Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: disciple, evangelist, the 12, the twelve, son of Zebedee, fisherman, incarnation, word became flesh, I Am sayings, apostle, sons of thunder, eternal life, darkness and light, eyewitness

Showing 1626 to 1650 of 1652 results

1626. The View from Jesus' Pew

Mark 12:41-44

Sermon

David E. Leininger

There is an old story of a father going to church with his three daughters and giving them each two quarters to put in the offering. When the offering came around the oldest put in her two quarters, the next did the same, but the last held onto hers. When she was going out of church, she pulled the pastor down to her level. "Sir, my daddy gave each of us kids two quarters to put in the offering. Sally put hers in the offering plate, and Julie put hers in, but I wanted to give mine to you." When the pastor ...

1627. Gold, Circumstance, and Mud

Luke 2:8-20, Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

David E. Leininger

The children in a small Sunday School were putting on the annual pageant. A small girl was chosen to be all the Magi. They practiced and practiced until everyone had the story ready to perform for the whole congregation. When it came time for the Magis' entrance - she majestically swept up the aisle - draped in all the jewels from many garage sales and robes of bits and pieces of all the fine fabrics collected from the remainders box at the local discount store. Pausing and bowing before the infant's crib ...

1628. A Date with Destiny

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

December 7th - Pearl Harbor Day - the "date which will live in infamy," according to President Roosevelt. A Date with Destiny. December 7, 1941 was, for what is called "the Greatest Generation," the day that changed their world, just as September 11th is the day that changed the world for the generation of today. "Where were you when you heard about September 11th?" We all could answer that. "Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor?" Even 60+ years later, just as easily remembered by those who ...

1629. What's in a Name?

Luke 3:21-38, Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"What's in a name?" asks Shakespeare. Lots, as it turns out. Ask Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Or should we say Essie Mae Thurmond? We heard about her a couple of weeks ago as the story broke that the late Senator Strom Thurmond, who rose to national prominence on a platform of absolute racial segregation, had, as a young man, fathered an illegitimate child with a black maid employed by his parents. "I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams and, at last, I feel completely free." So said this retired ...

1630. Fish Bait

Luke 5:1-11

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Two guys go on a fishing trip. They rent all the equipment: the reels, the rods, the wading suits, the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods. They spend a fortune. The first day they go fishing they don't catch a thing. The same thing happens on the second day, and on the third day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of their vacation, one of the men finally catches a fish. As they drive home, they are both really depressed. One turns to the other and says, "Do you realize that ...

1631. A Meal with Friends

Luke 9:10-17

Sermon

David E. Leininger

"...looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke..." Familiar sounding words. Reminiscent of the Last Supper. A foreshadowing of what we ourselves will do today. Our lesson is a well-known one, the feeding of the 5,000. Of all Jesus' miracles, this is the only one repeated in all four gospels.(1) Five loaves, two small fish...and by the time it is all over, 5,000 men PLUS their women and children had been fed and were satisfied, with twelve baskets of left-overs collected. How did Jesus do that? I have ...

1632. A Fool and his Money

Luke 12:13-21

Sermon

David E. Leininger

A fool and his money. Are soon parted, right? Someone has rewritten it to suggest that "A fool and his money are some party!" OK. Some of us are old enough to remember Adlai Stevenson, Governor of Illinois, UN Ambassador, two-time Democratic candidate for President, and rare wit. Stevenson once said, "There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."(1) Amen? Amen! Of course, this link between a fool and money (or possessions) goes back along way, all the way to ...

1633. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

Luke 13:22-30

Sermon

David E. Leininger

A little girl came home from school and asked her mother if she knew Christopher Columbus was Italian. "Yes," said Mom. And the girl continued, "Did you know that Queen Isabella furnished the money to buy his ships?" "Yes, dear, I had heard that." The little girl thought for a moment and then said reflectively, "Well, really, Mother, if you already know the things I come home and tell you, I don't see any use in going to school." By the time we get done here this morning, you may feel the same about coming ...

1634. Sonny Moneybags

Luke 15:11-32

Sermon

David E. Leininger

As most of you know, I am a golfer. I use the term loosely because I do not play very well and I do not get to play very often any more, but I still consider myself a golfer. There is an old expression in the game that says, "Every shot makes somebody happy," which means if you hit a good one, you are happy. If you hit a lousy one, your opponent is happy. Whoever came up with that line was not quite as charitable to the gentle folk who play the game as he or she might have been, but the point is well taken ...

1635. Leaping Lepers - Thanksgiving

Luke 17:11-19

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Leaping lepers. That is as good an image as any for the sight of a rag-tag bunch hustling down the road to the Temple. Just a few minutes ago they had been the ancient cast of one of the oldest "Survivor" dramas in history. No, they were not on some South Pacific island, but as far as the rest of Israelite society was concerned, that would have been preferable. Scripture was clear: "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face ...

1636. Hard to Believe

Luke 24:1-12

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Every Saturday in my e-mail appears a fascinating column called "This is True." This is what came last week: "According to the officers on the scene, she told them she was attempting to reenact a scene from the movie," said New Britain, Conn. police spokesman Sgt. Darren Pearson. The movie: "The Passion of the Christ." The unnamed woman, married and in her 40's, purposefully drove her Chevrolet Lumina into a pond at a city park in order to baptize herself, officers said. She was taken to a hospital for a ...

1637. The Christ of the Commonplace

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Familiar story. Two travelers. Friends? Brothers? Husband and wife? We have no idea. Just Cleopas and whomever. Perhaps the reason one remains unidentified is to allow us to insert our own name into the story. Cleopas and David (or Cleopas and Debbie...or Connie or Jim or Jane or Bob or John), out on the road, home to Emmaus. This idea of inserting our own name into the story makes sense. They were just like us. They had the same concerns that have been common in every age - keeping body and soul together ...

1638. The Gift of Fire

Acts 2:14-41, Acts 2:1-13

Sermon

David E. Leininger

Have you ever received a gift you were not sure you knew what to do with? I suspect we all have. Garish ties that you would not be caught dead in...rank perfumes or colognes that you would not wear for fear of dropping everyone in the room into a faint...horrible pictures from some rich, ugly old relative that are suitable only for the attic. There are some gifts we do not know how to handle. Now, let me change the subject for a moment. Let's talk about FIRE. Fire is fascinating. Little children say they ...

1639. Love without Limits

John 13:31-38

Sermon

John K. Bergland

The eloquent preacher Tom Long tells the story of a small church-related college that held an annual event called Christian Emphasis Week. It was the task of the Christian club on campus to invite a speaker who would come and lead a college revival. This particular year they invited a preacher who had come highly recommended. They were told of his dynamism and his unique way of communicating the gospel. The first night of the revival the chapel was filled with the faithful. There were no "animal house" ...

1640. Strong in Faith: A Little Dab'll Do Ya

1 Corinthians 16:13

Sermon

John E. Harnish

Have Faith: Everything changes. Some things never change. I grew up in the nostalgic days, the "Happy Days" of the 1950's. Our fathers, without a doubt the "Greatest Generation," returned from a world torn by war to build a new world out of their hopes and dreams. They began by giving birth to the largest generation in history, the Baby Boomers. Born in 1947, I was one of the first. It was a time of great vitality and optimism, a time of peace after the trauma of two world wars. And it was a time when a ...

1641. Unlikely Election

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

John E. Harnish

You could make the case that right here, in the first days of the first church in the first chapter of the book of Acts, the church made its first big mistake. Jesus left them in Jerusalem with nothing but a promise and told them to wait. Waiting got to be too much. With no idea what was to come, or when, anxious about the future, uncertain about what they should do, they decide to take things into their own hands. I can just imagine impetuous Peter—always ready to jump into a vacuum, to fill the silence ...

1642. Searching: MySpace

Hebrews 11:8-13

Sermon

John E. Harnish

I know I don't need to explain "MySpace" to graduates and Confirmands, but bear with me for the sake of the adults. "MySpace" is a website filled with over 70 million interactive, personal webpages and blogs. It's something like the old-fashioned personal pages in the newspaper (when news came on paper), but it's more like 70 million personal diaries, all hung out there for the world to read. Not all of it is innocent, however, as the story in yesterday's Free Press reminds us. They ran the story of a 16- ...

1643. New Covenant, New Testament

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Sermon

John Wayne Clarke

Our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah is one in which the Hebrew people, not knowing what else to do in terms of addressing their predicament, decide to blame it all on God. They believed their problems to be the result of their sins and the sins of their fathers. Of course, one person's sin does indeed affect other people, but all people are still held personally accountable for the sin in their own lives (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:2). This theme would later be taken up in the New Testament as ...

1644. Small-Minded Christians in a Big World

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sermon

John N. Brittain

How familiar Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1 sound! Chloe's people had reported quarreling among the believers. Imagine that — disagreements in a church! There were rivalries and backstabbing even in the very earliest days of the Christian community. Paul's words are worth examining because factionalism is a perennial issue in the Christian community, found not just within modern day congregations, but between local congregations within a denomination, between churches in a given community, among religious ...

1645. Actors

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Sermon

John Jamison

Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets.... We can almost see the people in the crowd leaning forward as they try to hear these things Jesus was saying that afternoon on the hillside. He had been talking for a while now, and although he started out talking about things that were theological, he was now getting to things that actually made sense to everyone. It was nice to hear him say how the poor are actually blessed, and the weak ...

1646. The Shepherd

John 10:11-18

Sermon

John Jamison

He woke up just as the sun was peeking over the top of the mountains to the east, just as he had done every morning for the past couple of months. He took a few minutes to enjoy the beauty of it all, and then quickly got up and took a quick look in every direction to make sure everything was safe. He made one quick trip around the low, stone wall of the sheepfold, making sure the wall was still secure. Then he stopped at the gap in the wall filled with briars, at the gate. The sheep began to stir as he ...

1647. Call It Like You See It

Mark 7:24-37

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

In Tobit, one of the books of the Apocrypha, the hero Tobias sets out on a journey to call in a loan owed to his father, who has gone blind. He will return with a bride and a cure for his father’s blindness. But he sets out on the journey with a young man — who he does not recognize as an angel — and a faithful dog. Well, sort of. There are several versions of this apocryphal book. In the version that was current among Greek-speaking Jews, there is a dog. In the versions that circulated among Jews closer ...

1648. The Secret Man

Mark 8:27-38

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

In 1972 two relatively unknown reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, began to cover what was described by one person as “a third rate burglary.” On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Watergate Hotel, where the Democratic National Committee had its headquarters. They were attempting to place a wiretap in the party offices. Even though it was an election year, the story didn’t seem to have much traction, because President Richard Nixon had such a large ...

1649. For Men Only?

Mark 10:2-16

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

In the year 311 BC a marriage contract in Egypt was drawn up for Heraclides and Demetria, both from the town of Koan. The contract specified that the bride was bringing into the marriage clothing and bling worth a thousand drachmas. Heraclides, meanwhile, agreed to support Demetria according to what was fitting for a freeborn woman. As to where the two of them would live, that would be whatever they both agreed to after consulting with each other. This marriage, like some that we read about, also had ...

1650. Not Guessing

Mark 10:46-52

Sermon

Frank Ramirez

In his book George Lucas: A Life author Brian Jay Jones tells the story about how the famed filmmaker rose from obscurity in the small California town of Modesto to become the world-famous creator of the Stars Wars series. Lucas, an indifferent high school student, became serious about pursuing a career in film after surviving a devastating car crash. His college student films attracted some attention, but initially only a few people recognized that he had the potential to become a great filmmaker. However ...

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