1-6, this message in our
preaching series in the book or Romans is called: YOU CAN DO BETTER.
Listen well.
If you can’t get the audio on your
device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a pastor, writer, community organizer, and
consultant
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Click here to support this blog with a donation.
Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and
click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support
Bailey Tabernacle CME Church with a donation through Givelify
Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church
1117 23rd Avenue
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401Tuesday, July 23, 2019
DYING TO BE FREE (audio)
From chapter 6, this installment of our preaching
series in the book or Romans is titled DYING TO BE FREE.
Listen well.
If you can’t get the audio on your
device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a pastor, writer, community organizer, and
consultant
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Click here to support this blog with a donation.
Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and
click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support
Bailey Tabernacle CME Church with a donation through Givelify
Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church
1117 23rd Avenue
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401
Friday, May 10, 2019
RIDING THE PROPHETIC CYCLES (audio of Daniel chapter 12)
This is the final message in our
preaching series through the book of Daniel. The title is RIDING THE PROPHETIC CYCLES.
Listen well.
If you can’t get the audio on your
device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
--Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Click here to support this ministry with a donation.
Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and
click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church
1117 23rd Avenue
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401
Thursday, November 15, 2018
CHANGING TIME: The 10th Plague
Blogging Exodus 12
Times change.
The increments by which we measure hours, days, weeks, months, and
years are invented things which we alter according to need and import. In the world before fast-moving trains, international
shipping lanes, and global communication forced standardization with Western
time-keeping, a major cultural change, like a new king, a new religion, or a
natural disaster was frequently commemorated by changing the calendar. God participated
in that tradition, marking the emancipation
of the Old Testament Hebrews by changing the count of time.
Freedom is revolutionary, so God cleverly ordained that the Jews
should equate their national liberation as a new year, a new “revolution”
around the sun.
This month shall be your
beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you (Exodus 12:2).
But, at the beginning of Exodus chapter 12, freedom for Israel did not
feel imminent. Pharaoh had resisted Moses, Moses’ God, and their radical
progressive agenda of liberation and ethnic self-determination. Through 10 rounds of negotiation, Pharaoh
had refused to let God’s people go. When last Moses had approached Pharaoh, the
king ended talks by threatening to have the prophet executed.
Then Pharaoh said to him,
“Get away from me! Take heed to yourself and see my face no more! For in the
day you see my face you shall die!” (Exodus 10:28)
Yet, God promised that within 2 weeks of the beginning of their new,
new year Pharaoh Pharaoh will let you go
from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether
(Exodus 11:1).
Pharaoh had grown more and more hard-hearted with each cataclysm God sent
upon Egypt. Why would he change his mind
now? How could the times change THAT
quickly?
Why did the United States of America abolish slavery after a century
of protecting the wicked institution? It wasn’t because the leaders of the
United States suddenly felt morally convicted by the abolitionist sermons
they’d ignored all their lives.
America freed its slaves because the Civil War killed or wounded more
than 5% of the population (1.5 million
reported casualties, not counting civilians, of an 1860 population of 31
million people). The Civil War was the great
plague necessary to force the liberation of God’s Black people in America.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
At midnight on the 14th
day of the first month of their changed time, God would send a final plague
upon the Egyptian slaveholders. A deliberate,
intelligent spirit, an angel from God, would kill every man, woman, child, and
domesticated animal in Egypt that was the firstborn of its family. The
casualties would be so high that Egypt, like 1860’s America, would let God’s
people go.
Some times only change because the times are made so brutally hard
that the powers at the time are forced to change.
Without the great plague that was the Civil War, American abolition
would have been delayed indefinitely.
Without the horrors of the first Passover, Pharaoh would not have let God’s
people go.
PASSOVER is the celebration, the sanctification of blood shed in the
revolution of liberation. On the
10th of their new, new year’s month, the descendants of Israel held in Goshen were to gather as families and eat
their LAST SUPPER as slaves.
Speak to all the
congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall
take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a
household. . . Your lamb shall be
without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or
from the goats (Exodus
12: 3 - 5).
PASSOVER was offered to every member of God’s community. No one, no matter their socioeconomic
condition was to be excluded from the table.
And if the household is
too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it
according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall
make your count for the lamb (Exodus 12:4).
The enslaved community came together, pooling their resources around
the Lord’s table as a united community.
A community union. A COMMUNION.
PASSOVER, COMMUNION, THE LAST SUPPER of a people in bondage took place
under THE BLOOD.
And they shall take some
of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses
where they eat it
(Exodus 12:7).
People who prefer their steaks and chops rare claim that the meat is
“juicy.” That’s not juice, though. That’s blood.
In our “civilized” era, most people are far removed from the bloody process
of taking an animal and turning it into meat.
Ancient people couldn’t delude themselves about the ugliness required to
provide for their families. Israel’s new
ritual required them to take a sheep (representing innocence) or a goat (representing
mean guilt) slit its throat, drain the blood into a basin, take that blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the
lintel of the houses where they eat it (Exodus 12: 8).
Up-and-down and then across, every Hebrew home was marked with THE
BLOOD. The blood of the innocent who
took upon Him the guilt of a people.
Up-and-down and then across, the people of God marked the change in the
revolutionary change in their times by coming under THE BLOOD of the Innocent
who was killed like the guilty are killed; who gave body and blood to His
people to set the people free. On a night of wrath, and death, and
revolution, the blood of the lamb purchased mercy for those in a believing
household.
Redemption is freedom from sin and the condemnation of eternal death. All freedom is revolutionary, and every
revolution is an ugly, brutal thing. The
Civil War, the death of the firstborn in Egypt, the Cross.
Jesus, as God manifest, transcends time. He is “I am.” He is present, future, and past;
so His death as the innocent lamb of God was the revolutionary sacrifice that liberates
believers across time from the slave wages of sin. The judgment of God passes over us who are
under the blood of Christ. It is a new
birth. A new life. A new beginning that extends into all time.
Times change, but more importantly, Christ changes ---- everything.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME
Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word
to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves
Click
here to support this ministry with a donation. Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and
click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Visit the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org
Support by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey Tabernacle CME Church
1117 23rd Avenue
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401
Monday, October 8, 2018
GET YOUR HEAD RIGHT; GET YOUR HEART RIGHT; GET YOUR FAMILY RIGHT (audio)
The 3rd message in the sermon
series: HEALING WOUNDED FAMILIES. The title of this message is: GET YOUR HEAD RIGHT; GET YOUR HEART RIGHT;
GET YOUR FAMILY RIGHT.
Listen well and leave a comment.
If you can’t get the audio on your
device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482
--Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the
popular blog: A Word to the Wise at
www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com
Friend
me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
Follow
me on twitter @AndersonTGraves
Click here to support this ministry with a donation.
Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and
click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Visit
the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org
Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Bailey
Tabernacle CME Church
P.O. Box 3145
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35403
Friday, August 4, 2017
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THE FUNERAL?
blogging Genesis 23
2 So Sarah
died in Kirjath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came
to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
3 Then Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spoke to the sons of
Heth, saying, 4 “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give
me property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my
sight.”
. . .
12 Then Abraham bowed himself down before the people of the land; 13 and
he spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying, “If you
will give it, please hear me. I will give you money for the field; take it from
me and I will bury my dead there.”
They loved their dearly
departed, but in their family they didn’t talk about death, especially the
business of death.
I won’t tell you how
many times, but it’s common. It’s easy
for better prepared families to mock and judge the unprepared, but you’d be
surprised how common lack of preparation is, even among people we think of as
great, powerful, and admirable.
The following is a
true story.
There was this guy,
a minority from out of state. He’d come
into town like he owned the place or he was supposed to. He’d been caught committing fraud but he’d
never been convicted, possibly because he had a following of hundreds of
earners who would kill for him --- and had.
He had two kids,
sons. His oldest lived out of state with
the boy’s mother, his ex-wife. Well,
maybe she was his ex-wife and maybe she’d been his official side-chick. The stories are kinda confusing on that
point, but everyone agrees that the man put his first baby’s mama out with his
teenage son because of the drama he had another baby by his first wife and then
there was just too much drama. It was
like even God knew they couldn’t make it work under one roof.
Now, this guy wasn’t
all bad. He was deeply and sincerely
religious, and he absolutely loved his first wife, and, though he made some
parenting decisions that under other circumstances would have warranted a visit
from child protective services, he sincerely loved both of his sons. He was fiercely loyal. I mean, this guy LITERALLY went to war when
his nephew got in trouble.
Our guy, like the
Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Kennedys, eventually earned the respect of the
ruling men around him.
Over time this man
amassed money, jewels, vehicles, and weapons for his private army; but when his
wife died he realized that he was technically HOMELESS.
He’d moved around: eastside, westside, northside,
southside. He’d stay for a while, make
some money, maybe get into some trouble, and then move and set up somewhere
else. He had baller status, but no real
estate. For all his power and property, he
didn’t own so much as a plot of Earth big enough to bury his wife in.
Was he stupid? Was he a ghetto fool? Was he just another thug who should’ve bought
life insurance instead of necklaces? Maybe you shouldn’t have any sympathy for
this guy. Maybe he deserved the extra
pain of having to negotiate and grieve at the same time. Maybe this was God’s way of paying him back
for being a b-ad baby’s daddy and a convicted felon.
Maybe.
Abraham went to the
men who ran things and asked, “Give me
property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight”
(Genesis 23:4).
They offered to donate
space in their family mausoleum’s but our guy Abraham insisted on paying full
price for a burial plot so that the land would belong to his family forever. After the usual haggling, Abraham bought a
tomb and the land surrounding it from Ephron the Hittite for 400 shekels
(Genesis 23:5-16).
God had promised
that Abraham’s descendants would own all the land where Abraham was renting and
squatting.
On the same day the Lord made a covenant with
Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of
Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— the Kenites, the
Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Rephaim, 21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the
Jebusites”
(Genesis15:18-20).
Sarah’s death made
Abraham realize how far he was from walking in that promise. When Abraham purchased Sarah’s tomb he didn’t
just arrange for a funeral, he made arrangement for the future of his family.
Abraham acquired a
piece of real estate that anchored his family’s claim to residence in the Promised
Land through a legal deed witnessed, notarized, and recognized by the Canaanite tribes that would rule the land
until Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob came to claim it 500-plus
years later. In Genesis 25:9-10 both
Abraham’s sons buried him in that tomb.
Through Ishmael and Isaac, the legal anchor of the Abrahamic claim to the Promised Land was
preserved through the Ishmaelites (Arabs), the Edomites (descendants of Isaac’s
son Ishmael), and the Jews (descendants of Isaac’s other son Jacob). Today,
a mosque that used to be a church sits atop the spot 3 historically contentious
religions s believe is the cave Abraham bought in which to bury Sarah.
 |
| The Ibrahim Mosque |
The financial funeral
arrangement Abraham made resonate 4,000 years later.
A long, long time
ago, an imperfect man said, “Lord, I don’t know how I’m going to bury her.” realized
the need to provide a place for those who had gone on and simultaneously to
leave something for those who hadn’t come along yet.
In other words, MAKE
A WILL, FILL OUT A LIVING WILL, GET SOME LIFE INSURANCE, AND WRITE OUT YOUR
FUNERAL PROGRAM so your family doesn’t have to go to the Hittites begging after
you die!
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T.
Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Subscribe to my
personal blog www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves
Follow me on
twitter @AndersonTGraves
Click
here to support this ministry with a donation. Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button
on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by check or
money order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME
Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
Sunday, July 17, 2016
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS?
The title of the message is: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS?
If you
can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a
writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;
executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You can
help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button
on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by
check or money order may be mailed to
Miles
Chapel CME Church
P O Box
132
Fairfield,
Al 35064
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS?
<iframe src="https://www.podomatic.com/embed/html5/episode/8130272?square=false&autoplay=false" allowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" style="width: 504px; height: 208px;"></iframe>
The title of the message is: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS?
The title of the message is: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH JESUS?
Listen
well.
If you
can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a
writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;
executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You can
help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button
on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by
check or money order may be mailed to
Miles
Chapel CME Church
P O Box
132
Fairfield,
Al 35064
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
EULOGY FOR MILDRED LOCKHART
Mrs. Mildred Lockhart was 95 years old when she passed away. After almost a century of life she left a
legacy of laughter and love that reminds us that there’s always MORE.
I was honored to speak on that legacy in THE EULOGY FOR MILDRED
LOCKHART.
Listen
well.
If you
can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a
writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;
executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership
development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You can
help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button
on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by
check or money order may be mailed to
Miles
Chapel CME Church
P O Box
132
Fairfield,
Al 35064
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)