Sermon and Worship Resources

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Showing 2876 to 2900 of 4977 results

2876. Backsliding

John 6:60-71

Sermon

Brett Blair

... . It sounded too cannibalistic. You can then understand why in verse 66 of chapter 6 (please don’t read anything into that) we read that many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. Notice what is said, they turned back! They quit following. They became Temporary. I don’t think a single reason can be identified as to why so many stopped following, a combination of issues probably, as we have already noted: His teaching confused some. His images offended others. But primarily, I think it ...

2877. The Man Who Couldn't Hear

Mark 7:31-37

Sermon

Brett Blair

... around when he said: Speak Lord your servant listens, until it reads listen Lord your servant speaketh. There was a fifth grade teacher who decided that she would use this listening process with her children. Every morning for five minutes she required them to be totally quite. That’s hard for any of us to do, much less a fifth grader. She discovered that a great deal of good came from the experience of silence. After one of these quiet times she asked the students if they had heard anything. One boy said ...

2878. Advent 1: Won´t You Let Him Into Your Heart?

Luke 2:1-7

Sermon

James W. Moore

... in the main door of the Holiday Inn on this Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was a young man dressed in a Biblical costume. Actually it was an old tattered bathrobe. The young man was pulling a donkey. On the donkey was a young woman who looked to be quite expectant. As they approached the desk, the young man announced loudly for all to hear, "My name is Joseph... and this is Mary... and as you can see, she is about to have a baby. We need a room for the night." Now, before telling you the rest of ...

2879. God With A Human Face

John 1:1-18

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... began with God's giving to humans and their giving to Jesus as the Wise Men brought their gifts to the manger-child. Gifts express love. They are physical tokens of love. We say, "I love you," with a gift. Of course, there is a danger in this. It is quite possible that this principle can be prostituted so the meaning is distorted and nullified. We all know that gifts can be given out of a sense of duty and obligation. Though we may not want to give, we are ashamed not to have a gift for one whom we know ...

2880. Wrinkled Wrappings

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

John R. Brokhoff

... I was a youth, these words of Tennyson captured my imagination: Man am I grown, a man's work must I do, Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the king, Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the king -- Else, wherefore born? Granted, this is quite a contrast to what you find in some churches. The complaint is heard, "Nobody wants to do anything. People won't visit prospects. Vacancies are on the church school staff. The choir loft is half-full." This indicates that some church people have not yet seen ...

2881. How to Profit from Prophets

Luke 1:67-80

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... not so much as the people we are, but as the people we want to be. The visions we have, the ideals we embrace, and the goals for which we strive seem often to recede as we approach them, and the things we know we should have done seem never quite to be accomplished. Forgive us when we fall short, especially of the moral demands you place in our consciences. The world is very much with us in buying and selling, working hard to get ahead and even winning at the money game. Grant that the things we see and ...

2882. Why Prophets Get Under Our Skin

Luke 3:1-20

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... the prophets when they tell the I.R.S. not to extort through taxes. And possibly those cheering the loudest would be those multi-millionaires Forbes magazine calls "The New Refugees." In a recent article (Nov. 21, 1994, p. 131), Forbes says that quite a number of rich Americans are renouncing their U.S. citizenship to live in places like the Bahamas and Bermuda where they are not taxed to death. Francis Mirabello, a Philadelphia lawyer, spoke in Bermuda this fall at a conference regarding offshore money ...

2883. The Unexpected Universe

Matthew 11:1-19

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... the Baptist. Had you and I been living in those days we would have shared his expectations. John was not without hope. He was not a defeatist or pessimist. No dour cynicism and comfortable skepticism were to be found in this austere, self-denying, wilderness monk. Quite the contrary, he was full of hope. He expected something new. The Kingdom of God was coming. He wanted to speak to the masses, to warn them, to prepare them, to baptize them, to cleanse their souls for the coming kingdom. And talk to the ...

2884. The Star Thrower

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... be worshiped as gods. The Emperor of Japan until recent times was thought to be the representation of the Divine on earth. And in the West, as well as the East, the doctrine of the divine right of kings was well in place. In fact, it was quite well in place with Herod the Great. He had been made King of Judea in 40 B.C. by the Roman Senate. Shrewd, capable, sometimes even magnanimous, Herod was, nevertheless, cruel and ruthless. When he suspected treason on the part of his family members, he murdered his ...

2885. Two Blessings for an Unwed Mother

Luke 1:46-56, Luke 1:39-45

Sermon

William G. Carter

... , Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph. The relationship was not a simple engagement that could be made with a ring and a kiss; neither could it be easily broken. By all intents and purposes, Mary already “belonged” to Joseph, even if they weren’t quite married. If she told him she was pregnant, it would look like she was admitting to adultery. With an admission like that, he was legally entitled to walk away from her. From her own lips, she was a “handmaid,” a term signifying a peasant of the ...

2886. Home for the Holidays

Luke 2:41-52

Sermon

William G. Carter

... of the year, draws relatives and relations to the same hearth. Yet Christmas can also expose family relationships to be something less than the Hallmark ideal. When you bring together people who love one another but live together no longer, the reunion can be quite stressful. It is helpful that Luke tells us a story about the straining of one family’s ties. Jesus and his family went to Jerusalem to celebrate a religious festival. Scholars tell us the population of the holy city swelled by thousands during ...

2887. What a Star Can't Tell You

Matthew 2:1-12

Sermon

William G. Carter

... to relax, much less experience the presence of God. As one overworked volunteer admitted, “Whenever I go to church, I always end up agreeing to do something. Sometimes I stay home on Sunday because, frankly, I need a break.” And yet something doesn’t seem quite right when someone says they feel closer to God out there than they do in here. For some, it may be a cop-out. If you’re looking for good reasons to skip worship, there are plenty: college football games in the fall, winter sports in ...

2888. Hated, Excluded, Reviled, Defamed — And Leaping For Joy

Luke 6:17-26

Sermon

William G. Carter

... Immediately after this passage, for instance, Jesus says, “Love your enemy.” Elsewhere he challenges somebody to unload all of his possessions. Here he makes no such demand. No, today’s text is downright difficult to comprehend. The Lord describes the world in ways quite different from the ways we are accustomed to seeing it. “Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich. Blessed are the hungry, woe to those who stuff their stomachs. Blessed are those who weep, woe to those who laugh. Blessed are those who ...

2889. Anything Better Than the Golden Rule?

Luke 6:27-36

Sermon

William G. Carter

... Nicholas Gage and his mother Eleni. Eleni was a Greek peasant who smuggled her son out of the village before he could be “re-educated” by the communist party. As a result, she was tortured and murdered on August 28, 1948. Thirty-two years later, her son quit his job as a reporter for the New York Times. He devoted his time and money to finding his mother’s killer. He sifted through government cover-ups and false leads. Eventually he found the person who ordered Eleni’s death. His name was Katis. In ...

2890. Beyond Our Sight, Within Our Hearing

Luke 9:28-36

Sermon

William G. Carter

... in, overshadowing the whole group. Suddenly the walls of time and space broke down, and the two greatest characters of the Jewish Scriptures appeared. They began to chat with Jesus as if he was their contemporary. What did they see? Luke can’t quite say. The words aren’t adequate. “The appearance of his face changed. His clothes became dazzling white.” That’s all he can describe. The Jesus whom they had grown accustomed to seeing was changed somehow, becoming in appearance like a shaft of light ...

2891. Truce or Peace?

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... season was an uneasy truce instead of a mysterious peace. In my family, Christmas meant a trip to Grandmother’s house, three hours away. With the usual pettiness of children and the excitement over the season accompanying us, my sister and I presented quite a behavioral challenge to our parents. Usually a few stern rebukes and admonitions that we would receive no presents if we quarreled or “acted up” produced a truce among us until we returned home from Grandmother’s. In a strange way, warring ...

2892. The Scattering of Lesser Figures

Acts 8:9-25

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... of F. W. Boreham, “The Catholicity of a magnificent purpose was strangled by the parochialism of a conservative race.”2 Today’s text is a text laced with extremism. It probably shook its first century hearers more than it shakes us for we are quite comfortable with our parochial spirituality and see the Holy Spirit as something that can be purchased, if not with money, then with prayer and meditation. We tend to focus on the instruments of the Holy Spirit, holding up our favorite passages of Scripture ...

2893. Old Favorite

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... addressed worked on. They handled the money from shops and furniture industries like Jesus and his father worked in as carpenters. The Corinthians were the first century’s accountants, vice presidents of sales, CEO’s and professors. They were also terribly good people, quite appallingly good. The Corinthians were not a bad lot at all, only a few of them. True, they did have a mountain towering above their town, topped as it was with the Temple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It was populated with ...

2894. A Note to Fearful Hearts

1 Corinthians 15:12-34

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... there had been no death. This rational thought, filled with oriental influences and Greek mystery religions, focused on mysteries instead of realities when it came to religious expressions. Paul’s focus on a bodily death and bodily resurrection must have been quite difficult for first-century converts to Christianity to understand. It was, perhaps, even more difficult for them to grasp than for us. Yet the great scandal of the resurrection of the dead remains the central belief of fearful hearts in every ...

2895. The Power of Uninformed Decisions

1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... s an uninformed decision. There’s no way to predict totally what it will be like. Even people who live together before marriage can often find that living in marriage with someone you’re legally, financially, morally, and tied by family to is quite different. Professor Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University contends that all our major decisions in life are “uninformed” decisions which require us to step out in faith. He could well be right. Consider most of our major decisions. What profession shall I ...

2896. Taking the Sting Out of Death

1 Chronicles 15:1-16:6

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... came dashing over with ice, and the physician from next door, who was cutting his grass, came over in a flash. Actually it was comforting to have the sting removed and to be surrounded by so many friends. The second time that same child was stung things were quite different. It was twenty years later and he had become “citified.” He had lived in Boston for three years in a dormitory in an area with 30,000 people per square mile. That summer he accepted a job in a large church back in his home state as ...

2897. Exposed!

2 Corinthians 2:12--3:6

Sermon

Harold Warlick

... experience. “Rabbi,” he said, “this is wonderful. It’s so good to be here. Let’s hold on to this forever. Let’s put up three shelters, three monuments, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Mark 9:2-6). It was quite a scene and Peter wanted to make it permanent. Three permanent shelters with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah in them; what a tourist attraction that would be! Hundreds of thousands of people would make a pilgrimage to that place. Yet Jesus said, “Let it go. We cannot ...

2898. Even Our Business Belongs to God!

Jeremiah 32:1-44

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... 7 Do you get the implications of this for the importance of your work? If God uses your work as a “mask” for giving you the goods of life, then God uses your work and the work of others to give other people the necessities of life too. Sometimes, quite often, you can be God’s means of working good for others. As much as my work brings God’s love to people, your job provides these opportunities too. Your job is a spiritual vocation filled with ultimate meaning! This is how the references in our other ...

2899. A Fresh Start

Joel 2:28-32, Joel 2:18-27

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... some sense their own fault. They had sinned, like you and I sin. “Wait,” you say. “Is it really the case that whenever something goes wrong for people in life it is their fault? Are the worst, sinful people the ones who suffer?” Not quite. You are thinking more individualistically than the ancient Hebrews did. They thought more in terms of the community. Consequently when the prophets like Joel claim that the evils which had befallen the Hebrews or were to happen were the punishments for their sin ...

2900. A Vision of Freedom

Isaiah 65:17-25

Sermon

Mark Ellingsen

... you hurting, anxious, or paralyzed by your past, by a destructive lifestyle, or by what society says you are? Our First Lesson points you to Jesus and proclaims that you have a fresh start. How’s that for a new vision of freedom? “Oh, but it is not quite so simple,” you say. “I have known of Jesus and his resurrection my whole life, and I am still stuck in some of the same old destructive patterns.” Is this text from Isaiah really relevant for you and me? Martin Luther was lecturing on our First ...

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