The Parson's Sermons

Before we get started, let me just say that I do not wish to debate with anyone whether my theology is right or wrong here. As a fallible human being, I am almost certain to be wrong on more than one point, though I have sought for God's truth through much prayer and supplication. Therefore, if you find something that you strongly disagree with in any of my sermon outlines, just chalk it up to a lack of enlightenment on my part and either modify it to your understanding or simply ignore it and move on.

In many cases, I make challenging statements to grab attention and force the listener to re-examine what he or she believes in light of what the actual Scripture has to say. Because I clarify and "flesh-out" the point with further elaboration during my preaching of the sermon, my outlines sometimes give an incomplete picture of my Biblical understanding. A careful review of the Scripture references I provide, however, will usually clear up any misunderstanding that might arise.

You can brand me as a heretic if you like, but as I understand it, we are all fellow travellers on our quest for God and His Eternal Heaven on Earth (see Revelation 21 & 22). We are all seeking to get revelation from God that helps us make sense of His Holy Word, the Bible. As the Apostle Paul put it, "we know in part and we prophesy in part" (1 Corinthians 13:9 NKJV), meaning -- I believe -- that we are able to prophesy (forthtell God's Word) only with the limited revelation (i.e., knowledge and understanding) that God has given to each of us as we are able to bear it (compare John 16:12 and Romans 14:4). Okay now, I think I've said enough about that.

After I published the first article in my series about using e-Sword for digital evangelism in both pulpit preaching and lectern teaching in the June 2013 issue of Christian Computing Magazine, the programmer and author of the e-Sword software, Rick Meyers, contacted me to inform me that there is indeed more than one way to export Topic Notes content into a shareable file. In fact, his recommendation is much more preferable to mine, and had I only taken the time to review the Help files for using e-Sword a little more, I'd have written a more informative article. Nevertheless, after my slice of "humble pie," I have updated the content below to reflect this new knowledge, so keep reading.

In order to view, edit, and/or print any of these sermon outlines, you will first need to download and install the latest version of the freeware program e-Sword. You can either download the basic installation of the software at no cost, and then download additional free components as you choose, or you can make a donation of at least $25.00 (here: www.e-sword.net/support.html) and receive the distribution CD directly from the program's author, Rick Meyers, with many of the free components he has included on his site. Instructions are on the e-Sword download Web page. If you are still using a dial-up connection, I STRONGLY recommend you donate for the distribution CD, as it will save you loads of time. NOTE: In case you are using an earlier version of e-Sword, you will need version 10 or later of e-Sword in order to be able to open and view/print the e-Sword Reference Book files listed below. You can also copy and paste the contents of any one sermon outline from any Reference Book file to a Topic Notes file in e-Sword where you can edit it as you choose. If you wish to share your outlines with others (as I have done here), you can do so in at least two ways:

  1. In your Topic Notes file (in e-Sword), hold down your Control (Ctrl) key while you right click your mouse and choose "Export" from the pop-up menu; once the "Export" dialog appears, click the "Save as type" button to choose from either of five different file formats to save your file to, including a Word document (*.doc), a Web file (*.htm), a rich text file (*.rtf), a plain text file (*.txt), or an Adobe PDF file (*.pdf)
  2. Or you may also choose "Convert to Reference Book" from that same pop-up menu to generate a Reference Library file (*.refx) like the ones I've generated below

Once you install e-Sword onto your personal computer, you can save the e-Sword Reference Library files listed below into the "e-Sword" subfolder under the "Program Files (x86)" folder on your computer's hard drive. Here are the steps to complete this process:

  1. First, right-click your mouse on the hyperlinked file name below which you wish to copy and choose "Save target as..." in Internet Explorer or "Save Link As..." in Firefox or Chrome
  2. Next, using the "Save as ..." dialog that appears as a result of step 1 above, navigate to the "Program Files (x86)" folder, and then navigate to the "e-Sword" folder
  3. Once you have opened the "e-Sword" folder, click on the "Save" button to save the file to that location on your computer; repeat this step for each file you wish to save to your computer
  4. Now, start e-Sword on your computer
  5. After it finishes loading, click on the "Reference Library" icon at the far right hand side of the e-Sword toolbar (let your mouse pointer hover over it for a couple of seconds and a tool tip will display to confirm it)
  6. After the e-Sword Reference Library opens, locate the drop-down menu bar along the top of the right hand pane and click on it to reveal the list of reference book files to open
  7. Choose the one you wish to view (the sermon reference book files will be listed by name alphabetically as follows: Advent-ChristmasA, Advent-ChristmasB, EasterA, etc.)
  8. Finally, use the list of topics displayed in the left hand pane to select the sermon outline you wish to view; although these files are not editable, you can copy and paste the contents of any one topic outline into a Topic Notes file of your own to edit it (see steps below for doing this)

To copy the contents of any sermon outline from e-Sword's Reference Library to a new Topic Notes file, follow these steps:

  1. Click your mouse pointer anywhere in the content pane of the outline you wish to copy
  2. Press the Ctrl+A keyboard combo to highlight the contents
  3. Press the Ctrl+C keyboard combo to copy the contents to your computer's clipboard
  4. Switch to e-Sword's Topic Notes editor by pressing the Ctrl+F5 keyboard combo and clicking on the Topic Notes tab
  5. To create your own separate Topic Notes file from the default empty one included with e-Sword, hold down the Control key while you right click your mouse and choose "New" from the context menu, give it a name on the "New Topic Notes Files" dialog and click the "Save" button to create it
  6. Now, click on the New Topic icon and type in a name for your topic
  7. Press the F11 key to retain the formatting from the original contents you saved to your clipboard (you need to do this the first time only, unless you press the F11 key again to toggle OFF the copy with formatting feature); now press the Ctrl+V keyboard combo to paste the contents of your clipboard into your new topic note
  8. Click on the Save icon to save your new Topic Note topic

That's all there is to it! Now, in order to get started, choose the file(s) below which you wish to download onto your computer. I'm planning to create an installation file that will install the whole list of reference book files for you automatically, so check back for that later. Since I expect to upload revisions to these files over time, you should note the date in parentheses that each file was last updated to insure you have the most current version. You can compare file modification dates by opening Windows Explorer, navigating to the e-Sword subfolder in your "Program Files (x86)" folder and choosing "Details" from the "More Options" drop-down menu of the "Change your view" option at the upper right side of the Windows Explorer screen. Look for the directory icon and let your mouse hover over it to display the tool tip which will confirm which one to choose. Locate the file name in Windows Explorer on your computer that corresponds with the file name in the parentheses below, and then compare the date in the "Date modified" column in Windows Explorer with the date next to the file name below. If the date of the file on your computer is earlier than the date on this page, you do not have the latest version. Now, enjoy these sermon outlines with my compliments: