Advancing Word Podcast

In Chapter Three of the Book of Daniel, the primary characters, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, did not make a purchase at a clearance sale or in a bargain basement but transacted the business of their faith under the most difficult and deadly of circumstances.  They embraced the “high cost of standing.” Their courage, commitment and confidence are an inspiration to every generation of believers...

In Psalm Fifty-five, stanza 22, King David laments the suffering and disappointment that he experienced because of his son Absalom’s attempt to usurp the throne and from the betrayal by a close advisor and friend.  Yet David expressed his personal, persistent and profound faith in God who can handle every demanding situation we face in life.  In this moving passage and its larger context, David of...

During the 225th Anniversary Celebration of the Historic Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, Dr. T. D. Stubblefield parses powerfully and passionately the Risen Lord’s commendation of the Church of Smyrna recorded in Chapter Two, verse 10 of the Book of Revelation.  While doing so, in this memorable message he exposes and explains the three characteristics of "the...

Chapter Eleven of the Gospel of Matthew begins with an exceptional interrogation by the John the Baptist but ends with an exclusive invitation in verse 28 by the One whose mission, ministry and message that John seemed to momentarily question.  This invitation should not be so easily dismissed or discarded.  On the one hand, to do so would forfeit an unparalleled opportunity for love, joy, peace a...

Samson would never be a poster child for Great Fathers of the Bible; in fact, there is no record that he ever had children.  But here we are!  Parked at this text.  Why?  Because Samson demonstrates for us the power of a praying man; no matter how finite, fractured or flawed he was!  For most of the narrative about him recorded in Chapters 13 - 16 of the Book of Judges, he is playing and not prayi...

As Jesus’s public ministry comes to an end, he intensifies the training of the disciples.  He teaches them that genuine faith can move mountains!  Faith does not retreat from impossibility but trusts in God. The principles in this message will encourage believers today to talk to and conquer our mountains no matter what forms they take!

In Chapter Thirty-Six of Exodus, Israel upsized their giving with an “over-the-top” offering.  Fresh out of Egyptian bondage and responding to an appeal to support the construction of the tabernacle, they gave so much that they were restrained by their leaders from giving.  The means, motive, measure and model of their giving is a challenge to believers and churches today and is a powerful precede...

During the Twenty-Third Pastoral Anniversary and Church Birthday Celebration at the Christ Way Missionary Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, Dr. Stubblefield preaches from Isaiah, Chapter 52, verse 12 and reminds Pastor and People that there are “assurances for the journey”.  On our journey with the LORD in life and in ministry, we can be assured of His promises, His presence and His protection.  B...

Dr. Stubblefield shared this powerful message on Father’s Day in 2022 at The Still Useable Ministries Church in St. Robert’s, MO.  In many homes in America, the voice of the father has been muffled, muted, maligned, misrepresented or gone missing altogether.  This reality is deeply damaging to the fabric of our society of which biblical marriage and family is the foundation and the father and husb...

The Parable of the Good Samaritan recorded in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, verses 30 -37, is Jesus’s response to an expert (scribe) of the Law, who came to Him attempting to justify himself.  The parable leverages one of the frequently used metaphors in the Bible of the spiritual life, that of a journey or a road trip.  The journey that is the life of the child of God involves dangers seen and...

The questions asked at many places in the Bible opens and pushes back the panoramic horizons of spiritual reality and truth.  Whether, God asking Adam in Genesis Chapter 3, “Where are you?” or the disciples on stormy sea in an act of desperation asking the Lord, “Care not that we perish?”, questions can be profoundly provocative and redemptively revealing.  One of those questions is recorded in th...

One of the Apostle Paul’s favorite metaphors for Christian life and ministry was the military.  2 Timothy, Chapter 2, verses 3 – 4, is one of many places in his writings where this image and analogy is used.  One gets the sense when reading his letters in the New Testament that Paul was all too familiar with the clank of armor, the thump and thud of soldiers’ feet as they marched under command and...

The final installment of the sermon series “Improving Our Serve” focuses on the call of Isaiah to the prophetic ministry recorded in Chapter Six, verses 1 -8 of the book that bears his name.  This passage reveals that before the prophet committed to be a servant before his Sovereign, he also acknowledged being a creature before his Creator and a sinner before his Savior.  God requires the same fro...

A mother who could quality as the poster child for “bad luck magazine” is driven into Jesus's presence because of a personal crisis.  Her faith will not allow her to settle for crumbs from the Lord's table because she believes she can have the crust.  She learned, as can we, that "Jesus is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think!"   

While the church grows stronger through worship, larger through evangelism and witnessing, deeper through discipleship and wider through ministry, we grow warmer through fellowship.  This sermon, Part 4 of the series “Improving Our Serve” focuses on the account of the victory that David and his army won against marauding Amalekites.   Although an Old Testament passage, this account recorded in the...

Someone defined discipleship as “thought accompanied by endeavor.”  In the Book of Judges, Chapter 7, Gideon leads three hundred Israelite soldiers with unconventional weapons to victory against a vast Midianite army.  Their actions demonstrate the characteristics that should be present in the life of every disciple.  In this sermon, Part Three of the series, “Improving Our Serve”, Dr. Stubblefiel...

In Part 2 of the series, “Improving Our Serve”, this sermon focuses on the account of Naaman the Syrian general recorded in Second Kings, Chapter 5, verse 1 -15.  Despite his position of power and prominence in the Syrian nation, military renown, and wealth, Naaman was a leper.  His visit to the prophet Elisha in Israel began with the faithful witness of a Jewish slave girl and culminated in heali...

In the first of a series of sermons around the theme, “Improving Our Serve,” Dr. Stubblefield focuses on worship.  Using Second Samuel, Chapter Six, verses 12 – 15, he makes the compelling case that worship is the church’s SPD, “Spiritual Prime Directive”.  Worship is the pressing priority of the church and the perennial occupation of heaven.  Worship is compliant, costly, compelling and contagiou...

If the life of Jesus was a movie, the Transfiguration recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and in the Second Epistle of Peter is a “spiritual trailer” and “a preview of coming attractions.”  It revealed God’s purposes regarding the death of His Son on Calvary and is the precedent that is the future hope of the Church because Jesus tasted death for all of us and His transformation on M...

This sermon focuses on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Nine, verse 36, and the compelling profile there of Jesus’s ministry as the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep.  His compassion is the hub around which this text and sermon pivots and pulsates.  Jesus models compassion with His searching awareness, His sincere affection and His sobering assessment.  These commitments propel the sacri...

The Cross on which our Savior died is at the epicenter of human history.  It defines everything that goes before it and determines everything that comes after it.  One of the seven sayings or utterances of our Lord from the cross was “It is finished.”  This cry was not the wobbling, woeful words of an abused victim but the triumphant trump of a valiant Victor.  “It is finished” is not the rant of...

This sermon is Part 2 of a two-part series. It introduces “huddle disease”, the malingering, malicious, malignant malady that cripples the contemporary church. Huddle disease frustrates the church’s efforts to develop laborers for the spiritual harvest that Jesus said, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9, verses 35 – 38 , “is plentiful”.  This disease accounts for the anomaly of a “churc...

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 9, verses 35 -38, provides a preview of the primary parameters of the ministry of Jesus.  The priorities, perspectives and principles that Jesus models in this passage is a blueprint for the contemporary church.  In the first sermon of a two-part series, Dr. Stubblefield will focus on how Jesus was committed to reaching out, reaching in and reaching down.  

In our Bibles, Psalm 86 is ascribed as a “prayer of David”.  The psalm expresses the comprehensiveness of the care David expects and experiences as a member of the covenant community.  As members of the Lord’s church, we are the bountiful beneficiaries of that care and coverage as well.  In this sermon, Dr. T. D. Stubblefield, in vintage form and focus conducts a policy review of stanzas four thro...

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus reminds His disciples and us that He is the “Ultimate Treat”.  He has no equal!  Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life.”  This passage uniquely highlights the uniqueness of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  He is both God and man and, according to this sermon, is the path that marks our purposes, the principle that molds our perspectives, the...