Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 226 to 250 of 1182 results

John 2:1-11

Sermon Aid

Raymond Gibson

... because of their awareness of the abiding presence of God in their union. At the same time, both partners are equipped by God’s grace to more fully realize and appreciate the material joys of life which God intends for all of his creatures. Dante, in his classic poem, Paradise, tells of how he was aware of his ascent into the high plains of Paradise only because it was first mirrored in the face of his beloved Beatrice. So it is marriage ordained by God — and many a home can trace the upward ascent of ...

227. Improving Your Serve

Isaiah 49:1-7

Sermon

Robert Beringer

... 15 million women are battered in our nation each year! The heart of humankind can be very hard. A tramp discovered that when one day he waslooking for a handout in a picturesque old English village. Hungry almost to the point of fainting, he stopped by a pub bearing the classic name, "Inn of Saint George And The Dragon." "Please, ma'am, could you spare me a bit to eat?" he asked. The woman who answered his knock on the kitchen door took one look at him and said, "A bite to eat for a sorry, no good bum, a ...

228. Saints Alive!

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

Theodore F. Schneider

... yet to come, the property of the "saints triumphant," a "code" for the life to come. The Beatitudes are the charter of the kingdom today, here and how. Living with God's gifts of grace as the birthright of our baptism, we are called, just as the classic saints of old, to struggle with our bewildering time and its confusing issues. The kingdom of God is at hand, and our Lord explained the responsibilities of our citizenship. A Final Word For The Living Saints It is not, after all, a matter of earning our ...

229. One Flock, One Shepherd

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Jerry L. Schmalemberger

... ourselves, our sins, our death, over fear and loneliness. One family of God may sing sentimental, experience-centered hymns, which another may use Greek and light candles, and yet another may roll in the aisles and speak in tongues! Still one more denomination may use beautiful classical music and revel in liturgies of ages past. It’s not a matter of one being wrong and the other being correct. It’s not a matter of one being God’s family and all the rest being the devil’s. These are God’s people ...

230. Death in a Hang-glider Accident

2 Samuel 18:19--19:8

Eulogy

George Paul Mocko

... every way, Norberth was worthy of their love and work, their pride, their hope and ambition. Three months from his twenty-first birthday, he stood six-foot-two, one hundred seventy-five pounds. With his broad shoulders and narrow hips, he was a strong, classically Nordic physical specimen. He excelled athletically. In addition he was an "A " student at the University. Hang gliding was in its early days. Norberth and his friends had made a hang glider. They would tow it behind a Jeep bouncing over the open ...

231. Thanksgiving

Ephesians 1:1

Sermon

Brett Blair

... . What if you lost your home? What if you lost your job? What if you didn't have much food on the table this Thursday? Would mean that you would therefore have no reason for thanksgiving? I will remind you of that wonderful Children's holiday classic “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” It was released this weekend as a movie staring Jim Carrey. You’ll recall in the story how the Grinch enters all the homes by way of their chimneys disguised as Santa Clause. He takes all the presents and ornaments, the ...

232. Sowing Seed Is Never A Waste of Time

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

Johnny Dean

... asked them, since I was music director for the week, which songs they had gotten the most enjoyment out of singing. I expected their choices to be the rowdy, lively songs we had sung, like "Pharaoh, Pharaoh," sung to the tune of the 1960’s rock and roll classic, "Louie, Louie," or "Rise and Shine," or "Do Lord." But the song most of the campers I asked said they would remember most from camp was a little praise chorus we had taught them, "Lord, You Are." Do you know it? It’s a quiet, beautiful hymn of ...

233. Get Ready, Get Set...Wait!

Matthew 24:36-51

Sermon

Johnny Dean

... that we may walk in his paths." In the world of Isaiah’s vision, war was a thing of the past, and the nations of the earth lived together in peace. What sort of images come to your mind when you think about Advent? Maybe you remember a classic work of art showing the journey to Bethlehem, the nativity, or the adoration of the Christ Child. Or maybe your traditional symbols of the season include the huge, brightly-lit tree on the White House lawn, or the one in Rockefeller Center in New York City. The way ...

234. Encounters With Christ I: Jesus & the Man Born Blind

John 9:1-12

Sermon

James W. Moore

... We can’t have that! So, they come out with the fervor of Barney Fife to investigate. They interrogate the healed man’s parents… and scare them out of their wits… and then they interrogate the man who has been healed… and he gives them a classic and powerful response that has resounded across the centuries. He says: “This one thing I know. Once I was blind, but now I see.” You see, this man (like most people) is a Pragmatist. Look at what he is saying to their “hard-line” questioning! “I ...

235. Encounters With Christ VI: Jesus and Caiaphas

Matthew 26:57-68

Sermon

James W. Moore

... they felt the wrath of God was upon them. Not so with Jesus… He says in effect, “The Temple is not here to exploit the people. The Temple is here to bring healing to the people.” Now, let me conclude with this… In one of Charles Schulz’s classic Peanuts comic strips, Lucy is watching TV. Her little brother Linus goes over and says to her, “Lucy, you and I are brother and sister. We should get along better. We should love and respect and protect each other. That’s the way it’s supposed to be ...

236. Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

Bulletin Aid

Robert G. McCreight

... the service with the sanctuary only dimly-lit. As the service progresses, the amount of light may be decreased and then increased to underscore the theme of God bringing the Light of our salvation into the world. Candelabra may also be used to add a classic touch visually representing to the congregation that the Light of God's messiah is coming into our lives. (The script indicates those points where the amount of light should be changed. Stage directions for levels of light range from a low of one to a ...

237. Some Illusions (Symbols) Are Better Than Others

Acts 14:8-20

Sermon

Carl Jech

... immortal, but in every other respect they were "very human." The people of Lystra assumed Paul was a representative of the god Hermes because Hermes was identified in their minds with science, invention, cunning, trickery, luck and eloquence. In the old, classic movie, The African Queen, the Katharine Hepburn character says to the Humphrey Bogart character: "Nature is what we were put in this world to rise above!" In their glorification of the natural world and of human nature, the Greeks demonstrated their ...

238. Love Over Logic

Luke 13:1-9

Sermon

Carl Jech

... % of the work and humans do 1% of the work by accepting the gift of faith." Ultimately, however, all of these approaches and explanations deny the real paradox of grace and put the emphasis back on our own efforts to become right with God. (Classical Christian theology calls this the false doctrine of synergism.) If the notion of universalism simply came out of the "humanistic doctrine" of the basic goodness and innocence of human nature, then one might easily reject it as naive and heretical. But when the ...

239. Giving Away the Store

Luke 22:7-38, John 13:1-17

Sermon

Carl Jech

... also that objections have even been raised to the entire theology of grace itself. Such critics maintain that to picture human beings as always helplessly begging for God's grace and mercy is demeaning to our dignity and self-esteem. In his famous classic, The Golden Bough, Sir James G. Frazer suggests that religion itself originated from some primitive notion that the gods must be appeased. Frazer's idea is that religion in most of its forms represents a failure of nerve on humankind's part. Originally ...

240. Will the Real Jesus Christ Arise?

John 20:1-18

Sermon

Carl Jech

... says that it is about "the changing image of Jesus in Western civilization within cultural, political, social and economic realms." And, certainly no discussion of the search for "the real Jesus Christ" would be complete without also mentioning Albert Schweitzer's classic book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Beginning on this Easter Day we embark upon a series of sermons that ask the fundamental question: "Will the Real Jesus Christ Arise?" What about all these theories concerning the "Real Jesus"? Are ...

241. Colorizing Jesus

John 20:24-31

Sermon

Carl Jech

... in computer technology? There is a strong parallel between the discussion of colorizing old movies and the discussion that has gone on for centuries in the Christian church, over the issue of the divinity of Jesus - a discussion that has resulted in the classic doctrine of the "two Natures" of Christ. The creeds of the church traditionally teach that, in addition to his human nature, Jesus also has the added dimensions of a divine nature. Jesus has been, if you will, "colorized." The historical "Jesus" is ...

242. Divine Liturgy, Divine Play, Divine Comedy

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Carl Jech

... gift of a sense of humor. Both give us that miraculous ability to maintain a positive attitude toward life no matter what happens. Both have to do with salvation - with healing. Both contribute to our physical and spiritual health. Victor Borge's lampooning of classical music and musicians has brought great joy to many people over the years. A review of his 1987 San Francisco Pops performance concluded with these words:"A world without the gentle wit of Victor Borge would be a world diminished by the loss ...

243. The Real Jesus is Channeling Grace

John 17:20-26

Sermon

Carl Jech

... make religion more palatable and meaningful to people by diluting the message or by avoiding God-talk! We do not promote religious unity by homogenizing all religious ideas and reducing them to their lowest common denominator. What we need to do is to work with our classical theological traditions and discover anew how they relate to our own day and age! We have been doing just that as we have asked what it means to believe in Jesus, what it means to use "God-talk." Jesus says in our text that he has made ...

244. A Covenant Sealed By a Sacrifice

Genesis 15:1-18

Sermon

Carl Hoefler

... Lord. Broadly speaking, there are four basic types of sacrifice in the Bible. First, there is human sacrifice. There is little direct evidence of this in Scripture. The story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to God is a familiar and classic example. However, it was well known that in Canaan, as well as throughout the ancient world, human sacrifice was a common practice. The intervention of God in the Abraham and Isaac story, where God provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of Abraham ...

245. Make Way For Poets Of The Heart

Sermon

James Angell

... to culture (if popularity is the yardstick). Yet it will also transcend the fickleness of the moment in ways that have us remembering their gifts to persons like me in whom their wisdom, vision, and greatness lives on. There are the classical preachers whose reputations were established between pre-Reformation times and the Reformation. An impressive nineteenth century list of those who made Scotland synonymous with the power of preaching to help set the nation's character or, in the New World, determine ...

246. Don't Just Stand There! - Get Involved!

Luke 3:1-20, Matthew 6:19-24

Sermon

Dr. John Thompson Peters

... that which enables a man to do it - the baptism of fire from Heaven. And man is to make himself an instrument in God's hand - once and for all - and to leap forward in faith. This is little enough for a cause you are committed to. In that Scottish classic, The Faith that Rebels, we have set forth for us the call to involve ourselves: "We are to go into the age-long war against all sin and all tragedy of circumstance as well, in firm faith that our Father wills to make an end of them all. That, alone ...

247. Dollar Signs and Life Symbols

1 Timothy 6:3-10

Sermon

Rev. Donald R. Shank

... take the towel and basin as the symbol of the servant discipleship to which Jesus calls us. Some would take the hour glass with the sand running through as a forceful reminder of the constant passing of time and opportunity. Some might choose the classic praying hands as a constant call to deeper devotion. A handshake of black and white would be an appropriate symbol for some. Others might choose the symbol of eternity (a figure on its side) with a perpendicular arrow coming down through it as a symbol ...

248. Living Passionately

Luke 4:14-30

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... , or memorize without labor, or think without turning over your mind? Does anyone ever read Oliver Wendell Holmes anymore, or are the literature courses like the one a student told me about recently where they were required to read and report on that great classic, Portnoy's Complaint, a modern masterpiece of pornography, filth, and decadence? Here are some words from Holmes, just in case you've never read any: "Through our great good fortune in our youth, our hearts were touched by fire. It was given to us ...

249. Taking On Christ's Likeness

John 13:31-38

Illustration

Lee Griess

A number of years ago Henry Drummond wrote a classic sermon titled "The Greatest Thing in the World." He concluded his sermon by suggesting that if you put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified field, that piece of iron itself will become electrified. And in the presence of that electrical field, it is changed into a ...

250. Redemption Is Found Through Suffering

John 14:15-31

Illustration

John M. Braaten

... who took it easy, who had it good, but those who struggled and who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds. A striking example is the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky regarded by many as one of the greatest literary geniuses of all time. His books are classics. The Brothers Karamazov is regarded by many as the greatest novel ever written. His stories all have a similar theme, that our redemption is to be found through suffering, not simply physical suffering, but in the anguish of our selfhood. We become ...

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