Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 2476 to 2500 of 3160 results

John 10:1-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... prayer closet curtailing and curtaining all life’s demands and focusing her spirit upon Jesus. The Port. The Patrol. The Portal. The aprons that our mother’s wore are symbols of service. Serving food. Serving care. Serving love. Jesus also wore an “apron” of sort on Maundy Thursday, when he insisted upon washing all his disciples’ feet and drying them with a towel that was bound about his waist. Jesus wore an “apron” to be a good servant to his disciples on the night before he was arrested and ...

2477. A Prayer for Persecuted Christians Everywhere

John 17:6-19

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... became known as the “Spanish Inquisition.” It seems 1492 is a year when both new, exciting frontiers and possibilities were discovered. Yet it is also a year when old prejudices, animosities, and cruelties were reborn with a vengeance. Although there were all sorts of free thinkers and some genuine wild-eyed crazies who got caught up in the Inquisitor’s net, the primary focus was on the resident Jews and Muslims residing in Spain. Both Jews and Muslims were rounded up and subjected to questions and ...

2478. Appetites and Desires

Romans 7:7-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... to dine with those who were outside the comfort zone of the religious establishment those who were “large and in charge.” Jesus ate with Romans and other Gentiles. Jesus ate with sinners. Jesus ate with tax collectors. Jesus ate with all sorts of “out there” persons. Yet John the Baptist, the one charged with announcing the coming of the Messiah, was discharged and dismissed for being some kind of aesthetic weirdo — living in the wilderness, living off locusts and wild honey, baptizing people in ...

2479. The Key to Getting Enough Rest

Matthew 11:25-30

Sermon

King Duncan

... practically carried along by the sea.” Now, said Dr. Peale, this wonderful technique can be applied to people as well as to ships. Get yourself in time with your difficulties. Then get in harmony with God, and you will ride out your difficulties without strain. That is the sort of thing Christ was talking about when he said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for ...

2480. The Parable of the Careless Farmer

Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon

King Duncan

... so many times, and so hard, so hard I prayed, and nothing happened.” (3) We feel compassion for Tom Sutherland. You and I don’t know how we would react to such a terrible experience. However, we do know that there were others who went through the same sort of experience and came home with their faith strengthened, not weakened. Jerry Levin, a Middle East bureau chief for CNN, was taken captive in Lebanon, and he not only held on to his faith, but he even learned to pray for his captors and forgive them ...

2481. How Does Your Garden Grow?

Matthew 13:31-35

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of heaven is like.” Last week Jesus likened the Kingdom to a field sowed with both wheat and weeds. This week he compares the Kingdom of God to the tiny mustard seed, which has the ability to grow into a huge shrub, capable of housing all sorts of wild life. In Matthew 13:44 Jesus extols the “richness” that might be found in ordinary soil. In v.45 he draws our attention to the richness, the “pearl of great price,” that might be found in ordinary seawater. But it is not just unexpected bounty ...

2482. All In: The Winning Hand

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

James Merritt

... , non-religious, meticulous, moralist, loose-living, immoralist, the defeated, the demoralized – whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ, but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all of this because of the Message. I didn’t want to just talk about it. I wanted to be in on it. In other words, Paul was saying ...

2483. Prison Theology: Bait and Bail

Philippians 1:12-30

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... can be gathered and stored away for a "rainy day." First there are "opportunity" cards. These offer special deals to cardholders helping them get ahead. Second is another very important card a player can stockpile: the "Get Out of Jail Free" card. All sorts of landing sites on the "Monopoly" board charge players with criminal conduct, demanding that the player "Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200" (the "going rate" for completing a round about the board). Once "in jail" the prisoner ...

2484. Living “I Don’t Know” While “In the Know”

Matthew 21:23-27

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... To declare that John the Baptist’ s mission and baptism was “from heaven” would be an admission of their own rejection and disbelief of him as he worked and witnessed among the people. To declare that John’s mission was just some sort of personal mission, his own singular-fueled desire, would enrage the huge numbers of people whom John had touched with his message and baptized with his own hands. Answering Jesus’ question was a “lose-lose” situation politically for the Temple authorities. Back ...

2485. About that Salesman

Matthew 23:1-39

Sermon

King Duncan

... so heavy the customer couldn’t even pick it up. Finally, the customer backed up to the counter on which the backpack sat and placed his arms through the straps. As he was staggering out the door, huffing and puffing, he asked the salesman, “By the way, what sort of vacations do you take? Where do you go?” The salesman retorted, “Oh, I just go to the seaside. Bad back. Could never carry all that stuff.” (2) O. K., let’s get this straight. The salesman was eager to weigh down the customer with all ...

2486. An Announcement to a Virgin

Luke 1:26-38

Sermon

King Duncan

... ! Do you remember when you were Mary’s age? I love the way Pastor John Nadasi deals with Mary’s situation. He envisions Mary as being fifteen. “Fifteen,” he writes. “It’s an awkward time. Your body is somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Hormones are doing all sorts of weird things to your body . . . And there is this great race to grow up. Still, at fifteen you are not old enough to drive a car, vote, stay out late, or live on your own. At fifteen, there are a lot of things that you are ...

2487. Last Impressions

Matthew 22:34-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... for his mission. There was no other reason for his sacrifice. There was no other reason for his resurrection. The Herodians, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, they all had carefully calculated plans about how human beings could connect with the divine. They had outlined all sorts of political shortcuts, liturgical and ritual outlets, and rigorous lists of legal do’s and don’ts. Jesus said no, plain and simple. The way to God is a really a short cut. The way to serve God and be in most intimate contact ...

2488. We Are Not The Light

Sermon

Craig MacCreary

... a new path for a weary people. The church in Thessalonica finds itself in the dark, as things do not seem to be going according to plan. The gospel lesson reflects some of the conflict between the followers of Jesus and John as they sort out their roles in the midst of the religious upheaval of the first century. Followers of the Baptist and the early disciples of Jesus struggled with each other’s claims. The conflict between early Christians and other faith communities gives some indication of how ...

2489. Dust Off The Throne

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, Luke 1:26-38, Romans 16:25-27

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... sentences is Tertius’. Or, it may be that Paul, like many of us when leaving messages on answering machines and voice mails, spoke rapidly without apparent punctuation. Personally, however, I am most inclined to attribute this kind of sentence to a sort of childlike enthusiasm on the apostle’s part. We know how an excited child can babble on breathlessly with their enthusiasm flowing faster than their words can accommodate. That is how this closing passage from Romans reads to me. Not all of Paul ...

2490. Night of Light

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Timothy Cargal

... his birth in response to an angelic visitation; Matthew recounts a visit by Magi approximately two years later (see Matthew 2:16) in response to an astral event. For those interested in delving into the details and some of the suggestions for sorting out this tangle, almost any recent critical commentary will suffice. The Christmas Eve service, however, is probably not the occasion for exploring these matters. It is best to do that in Christian education settings, or if you must treat them homiletically, to ...

2491. The Two Faces of Thanksgiving

Ephesians 1:15-23

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

Brain science has now discovered what The White Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” always knew: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." The most recent research in cognitive science, which is a fancy name for the science of “how the brain works,” reveals that remembering the past and visualizing the future use the same neural mechanisms. Memory and prophesy are flip sides of the same mental ...

2492. Why Matter Matters

2 Peter 3:1-18

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... is a growing gnosticism in this digital, cyber culture where matter is seen to be a handicap at best, something evil at worst. For example, we think we can capture memory in digital form so that we don’t need “stuff.” We have all sorts of technologies of memory that can create a “remembrance of things past.” Why should material for memory be material, we think? Well, you can capture the photo of your old baseball glove, but the smell of that old baseball glove may trigger memories that photos ...

2493. Get Out the Ticker Tape - Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11

Sermon

King Duncan

... paper once carried information about the performance of the New York Stock Exchange. As the information was entered by machines, holes were punched in the tape as it fed through, and other machines would read the information for the benefit of brokers and investors. It was sort of an early computer all very modern in the first half of the twentieth century. But there was a problem what do you do with the tape once it had gone through the reader and was no longer useful? One cynic says since all that ticker ...

2494. A Watery Grave

Mark 1:9-13

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... the beast before them, each is asked to describe the elephant. Since one has the trunk, another the tail, another a tusk, and so on, however, they come up with very different descriptions of what an elephant is like. The fable may be used for all sorts of mischief, of course, but it does provide a helpful image: Namely, that some truths are larger and more complex than any one person can fully understand or adequately describe. Baptism may be one such truth. Such a variety of imagery is used in scripture ...

2495. Getting to a Teachable Moment

Mark 15:1-15

Sermon

Craig MacCreary

... amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ ” Certainly, one would think that in the face of such obtuse behavior that Rome should be able to sort things out. That is what Rome does for a living and why it has developed a massive intelligence network. Standing right in front of him, Pilate can still not get who Jesus is. Mark has spun his narrative over fifteen chapters and we find ourselves ...

2496. A Personal History

John 18:1—19:42

Sermon

David J. Kalas

... . After all, it was just a death. Not a battle, not an invasion, not a massacre of thousands; just the execution of an individual. And not even the death of a general or a king. Indeed, we’d be hard put to label this particular man with any sort of official title, at all. Here is a poor man, without property, family, or office. He was unknown beyond the narrow confines of his own country — and an occupied country, at that. He won no battle, amassed no fortune, and generated no invention. He led a ...

2497. Personal History

John 18:1-11

Sermon

David J. Kalas

2498. Je Suis Jesus

1 Corinthians 7:1-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... or #jesuischarlie set a twitter record for the fastest spread of a hashtag in history. But did you know that the “I am Charlie” litany comes from a long line of “I am” declarations. In the 1950s when the Cold War was chilling, all sorts of Hollywood folks became special targets of governmental scrutiny for their involvement in the civil rights movement. We forget that one of the reasons why the older generation didn’t like Elvis was not because of his hips, but because of his support for ...

2499. The Kingdom Is at Hand

Mark 1:14-20

Sermon

King Duncan

... Her depression caused her to become uncooperative, and she cried a great deal. She only seemed to perk up when the morning mail arrived. Most of her gifts were books, games, stuffed animals all appropriate gifts for a bedridden child. Then one day a different sort of gift came, this one from an aunt far away. When Mollie tore open the package, she found a pair of shiny, black, patent‑leather shoes. The nurses in the room mumbled something about “people who don’t use their heads,” but Mollie didn’t ...

2500. God Writes Straight with Crooked Lines

Mark 1:35-39

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... late and light” (dawn and dusk) a special time for prayer and “reset” throughout his public ministry. Jesus programmed into his life “senior moments” — a time apart, a time to turn off the spotlight and turn away from his disciples, to sort through the minefields of miscellaneous “stuff.” For Jesus a “senior moment” meant a reset and reconnect to his Father and to the singular focus of his mission: “For God so loved the world.” The disciples lost their focus by getting sidetracked ...

Showing results