Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2751 to 2775 of 4957 results

2751. Suffering for Christ

Matthew 10:1-42

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

... for torture. Tell them to think it over and choose to their advantage." That night in the encampment, the forty Christian soldiers lifted their voices and sang Christian hymns and read from the Psalms. The next morning, when they refused to sacrifice to the gods, claiming Jesus Christ alone was their God, the Captain pronounced sentence. Their arms were to be bound, ropes to be placed over their necks, and they were to led to the shore of a nearby frozen lake. There, at sundown, they were to be stripped ...

2752. The Spirit - For Me Too?

Joel 2:28-32

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... the Spirit. Do you know if you have the Spirit? Are you dead certain about it? There are lots of Christians who have doubts whether they have the gift. Maybe this doubt is based on a misunderstanding of what it is to get and have the Spirit. Some Christians falsely claim that you do not have the Spirit until you are able to speak in unknown tongues. The Spirit may enable one to speak in a strange tongue, but it is no proof that one who cannot is not a Christian. I, for one, have never spoken in tongues, but ...

2753. What’s God Going to Do With You?

Hosea 5:1-15, Hosea 6:1--7:16

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... , "The only trouble with my life is that it is so daily." When you get up in the morning, do you exclaim, "Oh God, not another day!" Many of us have become pessimistic and cynical about life and the world. We are disgusted with politicians. We claim it does not matter what party is elected, for the first thing politicians do is raise their salaries while cutting the budget in social services. The economy is in bad shape. Nuclear war seems to be inevitable. The man on the street frankly says, "I don ...

2754. We Are Driven!

Jeremiah 20:7-18

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... is not a blind or foolish faith in his protection. Some time ago, Amish residents in Michigan objected to a law requiring slow-moving vehicles like their horse-drawn carriages to display orange reflective triangles in the rear. They based their objection on the claim that to display the triangle would deny their faith in God’s protection. Indeed, God expects us to do our part in protecting ourselves from disaster. On the other hand, there are times when only God can protect us. When Napoleon with his army ...

2755. Does God Give A Damn?

Exodus 5:22--6:12

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... our problems? Maybe he is too busy running the universe to be concerned about the welfare of us microscopic bipeds! Are the Deists right by maintaining that after creating the world, God withdrew to his heaven and let the world run on its own steam? The Bible claims, as in our text, that God does care about us even to the point of delivering us from our woes: "I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched ...

2756. Looking For God?

Isaiah 55:1-13

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... the presence of God in society. One reason we do not hear of God is the fact that Hollywood writers of our movie scenarios and elite editors of our TV shows are not generally God-conscious. A Public Opinion poll indicates that forty-five percent claim they have no religion. Eight percent go to church to worship and eighty-six percent seldom if ever go. Accordingly, their attitude toward God and their moral positions are not godly. Fifty percent say that homosexuality is not wrong and fifty-one percent do ...

2757. Heart To Heart

Ezekiel 18:1-32

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... pendulum fixed because it no longer swung. The clock man said that he needed the whole clock in order to make the pendulum swing. But the customer explained, "There is nothing wrong with the clock; it is just the pendulum that won’t swing." It simply bears out Jesus’ claim that a person is what his/her heart is. If you and I are to change our lives from sin to holiness, it will depend upon a change of heart. This was the experience of King Saul. The prophet, Samuel, said to him, "Then the spirit of the ...

2758. Two Bodies for Two Worlds

Isaiah 26:1-21

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... the terrible beating professional boxers give each other resulting sometimes in fatal injuries? It is a sin to distort and damage the body by drugs and excessive alcoholic intake. Cigarette smoking does great harm to the body in encouraging and causing lung cancer. Doctors claim that non-smoking will add ten years to a lifespan. And who dares to destroy what God has so wonderfully made? In 1981, 28,100 Americans committed suicide, and for every suicide 50 to 100 tried but failed to do it. Suicide is growing ...

2759. Your Money and Your Life

Matthew 6:19-24

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

In his classic treatise on politics, The Republic, Plato observed that the greatest enemy of justice is the family. Yes, the family! I daresay his claim will strike you as being rather silly. After all, most everyone agrees the family is a good and necessary institution. Sociologists continue to say the family is the vital unit or cell of society. We are all disturbed by the disintegration of the family as the divorce rate climbs. Many ...

2760. A Book Which Reads Us

John 4:1-26

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... flocked to "E. T." and been moved by it. They are searching for a source of hope. They are looking for a model of themselves as people who are loved by a power which will not let them go even in their darkness. So much, then, for the claim that modernity has numbed the religious nerve! Much of what we see happening about us reflects a widespread failure to find an adequate model for living. This is true, for example, of our number one social problem, alcohol abuse. We are all troubled by the many teenagers ...

2761. Out of the Barnyard

John 11:38-44

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... if we will but look, we will see people in need of deeds which embody the Good News. We will see the unemployed, the poorly housed, the hungry, the sick, and the troubled. God expects us to serve these people. If we are a church which claims the apostolic faith, we will reach out to them in service. This was done with great effect, as David King relates, by the Oakland Beach Congregational Church in Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1972 Pastor Alfred Colby received a call from the nearby Institute of Mental Health ...

2762. The Grace of Disillusionment

Matthew 26:69-75

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... earth, Jesus of Nazareth was entitled to be disappointed and disillusioned by life. He provided his disciples with many examples of sacrificial service, but he found them arguing about their rank. Of all the people entitled to walk "away in anger," Jesus certainly possessed first claim. But instead, the Gospel says, out of his love for the world, he endured the agony of the cross. If anyone were ever to have been justified in declaring: "I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men" - it would have been ...

2763. Victim or Visionary

John 19:28-37

Sermon

Robert Bachelder

... in Latin America, and the time came, when, in order to compete, it had to make an illegal payment to an official of the Honduran government. It was something other companies were doing, but Eli Black was too sensitive to live with this procedure, and it claimed his life. With agonized conscience, he jumped to his death from the forty-fourth floor of the Pan Am building in Manhattan. Then, too, some of us have been participating recently in a series of workshops on family life. We have been learning about ...

2764. Jeopardy, by Jeremiah

Jeremiah 23:9-32

Sermon

Richard F. Bansemer

... "God will get them" for every wayward glance and thought. Still, many of us are content to ignore God’s anger, or at least to let it run its course. "Time" will deal with God’s impatience, and he will ultimately love again! However, not many of us openly claim this as our way of dealing with God’s anger, though it is probably most common among us. What can we do with an angry God? Another whole new way of dealing with this anger becomes apparent to one who can get beyond the emotion of anger to the ...

2765. Hiltgunt Margaret Zassenhaus

Deuteronomy 31:1-8

Sermon

Carroll Gunkel

... met me." So he turned his back and went ... (and) I wondered what he meant."3 If you and I are honest about our spiritual pilgrimages, we know what the Master of McCall’s poem meant. The Christian life is not the overly simplistic exercise some have claimed it to be; nor is it the dramatic adventure some have suggested it is. For most of us, our meetings with the Master are much like those of Hiltgunt Zassenhaus, ordinary people whom God chooses. As he uses us for his work, we lose ourselves in him and ...

2766. "Two Men in White Suits"

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon

Peter Rudowski

... could let it go, I forgot it, not out of some kind of false humility but because the need was met." It strikes me the people who can meet the needs of others take very seriously what happened at the baptismal font when God said, "I love you and I claim you for my very own." It strikes me that people who can put other people first take very seriously what happens when we take communion; they feel a belonging to God’s Kingdom and they don’t always have to justify their own place. It strikes me that those ...

2767. A Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Acts 9:1-19a

Sermon

George Bass

... ’t know who was speaking to him and asked, "Who are you, Lord?" Christ had an answer for him, "I am Jesus, and you are persecuting me ..." Indeed he was on a mission to Damascus as a religious terrorist; his job was to find and arrest any people who claimed to believe in Christ and take them back to Jerusalem for trial and, perhaps, execution. A few words changed all of that: "I am Jesus ... Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do." Then and there, when the Lord revealed ...

2768. Pardon for Sin

Romans 5:12-21

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

... I was born with it." Or how easy it is to blame some imbalance on the chemistry of our body, or to blame the whole world by saying, "Everybody is doing it." Some people actually go so far as to deny that wrong even exists. They claim that evil has no reality; it is just an illusion of people telling us certain things are wrong. But asks one police officer, "How would you classify robberies, beatings, concentration camps, and murder?" Some people try to neutralize their wrong doings. For every bad deed they ...

2769. No Condemnation!

Romans 8:1-17

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

The prophet Micah, who lived 700 years B.C., was surrounded by people who worshiped many false gods and idols. One scholar has established that the Greeks alone worshiped thirty thousand; and we know the Hindus claim thirty-three million gods. In Mesopotamia every household had its own god. Micah beheld the Canaanites who worshiped Baal and Astarte, the Moabites who worshiped Chemosh, the Philistines who worshiped Dagon, the Amorites who worshiped Moloch, the Nabateans who worshiped Dusares, and the ...

2770. Overcoming Self

Philippians 1:1-11

Sermon

Dennis Kastens

... attitude toward other people. He just can’t. He is in the same category. This is why Christ told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. While the Pharisee was thanking God that he was not a sinner, the tax collector acknowledged that he had no claim on God because he was. All he could plead for was mercy. Jesus said, "It was this poor sinner who went home justified." Maybe it’s time that you should place yourself in the position of the humble tax collector. Maybe it’s time to cry with Isaiah ...

2771. Faith A New Potential for Life

Romans 4:1-25

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... faith, small moral purity. When a person sees God clearly in Christ and makes his commitment unreservedly, then he sees clearly his moral impurities and deals with them by the grace of God. Faith is the vision of God’s will which claims my will and results in imputed righteousness and, progressively, actualized righteousness. H. G. Wells once called this Kingdom of God "the mightiest conception that ever entered the human mind." And Bishop Watkins concludes, "Yet this Kingdom was to be composed, not of ...

2772. Shepherding One Another in a Collapsing World

Romans 9:1-29

Sermon

Robert G. Tuttle

... of Paul’s loving concern for his people: "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren." Paul was willing to give up everything if it would lead the Jews to Christ. Peter reminds us (1 Peter 29 NEB) that we are, "A people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the triumphs of him who has called (us) out of darkness into his marvelous light." How do we fulfill this call? Remember, ever since Christ came, God has been building a team, generation by generation, to redeem the world. We ...

2773. The Impartiality of God

Acts 10:23b-48

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... most estranged and alienated from God, that he suddenly breaks into our lives in unanticipated ways, shaking them up and forcing us to come to terms once again with what it means to be in need of a Savior. It is his love relentlessly pursuing us and claiming us, his wayward children, as his very own. St. Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in you, O God." It is also true the other way around! God’s heart is restless until our heart rests in him. Such is the greatness ...

2774. Called to Be Saints

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... be called to be saints in such a special way? The Corinthians, I’m sure, could have said something of the same thing! Did it seem any less accidental that they were encountered by Paul with the gospel in Corinth around the year A.D. 51? How can one claim to have been "called from the womb," as the First Lesson puts it, for such a task and title as the "saints of God"? It takes faith to say that this is more than an accident, that there is an intentionality behind our calling. One could never identify how ...

2775. The Need for Transfiguration

2 Peter 1:12-21

Sermon

Hubert Beck

... of the Lord. Sharing it among ourselves is to be lifted out of who we are for just a bit in order to be the see-ers of the glory, to set our eyes again on the Christ, to have our lives transformed by the presence of Christ. He who claimed us in baptism and feeds us on his body and blood comes among us. Not from within us, but from among us the transfiguration arises! It is a revelation outside of us that changes us! For all that, is the simple ordinariness of this moment still confusing? Does it seem ...

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