Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2501 to 2525 of 4490 results

2501. Balancing Act

Mark 6:30-44

Sermon

King Duncan

A lady opened her refrigerator and saw a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves. "What are you doing in there?" she asked. The rabbit replied: "This refrigerator is a Westinghouse, isn't it?" To which the lady replied "Yes." "Well," the rabbit said, "I'm westing." I guess everybody needs a westinghouse. Everyone needs a quiet spot--a place that they can get away to recharge the batteries, to re-nourish the spirit. In the 1970s, Michael Caine and Sidney Poitier co-starred in the movie Zulu, which was shot in ...

2502. God Is Not Fair (Grumbling in the Vineyard)

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

King Duncan

Years ago there was a golf tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee that had a fascinating ending. It was a hole-in-one tournament. The rules said that whoever came closest to getting a hole-in-one on the 90-yard hole was the winner. You didn't have to actually make a hole-in-one to win. Just come close. One man hit a terrible shot. It was so bad that it ricocheted off the scorer's tent, then miraculously bounced onto the fairway, where it hit another golfer's ball, and ricocheted again, finally coming to rest ...

2503. What Love Looks Like

John 13:31-38

Sermon

King Duncan

People do some really strange things to get their names into the Guinness Book of World Records. Every year, the Guinness organization publishes a book that lists the latest world records for such feats as walking the greatest distance on stilts, or eating the most M&Ms with chopsticks. Very few of us aspire to setting records like that. One particularly noteworthy entry in the 2004 edition of Guinness World Records was set on August 3, 2001, when 4,703 people participated in the world's biggest hug--that' ...

2504. Great Reasons for Great Giving

2 Corinthians 8:1-15

Sermon

Edward Inabinet

Newspapers a few years ago carried a funny though sad story about a man in Florida who sued his pastor and his church for fraud. He claimed the pastor had said God would make him rich if he gave 10-percent of his income to the church. When it didn''t happen, the man sued. History repeated itself just recently. Another man, A. B. Cash of Burkesville, Kentucky, filed suit to retrieve offerings he put in the collection plate at a local church. According to Gannet News Service, Cash charged that the Living ...

2505. Father? Almighty?

John 14:5-14

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Harry Emerson Fosdick once told the story of a little boy who, on his first day of school, learned that the sky is not a big, blue bowl. Upon returning home, he felt he must impart this new-found knowledge to a neighbor boy, and so he said, “There ain’t no sky.” The neighbor boy looked up into the heavens and said to him, “Okay, but what is it then that ain’t?” Something exists. The basic theological question is: Why is there something instead of nothing? Those who have suffered through my God Lecture in ...

2506. Love Is Extravagant

John 12:1-11

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

“But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ “ (John 12:4-6) You’ve got to admit that Judas had a point. His was the voice of sweet reasonableness. “Let’s not let ourselves get carried away,” he said, “Let’s not jump off the deep end. This is wasteful extravagance. This costly perfume could be sold and the money given to the poor.” Never mind that the author of the Fourth ...

2507. On Panicking Close to Shore

John 6:16-24

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Will Rogers once said that “a lot of what everybody knows ain’t so!” Nowhere is that more true than in the realm of Biblical scholarship. From my research in the gospel of John and many visits to the holy land I have discovered that a lot of what biblical scholars and commentators appear to know for sure seems doubtful at best, and downright wrong in some places. For instance, not too many years ago it was an accepted axiom among Biblical scholars that the author of the Fourth Gospel always tended to “ ...

2508. Wining and Dining with Jesus

Mark 2:18-22

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

Doesn’t it seem sometimes that the people who are NOT religious are a whole lot more fun than the people who are? At times the church suffers more at the hands of its friends than at the hands of its enemies. It suffers more from the rigidly righteous than from the blatantly irreligious. There are those who in their self-righteous zeal appoint themselves as monitors of other people’s morals and delight in pointing their fingers at the failings of everybody but themselves. Let’s face it: there have been a ...

2509. The Unfinished Story

Mark 16:1-20

Sermon

Donald B. Strobe

I am indebted to my son-in-law, the Rev. Frank Lyman, pastor of Lake Harbor United Methodist Church in Muskegon for my opening story. It seems that there was an unusual story on radio station WGN awhile back. A fellow sat down and ate 874 Walleye minnows at one sitting. That’s a lot of Walleye minnows! Why did he do such a strange thing? Because earlier in his life he had sat down and eaten 862 Walleye minnows and his accomplishment was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. So he set out to break ...

2510. Brokenness and Bread

2 Corinthians 5:11--6:2

Sermon

Eric Ritz

The novelist, Harry Crews, shares an insight into the human condition that he learned as a youngster. "I first became fascinated with the Sears Roebuck catalog, because all the people in its pages were perfect. Nearly everyone I knew, had something missing, a finger cut off, a toe split, an ear half-chewed away, an eye clouded with blindness, from a glancing fence staple. And if they didn''t have something missing, they were carrying scars from barbed wire or knives, or fish hooks. But the people in the ...

2511. Titles, Credentials, or Resurrection Power

Philippians 3:1-11

Sermon

Eric Ritz

The distinguished preacher, Phillip Brooks, once shared, "There are two things to be aware of in life: A timid surgeon and a timid preacher of the gospel. Neither of them will do you much good in life''s journey." As we open our scripture lesson for today, we see that the Apostle Paul is hardly a timid preacher and he certainly performs major surgery on the religious thinking that under-girded the setting of life of this passage. Paul begins in verse one with an exhortation to rejoice in our relationship ...

2512. What a Difference a Day Makes

Matthew 28:1-10

Sermon

Eric Ritz

One of the moving and insightful stories that came out of the Nazi concentration camps in Europe concerned a musician by the name of Gustaf Moeller and his niece. When the young Jewish girl arrived at the camp it was decided she was too valuable to be killed like the others. Instead, she was ordered to gather together an orchestra to play for the Nazi officers and top brass. She was able to gather together many talented Jewish musicians who were ready to be killed. Some of the performers were the most ...

2513. Do You Know What Time It Is?

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Eric Ritz

It is January! Praise the Lord! Can''t you feel the excitement and energy as we tear off the last page of the 2006 calendar and began the year of 2007? Did I hear someone say, "Baloney? Big deal! So what! Did the preacher come back again from one of those New Life Missions or Spiritual Retreats? Didn''t anybody tell the preacher just because we changed the calendar, we didn''t change the circumstances that existed on December 31?" Greek mythology has the image of "Time" being likened to a person, with long ...

2514. Waiting

John 1:1-18

Sermon

Brett Blair

As a child I remember that the most difficult part of Christmas was simply waiting for it to come. From Thanksgiving to December 25 seemed more like an eternity than a month. Days seemed like weeks. Weeks felt like seasons. Time seemed to stand still. Waiting is foreign to our society. It seems unnatural. We hunger for immediate gratification. The idea of delayed satisfaction is a stranger to our thinking. The symbols of our unwillingness to wait are all around us. Fast food chains boom because we don’t ...

2515. Easter Transportation

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Robert Noblett

The eyes of our nation have, in recent time, twice been riveted on Antarctica and the need to rescue medical personnel from a weather station there. Happily both rescues were successful, but they were conducted in weather conditions that were exceptionally hazardous for flight. Aircrews had to wait for precisely the right time to make each rescue attempt. The rescuers knew they wanted and needed to get to the weather station, but it was all but impossible. I am wondering whether a similar predicament ...

2516. Presented to the Lord

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

King Duncan

It is fortunate that New Year’s Day rarely falls on a Sunday. Many who stayed up last night to greet the New Year are in no condition to worship today. [Though I understand that a few could be heard this morning moaning, “Oh God . . . Oh God . . . Oh God . . . “] And then, of course there is football, the real religion of many in our land. New Year’s Day is always a day of worship for the true football devotee. But here you and I are in the house of God. This, of course, is where we ought to begin a New ...

2517. What Are You Going to Do with My World?

1 Corinthians 9:1-27

Sermon

Fredrick R. Harm

A friend tells of his son who asked for a globe of the world as one of his Christmas gifts last year. Of course his parents were pleased to purchase something so useful for their child. So many Christmas lists leave much to be desired! The boy thoroughly enjoyed his gift and kept it on a small table in his bedroom. One evening his parents were discussing the fact that so many of our clothing items are imported from foreign countries. The wife recalled that a recently purchased scarf had come from Sri Lanka ...

2518. And God Breathed Into Man

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Forty years ago, in 1948, two of our nation's outstanding educators entered into a debate which was printed. These outstanding educators were Robert Hutchins, then Chancellor of the University of Chicago, and James B. Connant, then President of Harvard. The discussion dealt with the structure of a university curriculum. The basis for the debate was the recognition that persons in leadership must determine what ideals they would like for their country to adhere to. Human values must be ordered so that some ...

2519. Christmas Is On Top Of A Steep Hill

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Now will you hear the scripture lesson of the morning, from the 2nd chapter of Luke’s gospel, beginning with the 22nd verse and reading through the 35th verses? “And when the time came for their purification, according to the Law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that opens the womb shall be called Holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord. A pair of turtle doves, or ...

2520. Such A Babe In Such A Place

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Have you ever noticed, have you ever really contemplated our infinite capacity to complicate things? It’s like we have a built-in aversion to the simple. We take the simplest situation and we make it a complicated affair. We build molehills into mountains. Before we examine a question, we wrap it in confusion. Really though, when you get the heart of it, the great experiences of life, even the great insights, have a way of turning out to be very simple. At the heart of it, Christmas is a very simple thing ...

2521. Proclaiming The Gospel

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

Many of you know that last month I had the privilege of participating in the World Congress on Evangelization in Manila at the Philippine International Convention Center. Nearly 4,600 persons attended from 191 countries -- more than are represented in the United Nations. Never before in human history have so many gathered from so many nations of the world to pray, share, witness, to consider strategy and resources, and seek God's will for completing the task of world evangelization. By far, for me the most ...

2522. And God Breathed Into Man

Genesis 2:4-25

Sermon

Maxie Dunnam

2523. When the Doctors Can't Help You

Mark 5:21-43

Sermon

King Duncan

A father was talking with his rather rebellious son one day and said, "Every person who lives in the United States is a privileged person." The boy answered, "I disagree." And the father replied, "That’s the privilege." Tuesday we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is a day we celebrate our freedom. But there is a different kind of freedom that we need to talk about today. Freedom that only Christ can bring. Jesus had attained celebrity status. People were coming from all around ...

2524. Pass the Pigweed

Exodus 17:1-7

Sermon

Bill Mosley

They tell a story about a hurricane blowing through Galveston, LaMarque, and Texas City heading straight toward Houston. A man's farm, his home and all he'd worked for, all he'd ever owned was directly in the storm's path. He didn't want to leave, and he believed the Lord would take care of him. A bus came by and a Red Cross volunteer told the man they were evacuating everyone in the path of the hurricane. The man sat tight on his front porch and said, "The Lord will provide." The water came up and the man ...

2525. Blinders

Acts 17:22-31

Sermon

Bill Mosley

Loggerhead turtles lay eggs among the sand dunes on beaches. The little turtles dig their way up through the sand and struggle along the beach seeking the ocean waters that wash upon the sand wave after wave. It's a hunger that is born deep within them to seek this sea water, for it is life -- even living water. If they don't find it, they die. But if they find the water, they can live over 100 years and weigh over 600 pounds! If a little turtle gets sidetracked, say it falls into a moat around a sand ...

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