Sermon and Worship Resources

Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on

Showing 251 to 275 of 4958 results

251. Philippians 3:4b-14

Philippians 3:1-11

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... loss.” He now sees them to be “skybala” — more delicately translated as “rubbish” or “excrement.” In the first century idiom, however, it meant exactly what you are thinking it meant. This dung-heap of his old life most notably includes Paul’s precious claim to “righteousness” under the law. Knowing Christ has enabled Paul to see he has no righteousness of his own. Knowing Christ has opened Paul’s eyes to see that it is only by being gifted with faith in Christ that he can experience ...

252. The Time Is Right

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

J. Howard Olds

... minute, I know who you are. You are a child of God. You are the Lord's boy. You have a great inheritance. Go out and claim your identity and live into it." That day Ben discovered he was somebody in the sight of God. I need to say to someone here ... to his stubborn son, “All that I have is yours." All we have needed God's hand has provided. Blessings are ours, with 10,000 besides. Claim your inheritance. It’s yours, God wants you to have it. When our son Brad was little he liked to play at the church. It ...

253. Mary, Martha, and the Martha Stewart Church

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... a great uncle of Jesus is buried in Glastonbury, England. Then finally, to cap it all off, the British author went on to claim that he himself was a member of Jesus’ family. When Pedro Arrupe got this far into the story, he stopped, smiled and ... :21: “that they all may be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us.” The claim to be a member of the Jesus family is one Jesus wants us all to make. Over twenty years after Pedro Arrupe died there was an “uproar” in ...

254. 1 Corinthians 1:10-18

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... hardly any baptisms while he was in Corinth. If some Corinthian Christians are mistakenly identifying with the name of the one who baptized them instead of the one in whose name they were baptized, Paul proves their silliness by the pitiful number who could claim him as their baptizer. He baptized only a handful of people: there is Crispus, a Jewish synagogue leader (see Acts 18:8); there is Gaius, most likely a wealthy Roman (see Romans 16:23); and then later he remembers “the household of Stephanas ...

255. Tough Talk for Tentative Disciples

John 6:56-69

Sermon

Robert Leslie Holmes

... can accept it?" (v. 60). Jesus knows that many people in the crowd are there for what he can give them. He makes claims for himself that will force them to decide whom they will follow. Would it be the teachings and traditions of their old ... two great possessions that I offer to you today, in Christ's name. They are faith — the inward conviction that Jesus Christ is who he claims to be and will do everything he promises to do. The faith I offer you is not mere emotion. It is, rather, action. I invite ...

256. Running the Race

Philippians 3:4-11, 2 Timothy 4:7

Sermon

Steven E. Albertin

... In any other kind of race, it is our performance that really matters and counts for everything. How fast we run, how much money we put in the bank, how much power we command, how many gold medals we have in the closet are what really matter. We can't claim victory on the basis of some one else's performance. Even God won't let us get away with that one. As we are often reminded, it is the Ten Commandments not the ten suggestions. God is holding us accountable for our performance. We are judged on the basis ...

257. The Word Alone

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Sermon

Scott Suskovic

... that everyone has been gifted by God with different talents, and God calls each as individuals to identify those gifts, develop those gifts, and use those gifts in the body of Christ as a part of the priesthood of all believers. It claims that that Word of God became flesh in Jesus and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. Following his interrogation at Worms, Luther translated the Bible into German and put it into the hands of all the German peasants. He did this under penalty of death because he was ...

258. Everyone Is Invited

Romans 1:1-17

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... other people provides an opportunity to share her faith, she explained, “I enjoy the warm feeling I get when I know I have impacted an individual by dribbling the slightest bit of faith into their heart.”[1] In a world with confused and competing loyalties Paul boldly claimed, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Paul was writing to the church of Rome, to people he had never met, to people who might have been unsure of their faith. It was dangerous to be a follower of Jesus Christ in a culture that ...

259. Credible Witnesses

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Timothy J. Smith

... faith came alive, when we met Jesus through the love of a Sunday school teacher, a friend, or a pastor. Those are the experiences we carry with us. Carl has experienced the transforming power of God at work in his life. “From a young teenager,” Carl claims, “I have seen and felt God in and through Jesus Christ mold and direct my life.” Looking back over his sixty years Carl says that “God has truly been my strength in stressful and difficult times.” His faith is more than just a Sunday habit, he ...

260. Really!

Luke 20:27-40

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... ,” in all its diverse forms, was soundly denounced as a heresy by the First Council of Nicea (525 CE). The Docetic heresy asserted that Jesus only seemed to be human, that he only seemed to be walking around in human form. The Docetist claim was that Jesus was actually and always the being of God. As a wholly divine being then Jesus was neither ever truly “born,” nor ever truly “died,” and so was never truly “resurrected.” Resurrection was unnecessary, for the wholly divine Jesus never truly ...

261. Christians and Grits

Acts 4:32-37

Sermon

King Duncan

... us be more like that early church. There is great power in unity of purpose. Even more importantly, when we are united, we are conscious of one another’s needs. It troubles me when I see people in the world who are more caring about others than we are who claim to follow Jesus. There was story a short time back that made sports pages all over the world. It was about a 17-year-old long-distance runner named Meghan Vogel. Meghan had just run the race of her life. She had won the 1,600-meter race to become ...

262. Body

2 Corinthians 5:1-10

Understanding Series

James M. Scott

... ; Rom. 8:34), God and Christ share the same throne-chariot (merkabah); hence they carry out activities either together or interchangeably (cf. 2 Cor. 5:19), including the eschatological judgment (cf. Rom. 2:6, 16; 14:10; 1 Cor. 3:13–15; 4:4–5). We must remember that Paul claims to have seen the divine throne-chariot (cf. 2:14, 17; 4:6; 12:2–4), and that fact is very much at issue in the present section of his defense. He is open to the charge of being a fraud, since there are no visible signs of his ...

263. Opposition to the Rebuilding

Ezra 4:1-5

Understanding Series

Leslie C. Allen

... in verse 2. Yet the response contains a deeper meaning; behind the command of Cyrus lay the prompting of God (1:1), and these very heads of the families were back in Judah to rebuild the temple by divine behest (1:5). The result was intimidation and, claims the narrator, the bribing of Persian officials to obstruct the work over a long period of time—for the rest of the reign of Cyrus onward. Verse 5b, resumed with a little extra detail in verse 24, looks forward hopefully and wistfully to chapters 5–6 ...

264. A Time for Everything

Ecclesiastes 3:1-22

Understanding Series

Elizabeth Huwiler

... exclamation of 1:13, “What a heavy burden God has laid on men!” The next verses (3:16–17) introduce the issue of injustice, here in the context of “a time for everything.” The chapter closes with an interlude (3:18–22) in which Qohelet claims that humans are like beasts, or even that they are in fact beasts. The preceding segment on injustice may allow the reader to infer that this conclusion is based on the way people treat one another, but Qohelet does not make this connection explicit. Rather ...

265. How Beautiful You Are

Song of Songs 4:1-16

Understanding Series

Elizabeth Huwiler

... 4:11, where he located them under her tongue. The difference in perspective between the woman’s invitation and the man’s claim need notbe resolved. As at many other points in the Song, the text points toward both anticipation and fulfillment. According to most ... ) 4:12 A garden locked up: The man perceives the woman as unavailable, as in 2:14. (This seems to reverse the woman’s claim in 1:6 that she did not keep her own vineyard.) The verse intimates wasted potential and may be something of a taunt. One ...

266. The Shepherd and His Flock

John 10:1-21

Understanding Series

J. Ramsey Michaels

... the Father and between himself and the disciples (v. 15), his words recall his self-revelation in Matthew 11:27: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” When he claims to lay down his life for his sheep (v. 15), it is clear that he is no longer speaking of fighting physically against wolves, but of dying on the cross to redeem those who believe in him. And when he promises to bring other sheep that are not of ...

267. Driving Out the Nations

Deuteronomy 7:1-26

Understanding Series

Christopher J. H. Wright

... do (vv. 1–5), to the basis of those instructions, i.e., Israel’s identity as the holy, chosen, and treasured people of Yahweh (v. 6). Israel’s status is grounded in the action of God in such a way as to remove any possible claims on Israel’s part that their chosen status reflected their own superiority. Three times, in fact, Moses sets out to prick any self-inflated bubbles of Israelite pride. Numerical superiority is rejected as even a remotely possible reason why God should have loved them; they ...

268. Not Because of Israel's Righteousness

Deuteronomy 9:1-6

Understanding Series

Christopher J. H. Wright

... . At a primary theological level, these verses reinforce the point made already in many ways that Israel owed all they were and all they possessed to the grace and gift of God, and not in any way to their own merit. They could stake no claim on divine favors in advance, nor could they retrospectively explain any success and prosperity that came their way as the due reward for their righteousness. It is probably right to take the whole of verse 4 as what the people would say to themselves (see additional ...

269. The Only Place of Worship

Deuteronomy 12:1-32

Understanding Series

Christopher J. H. Wright

... life was intended to imitate and mirror what Yahweh was like and had done. For did not Yahweh himself defend the cause of the widow and orphan? Did not Yahweh also love the aliens, feeding and clothing them (Deut. 10:18)? No worship, then, that claims to love God but excludes those whom God loves can be acceptable to God—a point that the prophets expressed negatively with such damning ferocity and that the early church expressed positively in the social care associated with their worship (Acts 2:44–46 ...

270. Micaiah Prophesies Against Ahab

1 Kings 22:1-28

Understanding Series

Iain W. Provan

... other prophet of the LORD here [whom we may consult]?” (cf. RSV) or “Does no prophet of the LORD remain here [whom we may consult]?” (NIV). The ambiguity is consonant with the atmosphere of the whole narrative. Are the other prophets truly “of the LORD” (as they claim, vv. 6, 11–12, 24) or are they not (as the links between 1 Kgs. 18 and 22 imply)? Is Micaiah a prophet of the LORD, even though he has apparently lied in v. 14 and uttered a false “prophecy” in v. 15 (cf. 13:18)? The ambiguity ...

271. The Year of the Lord’s Favor

Isaiah 61:1-11

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... the prophet takes up forms of speech as well as actual words from chapters 40–55. The first-person testimony corresponds to 48:16, 49:1–6, and 50:4–9, where it is also “the Lord Yahweh” who speaks (48:16; 50:4, 5, 7, 9). The claim that “the Lord Yahweh’s spirit is on me” recalls the earlier servant passage 42:1 (and as there, capitalizing “Spirit” risks giving a misleading impression). Like the Poet in 49:1–6 and 50:4–9, this prophet reckons to be the very embodiment of that servant ...

272. Praise and Prayer

Isaiah 63:7--64:12

Understanding Series

John Goldingay

... :19 and implicitly asks Yahweh to behave in the same way again. The act of remembering continues to be an important concept here. It continues in the appeal to Yahweh’s zeal, challenging Yahweh to do what 9:7 and 37:32 promised and what 42:13 and 59:17 claimed—to be the mighty warrior that Yahweh is supposed to be (9:6; 10:21; 42:13). The parallelism of the lines at the end of verse 15 tells us that fierce warlikeness and tenderness and compassion belong together, as two sides of a coin. Both the latter ...

273. The Revolutionary Values of the Kingdom of God

Luke 18:31-34, Luke 18:18-30, Luke 18:15-17

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... It might be good to define or have a group discuss the meaning of “rich,” first in terms of your audience’s own social context, and then in terms of living standards in the world as a whole.) How does observation of modern church life relate to Jesus’s claim that you cannot be a slave of both God and mammon? Why was it so difficult for the disciples to grasp the nature of Jesus’s own mission (18:34; cf. 9:45)? Should “what is written by the prophets about the Son of Man” not have been obvious ...

274. The Coming of the King

Luke 19:45-48, Luke 19:28-44

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... the temple’s intended role as a religious focus for all nations (an especially appropriate allusion in the court of the Gentiles), the second (Jer. 7:11) drawn from Jeremiah’s great temple sermon, which had similarly denounced the people’s sinful behavior while still claiming God’s presence among them (Jer. 7:1–15). Other texts, not cited, that would come to mind for those well versed in Old Testament prophecy would be Malachi 3:1–4 (the Lord coming to purify his temple) and Zechariah 14:21 (the ...

275. “When Will These Things Happen?”

Luke 21:5-38

Teach the Text

R.T. France

... . This makes perfect sense if, as I have argued, the discourse as a whole, including the coming of the Son of Man, relates to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. It is more difficult to explain for those who claim that 21:25–31 relates to the parousia. Some who hold this view claim that “this generation” refers back to 21:8–24, but not to the return of the Son of Man in 21:25–31. Others understand “this generation” to refer to the last generation before Christ returns, not to the disciples ...

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