September 1 Sermon: From Suffering to Salvation

Have you ever imagined the surroundings of the people who wrote different books of the Bible? The letters of Paul, I think, invite us to do this because we have a knowledge of Paul's history from knowing his ministry journeys in the book of Acts and the fact that in some of his letters, he tells us that he is imprisoned. In fact, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon are commonly known as the prison epistles. The setting in which a writer is penning a letter helps us to understand context. And actually think about the different situations that the authors may have been in as I read through the Psalms. Because there are so many different emotions in the Psalter.