Sermons

The D. L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation houses a large archive of sermons written and delivered by the Reverend D. L. Dykes, Jr. These sermons contain a treasury of insights on faith and Christian theology and are available for purchase by special order.

The sermon catalog indicates whether a sermon is available as a transcript, DVD, or both. Once you know what you would like to order, please fill out the Sermon Special Order form. You can mail the form to the foundation office. Or, you may choose what you want and call in your order. The best time to place a phone order is Monday – Friday from 9 am – 12:30 pm. Please note that Special orders may take 2-4 weeks for delivery.

Order from the sermon archive of D.L. Dykes, Jr.

Download & print our Sermon Order Form for full list of titles

The D. L. Dykes, Jr. Foundation
200 S. Lamar St. Suite 130S
Jackson, MS 39201
800-882-7424 or 601-354-0767
Fax: 601-354-9359
Email for Special Orders:

Read a free sample sermon from the archive:

The following is an example from the sermon catalog. Delivered on September 11, 1977, The Fundamentals of a Liberal is a keystone sermon that offers a powerful perspective on Christian faith that does not cling to literalism or dogma but instead offers profound insight on the transformational powers of love.

The Fundamentals of a Liberal

A Sermon by D. L. Dykes, Jr.

I would like to use as the subject this morning, “The Fundamentals of a Liberal,” and the text is “I am determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Now I believe that Paul meant by this, "I am determined to know nothing among you, except that which Jesus considered fundamental."

Some time ago, I went to speak at an Annual Conference Lay Retreat in this jurisdiction of the Methodist Church. It was a great experience to spend a couple of days with these laymen. I enjoyed mostly the after-dinner visits around the supper table when we would linger together. One evening, in the midst of such a session, a man said to me, "Are you a fundamentalist?" I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Do you believe the fundamentals of the faith?" Now I could tell by the tone of his voice and the expression on his face, as well as some of his previous comments in the conversation, that I probably did not believe in his fundamentals. So, I guess I hesitated a moment to decide how to respond to him. Before I could answer, he said, "I believe you are a liberal."

Now, I don't like labels, and especially when they are put on me by somebody I don’t particularly take to, anyway. I think this feeling dates back to when I was eleven or twelve years of age and an overgrown boy named Smiley Rayburn, with yellow teeth and dirty fingernails, called me a "sissy," because I said that smoking corn silk made my tongue sore. Ever since then, I haven't liked labels. Ever since then, anyone who gives me a label makes me think of Smiley.

Of course, labels are not important, but what we believe is terribly important. Therefore, when a label is used to express a doctrine or a belief, then that label becomes very important. If some kind of decree were sent out and we all had to have a label of either fundamentalist or liberal, or if I were going to be stood up against the wall and shot if I didn't choose one or the other, then in spite of my dislike for labels, I would have to be called a liberal. But I would immediately insist that I have a right to my "fundamentals" as a liberal. In the light of this introduction and from this particular point of view, what are some fundamentals of a liberal?

First of all, the first fundamental of a liberal is that God is all goodness and total love; and therefore, he never punishes or rewards. He loves his children just as much when they are bad, as when they are good. Therefore, any good behavior that comes out of fear of punishment from him, or due to the hope of reward from him, comes out of the wrong motives. Any good behavior that springs out of fear of his punishment, or hope for his reward, is not properly motivated. God does not make special effort in behalf of his children when they are good, and withhold his blessings from them when they are bad. Jesus put it; "His rain falls on the just and the unjust."

In fact, the New Testament seems to indicate that if God makes any special effort on any of his children, it is in behalf of those who are lost. In the lost sheep parable of the good shepherd, the shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep in the fold and went out to make a special effort on the lost one.

I have a son—as most of you know—and I love him with all the capacity of a parent, as you do yours. There is no way for him to lose me, or my good will, or my continuing effort in his behalf—no matter what he would do. When he has done wrong, I have suffered with him. Sometimes I think more than he has, because it is more painful to suffer for someone you love than to suffer yourself. Jesus said, "If you, being human, know how to do good things for your children, how much more does your heavenly Father care for you?" Goodness is its own reward. Evil is its own punishment. And when we get that punishment, he suffers through it with us. Anything that places a condition on the love and favor of God—I believe—is not in line with the image Jesus gives us of God. Some time ago in a sermon on this point, I was talking about the importance of not holding grudges and resentments against people. I said, "According to the Lord's Prayer, we can accept the forgiveness of God for our sins only to the extent that we forgive others who have sinned against us." When I had finished the sermon, one of our younger ministers came up and said, "I want to talk about that point with you—where you indicated that God's forgiveness is conditioned on our forgiving others." I told him that I thought he had misunderstood what I had said. I got my notes out and read to him the exact statement, and it said, "We can accept the forgiveness of God only to the extent that we forgive those who have sinned against us." Then he stopped me dead in my tracks. He said, "I understand. But would it not be more truthful and more faithful to Jesus to say that we can forgive others only to the extent that we accept the forgiveness of God for our sins?" The accepting of the forgiveness comes first, rather than saying that we can forgive others to the extent that we have accepted God's forgiveness. This is what must come first—accepting the forgiveness of God, and seeing God as that all-loving heavenly Father. So, the first fundamental of a liberal is that God is all good and total love, and never punishes or rewards.

The second fundamental of one liberal is that all of God's creation is good, and evil is the misuse of that good. If God is the creator of all things and if God is totally good, then he is incapable of creating evil. In the account of creation in Genesis there is one phrase that keeps repeating itself, over and over, that I have often quoted. At the close of each day of creation the scripture says, "God saw it, and it was good."

Recently, I was present at the annual meeting of a church conference in a large auditorium. There were about forty or fifty large banners hanging on the walls. The young people and children had made these out of felt and burlap. It was very interesting to sit there and look at them. I'd like to meet one little boy or girl who made one that said, "God made me, and he don't make no junk." Everything God made is good. Evil exists only in the misuse of that good. Everything in God's creation is potentially good.

There are no bad keys on a piano. Now, if I sit down to play there would seem to be some bad keys on the piano; but put the right person on the stool and there are no bad keys. I've been teaching in recent years in the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana. Here is a class of forty or fifty young men and women who were selected out of four or five hundred applicants. They are brilliant young scientists, would-be-doctors. I am amazed at how naive some can be in the world of religion, and how obsessed some have been recently with the idea of the devil and demons.

One day one of them said to me, "What do you believe about demons?" I said, "I don't believe in demons because I don't believe in the devil. I don't have two Gods—a bad one and a good one. I have one God whose will is total good and my rebellion against him is evil; and I give personality to that evil when I participate in that rebellion."

The third fundamental of a liberal is that Jesus is what all men are meant to be. He is the second Adam, the scripture says. The first Adam demonstrated the potential failure of all people. The second Adam demonstrates the potential success of all people. Jesus is what God intended Adam to be. This is the reason Jesus could say, "That which I do, you can do; and greater things you will do." I believe Jesus. I can almost hear him sometimes saying, "Stop worshipping me." He never asked us to worship him, but he asked us to follow him.

I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I sometimes am tempted not to use the name, Jesus, because of the "sweet Jesus" cult people who now sing love songs as they worship Jesus. I believe they are destroying him by worshipping him. I find myself, when it comes time to say, "Jesus,” tending to say, "the Christ." On that day when the disciples came upon Jesus in prayer, unexpectedly, they apparently saw something in him they had never seen before, and they wanted it. They said, "Lord, teach us to pray." And he said, "When you pray say, 'Our Father, who art in Heaven..." In other words, pray to God—worship God. On another occasion they came to him and said "Good Master," and he stopped them before they could continue and said, "Why call you me good? There is none good, but the Father."

People have somehow always preferred to worship an ideal rather than practice it. Man has sometimes done some of his best escaping his responsibility by worshipping. The reason is that lip service is so much easier than daily living. It is like a man who speaks with great respect for his mother, then goes out and does things that he knows will break her heart. It is like a husband who speaks adoringly of his wife, and then is repeatedly unfaithful to her. He worships her, and destroys her. I have a feeling that Christ would much rather be an elder brother or a guide than a God. He never asked that we worship him. He asked that we be like him.

The scripture says Jesus walked on water. I believe there is a relationship between the spiritual and physical world that when the perfect balance and perfect attunement comes, the spirit world will control the physical world. It's possible that Jesus walked on water, but if he did, we can too. I'm interested in the miracles of Jesus that can be repeated, not the one time miracles of Jesus. The miracles that are significant are the ones he was able to do and the ones that when we become as he is—we, too, shall do.

Another fundamental of a liberal is that the Bible is a book of truth, not magic. This means some scripture is more inspired than others are. It means that the truths that are scripture in the Bible are in the Bible because they are true, and not true because they are in the Bible. There is a big difference between these. It means that myth nearly always contains more truth than historic fact. Take the Book of Job, for instance. If Job had been one man who lived in one place at one time, that is an “historic figure.” The writer could have put on Job only the troubles that one man would have at one place in one time. But if Job is a “mythical figure,” then the writer can heap upon Job all the troubles that anybody ever has, and we can all identify with Job.

Myth is the expression of the inexpressible. The reason there is so much myth in the Bible is that there is so much inexpressible truth that is too great for words. Very little great literature of man is historic or scientific in its nature. Almost all of it is mythological, or parabolic, or fictional, or poetic, because these are the forms of literature in which man has found he can express his truths most graphically and exactly. Jesus knew this. This is the reason when he really wanted to make a point he told them in a parable. In fact, this was so obvious that one writer of scripture expressed it in these words, "Without a parable, he spoke not to them." He never spoke, except at times when he used a parable. Stories about soldiers' lives being saved, because of the magic New Testament they carried in their shirt pocket that caught the bullet, have often bothered me. The people who take the Bible literally and use it as magic, I believe, are sowing tares among the wheat that must be eventually rooted out before the harvest.

The fifth fundamental of a liberal is that every person is entitled to experience God in his own way. The only God I have is the God I have experienced. I may love Mother, and be happy and enjoy her experience of God. But at some moment in my life I face the lonely fact that the only God I have is the God I have experienced. It must be my own, and no one can prescribe what the experience of God might do to me. It may make me be immersed in water, and it may not. It may make me say, "Praise the Lord," and it may not. It may make me speak in tongues that no one around me can understand, and it may not. The only real test for that experience is, “Does it make me love God with all my heart, and my neighbor as myself?”

Another fundamental of a liberal is that the kingdom will come with Christ in the hearts of men, and not on "clouds of glory." The main trouble with the "second-coming" preaching of many fundamentalists of this kind is that it is just not true. Jesus said, "There are those standing here who will not taste death until they enter the kingdom." I do not believe that Jesus was grossly mistaken, or had the grossly mistaken idea that they would still be alive after his crucifixion, and his resurrection, and his second-coming when he said, "There are those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom." Even though we cannot separate God's part and man's part in bringing the kingdom, because apparently one cannot do so without the other. If I had to pick, I would say God is further ahead on doing his part than we are doing ours. The kingdom is not waiting for God to get ready. The kingdom is waiting for man to get ready.

Finally, another fundamental of a liberal is that salvation is accepting the grace and the unconditional love of God as revealed in Christ on the cross. It is not in some penance on our part, and it is not in some payment of debt on the part of Jesus for us. They beat him; they put a crown of thorns on his head; they stripped the clothes off of him, and put a ragged robe on him; they put the cross on his shoulder and made him carry it to the top of the hill. There they nailed him to it; and when he wouldn't die quickly enough they put the spear in his side. With the last ounce of energy draining out of his body, he looked down upon them and he said, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." And at that moment he becomes our Savior. In that perfect revelation of the total unconditional love of God with which he loves us and with his help, we can love each other. It is so significant that Paul said to the m in this second chapter of Corinthians, "I am determined to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified." He did not say, "In him born of a virgin," or "Him turning water into wine," or "Him being resurrected." He said, "I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

It is not an accident, I believe, that the early church chose the cross as its symbol. It could have chosen an open tomb; it could have chosen a manger, but it chose a cross. Here is our salvation. Let me hasten to say that these kinds of things would take hours, and weeks, and months to discuss. Let me also hasten to say that no one person, no group of people, no large gathering of people can go to an auditorium somewhere and vote "yes" or "no" and determine the fundamentals for all of us. Sooner or later, we all must determine our own fundamentals. Nobody can do it for us.

Prayer:

Father, we are grateful for every good influence in our lives. We are grateful for that person, whoever it may have been, who first told us about Jesus. We are grateful for our mother and father, Sunday school teacher, and preacher. But sooner or later, we know there is that lonely moment on the top of a hill—somewhere in life—where the sound of no human voice reaches us, and when we face the bare fact that we must find our own fundamentals. Help us to do it, and to do it again, and again, and again. We ask it in his name. Amen.