If your pastor made a sermon blunder, would you catch it?

A couple of weeks ago I was traveling most of the week and, due to computer problems, I could not get on the Internet. That meant that I had to prepare my Sunday sermon without any commentaries from my library or any help from the Internet. Turns out it was harder than I realized.

The sermon was from Galatians 4:21-31. It focused on why it is important to wait for God's timing and methods instead of trying to do things in our own way and in our own time -- an important message for the church to hear. In that passage, Paul builds an illustration based on the relationship Abraham had with Hagar, which produced Ishmael. That particular story is not well-known among many Christians, so I decided to tell the story as part of the sermon.

The problem was that since I did not have access to any of my reference books, I decided to tell the story from memory. My memory failed me and I got the characters wrong and told the story as if Esau, instead of Ishmael, was the son of Hagar. Though I got the point across adequately, the details were not very accurate. Most of the congregation never realized I had messed the story up. But about 10 percent of the congregation caught the error. Keep reading.