Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 226 to 250 of 972 results

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

John A. Terry

... enemies, and encouraged them "to bear up under this life of toil and care, because a blessed home awaited them in the far-off bye and bye." The congregation felt consoled. "They basked," Ms. Angelou wrote, "in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden." They believed what the preacher and the Bible said. The ugliness of their present lives would make little difference in the long run. They would finally overcome by the power of God. The people in the revival tent seemed to have ...

227. The Fruitful Vine

John 15:1-17

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

... . 6. "Already Cleansed." (v. 3) The allusion here is probably twofold. In chapter 13 John had told of the footwashing and the rebuke of Peter when he wanted to be washed all over (vv. 9, 10). In the following verse (v. 11) Jesus referred to the exclusion of Judas as a part of the cleansing process. This represents a bit of mixing of the metaphor, though cutting off the dead branches and pruning the fruit-bearing branches was a type of cleansing. A word play is found in Greek between "pruning" (airei) and ...

228. Lent 2

Mk 8:31-38 · Rom 4:13-25; 8:31-39 · Gen 17:1-7, 15-16; 22:1-18 · Ps 22

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

COMMENTARY Old Testament: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 God establishes his covenant with Abraham and his descendants. Like the covenant with Noah, it is an eternal covenant. Unlike that covenant, the beneficiaries of this covenant are Abraham's descendants exclusively. God promises to multiply his progeny so that nations and kings come from his line. As a result of this new relationship, the names of Abram and his wife, Sarai, are changed to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham means "the divine father is exalted." Sarah ...

229. Christmas Eve

Lk 2:1-20 · Isa 9:2-7 · Tit 2:11-14 · Ps 96

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

... sought other types of perfect government. Imperfect people cannot usher in a perfect government. Christians seek God's perfect reign in the kingdom of Christ. Lesson 2: Titus 2:11-14 Sermon Title: Grace For All. Sermon Angle: The grace of God is not stingy or exclusive but generous and abounding. "The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all people" (v. 11). Outline: Humans tend to bestow their gifts on their own clan or kin. We also bestow gifts on those we deem deserving. God's gift of grace and ...

230. Easter 6

John 15:18--16:4, Acts 10:23b-48, 1 John 5:1-12

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

... tell the story of God's jailbreak. We attempt to imprison God's Spirit in our limited perceptions, ideas or rituals. 2. The command against graven images was to prevent man from limiting God to one form. 3. God broke out of the Jewish understanding of being exclusively chosen as God's people. At first the gospel was preached only to Jews. 4. In our text the Spirit had broken loose of the notion that Gentiles could not be baptized or receive the Spirit (v. 45). 5. Let God break you loose from concepts that ...

231. Proper 23

Job 23:1-9, 16-17, Mark 10:17-31, Hebrews 4:12-16

Sermon Aid

Russell F. Anderson

... devastating disease. Casteen's wife was worried that this promotion would devastate their family finances. "No it won't," Ed responded. "I won't spend a penny. I'll ask people to help." He traveled 5,126 miles in 105 days and relied exclusively on the kindness of strangers. Over 500 Good Samaritans responded by providing food, lodging and other necessities. Only five people turned him down. Casteen also raised over $10,000 for multiple sclerosis research. This trip taught him the concept of audacious asking ...

232. Real Solutions To Real Problems

John 21:1-14

Sermon

Lee Griess

... vowed that he would live his life to the fullest in the six months that he had left. Subsequently he went out and quit his job, cashed in his savings, and bought a new sports car, a closet full of new suits and expensive shoes. Then he went to an exclusive men's shop to buy a supply of the best quality tailored shirts available. He entered the shop and had the tailor measure him. As the tailor took the man's neck size, the dying man noticed him write down "size 16, neck." "Wait a minute," the man said. "I ...

233. A Scholar · Nicodemus

John 3:1-21

Sermon

Gordon Pratt Baker

... asking that carpenter the questions that were troubling him. (John 3:1-10) It was an act which, in the light of Nicodemus' official role, took no small courage. Nicodemus was a Pharisee; (John 3:1) and, like all Pharisees, he had been steeped in an exclusive and Puritanical outlook on life. But not once in the course of their session together did Jesus call on him to renounce the harsh attitude and equally harsh actions of the body to which he belonged. The omission is highly suggestive in view of the Lord ...

234. Transfiguration

Mark 9:2-13, Psalm 50:1-23

Bulletin Aid

B. David Hostetter

... . EXHORTATION Proclaim not yourselves nor any institution instead of Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves his servants. PRAYER OF THE DAY Transfiguring Spirit, clear our sight of all unbelief so that seeing Christ in all his divine perfection we may worship him exclusively and look for no other leader into the realm of God. Amen. PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING Speaking God, shining God, judging God, we celebrate the beauty and order of the world which you have summoned into being. We respect the justice that you ...

235. A Seeking Savior

Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

W. Robert McClelland

... . The new being is being born in us, just when we least believe in it. It appears in remote corners of our souls which we have neglected for a long time. It opens up deep levels of our personality which had been shut out by old decisions and old exclusions. It shows a way where there was no way before."9 When the anguished cry, "O wretched person that I am. Who will deliver me from this bondage to death?" has been wrenched from us and we have been forced to kneel mutely before our own inadequacies, trusting ...

236. Bringing Love Close

Deuteronomy 6:1-25

Sermon

George Paul Mocko

... of faith are quick to point out the inconsistency and irrationality of all of this. No less a man than that historian, Arnold Toynbee, once chastized us for the smallness of this. "You are so narrow-minded. Do you seriously believe that you have exclusive possession of truth, and that wherever any disagree with you, they are automatically wrong?" "Away with you," says the man approached by a missionary in exasperation, "how can you ask me to accept a God who has been damning generations of people for sins ...

237. Jesus, The Mad Man

Mark 3:20-30

Sermon

Erskine White

... that Dallas had become a hotbed of far-right extremism while people like himself had been silent. Now, the President of the United States was dead. Soon after he wrote the article, he was forced to resign from the oil company. His friends threw him out of their exclusive country club and made him an outcast. "Shea has gone mad," they said. "He cracked up; he couldn't take the pressure of the oil business." Jack Shea had seared a hole in the conscience of Dallas and people had to find a way to explain him ...

238. Hope Against Hope

Genesis 17:1-27

Sermon

Erskine White

... man. Having worked hard all his life, he is now a fairly wealthy man, living on his Social Security checks and the income from a few well-placed stock investments made when he was younger. He and his wife, Sarah, are on the waiting list for an exclusive nursing home and are happy with that decision. Everything about their life seems well-planned and in order, the way one’s "golden years" are supposed to be. Still, there is a gaping hole in their lives and a consuming sorrow in their hearts - they have no ...

239. A Letter From Paul

Sermon

Erskine White

... later generations to pay the long-term costs of its short-term gain. Love enriches all people, ennobles all people, serves all people, saves all people. Love never ends. As for class privileges, they will pass away. As for cycles of poverty and exclusions from the economy, they will cease. As for inequitable divisions by race and sex and income, they, too, will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our morality is underdeveloped, but when the perfect society comes, the imperfect will pass away. When ...

240. A Chosen Race?

John 14:1-4, John 14:5-14

Sermon

Erskine White

... was firm objection to Jesus' saying, "I am the way ... no one comes to God but by Me." Several ministers said, "There are other people with other beliefs in the world and some people don't believe in religion at all. Christianity is not an exclusive religion - we don't want to exclude anyone - and we might offend some people by thinking that Jesus is the only way." I left the discussion that morning both angry and depressed. I was angry with my colleagues because they are charged with responsibility for ...

241. Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11, Isaiah 62:1-12, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, Psalm 96:1-13, Psalm 36:1-12

Sermon Aid

George Bass

... of this; he determines what gifts shall be given and to whom they should be given. And he is concerned that all of the gifts should be appreciated and highly valued by the community, so that none would be elevated in the eyes of the faithful to the diminution - or exclusion - of the others. The gifts of the Spirit are God's to give, and he gives them as he wills, sometimes to the unlikeliest of persons. John 2:1-11 (E, L, C); 2:1-12 (RC) In his book, Jesus The Magician, Morton Smith says that "Taking the ...

242. Beyond Togetherness

John 17:20-26

Sermon

John M. Braaten

... (name a denomination here) in there; they think they're the only ones up here." It isn't just (name a denomination here) who think they are the only ones who have got this God business right. There are other denominations who also give the impression of exclusiveness and project the feeling that it is only natural that the blessings of God should fall upon them. They are probably just as amazed as we are to see that it "rains on the just and the unjust alike (Matthew 5:45)." I suppose that is not strange ...

243. Endorsing The Future

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... yell reverse discrimination, close the borders to immigration, and turn on those we perceive to be the alien, the stranger, and the foreigner to our traditional cultural inheritance. And there is much support for this. The Western religions are exclusive religions and fundamentalism is worldwide. Countries ruled by dictators usually have the cleanest streets. We can employ "survival of our kind" techniques. Gerald Kennedy tells the startling experience of a man who visited the Bell Laboratories. One of the ...

244. Illusion Or Reality?

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... all thrown together in sharply contrasting mixes. The gathering was about sixty percent white, thirty percent black, and ten percent Hispanic. The president of the gas company sat in his three-piece suit, surrounded by his two teenage daughters who attended the fine and exclusive private high school. Next to him sat another white man, one of the town's garbage collectors, dressed like he was getting ready to leap on the truck for the Monday morning run. He had his two teenage sons with him and they looked ...

245. Life Isn’t Fair

Amos 5:18-27

Sermon

Sims Robert

... us telling us we do not journey alone. God is fair, more than fair. God goes beyond what is fair to what is good. Though it was difficult for the people of Israel, they had to learn that God is good to everyone. His love is not limited to an exclusive few. There is not a certain group of people who are our kind of people. All people are our kind of people. Jesus said so in the gospel of John. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that if anyone believes in him, they will ...

246. John Christian Frederick Heyer First American Lutheran Missi

Drama

Thomas A. Renquist

... , extending the invitation to come and worship. Today’s mission developer also utilizes the tools of the time; today such tools include direct mail, telephone surveys and advertising. Reader 1: Mission work among Lutherans in America had been exclusively home missions, that is, the planting of congregations on America’s western frontier. But increasingly, the American Lutheran church began thinking about the possibility of sending missionaries to foreign lands. After all, they reasoned, isn’t that the ...

247. Spirit Full Or Foul?

Isaiah 44:1-5

Sermon

Justin Tull

... Hebrews and to the early Christian church a gift we have received or rejected, nurtured or ignored? Is the Spirit of God in us? In many ways the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is not an entirely new act of God. The gift of the Spirit is not exclusively a New Testament occurrence. In the book of Isaiah we find the promise of the Spirit, a promise that was fulfilled in part in Old Testament times but came into full bloom on the day of Pentecost. Today I invite you on a journey through time, a journey that ...

248. Beasts, Saints and Chaos

Daniel 7:15-28, Daniel 7:1-14

Sermon

Paul W. F. Harms

... would think of us as saints? Some pastors believe their task is to show that they are not saints. I did not think that required a personal campaign. Two weeks scrutiny of any one of us would make that clear. We sometimes associate an exclusiveness with the word "saint." Perfection, we mean. Even the proud are reluctant to associate perfection with their name or reputation, at least to say so themselves. No matter how common is the misunderstanding of saint, the Scriptures do not so misunderstand it. In his ...

249. Revised Edition

Psalm 71:1-24

Eulogy

Richard F. Bansemer

... Upon thee I have leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother's womb. My praise is continually of thee." The elderly often impress us with two qualities seldom found among the young: trust and simplicity. These characteristics are almost always the exclusive gift of the aged, for they alone have spent their lifetime learning how to combine the two into a style of living. In the many years we've known each other, I've never known ___________ to complain or doubt. Things were as they were, and ...

250. When the Tie That Binds is a Slipknot

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

Sermon

Johnny Dean

... . Mr. Fawcett obviously had no way of knowing what the church would be like in the year 2000. Today the "fellowship of kindred minds" is under a great deal of stress. The Methodists are still upset about their newest hymnal, mostly over the exclusion of some old favorite hymns. The average Catholic lay person continues to wage a war of conscience over the church’s teachings on abortion, contraception, divorce, and the role women are allowed to play in the life of the church. Episcopalians are still not ...

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