Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 251 to 275 of 4999 results

Luke 16:1-15, Luke 16:16-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... in another of Jesus’ parables). So what does the manager do? Does he simply resign and accept whatever fate may befall him? Not a chance! Caring much about what will befall him, he tries to remedy what he has done. Granted, he doesn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart. But he does realize his error and try to correct it, because he DOES care what his Master thinks of him and about his own future or lack of it. He realizes that relationships will be much more important than money. So he acts wisely ...

252. Heart of a Pelican

Matthew 17:24-27, Exodus 30:11-16

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the relationships are in our lives. Sometimes it’s more important to take part in those relationships, to value our peers, to be kind to our friends, to support our children than it is to cash in our “ticket” of honor. In our scripture today, Jesus ... spirit –justified and made righteous. The money itself is a “memorial” to that salvific act. It is like the altar it supports, a kind of icon to God’s redemption. But literally, it’s not about the money. For Jesus, there is no reason for Peter to ...

253. House of Prayer

Matthew 6:5-15, Matthew 6:16-18

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... don’t like much the way Jesus wants us to live our lives. We don’t like much the mission statement Jesus gave us. And we kind of conveniently just read over some of that. We don’t exactly ignore it. But we don’t emphasize it either. Today, I want to ... the Holy Spirit among and within us that makes this disciples’ prayer unique, even as it challenges us in our humanness to be the kind of people God intends us to be, as Jesus teaches what the Kingdom may be like (both now and in the future in God’ ...

254. Unfettered Faith

Mark 1:35-39, Mark 1:40-45, Exodus 15:22-27

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... the form of guilt, shame, ostracizing, and embarrassment. In the scriptures, the sin of gossip or slander (or even what we call tattle tale-ing) is known as a sin of the tongue in the Jewish tradition (lashon hara). We can be “tongue tied” in a different kind of context! The tongue can cause us to sin when we harm someone with our words, which unlike the saying “words can never hurt me,” DO harm people, sometimes tremendously. We can in that way also be the cause of someone else’s fettering due to ...

255. Beautiful

John 20:10-18, Song of Songs 4:1-16

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... name, for an everlasting sign [that] shall not be cut off.” (Isaiah 55:13) God created you beautiful. God created you to bloom with kindness, to be myrtle-white pure of heart. God created you to love with the fragrance of patience and grace, to be hardy and loyal ... alongside people in our culture who believe in God, who have a faith, who long for meaning, and who have hearts that are kind. And yet, they were not brought up to read the scriptures or to follow Jesus. To these people Jesus sends us today. For ...

256. Dusted

Mark 6:7-13, Matthew 10:1-42, Luke 9:1-9, Luke 10:1-24

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , block-headed, stiff-necked people. If we refuse to hear and see the truth, we have sealed our own dusty fate, as the chaff resigned to blow away in the wind. From dust we came. To dust we return. We all return to dust. But we get to decide what kind of dust it is we end up. Sawdust or Stardust. If we stop, brush off the dust pile we’ve been hiding under, re-turn to God and repent of our willfulness and waywardness, Jesus will cleanse us, re-form us, re-clothe us in the robes of righteousness, and ...

257. The Neverending Feast

1 Kings 17:7-24

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... all “bread” is alike! You can eat the bread of idleness (Proverbs 31:27) or the bread of adversity (Isaiah 30:20). Or you can take within you the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:7-8 or Luke 11:3). Bread from God contains the kind of nutrients that creates in us a richness of character, a pureness of heart, and a saltiness of our spirit. The “bread from heaven” given to us by God is in a sense God’s relational presence, the blessings God bestows upon and within us, the righteous heart ...

258. Immersed

Matthew 3:13-17

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:7-18) We usually think of the mezuzah as a common and contemporary kind of Jewish iconography. In current day Judaism, the mezuzah is a ceramic, wooden, or leather rectangular box-like container into which a small rolled scroll is placed containing one or two verses from the Torah, typically the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 or Deuteronomy 11:13 ...

259. The Lighted Path

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... their clothes felt slimy and salty. The night felt tedious and hard and long. Yet they pushed on, certain that eventually, day would come and their job would be made easier with the light. This season of coronavirus has in a sense put everyone into a dark kind of wilderness place the like of which we haven’t experienced before in our lifetimes. We feel alone. We feel isolated. We feel sad. And we feel afraid. A few months ago, we felt that nothing would ever change, that life would go on “endlessly”in ...

260. Will the “Real” Jesus Please Stand Up

Mark 3:20-35

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... a sense of longing, of sadness, feelings of deficiency or inadequacy that somehow their life isn’t like those others they see. While social media sites can be a connective force, they can also remind us of what keeps us apart. But there’s a different kind of social media phenomenon breaking that pattern. And young people can’t get enough of it. The Tiktok phenomenon is changing social media in a way that is also changing people, and the way we look at and interact with others. Tiktok to some may seem ...

261. Never on Sunday

Mark 2:23-3:6

Sermon

Dean Feldmeyer

... that is biblical literalism. We must, if we are going to grow in our faith, stop worshiping the Bible, and start wrestling with it, struggling with it, contending with it, discussing it, and, at the very least, studying it. Just reading it and expecting it to work some kind of magic in our lives is not enough. It’s neither a talisman nor a grimoire.3 It carries with it no magical power or magical knowledge. It is, above all else, a story that needs to be studied, compared, and applied for it to have any ...

262. Hope Rises

Mark 9:30-37, 42

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... is describing the child as the greatest of his disciples, because his spirit behaves as the least. The child is not looking for power, or greatness, or status, or wealth. The child’s heart has a purity that has not yet learned to value any of these kinds of goals. This in Jesus mind is what it means to be a “great” disciple: loving, pure, authentic, honest, unfettered by desire, unspoiled by hate. To be a disciple of Jesus, we must re-learn, re-member how to think and feel like a child. Third, Jesus ...

263. Empowering the Powerless

Mark 10:2-16

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... relationship with each other, and who we are in relationship even with ourselves. The moment we begin to use them as weapons, that’s the moment we have entirely misunderstood the scriptures, and the One who wrote them. Jesus came to us declaring a new kind of covenant, and a new kind of community –one based in mutual love, care, respect, and peace. May we revel in the joy of the scriptures, and the Truths they reveal about us and about our lives. But even more so, may we revel in the joy of Jesus, our ...

264. For The Love of God Is Empowering

Matthew 22:36 -40 · John 4:1-32

Sermon

Billy D. Strayhorn

... for a drink of water. And then he began to tell her all about herself. Most people who knew her story treated her like dirt. They treated her like she had a scarlet "A" branded or tattooed on her forehead. But not this guy, not Jesus. He treated her with kindness and patience and love. He treated her like a real person and not like a loser. And that's what made all the difference in her life. That's all she needed, to know that she had value. To know that someone thought enough of her to actually love her ...

265. The Glow

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... an important phrase when it comes to happiness. True happiness emerges from the inside out. Hence, the glow! Perhaps that’s the kind of glow that surrounded Jesus at the moment of his baptism! When Jesus was being baptized, as he was praying, the ... God face to face? Look for that glow on the face of someone you meet. You can be sure that it comes from a very special kind of joy. You can have that glow too. For whenever one of us follows Jesus, dares the true path that Jesus wants us to take. Whenever ...

266. The Dare Prayer

Luke 11:1-13

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... , since he already knows why you’re secretly asking! Ask him what he means by neighbor, and you’ll get a lesson in the kind of active compassion you’re not enacting in your own life. Ask him if you should pay your taxes, and you’ll get an ... to pray in a way that is not most likely our first inclination. Let’s face it. When we pray, we often ask God to fulfill our wishes, kind of like God is a genie in a bottle, who can grant our every whim. Or we pray in earnest fully expecting God to give us the ...

267. Living the FIRE Life

John 17:1-11

Sermon

Lori Wagner

... in the here and now no matter our other circumstances. Eternal Life. That’s the promise Jesus makes to his disciples. But what exactly does that mean? Scholars tell us that the word “eternal life” here in the Greek is “zoe aionis.” The phrase suggests a kind of life that happens in the fullness of time. It refers not to a duration of life or a future destination in life but to a “quality of life” based in the “knowledge” (ginosko) of God (the Father/Son/Holy Spirit). As we said when we ...

268. Proper 17

Psalm 81:1-16, Hebrews 13:1-25, Jeremiah 2:1-3:5, Luke 14:1-14

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

... in the position of preaching to an empty space of several rows. It is often difficult to get people to move forward in a meeting even when asked. Yet it is easier to speak to them and to carry on discussion of issues when that is appropriate to the kind of meeting held. Is it thoughtlessness, false humility, or laziness that causes people to plunk themselves down at the beginning of a row of chairs or a pew? It makes later comers crawl over them to get to a seat. It also often leaves an empty space in the ...

269. An Unfamiliar Place For God

Jeremiah 29:1-23

Sermon

Thomas G. Rogers

... As their captors led them over a hill, the city dropped out of the prisoners' sight. The citizens of Jerusalem were then led to Babylon. They were led into exile. I suppose it is possible to say that once the exiles got to Babylon they experienced a kind of peace. Yes, technically the fighting was over. Still, it would be pretty hard to imagine that they had much of an inner peace or much peace of mind. Try to think how you would feel. Suddenly, you are in a totally new environment. Everything is unfamiliar ...

270. Let's Live

Isaiah 1:1-31

Sermon

Richard L. Sheffield

... 's way, or even Rotary's way. Isaiah described a world in which: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4). That's the kind of world, the kind of community, the kind of life, that we want for our young people; that we want for our kids; that we need for ourselves. We can only have it if we want it for everybody. Do we get it? Then let's get with it! Let's do it! Let's ...

271. Test Everything

1 Thessalonians 5:21

Children's Sermon

Wesley T. Runk

... . Well, today I am going to let you take part in a little test that is something like that one. I have here four different kinds of candy, but without the wrappers. I am going to ask for some volunteers to help me decide which is the best candy bar. When ... several different models to see which one felt the best to you. Today we will hear Paul telling us that we should do the same kind of testing with people who say that they have special gifts from God. Some of them might just be trying to fool us. Paul also ...

272. Sowers Of The Seed

Psalm 119:1-176, Romans 8:1-17, Genesis 25:19-34, Matthew 13:1-23

Sermon Aid

William E. Keeney

... it to mix the seed into the soil. In some instances two persons worked together, one scattering the seed and the other following with the plow. In this way the soil on which the seed might be lodged was somewhat haphazard and the seed might be cast on different kinds of soil. 5. "On the path." (v. 4) People and animals tend to follow well-worn tracks. They choose either the most direct or easy way to their goal. The earth then gets compacted as they traverse the same path. The seeds would lie on the top of ...

273. Seeing The Whole Person

John 4:1-26

Sermon

David Belgum

... See The Samaritan Woman? Jesus begins the conversation in a remarkably simple and straightforward manner. Nothing about "Please," "You can understand how thirsty I am since I've walked a long way," or "If it's not too much bother, I'd appreciate it if you'd be so kind as to give me a drink since I have neither cup nor bucket." No, it is not even a polite request, but just a bald-faced command: "Give me a drink." And, as was so like him, he almost immediately departs from the mundane topic to a spiritual one ...

274. Greed - Putting Things In Their Proper Perspective

Matthew 6:25-34

Sermon

R. Curtis Fussell

... have you ever heard of a club to stop your craving for money? No! Because there's not one. Instead, there's just the opposite kind of clubs, ones which help you gain more by buying in bulk, but none to overcome compulsive buying. There aren't even any books to ... the glove is limp and lifeless; it can't pick up anything. But slide your hand into it and it acquires the power to do all kinds of things. Money is like a glove which by itself is neither good nor bad, but put it into the hands of a person and it ...

275. How Unexpected Can Christmas Be?

Matthew 24:36-51

Sermon

William B. Kincaid, III

... , they too may respond. The good news is that we are sure God isn't going to give up on us. God does not forget or forsake. God comes to us. For some, God brings renewed promises that they are loved. From some, God requires evidence that kind of love is still real and alive in the world. For whatever our part will be, we are asked only to be ready. 1. Fred Craddock, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year A (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), p. 9. 2. Paul J. Achtemeier, General Editor ...

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