Continued Teachings from the Baptist Rabbi

Samuel D. Dean First Baptist Church Clinton, TN January 20, 1985 One night as I was a little bit delirious with fever, I longed for the morning to come. When you can't sleep, the night becomes very long. And there is a great deal of anticipation for morning to come. I remember going through moments of grief when the same thing happened. When you lose a very dear loved one and you go to bed, there is something about your psychology that makes you almost rebel against sleep. And if you sleep, you sleep in short segments. It's a restless sleep and you long for the morning to come and for the night to be behind you. The same thing happens when you are wanting to go on a great trip. You can get so excited about the trip, that you anticipate the morning so much. My wife was kidding with me this morning (no...she really wasn't kidding with  me....she was being very honest). My family also gave me a rough time this morning. They said that I acted more like a child than my ow...

Samuel D. Dean First Baptist Church, Clinton, TN July 21, 1985 I have a friend who has an expression that is precious. He talks about holy smack. In the Bible, people have mentioned the "holy kiss" and he calls it the "holy smack." He says that many times in life we like to put the holy smack on many of our personal ideas and on many of the things that we want to do ourselves. I find sometimes we do that when it comes to the Bible. We try to put a verse of scripture which will put its stamp of approval on our particular ideas or on our particular behavior. We do this sometimes by saying that things are in the Bible that are not in the Bible. There are many old saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin that many people think are in the Bible. They will argue with you and say "That's in the Bible." But good ole Ben probably said it instead of it being found in Proverbs. Other times, people will take a verse of scripture and they will just use a segme...