Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2576 to 2600 of 4957 results

2576. Don't Try So Hard!

Mark 8:31--9:1

Sermon

... anymore! II. As Christians we need to broaden this general thought concerning our salvation and also say, "Don't try so hard to establish the truths of the faith." In the past we Christians have had a way of overpowering people about our faith with proofs and claims. We've been so eager to sell someone on the Christian faith that we've oversold them. Countless times young people have told me that they no longer go to church because that's all they were made to do as children. Some preachers have come off ...

2577. How Was Jesus' Death Different?

John 19:28-37, John 19:17-27

Sermon

... Bonhoeffer, a martyr of the Nazis. You might even add to the list Martin Luther King, Jr., a martyr to brotherhood. Jesus was not the only martyr in the history of the world. That cannot be the reason that Jesus' death was different. Still, we claim that Jesus' death was different. For almost two thousand years now we have been observing Good Friday as the anniversary of his death. We make more of his death than that of any person who ever lived. Why so? Different Because Planned One reason for Jesus ...

2578. Fixing The Fox!

Luke 13:31-35

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... our day, a nicer word for "compromise" is "detente." Some, like Nobel-prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, warn America against making detente with Communist Russia. He addressed the nation in 1975, warning that we were making a mistake by going easy with Russia because he claimed we are making a deal with murderers who deny their people basic human rights. He asks how we can compromise with an enemy that a short time ago was guilty of shooting 40,000 innocent people per month. If we do not compromise with ...

2579. Cross Purposes

1 Corinthians 1:18--2:5

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... of righteousness given by Jesus. Now, by the cross man is reunited and reconciled to God. Here is a demonstration of the power of the cross to cleanse. Power to Change The cross has also the power to change. Here again, man probably is not impressed by this claim of the cross's power. We see changes all the time. Churches often find themselves the victim of changing neighborhoods. Leave town for a year and when you come back, you are so impressed with the changes that you say it is not the same place. Man's ...

2580. Born Naked With A Cross

Sermon

... God, and he takes our petitions to the Father who answers them for Jesus' sake. Also, Jesus is the key to our being accepted by God. Jesus is the mediator between God and man. God will forgive you and me because of what Christ has done for us. Our only claim to getting into heaven is knowing Jesus who died for us in love. There is no other name by which a person may be saved, preached the Apostles. One religion is not as good as another. It is not a case of one God over another. The fact is there ...

2581. The Day of Pentecost

Isaiah 44:1-5

Sermon

... desert that is transformed is Israel itself. This will happen because the spirit and the blessings of God will be poured out on all the people of Israel. According to the Anchor Bible (Vol. 20, p. 64), this is a novel concept. The normal traditions of Israel claimed the Spirit of God was given only to the leaders and not to the whole people. The thirsty soil, the dry ground, speak dramatically of the lack of life and the chaos among the people; all of that was working against the fulfilling of God's will ...

2582. Proper 7

Genesis 28:10-22

Sermon

... it with oil, and called it "Bethel," which meant literally, "The house of El" or "The house of God." He also made a bargain with God that, if God would give him what he needed and keep him safe until he returned to his father's house, he would claim Yahweh as his God. It was an awkward way to try to relate to God, but Jacob was basically an earthy "man of the world" so he tried to strike a bargain. All of this probably showed how frightened Jacob was, as well as how stunted his spiritual development ...

2583. Proper 9

Exodus 1:1-22

Sermon

... the idea of destroying the Hebrews. At first, he didn't want to do it openly. Therefore, he suggested to the Hebrew midwives that they proceed to kill all the Hebrew males at birth, letting only the daughters live. One assumes, it could be claimed the children were all stillborn. It's not at all clear why the Pharaoh thought the midwives would go along with his heinous plan. Pleading extenuating circumstances, they didn't, and the Hebrew male children lived, and the population of the foreigners continued to ...

2584. Estranged Hands

Psalm 143:1-12

Sermon

... of us, that God, seeing us burdened by our sin, would wipe away the guilt that is ours and restore us once again into that relationship with him. Jesus Christ came to do that. He made it effective in each of us as he has called us by name and claimed us as his own. The message of the Cross is that our guilt is resolved in Jesus Christ. In his hands are our freedom, forgiveness and salvation. May we hear the invitation of our Savior, even as the hymnist wrote: "Come, O sinners, one and all, come accept his ...

2585. Serving Hands

Psalm 92:1-15

Sermon

... commune with one another as we are bound as brothers and sisters through our participation in this one body and blood. Apart from faith, we deny the value of this meal for ourselves. It is in faith, the faith that the Spirit works in you and me, that we lay claim to the meal and the worth of that meal that the Lord puts before us. A host invites his guest to the table in order that he or she can eat, be filled, and depart satisified, sustained to continue their living. God as our host is no different. He ...

2586. Hunger, Health, and Happiness

Luke 14:1-14

Sermon

... His leaving seemed inevitable. Then it happened. She went out one day to visit her sister, and when she returned her husband was gone. There was a note in which he put in writing what he had often told her. He could not stand by and watch creeping death claim his family. Yola did everything she could do to feed her children. Her brother was a servant in the home of one of the government officials, and he would help her find some bits and pieces of food in the trash cans, but this was not enough. She begged ...

2587. The Confessions of a Younger Brother

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

... them. I’ve grown tired of the weekly, routine television shows. Why shouldn’t I scan my religious world and look for the extravaganza, the special revelation from God? It’s the same principle. Oh, by the way, I confess that every once in a while the people who claim that the world is coming to an end get my attention. Recently, I read that a whole group of them had sold all their belongings, given their money away, and gone up on a mountain to wait for the world to come to an end. I didn’t tell ...

2588. Slavery and Freedom

John 8:31-41

Sermon

... could change that. A father could not unmake a son. Once a son, always a son, but a slave could be told to leave at any time. Herein lay the secret of their freedom. They could be enslaved by sin, but the son of God had come to claim them as the sons and daughters of God, and as sons and daughters they belonged to God from everlasting to everlasting. Their relationship was permanent, and they could not be "kicked out." Of course, they could be involved in acts that enslaved them and cut them off from ...

2589. Seek Good, Not Evil (That You May Live)

Amos 5:1-17

Sermon

... magazine. It then proceeded to detail its answer, young men and women bent on making fortunes and spending fortunes in the most profligate way. The righteous are afflicted, not the wrongdoer. There is a readiness to take bribes. The poor man’s claims, if he dare make them public, are ignored because he is powerless to press for justice. The language is fierce, scathing. But no matter. What should provoke denial and retaliation merits only indifference, not unlike indifference in the West. How many times ...

2590. Being Wealthy, Religious and Powerful

Micah 2:1-5

Sermon

... rich defines most of us. That’s correct. After we’ve recovered from the first blast of fury, we realize that it is not pagan people whom God has addressed. He does so on other occasions. Here he is addressing his own people. His people who claimed the temple of Solomon as their place of worship and continued to worship and think of themselves as the people of God but had become specialists in anti-God activity of every sort. That activity included devising wickedness; brewing up new ways to do evil even ...

2591. Whoever Would Be King

2 Samuel 5:1-5

Sermon

... some doing. In the midst of all this, why bother with Christ’s kingship? He seems to be weakness incorporated. How we despise weakness! He hardly seems the fulfillment of "that day," repeatedly prophesied as a threat or encouragement throughout Hebrew history. But Christ claimed that day, "I have come to announce the acceptable year of the Lord." And when he sat down, he said, "This day this saying has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4) What was that day in all of its fullness? Contrast David and ...

2592. The Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:1-16

Sermon

Kendall K. McCabe

... the story of the temptation, we emphasized that that event meant Jesus could understand the weakness of each man and woman. Now we learn Jesus knows our grief and suffers the pain of loss as we do. These words assure us that the Jesus who makes those magnificent claims about himself throughout John's Gospel is not simply some divine being set apart from us, but he is one of us. God is a human being! Or, as John puts it at the beginning of his Gospel, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us." The Gospels ...

2593. The Sunday of the Passion

Matthew 26:14--27:66

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

... the God who will never let us go. That is why some of us will make vows of commitment for the first time at the end of this week and the rest of us will renew those vows we made long ago, bringing them up to date and letting God claim us afresh as a peculiar people. We tell the story all over again this week to remind ourselves that our religion has to do with the human issues of life and death. We do not merely follow the precepts of a great teacher, the vision of an ethical idealist. We ...

2594. Good Friday

John 18:1-19:42

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

... overcame on that fateful Friday long ago, and our lives will bear fruit in the desert, for he has proven himself to be the Lord of desperate moments. There are people in this congregation who have been confronted by darkness, plain people who make no boastful claims about their spirituality, and they are given light day by day because that is the nature of the Christ who conquers from a cross. The life of Christ is, then, a constant source of recovery and restoration. He makes a life controlled by love not ...

2595. The Third Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13-35

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

... Maryland. The church's story and the bread broken for the world's hungry, whether in body or spirit, the story and bread together, will warm hearts and open eyes to the fact that, by God's grace, we practice what we preach. Victim Divine, thy grace we claim While thus thy precious death we show: Once offered up, a spotless Lamb, In thy great temple here below, Thou didst for all the world atone, And standest now before the throne. We need not now go up to heaven, To bring the long-sought Savior down; Thou ...

2596. Ascension Day

Luke 24:36-49

Sermon

Kendall McCabe

... Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is present here and now to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of those to whom we witness. That is why we sing: Christ is alive! No longer bound To distant years in Palestine, He comes to claim the here and now And conquer every place and time. (No. 870, Supplement to the Book of Hymns: United Methodist Publishing House) And that is the reason we will not only listen to the Scriptures each week in order to remember where we come from, it is also why ...

2597. When God Says "Go"

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Sermon

... , not overly bright, cantankerous, humble (and have good reason to be humble.) Usually, he chooses people just like us. That's the secret of the success of our religion. Little people, common people, witnessing to a most uncommon faith, intriguing all who listen, by claiming that a man executed as a criminal makes all the difference in their lives. It's not the charm of the messenger which makes our faith attractive - it's the beauty of the message. David, Peter, Isaiah, Abraham - they were no supermen. And ...

2598. A Daffy, Magnificent Hope

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Sermon

... of God who hoped for the most were rewarded the most. Abraham set off across the desert for a Promised Land, sustained only by the wild promise from God that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Today one and one-half billion people claim him as their father in faith. Ezekiel asserted that Israel could rise from its living grave as captives and return to its own land. Within a generation it was done and Judiasm was born. In the Gospels, countless blind, diseased, lame, and grieving people came ...

2599. Christ's Passion Portraits

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Paul Hegele

... , Jesus "was a stormy personage with a mighty vein of granite in His character." (Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, p. 76) If we want a picture of Jesus we can emulate, let it be set here in the temple with our Lord consumed by zeal. Paul claimed Christ came to our world "to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds." (Titus 2:14) Our world desperately needs such zeal. We, too readily, wink at corruption and yawn at the arms race and glance away from the gaunt faces of ...

2600. "If Only. . ."

Exodus 12:1-30

Sermon

... 's sundown, he's dead, executed as a traitor. If he really was faithful to his religion and innocent of crime, as even Pilate admitted, how could he be tried and found guilty? And if he really was God's Son, the Messiah, as his disciples claimed, how could he die, as a criminal? It's no wonder the gawkers who stand at the cross beat their breasts. Confusion reigned! The world turned upside down! On this Passover evening before his death, life seemed so rational and so reassuring. God was on their side ...

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