Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 251 to 275 of 832 results

Sermon

Alan Bacon Bond

... is not really accurate. The focus is really on God. Reliance on God, discipline by God, and giving to God. Shalom is, then, fulfillment in God. A woman who worshiped with us, for some months, in the knowledge of her approaching death, provided me with a copy of the composition which was found in St. Paul's Church in Baltimore in 1692. Its unknown author captures something of the essence of God's fulfilling Shalom. "Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence as far ...

252. Encounters With Christ III: Jesus and Nicodemus

John 3:1-21

Sermon

James W. Moore

... (2wo/mu/non/dii/ta Kurewa Abingdon 1995, 15-16) tells a wonderful story about a young woman who had heard people talking about an interesting new book that had just been published. Everybody raved about how great it was. She went to the bookstore, found a copy, bought it, took it home and tried to read it… but, somehow she just couldn’t get into it… She would read a little and then put the book aside. It did not capture her attention. A few months later, the young woman was traveling in a foreign ...

253. Making Money on God

Acts 19:25-26

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... who lived in Ephesus and was a silversmith. He was a great artist and a very rich one. He made statues of an idol goddess called Diana. There were large temples in Ephesus built for the worshipers of Diana. But people were urged to have many copies of the big statue in their homes and their places of work. People like Demetrius, who were silversmiths, made their living by making these expensive statues of Diana. There were not very many Christians in Ephesus, and there were a lot of people who followed the ...

254. Divine Liturgy, Divine Play, Divine Comedy

John 13:31-38

Sermon

Carl Jech

... joke that says "God created man in his image ... and man returned the compliment!") The great philosopher Plato, however, went to the opposite extreme of not valuing our human symbols and forms enough. He thought of everything in this world as nothing but a poor copy of the ideal thing (a chair, for example) in the mind of God. Since an actual chair is just a poor imitation of the "idea of chairness," it is not particularly valuable or important. For Plato, a painting of a chair was particularly useless and ...

255. Names, Not Numbers

Deuteronomy 26:1-15

Sermon

Carl Hoefler

... in a mall or at the supermarket, the cashiers do not ask us what our name is; they just mumble, "Let me see your driver's license, please." And the stinging insult, in most cases, is that the cashiers never even look at our pictures. They just automatically copy down the numbers from our driver's license and mark the check, "OK." A census taker went up to a house and knocked on the door. A mother came to the door. "How many children do you have?" the man asked the woman. "Well," she answered, "there is ...

256. Preaching Because We Have Something To Say

Sermon

James Angell

... becomes a letter from Christ "written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts." As a long-time admirer of the writer/dramatist Norman Corwin, I once in a moment of boldness mailed him a copy of a book I had written. He was then teaching, as a senior statesman of creative and script writing at the University of Southern California. In acknowledging what I had sent, he said the book had arrived on the day before one of his last classes of the ...

257. The Aim Of Preaching: To Bestow The Kiss Of Life

John 20:19-23

Sermon

James Angell

... show our kids some of the special sights there, including a by-night look at the big city from the top of the Empire State Building. There, at the top, I found a plaque on which these words by MacKinley Kantor had been inscribed - and which I copied down in the poor light: Whence rise you, Lights? From this tower built upon Manhattan's native rock. Its roots are deep below forgotten musket balls, the mouldered wooden shoe, the flint, the bone. What mark you, Lights? Our Nation's doorway. Who sleep or toil ...

258. Natural Or Supernatural?

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

Louis H. Valbracht

... is always a bit skeptical about any miracles that have not been preceded by human scientific research, technological development and, finally, automated production. I received a delightful little book from someone at Christmas. It's entitled Children's Letters to God, actual copies of communications with the Almighty that were written by seven or eight year old children. A couple of these are examples of this skeptical outlook. For instance, one little boy writes: "Dear God: Your book has a lot of zip in it ...

259. Why I Believe In The Resurrection

John 20:1-9

Sermon

Brett Blair

... sake, which I thought was the best of the year, but for the stories sake. That story told by JRR Tolkien is, next to the bible, one of the greatest stories ever told. Time has proven it so. Why? Is it timeless because it has sold over 50 million copies and everyone now knows the story? No. It is so timeless because it's the product of a truly top-shelf mind. Tolkien was a distinguished linguist and Oxford scholar. You see Tolkien was the real thing not some product of pop culture packaging a product for the ...

260. Joy Comes With The Morning

Psalm 30:1-12

Bulletin Aid

Robert G. McCreight

... . To follow you through any grief And trust your gracious hand. To you, the maker of us all, To you, the Risen Son, To you, the Spirit of new life, We lift our hearts in song. Amen. Bulletin Material (Notes, hymn texts, calls to worship, prayers, responses, etc.) may be copied for local church use by permission of CSS Publishing Co., Lima, Ohio.

261. People Get Ready!

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Brett Blair

... of his followers deserted him but many stuck around and today you know them as 7th Day Adventist. A Christian Church but founded on a very shaky beginning. Hal Lindsey, in his book “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which has sold over 30 million copies, predicted in his book that 40 years after the establishment of the country of Israel Jesus would return to earth and 7 years after that return the church would be raptured to heaven. The problem is this: Israel was established in 1948. Christ should have ...

262. On Staying Awake

Luke 12:35-48

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... ’s definition. Yet the interpersonal relationship is also the source of God’s gracing of our lives. It took me over twenty-five years to complete Martin Buber’s I and Thou. My son, filled with enthusiasm in his theological studies, gave me a second copy and I read what I ought to have read before. Buber is a profound answer to Sartre, and to us in our worst moments. "In the beginning," he writes, "is the relation." Real life - God - is at the intersection of meeting with others. A Christian might ...

263. Mission to Unbelievers

Luke 16:19-31

Sermon

Wallace H. Kirby

... if we tell the poor, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without making effort to feed and clothe the poor, then there is a death-quality about our belief. "So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." In my office I have a copy of the 1908 Discipline of The Methodist Episcopal Church. To me it is a very important edition of that document which we Methodists revise and publish every four years. In 1908 the General Conference of our church adopted a Social Creed to be companion to our other theological ...

264. Some Man

Luke 10:38-42

Sermon

... as well as a faithful member, but he never relinquished his relationship with God and his faith. Not long ago, one of the first books he published, Living the Good Life, was rediscovered and republished by a well-known firm; it has sold over two-hundred-thousand copies, but more than that, it is vindication of his convictions and that he had "chosen the good portion" - a relationship with God and not just a good way of life, and it wasn’t taken away from him. But the story of Mary and Martha is not ...

265. Advancers Over Decliners

Luke 19:11-27

Sermon

... a sign that he will see each morning as the first thing on the day’s agenda. "Good morning, Jesus! Thank you for loving me. What have you got going today? I want to be part of it." At a church that I attended recently, the pastor had prepared a copy of that sign for everyone at worship to take home. I put it on my mirror, too. But I confess that often with my mind preoccupied with daily business of my own, I failed to see the sign, or seeing it, I wished I hadn’t. Yet I believe that ...

266. God's Telegrams

1 Corinthians 15:3

Children's Sermon

Object: Idea of a messenger - some Western Union Telegrams, copy for each child. Today is the right kind of a day for you and me. There’s no question about it, this day was meant to be shared by us. I don’t think that it was an accident that you and I met together in church today. As a ...

267. Keep The Devil Out!

Luke 4:1-13

Sermon

... Bible as the true Word of God, then we need to know it frontwards and backwards. We ought to know it so well that we can quote it when necessary, just as Jesus did. The sad part about it, however, is that while we buy the Bible - ten million copies in 1975 - we do not know it. In a recent poll, fifty percent could not name the first four books of the New Testament. We do not know the difference between epistles and apostles. We think that Sodom and Gomorrah are husband and wife. Suppose you were asked to ...

268. A Crippling Spirit

Luke 13:10-17

Sermon

Brett Blair

I want to encourage you to do something. If you have never read Victor Hugo’s memorable novel the “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” pick up a copy and read it. Hugo uses an interesting literary technique in the story. The reader is allowed to see the basic decency and humanity of Quasimodo, the hunchback, while the crowd sees him only as a monstrous freak. The story, in its essence, is part tragedy, and part hope. Our text ...

269. Prayer

John 1:1-18

Bulletin Aid

God's Word And my words. God's Word creates Builds Saves. My words echo Copy Even destroy. I do a lot of talking, But I say very little! My life is filled with words Some good words Some bad words Many empty words! I use words to fill the empty spaces To cover the silences. I talk to others Even when I have nothing to ...

270. Christ's Passion Portraits

Isaiah 50:1-11

Sermon

Paul Hegele

... choose? Everyone had a favorite. The youth representative to the committee had torn from a catalog a picture of a laughing Jesus. "It's a fresh look," he said. "It makes Jesus the kind of person it would be fun to know." An elderly housewife held up a copy of Sallman's famous Head of Christ with its glowing, calm face and its placid eyes staring off into space. She would gladly donate this from her bedroom wall. The Sunday school teacher suggested a scene of Jesus kissing a child in his arms - she once had ...

271. Doing God's Work

John 2:1-11

Children's Sermon

Object: A drawing of Jesus without hands, feet, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. [Trace over a large copy and simply leave these parts off the drawing.] Good morning, artists! Every day is a beautiful day for an artist, isn't it? He can see all the beautiful colors in God's great plan and on God's good earth. This morning I am going to tell you a ...

272. There's Only One Right Way

Matthew 24:1-35

Children's Sermon

Object: A maze. Draw a maze with many false paths. The center should be marked GOD. If you wish you may make a copy with the correct path colored in and lettered THE CHRIST. Good morning, boys and girls. It is nice to be at the beginning of some things, don't you think? I like beginnings. I like to begin games and begin to eat and other things like that. But you know, ...

273. Prayer in a Pinch

Matthew 14:22-36

Sermon

... . Well, you might say, "Some of the jams we get into are avoidable." I grant that, and recognize that as important. The eighth grader who didn't study for a test and then depends on God to pull her through with an intense twenty-second plea bargaining as the test copies are handed out, has a lot to learn. But the prayer is not wrong! What may be needed are ears to hear God's answer, which may not be, "Here are your answers, Sweet Pea," but rather, "Next time, study! And I will be with you to show you that ...

274. Soap Opera Silence

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

... disturbed by the portrayal of this television "man of God." In some ways, of course, it was far better a portrayal than is offered by those television ads which suggest that clergypersons are good only for rolling their eyes toward heaven in gratitude for a new copy machine or an improved angel food recipe. But the portrayal of this priest still bothers me. It suggests that the clergy can share an effective word only when it is printed on the pages of a service book. It suggests that the clergy can share an ...

275. The Trifocal Festival

Matthew 5:1-12

Sermon

... s wife and companion. I miss the solicitousness, the thoughtfulness, the sensitivity and the care not to meddle. All of which is to say I miss precisely and irreplaceably her. By chance - or perhaps by providence (I can never tell them apart) - I picked up a copy of Henri Nouwen’s little book, A Letter of Consolation. It is a letter from son to father written six months after the death of the author’s mother. With poignance and simple eloquence Nouwen spoke the gospel to my need. At one point he writes ...

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