Synonyms: Levi, disciple, evangelist, tax collector, the 12, the twelve, apostle, sermon on the mount, jewish audience, beatitudes, lord's prayer, great commission, parables, olivet discourse, mount of olives, olivet, synoptic
Showing 2701 to 2725 of 2815 results
2701. Deep Well
John 4:1-26
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... of Austin. Underwater caves and turns have made it difficult to get out or to find one’s way to the surface. Like the frontier of space above the earth, the world under the earth is equally as mysterious, and as fascinating to us. Jesus told a parable to His disciples in which he describes a valuable “pearl” hidden in a vast field. He points out that a merchant would buy the entire field just to search for that one small pearl hidden somewhere in the earth. And that, Jesus says, is what it’s ...
2702. Raison d’Etre
Matthew 5:13-16, Matthew 5:17-20
Sermon
Dean Feldmeyer
... people who call themselves Christians but they aren’t really Christians. When Stanley Kubrick suggested that it is up to us to “supply our own light” in a vast, dark universe, he came surprisingly close to what the gospel of Matthew suggests in the next little parable when Jesus tells his followers, “You are the light of the world.” Jesus layers in another metaphor. Like salt, a lamp has a function and a purpose. It is meant to illuminate. The lamp spoken of here is an oil lamp that works on the ...
2703. By Invitation Only
Luke 14:1-14, Luke 14:15-24, Proverbs 25:1-28
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... , and do not claim a place among his great men; it is better for him to say to you, “Come up here,” than for him to humiliate you before his nobles.” Drawing upon proverbs, Jesus turns this advice on hospitality into an entire set of parables, designed to address what it means to be a Jesus follower, or rather what kind of heart God appreciates and favors most. For Jesus, the advice to wait to be invited is not just practical wisdom about good “table manners,” but he sees this table phenomenon ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Can you think of a better description of the mass of people both then and today—“harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd?” What a parable of contemporary life! “Harassed and helpless—like sheep without a shepherd.” It is a marvelous metaphor—or more properly, a striking simile. Can you not see a flock of sheep milling around in a pen? Frightened and confused, they stumble blindly ...
Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.
Malcolm Muggeridge
2706. How Do We Forgive?
Matthew 18:21-35
Sermon
King Duncan
... do we let go of the pain, the resentment, the sense of betrayal? We let go, first of all, by recognizing that we ourselves have been forgiven. We have been forgiven, and thus we are able to forgive others. Jesus followed his answer to Simon Peter with an interesting parable of a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. One of his servants owed him ten thousand bags of gold. Since he was not able to repay the king, the king ordered that the man and his family and all that he had be sold to repay ...
2707. The Complex Human
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... our silence can either offend or lift up in a time of need. The human spirit is a complex entity. We try our best to make the best decisions and judgments we can, but only God knows, if our actions were truly the right ones to make. Jesus with his parable today seems to be telling us just to do our best, to try to discern God’s will for our lives, to seek God’s wisdom and guidance when we need to make a decision that concerns someone else, to live in relationship with Jesus, so that His Spirit can ...
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... upon others. You are asking God to impose upon you the just consequences for your thoughts and actions. If you don’t think that’s a tough vow and commitment, you haven’t paid enough attention to the prayer you’ve been praying! Jesus’ parable today about forgiving sins and debts is a powerful one. If we expect and yearn to be forgiven, we must first be willing to forgive. All of us love the idea of “fairness,” “justice,” “equality,” and “come uppance.” But think about it. We love ...
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... of our lives. As soon as something like that happens, out comes the yard stick, and we begin “counting our chocolate bars” trying to figure out how this possibly could be ok, how this ever could be “fair.” We’ve learned time and time again that Jesus’ parables have significant shock value. But the one today must have sent seismic shock waves down Jesus’ disciples’ spines the day he told this tale. And I suspect that if you think about it, it feels the same to you! How can it be fair that the ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... there is a time for action. And this brings us to our final principle for today: unresolved anger is a spiritual problem. Anger not only affects our health and our relationships with others, it is important in our relationship with God. Jesus told an amusing but profound parable about a man who owed his master the equivalent of 100 million dollars. His master forgave him his debt. But then this man turned right around and went to a man who owed him about two thousand dollars and had him thrown into jail for ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... Jesus. What did they hope to find? Jesus was not a philosopher. No one would compare him to Plato or Aristotle. We have nothing that he wrote, and not much of what he said. He did not employ complex sentences or high-sounding ideas. He spoke mostly in parables and used the language and the symbols of the common listener. So why is it then that, 2,000 years later, we still hang on to his every word? Why is it that hundreds of thousands of brilliant men and women have studied every syllable that was recorded ...
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... connection between Pre-Christian spirituality and folk art and Christian veneration of the Madonna and Son. But the idea of the “matryoshka” goes beyond art. The “matryoshka principle” can be used also to describe the ancient manner of writing parables and stories. This principle was also the key to ancient, effective oral storytelling.Social anthropologist Mary Douglas, whose research into human culture and symbolism has earned her renown and prestige, wrote in her book, Thinking in Circles, about ...
Sermon
Timothy W. Ayers
... John or the other nine wouldn’t you be surprised, possibly shocked, certainly dismayed, and definitely discouraged? They shouldn’t have been and neither should we because Jesus warned them and Mark recorded it in chapter 4 of his gospel. Jesus was teaching his disciples through parables, which are word pictures designed to teach a point. Mark wrote in 4:3-9: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell ...
Children's Sermon
Thomas A. Pilgrim
... . All of us love stories, don't we? Everybody loves a story. Young people and old people, little people and big people, all people love a good story. That is why we read books and watch television and go to movies. Jesus told a special kind of story called a "parable." This was a story with a special meaning about God and God's kingdom. I want you to listen closely to the scripture lesson today. There is a story in it Jesus told. The point of that story is that we must let the Good News we hear in the ...
2715. Homecoming
Mark 16:1-20
Sermon
Will Willimon
... home, the father recklessly gave him his entire fortune, and when the boy at last returned, the father recklessly threw a huge party, holding nothing back for himself. He loved his son extravagantly on his leaving, and he loved him prodigally upon his return. It's a parable of effusive, reckless, relentless, prodigal love. It's told by a Savior who, when the wine ran low at the wedding at Cana, made from water 150 gallons more wine. I'm a Methodist, but still, that seems like a lot of wine. When the bread ...
2716. Overwhelmed
Revelation 1:4b-8
Sermon
Will Willimon
... news must precede any discussion of bad news. Only after we have convinced that there is a possibility of good news, a possibility of the triumph of right, are we able to speak of what needs fixing. Franz Kafka wrote a short story, a kind of parable, really, called, ''The Old Page." It was alleged to be a report from a terribly besieged country about some unnamed group of barbarians who had overrun the country, a page from a report which was written sometime long ago, possibly in the middle ages. Everything ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... -writes-notes-100-students-heartbreaking-incident/story?id=39526410. 5. Sent by Mary Sutherland, http://monday-fodder.com. 6. HB Charles, Jr., https://www.preaching.com/sermons/how-god-says-i-love-you. 7. From Joseph Stowell in Moody, November, 1995, p.4, submitted by Jay Martin, Manistique, Michigan in Parables, etc.
Sermon
King Duncan
... alone could provide. When he looked at the people crowding around him, he viewed them as sheep without a shepherd. In John’s gospel Jesus proclaimed, “I am the good shepherd.” That might not make any sense to you unless you understood Jesus’ parables about sheep. Jesus told the story about a shepherd who was tending a large flock of sheep. If one sheep was missing, the shepherd would diligently search until it was found. Shepherds in Jesus’ day didn’t work in gated communities. They tended sheep ...
Sermon
Dean Feldmeyer
... , shaking his head, clearing his throat and scratching his arm in a flurry of confusion and frustration. There’s Bread, and then There’s Bread I sometimes think that the gospel’s author, who is also named John, selected a whole bunch of metaphors, symbols, parables, stories, quotations, that sort of thing, and dumped them all into a giant blender, turn it on “frappe” for a few seconds and then dumped them all out onto paper. That is, for me, a pretty good description of chapter six of the Gospel ...
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... these mistakes. When we do, we can make untrue or confusing interpretations that misinterpret Jesus and effect the ways we live our lives and the ways we encourage others to do so as well. Just as it is important to understand that Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors in order to illustrate for us spiritual truths, it’s important always for us when we read the scriptures, the language of our faith, to understand that most of it is written in spiritual metaphor in order to tell us important truths about ...
Sermon
Frank Ramirez
... child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me (9:36-37). What Jesus was doing was acting out a parable. Perhaps this child was part of the Simon and Andrew’s household. The text uses the Greek word agkale that refers to a bent arm. Jesus took the child in his arms and embraced him. This child might have been trying to behave and stay out of the way of ...
Sermon
Frank Ramirez
... possible. I must add that one of the story telling techniques of Jesus was exaggeration, or hyperbole. This is a funny comeback. The image of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle probably made the first listeners to this little one-line parable laugh, especially because it made the rich uncomfortable. The disciples got it — if this was true, who could be saved? And we already know the answer — on the basis of what we do — no one. No one — not without God’s love. Not without God’s ...
2723. For The Love of God Is Empowering
Matthew 22:36 -40 · John 4:1-32
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
... ME! in return." This is the Word of the Lord for this day. 1. From THE SOURCE OF JOY, a sermon by Rev. Eric Ritz, DYNAMIC PREACHING APRIL/MAY/JUNE 1992. 2. Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson, 11-27-90. 3. Charles Krieg, St. Joseph's Seminary, Princeton, NJ. Parables, Etc., March 1987.
Sermon
Billy D. Strayhorn
... by Bill Adler, (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1980) 2. "Garfield" by Jim Davis, 7-26-94 3. "Hagar The Horrible" by Chris Browne, 5-28-91 4. Based upon a true story that occurred in the village of a friend of Jay Herndon, Seminarian, Mill Valley, CA. Submitted to Parables, Etc. by Jay Herndon. 5. Thing Called love by John Hiatt, Vocals by Bonnie Raitt on her Nick of Time album by Capitol records.
2725. To Love
Mark 12:28-34
Sermon
Lori Wagner
... actions would set the foundation for all of Christianity. For Christians are to be lovers not judgers, people of mercy and forgiveness not bestowers of banishment and punishment, servants of all not wielders of power and judgments. Jesus’ entire ministry, his parables, his healings, his disputes, and his death would all demonstrate this precept: that love rules over everything. For in love he even gave his life for every person, both friend and enemy. This emphasis on our loving relationship with God, and ...
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